The Evolution of the Stickleback Fish

People often ask questions like "yeah, but how does evolution work though?" and "how can such massive changes happen so quickly and stick around?". They are good questions, and as it turns out, they've been answered.

In this post I'll look at the example of the stickleback fish, a small fish characterised by three little spines attached to its pelvis (right) which it can push out to counter predators, essentially turning it into a swimming pincushion. This was a very useful trait as you could imagine. However, over time the stickleback population began to move into more freshwater regions, where their spikes were a disadvantage as large insects like dragonflies could just pluck them out of the water by their sticking out spikes. As you would expect, the spiky sticklebacks began to die out and through natural selection a species of stickleback without the spiky pelvis began to emerge and thrive in the freshwater regions.

This is simple enough to understand on a basic level, but we can dig deeper. How did the stickleback lose its pelvis in the first place? Evolutionary biologist David Kingsley of Stanford University has researched into this question thoroughly and has come back with very convincing results. What he managed to do was isolate the stickleback's gene which was responsible for the production of the pelvis. What he found was that this gene is present not only in the marine sticklebacks with the pelvis, but also the freshwater sticklebacks.

What we can tell from this is that even though both types of fish have the same gene, there is something turning off that gene in the freshwater population - a kind of switch. These gene switches control when a gene is turned on and in what places. So as it turns out, it is not the genes themselves which are mutating, but the gene switches. As a result of this we find very different species can have very similar gene patterns, it's just that some of those genes are switched on or off.

It's likely that this is why we sometimes see mutations in the

human DNA that reveal parts of our ancestry, such as tails (yes, they do happen).

We share 99% of our genes with apes. Yet how do we look so different? The mutations needed for these changes are so so small, but can make such a huge difference in appearance. In my next blog post I might go into how the human brain actually evolved to be so much bigger than the ape brain.

It is all down to tiny mutations.

So what do you think guys, should I have been an evolutionary biologist?

Bands I've Seen Live

This actually has nothing to do with anything, I just want to keep a list of all the bands/acts I've seen live and this seems like a good place to do it. :)

• Linkin Park
• Heaven & Hell (before Dio died, R.I.P)
• Metallica
• NIN
• Soil
• Machine Head x 2
• Bullet for My Valentine
• Lamb of God
• Avenged Sevenfold (before The Rev died, R.I.P)
• Anthrax x 2
• Saxon
• Alien Ant Farm
• Skindred x 2
• Dead By Sunrise
• Iron Maiden
• Rammstein
• Pendulum
• Lacuna Coil
• Alice Cooper
• Gary Numan
• Europe
• Slayer
• Madina Lake
• Alestorm
• Sabaton x 2
• Turisas
• The Fab Beatles
• Bjorn Again
• Tim Minchin
• Dara O'Briain

This list should get bigger this summer!

Explaining the God Delusion with Social Anthropology

As many of you know I recently converted to Atheism. However, even now that I am an Atheist, I am still questioning the nature of faith and belief in religion. It is clear to me that we have found enough evidence for evolution for it to be logically considered more convincing than any religion. For the sake of this blog I will use Christianity as my main example as I know more about it than I know about other religions, but I'm hoping that the same principle can be applied to any religion.

I'm not making this blog to push my atheism on anyone else, nor am I making it to try and give evidence of evolution. I am making this blog post to investigate this question: why is it that when Christianity fails under the scrutiny of scientific evidence, the beliefs are still held worldwide and thought to be the best explanation of the world around us by many?

Power in Numbers

The statistics of the amount of atheists in the world has never been favourable. Wikipedia has this to say on the demographics of atheism:

"The demographics of atheism are difficult to quantify. Different people interpret "atheist" and related terms differently, and it can be hard to draw boundaries between atheism, non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious a

nd spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, atheists may not report themselves as such, to prevent suffering from social stigma, discrimination, and persecution in certain regions such as the Middle East, or, in cases where the situation is reversed, religious people may keep their beliefs secret in pro-atheist societies." - Wikipedia

Atheism has been pushed into the margins of society and looked down upon for as long as it has been around. Unfortunately, it is often the case that people will change their beliefs dependant on the society they find themselves in.

I am not the first to come up with this argument, Dawkins has been arguing it for years.

"If you'd been brought up in India, you would be a Hindu. If you were brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you would be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you would be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa, you would be believing in the Great JuJu of the mountain." - Richard Dawkins ~2006

In my opinion, it seems fair to assume that your social surroundings play a vital role in determining what beliefs you hold. Only 2.5% of the entire population of the world is atheist, showing that science and archaeology are, for the most part, ignored by most of the earth. In places like Africa I can understand their religious beliefs, as they may not have access to information about how species really evolved (which is quite sad really, as Africa is where it all happened). However in places like America, it is utterly unacceptable in the information age for only 1.6% of the population of North America to express themselves as atheist.

At this point I would like to state: There is power in numbers. Not just physically, but mentally too. Religion can be seen as an "imagined community" - imagined, but not imaginary (Anderson 1983). Anderson uses the concept of imagined communities to explain nationalism, but I would like to use it to describe the religious community in the USA. Christianity is a socially constructed community, "imagined" and created by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. His theory states that without anybody to imagine the community, the community dies. So if nobody believed in Christianity, Christianity would quickly wither and die and other beliefs would take over.

Similarly, because lots and lots of people are Christians, their faith is very strong. Like I said, power in numbers.

No Evidence, So Why Believe?

I would now like to talk about the philosophical teapot theory, which I find best describes the religious doctrine.

In 1952, a Bertrand Russell wrote the following for an article:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time." - Russel 1952

This idea has been reincarnated in many ways such as the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Dragon in my Garage. The point is, if you can't prove that something isn't there it doesn't mean that it IS there, because that's not yet been proven either. However, something as ridiculous as a celestial teapot or a Flying Spaghetti Monster can be seen as historical fact if enough people believe in it for long enough. If we found a 6,000 year old text which affirmed the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster, no doubt a religion would form around it and people would live their life by this fictional being.

In my opinion, there are two reasons that people become Christians and only two.

The first is that they are looking for an explanation and don't understand science enough to understand that the Big Bang theory and the theory of Evolution are very convincing. This is incredibly disgusting and should be fixed as soon as possible.

The second is that they find themselves in a society where believing in Christianity is the norm. Think about it. If you were born into a society where wearing crocs was the norm, you would wear them too right? Even though crocs are so ugly and atrocious and a crime against fashion, you might see this, but it doesn't matter because it's "tradition" and everyone does it. You would especially wear crocs if you had been told as a child that if you don't, you'll burn forever after you die, or will be eaten by the boogey man. If anyone from a different society comes along and says "Why are you wearing crocs? They're ugly!" obviously you would defend your stance fervently, but you wouldn't really understand why you felt so strongly about crocs. This is what I think is the case with the majority of Christians today.

Christians feel like they are able to defend their faith because they have the power of the church behind them. Religion is a social construction which brings people together and at the same time divides them. Human beings are social creatures, above all they just want to be accepted by others. Human minds are also very prone to indoctrination and brainwashing, an example of this is North Korea.

Hegemony

One of Gramsci's necessities for hegemony (total and utter ideological control) was isolation. This is one of the forms of control shown by the Christian faith which stares us right in the face. Parents with a strong Christian faith often want their children to grow up in a Christian environment, because as we've seen, the place you grow up shapes your beliefs and what you feel is the social norm. So the Christian parents isolate their children completely from any other religion. This is particularly prominent in the USA. They send their young child to a Christian preschool, where they are taught the teachings of the bible. Then they are sent to a Christian elementary school where they are taught no science, only biblical "facts". They are also taught, as little children, to fear that place called Hell that they might go to after they die. It's the same concept as telling a child that if they misbehave they won't get any presents from Santa Claus, but even more disgusting.

Christian children are not allowed to find out about any kind of magic like Harry Potter or dragons and are punished whenever they try to rebel against their Christian faith.

A similar example of hegemony like this is North Korea. In North Korea they are not allowed contact with the outside world, and told that North Korea is the best nation on the planet. If anybody tries to debate this, they are quickly "silenced". Total isolation, total control.

To exercise this level of control on any human being is horrible, whether it's the citizens of a country or your own child. To try and get your child to behave by making them fear the consequences so much they have nightmares about it is moral abuse and shouldn't be tolerated in this day and age. There are other reasons to be good apart from getting into heaven and children need to understand that as much as adults do.

Anyway, that's my two cents on religion for now. Maybe one day I'll write a book about it, lol. My blog posts are always so long it's a wonder anyone reads them at all! Please do tell me what you thought of all this if you read it and if you agree with the points I raised. If not, please tell me why. Ciao for now!

Forwards and backwards - a review of 2010 and other thoughts

And so I sit here with the christmas lights on the chipboard behind my laptop reflecting off the keys, providing a nice ambience, and during my last few days in Manchester this year I have time to contemplate.

Contemplate what? Anything and everything. There has been so much on my mind as of late I've been walking down streets of melted snow and ice under bare trees completely absorbed in my mind. Today as I walked down a street I've never walked down on my own before, I was thinking about the nature of our existence. This may seem surprisingly philosophical for me, but I just want to get this down somewhere and this seems to be a good place.

It seems like we are constantly taking two steps forwards and two steps back, in every way. I was looking at the BBC News on my phone and I saw that unemployment has risen sharply in the last 3 months and I silently begged for the conservatives to sort it out. A while ago I had a look at the unemployment rate of the last 50 years or so and saw that when Thatcher was in power, unemployment declined hugely but when Brown was our prime minister the level skyrocketed. It's like everything Thatcher did to bring down the level was pointless. Obviously it wasn't, but if you look at the chart that's the initial feeling. There's this feeling of reciprocity, where everything that is done is undone, redone, undone again etc. and the cycle never ends. As I think my mum said, "labour spend spend spend, tory cut cut cut".

The trees lose their leaves with the promise of getting them back in the spring, only to lose them again. Forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards.

Another thing I was thinking about was my university education and where it is ultimately going to lead me. A startling number of graduates I have met struggle to find a job after they graduate and yes, they end up back at their parents' home, which is most likely the last place they want to be after the 3 or more year struggle for independence. Back and forth. In and out.

And finally, our lives. We are born dependant on those around us, we grow up and learn to be independent and take care of ourselves only to be largely dependant again on the community and our loved ones when we get elderly. In a way it makes you think, we spend a lot of our lives striving for independence and to escape, but ultimately what is it worth?

It's worth everything, especially to me. The freedom you experience during the years of living in a new place or making new friends are the best years and worth every moment. You learn so much by meeting new faces, seeing new things, looking at things from a different perspective and learning about the world around you. Moving away from home, away from my secluded corner of the country has taught me so much about the world I live in and the people I share an island with.

More important than anything, since I have moved out I've been able to see my life as if I'm standing away from it, looking from a distance. Sometimes it's incredibly valuable to just look at your life with different eyes, from a different place.

Will I ever return to New Romney? No. Not for anything other than nostalgia. As I say goodbye to the corner of the world that I lived in for 18 years, I may miss it but I will not look back. Life is too fast to look back. You may spend all your time thinking about the past and let the present pass you by.

As 2010 comes to a close, and I get ready to welcome the new year with friends and alcohol, I will be looking to the future with excitement and imagination, for the world is my oyster right now. University is the crossroads, from here I can go in absolutely any direction I want. The control I have over my life makes me content.

So friends, have a very merry christmas and enjoy seeing your family! I'll see you on the other side.

Cute Gay Animals

Today I feel like talking about homosexual tendencies in animals. Just because I think more people should know about them, it's pretty cute.

The penguins in the picture above are the male chinstrap penguins Squawk and Milou of the New York Central Park Zoo, just one example of same-sex courtship among animals. This is hardly the first time we've seen this, there were also the male penguins Roy and Silo who took a strong liking to each other and showed the classic signs of penguin lurrrve whilst also completely dismissing the attention of female penguins. They were also determined to "adopt" a chick as their own, as a lot of same-sex animal couples do.

"At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own."

Cute, huh? Of course it doesn't stop with penguins. 8% of male lion and ram sexual interaction is males mounting other males.

45% of male elephants, both African and Asian, will engage in same-sex bonding and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with affectionate interactions, such as kissing, trunk intertwining, and placing trunks in each other's mouths. Male elephants, who often live apart from the general herd, often form "companionships", consisting of an older individual and one or sometimes two younger, attendant males with sexual behaviour being an important part of the social dynamic. Unlike heterosexual relations in elephants which are fleeting, homosexual relations may last for many years. Quite sweet isn't it, how homosexual relationships between elephants last a lot longer than heterosexual ones?

Experts estimate that at least 90% of giraffe sex that happens is male-male sex and 1% is female-female, leaving only about 9% of giraffe sex heterosexual and actually reproductive.

Maybe one day I'll write another blog about the strange sexual habits of giraffes, they're quite disgusting, but that's for another time I think. If we can take any lesson from this, it's that being gay is totally natural. I seriously doubt these animals are actively choosing to rebel against the system and be different.

Debating Intelligent Design

I wasn't sure whether or not to make this blog yet, but it's been playing on my mind all day and if it wasn't this it was going to be about the vikings finding Greenland and then abandoning it in the 15th Century for no apparent reason, but that just seemed too boring. This is what I really want to discuss.

In this blog I just want to discuss my own reasons for not believing in intelligent design and the idea that a loving, benevolent god created us exactly as we are.

One major argument creationists use to defend the creation myth is "complex things like the human eye could not have evolved as perfect as they are now, they work like a machine and therefore can't have evolved".

I'd like to present an analogy to disprove this. Let's say we have a designer of cars. The cars he designs are generally good, they work. You can drive around, there's a windscreen to see through and the engine is very cleverly designed to used fuel to power the car. However the clutch might stick sometimes, that's just a minor flaw, you can take it to the garage and get it fixed, that's how clever he is! He designed something that when it breaks, you can spend lots of money and time fixing it. Not only that, but sometimes his cars break beyond repair before you've even used it, but you are refused another one so you have to use a car which you can barely even drive on the road for the rest of your life. What an intelligent car designer, right?

In this scenario, if this man really designed cars, nobody would buy them because of how faulty they are. Would you describe this man as intelligent? Because I definitely wouldn't.

By comparison, let's look at the human body. It's generally good, you can walk around and there's eyes to see where you're going and you're very cleverly designed to run on food. However your heart might stop sometimes, but that's alright! You can just go to hospital and get it fixed. How clever! Not only that, but sometimes you get cancer or heart disease or leukaemia or a severe mental disability or deafness or blindness or physical deformity before you're even born, but you can't get another one so you have to live with this horrible illness for the rest of your life. Whoever designed this must be really intelligent.

And FYI, the human eye is anything but perfect. Not only are the light-receptive photo cells all facing the wrong direction, there is a big blind spot through which the nerve fibres and blood vessels pass. The only reason we can even see is because of the huge amount of work the brain has to do to restore the image to how it should be, otherwise we'd be seeing upside-down. And that's just the start. Eyes are prone to myopia, astigmatism and retinal detachment. If it wasn't for HUMAN inventions like glasses and laser eye surgery which were all made by SCIENCE, some of us wouldn't be able to see a thing. ( For more information on this, please visit this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7yAEh-PU4M ) Personally my eyes are bad to a factor of -4.5, and to put that into perspective, average reading glasses are about -1.25.

My question to people who believe in intelligent design can be summarised like this. If there was an intelligent designer who made us perfect, why don't my eyes work? Why do they require science to function? Sorry, but to me this seems like science 1 - 0 religion.

Ok, onto the second part. The other most annoying argument that creationists often use is "Well look at the mountains, sunsets, oceans, they're all so beautiful! It must be a gift from God."

This is probably the argument that upsets me the most. You think the world is perfect and beautiful and made by a loving creator who loves each of his "children"? The world itself disproves this ridiculous notion.

First let us quickly consider the thought of beauty. I'm sure we all would agree that sunsets are a very nice sight to see and preferable to other things, like a slug. Not many people watch slugs for their astounding grace, beauty and peacefulness. But it is true that if we had nothing like the slug to compare the sunset with, the concept of beauty to describe that item would not exist.

Beauty is entirely a socially constructed concept, which is incredibly obvious in modern society. Why is a slim woman with lots of makeup and smooth hair more beautiful a larger woman with greasy hair and a droopy face? And don't give me the "everyone is beautiful" crap, a very small number of people would look at the second woman and think about her beauty. There is a certain socially established idea of what beauty is and isn't, and it differs from culture to culture (in certain societies, a fat woman is seen as more beautiful).

So now we've determined that beauty is defined by humans. This is only one reason that beauty is not a reason for God's existence.

But even with that argument aside it's not viable to believe that the wonder of nature was made by the intelligent, loving god of the bible. I think to believe so is to be incredibly incredibly ignorant of the world around you.

According to you, god lovingly allows poverty, famine, plague, birth defects, autism, asperger's syndrome, down syndrome, conjoined twins (parasitic and otherwise), miscarriages, drought, earthquakes, wild fires, floods, tsunamis, greed, hunger, selfishness, murderous intent, depression, suicide, genocide, leprosy, avalanches, sandstorms, lightning which kills, deadly animals everywhere which kill us...

That's not to mention the environment he bestowed upon us. Most of the planet is totally uninhabitable, plus we depend on fossil fuels which will one day run out and we orbit around a star which is one day going to explode. We risk every day random climate change and a meteor strike. He also gave us deadly bacteria which are perfect for living in our bodies (I did see an excellent video about this, will put it here if i find it).

In summary, we live in a hostile environment where everything wants to kill us. If god can do amazing things like save a baby in an earthquake (out of the thousands that he killed) and create the Earth in seven days, making Adam from dirt and Eve from bone, why can he not help us out a bit?

What I can conclude from this is that if there is a divine creator, he is one of three things: cruel, stupid or uncaring of his creation's fate. I think you would agree that none of these accurately describe the god of the bible as most people like to see him. Although, the word 'cruel' can be very nicely given to a god who demands worship based on no reliable evidence or else burn for eternity in the flaming pits of hell.

If there is a god, he hates us. I'd rather not believe something like that, it's completely stupid.

If anyone would like to see some interesting youtube videos relating to the creation/science debate, just hit me up and I'll recommend you some brilliant ones!

Redefining Islamophobia

In this post I just want to present a quick response to the idea of "Islamophobia" and what it has been claimed to stand for. I think it's important that this word is not misused too often, as it can seriously make people look stupid.

Let's go over some of the ways in which people use the word. If somebody is described as an Islamophobe, it is most likely that they have done or said something which is offensive to the Muslim community. It's a word commonly used to describe anyone who has a hatred of Muslims.

So what is the difference between Islamophobia and racism? Surely both harbour an irrational hatred, right? Wrong. Racism is a belief that one race of people is, in one way or another, inferior to another. It's characterised by a prejudice of an entire race, not just a few extremists.

Now let's go over Islamophobia and what the word actually means. The word 'phobia' I'm sure you're all aware of - it means an irrational fear of something. Arachnophobia is an irrational fear of spiders even though they can't hurt you, hippopotamonstrosesquipedaliophobia is a fear of long words, etc etc. So the literal meaning of Islamophobia is an irrational fear of Muslims. Wait, what?

Imagine someone who has an irrational fear of Muslims. He walks down the street, sees someone in a burka and runs off screaming. Ridiculous. However there are people who are scared of Muslims irrationally, terrified of an entire religion based on a few extremists who've blown themselves up. They're afraid to get on a plane in case it gets hijacked and explodes.

On the other hand, an irrational fear of Muslims can be seen as a bit of an oxymoron. Isn't it ok to be afraid of a group of people who preach hatred and kill anyone who converts from Islam, and force women to cover themselves up or else stone them to death? A group of people who are making their way across Europe and to the USA, trying to gain respect whilst at the same time doing crazy things like burning poppies and yelling about British soldiers burning in Hell? How can a fear of these people be irrational?

If you apply racism to this case, you would still be wrong, because it's not a fear of ALL Muslims, it's a fear of a few extremists. HOWEVER, if you apply it to ignorant people who think that every single Muslim in the world is like this, you'd be absolutely right. As long as they didn't think Muslims were inferior to themselves, then you'd be talking about racism.

If you look at society properly you'll see that people like the example above who think that every single Muslim in the country is out to get them you'll see that not many people actually think that way. Most of the people who are branded with the name 'dirty Islamophobe' actually just criticise Islam and disrespect some of the horrible things it influences people to do. That is neither racism nor Islamophobic. It's a rational conclusion that stoning women to death is generally not a nice thing to do. It's not Islamophobic because it's based on rational thought, and it's not racist because it doesn't claim that the entire religion is inferior, as there are a lot of Muslims who do not stone women or crash planes into buildings and the like. In fact the majority of Muslims are alright to live with. A lot of Muslims actually make an effort to integrate into the society they move into, and I'm sure nobody who isn't racist or Islamophobic has a problem with that at all.

If anybody is Islamophobic, it's the entire country as a whole. We are terrified of insulting Muslims in case they blow us up. We bend over backwards to appease them so that they won't get butthurt about what our actual beliefs are. Take this example.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11765420

In a toy farm set, the pig was removed after concerns that it would offend Muslims and Jews. Now, my brother actually had this play set before they removed the pig and I honestly don't understand how it could have offended anyone. If it had come with a shotgun to kill the pig with and a knife to chop it up, then yes it would be offensive. But you can't seriously believe that Muslims and Jews want to deny the existence of pigs altogether? Even Muslim mothers wrote in to say that it was absolutely ridiculous to do. This is just another example of "political correctness gone mad". How terrified do you have to be of Muslims and Jews that you are actually attempting to speak for them and guess what is going to offend them just in case they complain that you're not turning Britain into an Islamic or Jewish society and decide to kill people?

Not only is it cowardly, it's patronising. Do you really think that extremist Muslims are going to target the Early Learning Centre for their next bombing? Honestly.

Another case of this the fact that my sun cream got confiscated from me at the airport last summer. Why? In case there was a bomb in it. We also can't take printer ink onto planes, why? In case there is a bomb in it. This country is terrified of Muslims.

As you can see, Islamophobia is intrinsically embedded into British society, and yet we call rational thinkers and critics of the Muslim faith racist Islamophobe nazi evil bastards? If you want to call them anything, call them freedom fighters. Striving for the freedom of speech which Muslims would prevent us from having, given their way. Have you also noticed that nobody who criticises Christianity is called racist? Why is that? I'm not going to discuss that here, I think this blog post is long enough already. But nobody is scared of Christians, because whilst some of them are completely insane, the most they ever do is protest outside abortion clinics and military funerals. There is no Christianophobia. People are only scared of Muslims and there is a reason for that.

But yes, this blog post is long enough, I could go on for hours on this topic but I just want this post to be about the definition of Islamophobia and how wrongly the label is given to people. Maybe some other day I'll talk about Islam itself but for now I want to seem relatively impartial, don't know if that's worked... please tell me if you have any thoughts on this at all. I like hearing people's opinions!