This week Oi 'ave been mostly working on ... nothing

No blogging for a while because I've had plenty of stuff to do recently, but there is stuff in the pipeline so bear with me!

There's a long reply to the bullshit that Skeptico left on the 'Guns and Skeptics' post that I've decided to turn into a blog post rather than muck around with Blogger's comment limit. I plan on going back to Conservapedia to start ripping apart their history lessons. I've a rant in progress about the 'God can't lose' principle and the whole indifference of gods if we for a moment assume they do exist. I should probably get around to saying something about healthcare too. And there's always the Bible to blog about.

I'm working on it!
Embiggen!

Not YOUR religion, ALL religion

The subject of this post may seem a little obvious to many people, but apparently some others still don't get it.

A friend of mine got into an argument on Facebook about Obama and how Christian he wasn't - the evidence for this was, apparently, that he wouldn't allow Christian prayer in schools and he had held a Ramadan break fast at the White House. Leaving aside the fact that, as my friend pointed out, Bush held plenty of Iftars and no right wing nuts complained about him not being Christian, I want to vent my spleen about the whole prayer in school thing.

Nothing new to anyone who reads atheist blogs I know.

Let me start by stating the obvious point that most Christians who whine about the lack of prayer in US state schools seem to miss - it isn't about YOUR religion, but ALL religions. If you allow one religion to have prayer in state schools then you have to allow all religions to have prayer in state schools, and then you have to allow some equivalent activity for the non-religious as well. The reason for this is quite simple, and one of the best things about the USA - the first amendment to the Constitution, otherwise known as the third article of the US Bill of Rights.

This states, for those religious and right wing types who like to waffle on and on about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights without reading either of them:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I've highlighted the important part for those still too stupid to get it. What this means, and I'm no constitutional expert so this is my layman's understanding, is that the federal government can't enact laws that would favour any one religion over any other religion or prevent people from the exercise of their religion in any way - that means it can't enact a law that favours Roman Catholicism over Anglicanism, or Christianity over Islam, or Buddhism over Zoroastrianism, or theism over atheism. It also means the government can't enact a law that restricts your freedom to practise your religion. The first amendment guarantees that the government stays out of religious worship, period.

Now, this originally only applied to the central (federal) government, but the fourteenth amendment effectively applied this to all states as well:

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Again, I've highlighted the important part. This meant that state laws regarding state governments and religious observance were overruled by the first amendment of the federal Constitution - all US citizens had the privilege of the first amendment and no state could overrule that.

Now, I'm not an expert on the US education system, but I do know that state schools receive federal funding. That is, funding from the US federal government, for those people still having trouble following this. Given this, and the first and fourteenth amendments, that means that if any state government, or the federal government, passes a law allowing for or making mandatory just one religion's prayers in a state school, they are (as I understand it) violating the first (and fourteenth in the case of a state) amendment of the US Constitution.

The only way to avoid violating the first amendment would be to allow all religions to have school endorsed prayers in state schools. And we know that isn't what the people whining about prayer in schools want, don't we? They want just their religion's prayers to be allowed in school. Do you really think the people who want God in our schools are also happy to allow Allah, Vishnu and Thor? Can my kids pray to Robbie Fowler, if that is the case?

But that isn't the only stupid here - prayer is not actually prohibited in school, and that too is guaranteed by the first amendment ('free exercise thereof'). Kids in school are allowed to pray privately whenever they want. The first amendment merely guarantees that state schools can't endorse one religion's prayer at the expense of other religions. No-one is stopping anyone from praying in school as long as that prayer is not officially endorsed by the school, state or federal government.

And it gets better for you religious types, there is a place where kids can go to school and have the school tell them they are saying the right prayers and even say them with your kids - they're called religious and private schools. If you want your kids to go to a school where prayer is endorsed by the school then send them to a religious school, not a state school, and stop fucking complaining.

So get this through your thick skull religious whiner - your kid IS allowed to pray in school, and that right is constitutionally protected. The school is not allowed to endorse that one religion's prayer though, or make it mandatory, official or otherwise sanctioned ahead of any others - and that is constitutionally mandated as well. The only possible constitutional way around that is to allow all religions to have prayer in state schools so that no one religion is 'respected', in the language of the first amendment. Which would leave no time for actual education, wouldn't it? Ah, I see where you idiots are going with this now...

And so; if allowing all religions is impractical, and allowing just one religion is a violation of the first amendment what is the sensible and legal solution? Allow no prayer in school other than private ones. Shock horror, Obama would be upholding the Constitution by not allowing Christian prayer in state schools. And him being President and all. Fancy taking that oath seriously...

It's all religions or no religions, but definitely not just your religion. If you like pre-Enlightenment Europe so much then piss off back there.

And don't get me started on the first amendment and "in God we trust" or the ridiculous quasi-fascist pledge of allegiance.
Embiggen!

Blogging the Bible part 9

OK, so on to Genesis chapter 9, and there's not much going on here I'll be honest.

God blesses Noah and his sons (why not the wives? Can anyone say "ancient patriarchal society"?) and tells them to be fruitful and increase in numbers and fill the earth. (GEN 9:1) Then he tells Noah and his sons that he has put the fear of man into all animals and gives them all to Noah and his boys. Then God says that "Everything that lives and moves will be food for you." (GEN 9:3) So, God condones cannibalism. Interesting that Christian missionaries used to get so wound up about it then, really.

But wait, God then says:

But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. (GEN 9:4)

Which is a curious phrase - does this mean we can't eat animals that are still alive? Does this mean we can't kill animals to eat? Does this mean we have to wait for animals to die before turning them into food? Does this mean we can't eat a rare steak? Does this mean we have to ensure all meat has been hung long enough to ensure there is no more blood in it? Does this mean I can't eat Black Pudding? If I can't then frankly, God's version of an English breakfast must suck.

Then we have some stuff about God demanding an accounting for everyone's blood which finishes with :

"Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man. (GEN 9:6)

Did you get that? It is not wrong to kill because it is almost always morally wrong to do so, but because we look like God. Indeed religion and in particular the Bible, must be the source of all morality...

Then there is some more about being fruitful and multiplying. Which makes you wonder why Christians are so obsessed with preventing people having sex. (GEN (9:7)

Then we get to God's covenant with Noah. Which is certainly presented here as God doing us all a big favour. And what is this covenant? Oh, nothing more than God promising not to drown everything again. Well gee, thanks a bunch. What a prick. Isn't that the very least he could do for his creations? (GEN 9:8-11) Of course, like all good contracts it does you good to read the small print here. God doesn't say he will not destroy the world in other ways, just that he won't use a flood to do it (GEN 9:11). So everything else is still on the table here. It's like signing a contract with a security firm who promise that they will be able to protect you from one very dangerous crook, but no guarantees about every other one. Even though they all work for the security firm anyway. Great, thanks a bunch. Definitely getting the moneys worth. But it gets better, what he is really promising is that he won't use floods to kill everything. Which he never did in the first place. So killing almost everything is OK. So really he hasn't promised to stop doing anything.

The devil is in the details. Always read the small print, even if it is your creator. See, the Bible does have some useful lessons in it after all.

But, not only does God make a basically worthless covenant and expect us all to be happy about it, because he is apparently a doddering old fool he also has to make a sign to remind him that he has promised not to drown everybody again. This, we learn, is the rainbow. (GEN 9:12-17) See now, you all thought that rainbows were a thing of natural beauty to do with refraction and water droplets and viewing angles etc, when in fact what you are seeing is a godly Post-It note reminding the Almighty not to drown all life on the planet. And that sucked the life out of that particular natural wonder for you.

Rainbows are there to remind God to turn the tap off. You shouldn't appreciate their beauty, you should reach for the water wings. Just in case. I mean, we are made in God's image after all and how many times have you lost a Post-It note with something important on it?

Then we find that we are all descended from Noah's three sons, and this, coupled with the coming verses, nicely sets the scene for subsequent racism. (GEN 9:18-19) Source of all morality...

We have some bizarre stuff now about Noah sleeping commando and his youngest seeing the family jewels and his offspring being cursed for it. (GEN 9:20-29). Noah is a man of the soil, and proceeded (this can, according to the footnotes, be translated as 'was the first'. Which is an entirely different meaning - any Biblical literalists like to explain?) to plant a vineyard. Where did he get the seeds, by the way? Anyone?

Now, presumably some time later, Noah then drinks some wine from this vineyard and gets drunk and passes out in his tent, in the altogether. Ham, who is father of Canaan, sees Noah's meat and two veg and (because clearly it is hilarious when some drunken fool passes out naked) tells his brothers. His brothers then take a garment and lay it across their shoulders, then back into the tent to cover Noah's sweaty bits. They make a point of ensuring they don't see Noah's johnson. (GEN 9:20-23)

When Noah wakes up, he finds out what Ham had done to him. Wait, what Ham did to him? Ham did nothing apart from stumble upon the old drunken fool passed out naked on his bed. And as a result, since God has already promoted the idea that if you fuck up it is OK to blame everyone else and punish them for it, Noah curses Canaan. Wait, what now? Ham finds Noah naked because Noah got drunk and passed out naked, and as a result Noah thinks Ham did something to Noah and so curses Canaan, Ham's son.

Dude, that is fucked up right there. Source of all morality you say...

Noah says (of his own GRANDSON remember):

"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers."

He also said,

"Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
May God extend the territory of
Japheth;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be his slave." (GEN 9:24-27)

What a colossal dick. He cursed his own grandson for something his son saw because he got drunk! Don't ever fucking dare tell me this trash is the source of modern morality unless you want me to tear off an arm and beat you to death with the soggy end.

Still insist on telling us there is morality in these tales? Maybe you should understand exactly what the Curse of Ham has been used to justify over the centuries then.

Thankfully, before the end of the chapter, that old drunken son of a bitch Noah dies.

I mean, really?
Embiggen!

Holy Scripture not working for you? Then re-write it!

Just when you think that the ultra conservative right wing hardcore religious inhabitants of this planet couldn't possibly extend and expand their capacity for preposterousness you will find yourself, as I recently did, running across the simpletons and buffoons that inhabit the world of Conservapedia. There apparently really is no depth of intellectual absurdity to which these imbeciles will not sink, and here is the proof. In case you haven't heard, Conservapedia are re-writing the Bible to remove, astonishingly, its liberal bias!

Wait, what now? Yes you read that right, translations of the Bible are apparently too liberal for ultra-conservatives. Just exactly how delusional or detached from any real connection with reality do you have to be to consider any translation of the Bible as liberal? For crying out loud, Hitler was more liberal than any translation of the Bible ever was. At least he was a vegetarian.

Of course, unwittingly but also in an immensely gratifying way, these numbskulls are proving several points that atheists, skeptics and critical thinkers have long argued about religion, the religious and alleged holy scriptures. Rather than examine the twisted intellectual gymnastics that the people at Conservapedia must be using to justify doing what they are I am going to look at the problems they have created for themselves and the suspicions they are confirming for those of us of a skeptical bent.

Isn't the Bible inerrant and to be taken literally?

If ultra-conservatives claim that the Bible is the word of God and/or inerrant then this whole project of theirs clearly hits a snag. Of course skeptics have long argued that there are mistranslations and conflicting translations between varying editions of the Bible going all the way back to the earliest surviving manuscripts that we possess - but that has never once stopped biblical literalists arguing that the Bible can and should be taken literally. Now however, Conservapedia is saying that yes there is something wrong with translations of the Bible. Does this mean the end of biblical literalism? How could it not?

How can you argue that the Bible has been mistranslated BUT at the same time it should be taken literally because it is the word of God and inerrant?

Furthermore, if you are going to argue that the Bible has been deliberately mistranslated then you should be able to show exactly how, where and why this occurred. It is not enough to merely proclaim that you find a word too liberal and therefore it must be a politically liberal deliberate mistranslation. If you can't do that then you are simply demonstrating that because you don't like the wording you think you have the right to reword it.

You can't have it both ways Conservapedia - either the Bible is the inerrant word of God and must be taken literally or it is the work of human authors prone to error and filled with mistranslations, bias and contradictions. On top of that - if the Bible is the word of God then why did he let it be reproduced with incorrect translations if that isn't what he wanted?

Basically, Conservapedians now think they know the mind of God, and it just so happens he's a Republican and a Rush Limbaugh fan.

Not translation - interpretation

Of course, what is really happening here is that these cretins are not now giving a more accurate translation, they are simply reinterpreting it in light of their own worldview. Read their silly article on the project here and watch them admit that this is what they are doing.

The only way to ensure that a correct translation of the Bible is achieved is to first be fluent in the languages that the earliest surviving manuscripts are written in and then re-translate directly from those manuscripts with no intervening liberal or conservative bias. However, the Conservapedians admit they aren't doing this. They say there are three sources of error in conveying biblical meaning (but - literal and inerrant?) and the third of these is :

translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.

And then they say :

But the third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate.

In other words, in order to remove bias and give an accurate translation of the Bible they are going to use their own conservative bias.

There is no translation here, merely the rewording of the Bible to suit a conservative interpretation and conservative bias. This makes them no better than the liberals they claim have mistranslated the Bible since it isn't about a correct translation, but one that suits conservative principles.

This problem of the religious interpreting religious books how they want when they want is of course one of the problems skeptics of religion frequently point out - Conservapedia wants to substitute a conservative translation for what they think are liberal ones. The telling consideration is that they aren't interested in an accurate translation, just one that removes those naughty liberal words and replaces them with more conservative sounding terms.

Still think this is about translation and not interpretation? Then check out some of the list of possible approaches they identify:

identify pro-liberal terms used in existing Bible translations, such as "government", and suggest more accurate substitutes

What is a pro-liberal term? How is it identified? Is a pro-conservative term more accurate? Why? What if a pro-liberal term IS the most accurate translation? Is it to be changed anyway for a less accurate but conservative term?

identify conservative terms that are omitted from existing translations, and propose where they could improve the translation

Why only conservative terms, why not more accurate terms?

Then look at how they word the stages this could be done in:

In stage one, the translation could focus on word improvement and thereby be described as a "conservative word-for-word" translation.

"Word improvement" is a telling phrase. Not translation accuracy, but word improvement. Spoken like a true Communist. No doubt word improvement means replacing those pesky liberal words with fine upstanding conservative words, irrespective of accuracy of course. I suppose they feel, in that uniquely arrogant conservative way, that the conservative term is by definition the accurate term.

It's all arbitrary anyway

Another problem skeptics of religion like to highlight is that which version of a translated holy book is used is almost always entirely arbitrary, there is no logic behind the believers use of a particular one or other.

This silly project is no different, Conservapedia opt to start with the King James version as the baseline for their translation. Not because it is the most accurate English language translation. Not because it is a fine example of early English literature. No, they choose the King James version as the baseline for their new translation of the Bible because it is freely available online.

Which blows any claim they might have to wanting a more accurate translation clean out of the water. You don't get a clearer translation of a book written in many other languages into one other language by re-interpreting a prior translation already in the one language. I don't get a better Greek to English translation of Plato's Republic by simply substituting one English word that I like for another English one used in the English 'Penguin Classics' version.

On top of that, the King James version was already interpreted by its translators under instructions given to them by King James, and this interpretation was intended to support the structure and beliefs of the Church of England circa 1604. Conservapedia are simply further biasing an already biased translation.

The only way to get a new and accurate translation is to go back to the earliest surviving manuscripts and then closely and correctly translate from the original language. Nothing else will do. Anything else is just reinterpretation.

It's a pick 'n mix

Skeptics of religion have long pointed out the religious believers' practise of picking and choosing which parts of their particular holy book apply and which don't, and the problems this creates. Conservapedia are doing no different here, and they are proving the point of the problems this causes for religious belief and taking any holy book as a basis for anything.

One of the ten guidelines they list for reinterpreting the Bible is:

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

Of course, this wasn't inserted by modern liberals in a modern translation, it was inserted in early manuscripts of John's gospel. To suggest otherwise would be, well, stupid. This just shows a very basic ignorance of the history of biblical manuscripts and the creation of the Bible. I mean, do you really think Conservapedia are going to drop the last verses of Mark's Gospel? They aren't original and were added by someone other than the original author, so an accurate translation should drop them as well. Given the reasons for the possible exclusion of the adulteress story over at Conservapedia, Mark 16:9-20 should also be excluded. But, checking the Conservapedia Bible shows those verses are included, just with a note to say they are not likely to be accurate. So why are they included at all then? If the new translation is to be guided by conservative principles, as stated, are we to surmise that accuracy is not a conservative principle?

All this of course merely reinforces what skeptics of religion have always said, the religious are merely picking what they like and discarding what they don't. Which merely highlights the abject dishonesty and arrogance at the heart of this entire project.

Then we have this:

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

Never mind the ridiculous implication that inventive and poetic use of the English language in literature is somehow a liberal weakness or fault we have here further evidence that this is not about accuracy, but about what conservatives think the Bible should say rather than what it does. What if the correct translation IS 'Yahweh', or 'Jehovah' and not 'Lord'? Why, conservatives want it changed anyway, because conservatives know what the word of God really is, after all.

Unadulterated dumbfuckery

And that, really, is what this Conservapedia project is. They've made a mockery of any claim that the Bible is the word of God or inerrant or to be taken literally, and I am quite sure they can't even understand why.

They've shown that they have no interest in the truth or accuracy, only in what conservatives believe.

They've inadvertently begun to make the arguments of skeptics of religion for them, and won't even realise why this is the case.

They've highlighted once again their own hypocrisy.

And here's some examples of just how low they've sunk. The first example they give as to a liberal falsehood in the Bible (that is literally what they call it) is a verse in Luke's Gospel, 23:34.

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Conservapedia asks:

Is this a liberal corruption of the original?

No, not if it appears in a manuscript written centuries before there were any liberals. Since you ask this though Conservapedia, you have been back to the original to show it doesn't appear until translations made in the twentieth century, right? Of course, since we don't have any ORIGINAL New Testament manuscripts you are going to have some problems proving this. The fact that you refer to originals as if we can go back and check them just proves exactly how far into dumbfuckery this whole project has gone.

But it gets better, Conservapedia goes on to say:

This does not appear in any other Gospel

So, if a story does not appear in every Gospel it is grounds for it to be discarded? Are you really sure you want to do this? For instance, how many of the Gospels mention the Virgin Birth?

Now, I bet you didn't know that the Bible also promotes socialism, did you? Well according to Conservapedia the conservative word 'volunteer' (how does a word become conservative or liberal, by the way?) appears only once in the English Standard Version of the Bible, but the socialistic (their word, not mine) word 'comrade' appears, wait for it, three whole times! It's virtually the Communist Manifesto! I mean, twice more than 'volunteer'. The Reds are coming I tell you. It gets worse though, why that blatantly Marxist word 'labourer' is used an entire thirteen times. THIRTEEN. 'Laboured' is used a mammoth 15 times. Everyone knows that there are absolutely no other possible uses of the word 'labourer' and 'laboured'' ever, other than in reference to the brothers and sisters of the Comintern and in the context of worldwide Marxist revolution.

In case you were wondering about the context of this breathtaking stupidity, a quick Google search suggests there are between about 773,000 and 784,000 words in the Bible, depending on the version. That means 'comrade' constitutes about 0.0004% of the words in the Bible. All hail the revolution.

This is the first time I've bothered to read Conservapedia, and on this evidence it seems to be the place for any half witted, ignorant, arrogant, uneducated dimwit to voice their opinions online as though they are fact. I'm going to be keeping a closer eye on this place as blog fodder, especially since they seem to have a world history section that I definitely plan to give the Terrible Truth treatment to.

And ultra-conservatives wonder why their guy and their values lost the 2008 US election. Let me spell it out:

It's because as soon as you open your mouths the rest of us realise you're all fucking idiots.

Embiggen!

Moved away, Jimmy Blue?

Ha, you wish!

No I haven't given up on blogging and nor did I run away to sulk in a corner with my tail between my legs over recent heated arguments (which I'm not done with yet but will be putting my final say to shortly by the way). First, some unexpected events in Real Life™ forced me to miss putting a note on the blog to say I was going back to Blighty on holiday, and then I went on said holiday and had far more enjoyable things to do than argue with people who aren't listening or won't hear, or who appear to be absolutely convinced that they are only ever right.

So I am back and normal service is hopefully about to be resumed whether you like it or not and whether I've pissed off my one or two readers or not.

Whilst I was away though I had plenty of time to do a lot of, for me at least, unusually in depth and introspective thinking and eventually decided that I need to be more assertive, aggressive and confrontational in my blogging - in particular with regard to other skeptics and bloggers. In the past when I have disagreed with other skeptics I have tended to just ignore those blog posts where I didn't agree, and I have also certainly treated other bloggers with more uncritical respect than I should have done. This is something that I've actually been thinking about for some time, in fact since Mark made this comment a couple of months ago, and the recent discussion here just confirmed it.

So I've decided to stop ignoring the obvious fact that skeptics get it wrong (even if it is not as often as they get it right) and I will be calling it like I see it more often. So a word of warning to the faint hearted - it will undoubtedly get ugly at times. Skeptics apparently don't like the idea that they might be wrong, or at least not completely right.

No doubt I will also get it wrong sometimes and I encourage people to point that out with a reasonable argument that actually takes into account what I said, not what you think I said.

One further word of warning - I will never accept or agree that in a discussion you can make a claim or assertion in support of your position and expect me or anyone else to simply accept it as an undeniable or accurate fact and that the burden is then on me or someone else to disprove it. That's not how it works, and if you ever think it is then you are exactly the sort of person I am going to eventually butt heads with.

Let the games begin...
Embiggen!

Days of infamy part 4 - the end?

OK, after a long break and some unpleasantness it's time to finish what I started all those weeks ago!

So, we've looked in detail at the circumstances surrounding the actual attack on Pearl Harbor and the details of the global political situation before the attack - and we examined what these things meant for the conspiracy theory. Now we're going to return in detail to the list of factors I mentioned in the first post.

Here I am going to flesh out the details, repeat some stuff and wrap it all up!

As a reminder, here is the list of factors that are common to most military or intelligence disasters and screw ups and are certainly present at Pearl Harbor:

1. Intelligence 'noise' and the fog of war.
2. Competing/rival intelligence agencies and armed services.
3. No centralised intelligence gathering structure.
4. Lack of unified command structures.
5. Personalities - including personal and professional arrogance.
6. Underestimation of the enemy.
7. Misinterpretation of available data.
8. The mistrust inherent in handling secret information.
9. Availability of information or access to it.
10. Context of available information.

In the first post I explained what each of these meant, here we are going to look at how they relate to the attack on Pearl Harbor and how they demonstrate that what happened was not a conspiracy but a good old fashioned balls up. Of course, if it wasn't a conspiracy then our Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist (PCT) has some problems, especially if they are of the deranged type that links Pearl Harbor with the 9/11/01 attacks.

Intelligence 'noise' and the fog of war

To recap, noise in the intelligence world refers to the sheer volume of data that an analyst might be confronted with. In the months leading up to Pearl Harbor, noise was one of the factors that distracted from the signs that pointed to the coming attack.

The problem was that the majority of data the US intelligence analysts were seeing pointed primarily to attacks in Southeast Asia rather than an attack on Pearl Harbor. The relatively few things that did show that the Japanese were going to attack the US Navy in Hawaii or were at least thinking about it were buried amongst everything else, and there were no sophisticated computer systems to sift through everything looking for indicators of an attack, nor were there large and well staffed agencies that could have examined everything in detail. The noise of Southeast Asia drowned out Pearl Harbor.

Don't forget the fog of war as well - up until the attack on Pearl Harbor Japanese actions suggested an interest in Southeast Asia, they showed a definite trend. Without knowing exactly the Japanese intentions it was certainly safe to assume further actions in that area rather than a shift to a target thousands of miles away. Furthermore, even if the US were aware of the sailing of the Japanese fleet that eventually targeted Pearl Harbor, how were they to know what the purpose of its sailing was? There could be any number of reasons the fleet sailed, and there was no satellite reconnaissance to track the fleet across the Pacific.

Competing/rival intelligence agencies and armed services

We've seen in detail how the different agencies and services worked together (or, in actuality, didn't work together). The Navy would not share information with the Army and vice versa. They did not plan operations together. There was no unified command structure. The two services intelligence organisations were looking at different sources and did not share interpretation successes. The US Navy was reading Japanese naval radio traffic, the Army's SIS was reading Japanese diplomatic traffic. They didn't share the results. Then, in late 1940, the two agencies decided that on odd days the Navy would do the diplomatic signals and on even days the Army, and that this information would go to the White House on a monthly basis with the Navy taking it on the odd months and the Army on the even ones. Not only were they not sharing the information they had, they were competing to get their information to their political masters.

When the final fourteen part Japanese message declaring the severing of diplomatic ties was received in Washington both agencies (US Naval and Army intelligence) decoded it separately at different times and sent the results to different people without any co-operation in between.

The FBI was not blameless either. Head of the FBI J Edgar Hoover refused to share information he received with either of the armed services responsible for the defence of Hawaii, for reasons we will go into shortly.

All of this meant that not one of the intelligence gathering agencies responsible for detecting incoming attacks on US soil ever had the full and complete picture, and at times they didn't even share what they did have with the few people that may have had a complete picture.

No centralised intelligence gathering structure

This is one of the key areas of weakness. Because the main players in intelligence gathering and interpretation were competing agencies that did not work together it was vital that there was a single centralised organisation to co-ordinate intelligence gathering tasking priorities and to collate, evaluate and disseminate the information gathered by each agency. Only in 1941, the Americans didn't really have one.

If this had been in place then there could have been one organisation that did have the whole picture - all the strands could have been brought together. This would still not have guaranteed that someone would have seen the attack on Pearl Harbor coming, but the chances were far greater than one agency with only a small portion of the picture being able to describe the whole thing accurately. Essentially, without this centralised structure what was being asked was that one of US Navy intelligence, Army intelligence or the FBI were being given the top left quarter of the Mona Lisa and being asked to describe the rest of the picture with particular emphasis on the expression on her face.

There was no such organisation in place in Washington to co-ordinate at an agency level and there was no such organisation in place on Pearl Harbor to co-ordinate the two service commands on the Hawaiian islands.

In short each agency was working to its own priorities, with its own agenda and was being expected to do so for everyone. Which leads us nicely into:

Lack of unified command structures

There was no Joint Chiefs of Staff as it is today in the US military until 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Without this, the Army and Navy on Hawaii acted completely separately in what they considered their own spheres of influence - they did not meet to discuss the defence of Hawaii. They didn't share their plans for doing so. The US Navy commander in Hawaii, Admiral Kimmel, even admitted he did not tell Lieutenant-General Short, the Army's commanding officer in Hawaii, his plans for the defence of Hawaii. They acted separately and planned separately, without sharing any of their intelligence data in between.

Say it out loud and it sounds even dumber - the two services responsible for protecting Pearl Harbor never spoke to each other about how to do so or about what their inevitable enemy might be up to in regards to the base.

Personalities - personal and professional arrogance

This is one of the more intriguing areas in this whole saga. One of the biggest causes of the shock that came with the Japanese attacks beginning on the 7th December 1941 was that the British and Americans didn't think the Japanese were capable of such military feats. Professional arrogance got the better of them. Singapore fell largely because in a few weeks the British attitude swung from "Bring the tiny short sighted buggers on." to "Blimey, these guys are invincible." and this destroyed British confidence and morale.

The US Navy didn't think the Imperial Japanese Navy capable of attacking Pearl Harbor, so they weren't that worried about it. The US Navy also ignored the lessons of the Royal Navy's attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto - that Americans don't have anything to learn from the British was not exactly an uncommon feeling then (and still isn't now) in the US military. The harbor was too far away, too well defended and too shallow for the Japanese to attack. The US military just knew this to be the case.

The Japanese couldn't possibly attack Pearl Harbor because the Americans didn't think they could.

Individuals inevitably play a part in all this as well. People going asleep because they didn't feel any urgency even though the attack was just hours away is but one example. J Edgar Hoover's arrogance and personal dislikes also play a role in the dismissal of some key intelligence data that gave a strong indication that Pearl Harbor was a target.

Early in the war the British Security Service (MI5) had been successful in turning nearly all of the German Abwehr agents in the British Isles into double agents - agents working for the British but giving the impression they still worked for the Germans. One such agent was Dusko Popov, codename 'Tricycle'. Tricycle was dispatched to the USA in 1941 to train the Americans in the value of double agents, and he also had the latest German intelligence collection priorities with him to share with the Americans. This included a questionnaire that amounted to all of the Abwehr's collection priorities for the USA, which included an entire section on Pearl Harbor, its layout and defences. Tricycle met with the FBI Bureau Chief in Washington in August 1941, but the meeting did not go well. Tricycle's nickname is rumoured to have come from his preference for having two girls in his bed at a time and Hoover disliked him intensely because of his playboy tendencies and the fact that he wasn't American. Hoover even bragged in his diary that he had sent a 'dirty Nazi spy' packing (Hughes-Wilson , p.69). All this despite the fact that since January the Japanese, Italians and Germans had agreed to share intelligence and the questionnaire about Pearl Harbor was partly a Japanese one.

As Hughes-Wilson points out, comparing this questionnaire with other Japanese signals intelligence would have made the significance of Pearl Harbor clear, but Hoover's own arrogance and prudishness prevented this from happening. The Japanese Consul-General had been using a questionnaire just like the one Tricycle had. Someone was clearly very interested in Pearl Harbor. And Hoover dismissed any chance of finding out who because he didn't like the source personally.

There is no way the conspiracy can account for any of that.

Underestimation of the enemy

Linked to the previous point this is worth some more emphasis - European Imperial authorities and the American authorities simply did not think the Japanese would make good fighters. They didn't think they had the resources, training or capabilities to pull off a feat like the Pearl Harbor attack. There was an innate sense of superiority in the European and American militaries that led them to constantly underestimate the Japanese for the first few months of the Pacific War. This initial dismissal of Japanese abilities ironically turned into a belief in their invincibility with the early and rapid Japanese successes.

Japanese equipment was dismissed - the Zero was dismissed as too light and underpowered and armed to compete with American and European fighters. Veterans of the Battle of Britain sent in their Spitfires to fight in Asia against the Japanese were quickly set straight about the skill of the Japanese pilots and the capabilities of their aircraft.

The Americans didn't think the Japanese had torpedoes that would work in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor, yet ever since Taranto the Japanese had been experimenting with different types until they got it right.

Because the Allies consistently underestimated the Japanese, the surprise and shock that came with Pearl Harbor and the attacks on other Allied territories was almost inevitable.

Nobody thought the Japanese could do it.

Misinterpretation of available data

This is one of the biggies in intelligence collection and analysis. You can have all the right data and still make the wrong conclusion. When it comes down to what your enemies intentions are, in the end you are still guessing unless you have a source on the ground and on the inside.

Once the oil embargo on Japan was in place the Allies had a timetable to when Japanese action might be necessary. There was a given amount of time before Japan used up its fuel reserves. The Americans looked at this data and concluded that this would bring the Japanese to the negotiating table and force them to withdraw from their conquests in Southeast Asia before then. The Japanese looked at this data and decided they would have to take their resources by force before then.

In the summer of 1941 American planners had correctly calculated that the Japanese had about 6 months of aviation spirits left. That meant that by about December 1941, or so the Americans thought, the Japanese would have to come back to the negotiating table. And when was the attack on Pearl Harbor? December 7th 1941. Japanese planners had concluded they needed to seize their raw materials before the end of December 1941.

Again, we are forced to bring up the Royal Navy attack on Taranto. The Japanese looked at this attack and saw that torpedo bombers could attack a fleet at anchor in a shallow and defended harbor with modified equipment and well drilled aircrews. The Americans still thought that the Japanese couldn't possibly do it. As Hughes-Wilson points out:

In the words of the Japanese Naval Staff, "Taranto made Pearl Harbor feasible."
[p.96]

The Japanese learned from the British by trial and error. All the US Navy needed to do was ask, but they didn't.

The mistrust inherent in handling secret information

This one is inherent in the intelligence gathering world - its the business they are in. As it applies to Pearl Harbor though it was taken to ridiculous levels. At times the Army and Navy were, according to Hughes-Wilson, even keeping information from the President!

Lieutenant-General Short was not cleared for the highest levels of Naval signals intelligence, so the Navy wouldn't show it to him. Need to know criteria was so stringently applied that important decision makers were excluded from access to intelligence information because the intelligence communities decided they didn't need to know. Short didn't know that the Navy was reading Japanese intentions. Because Short wasn't cleared, Kimmel wouldn't show him everything he could have. On top of this, Kimmel himself was not privy to all the intelligence gained from the Magic program. His own personal Magic code breaking machine had been removed and given to the British as part of an intelligence sharing exchange. So Kimmel was not sharing with Short, and he didn't know everything himself anyway!

Now, in defence of the intelligence operators there is good reason for this - the Japanese suspected at one point that their was a program to read their signals, Magic was almost compromised. With such potentially war winning weapons (as Magic, Orange and in Europe Enigma were) secrecy is vital - if the enemy knows you are reading his codes then he changes them and months of effort are lost, with the subsequent loss of life in wartime. The intelligence operators distrusted what could happen if information was passed to indiscreet politicians - but cutting out the decision makers on overly stringent need to know criteria is ridiculous. On what sane basis can you really argue that the field commanders don't need to know what their enemy are doing? The only real answer is an over obsession with secrecy and protecting the personal and professional influence that comes when you can drip feed the power holders the information they desire.

Availability of information or access to it

This is a problem that is not always appreciated by the public or your PCT - just because the information is out there doesn't mean the right people can get hold of it. There were no agents deep inside the Japanese government that could give details of Japanese intentions - just like there are no agents in Al'Qaeda and just like there were none in Saddam's inner circle. Human intelligence is vital for understanding intentions, signals can give you some of that but not every decision or plan is conveniently transmitted for interception. The Allies simply did not know that Pearl Harbor had been selected as a target, and that detailed planning was underway for most of 1941. They didn't know the fleet had set sail to attack Pearl Harbor. They didn't know the fleet was going to attack when it did and in the manner it did.

It's that simple. There were no satellites, no high and fast reconnaissance aircraft, no submarines patrolling the coast of Japan, no private phone taps. Even the high powered and specifc intelligence of Magic and Orange didn't tell the Americans Pearl Harbor was the target and on what day.

One thing that modern US intelligence agencies have had to relearn is that it doesn't matter how sophisticated and comprehensive your data collection and signals intelligence is, human intelligence is still better. Agents on the ground can gather the intentions of your enemy, not just their capabilities.

You can't analyse or interpret what you don't have.

Context of available information

This is linked to the previous entry - raw data on its own is not enough, it doesn't tell you the important stuff. Capabilities, as Hughes-Wilson explains in detail, is only half the picture, less than that really. The real jewel is intentions - what the enemy plans to do. If someone only has a little of the picture, they can't give it context - its meaningless on its own. They can't complete the story. If Army intelligence only had information that a fleet had set sail, they can't easily figure out why. But if Navy intelligence has word of an attack on Pearl Harbor, suddenly there is context. This wasn't available because no-one had the complete picture.

As I said in my first post, the best way to explain this is an analogy to a big story. You can read page 67 of The Two Towers and know what page 67 is about if you're lucky. But there is no way in hell from there you can describe what The Lord of The Rings is about and how page 67 fits into that and what the events of page 67 mean. At times, the people involved in the Pearl Harbor tragedy weren't even getting a page, more like the second word from the first line of the fourth paragraph of page 67.

So what does it all mean - was there a conspiracy?

No, and anyone who says there was is an idiot. They are ignoring the facts, plain and simple. All the conspiracy theory does is raise more questions than it answers. Pearl Harbor was the result of individual and systemic incompetence, of personal and professional arrogance and of the problems inherent in intelligence gathering and interpretation. Add to that mix some technical failures and human frailties then throw in a dose of bad luck and the scene is set.

If the attack on Pearl Harbor was not some Churchillian or New World Order conspiracy, then claiming it as the first act in events that led to 9/11 fails at the first hurdle. Hell, it doesn't even get up out of the blocks. If your PCT has linked the two and claimed they are both conspiracies perpetrated by the same organisation or people, then he also has a bigger problem. If the first one never was part of your grand conspiracy, then what of the second one?

Pearl Harbor also highlights the problem of examining any history - 20/20 hindsight. It all looks clear for us after the fact, when every indicator takes on new significance and meaning. "If we can see it, why couldn't they?" asks the PCT, thereby implying something more is going on. The answer is simple - it has happened now you dumbass. Of course it is obvious after the fact. Of course everything makes sense after it has happened.

We know why these guys were taking flying lessons and weren't too interested in landing now - did anyone ever guess that some group would organise the simultaneous hijacking of four airliners to use as missiles before they did though? It seems so obvious now that we can't believe someone didn't think of it before. It is only ever after the fact that people need to invent conspiracies to explain what to them seems obvious after the events, and usually their explanation just happens to involve groups or people they personally don't like. How convenient for them.

It's not a conspiracy, it's history. That's just the way it looks sometimes.

Embiggen!

Of Guns and Skeptics

OK. Despite the specifics of the title, this is going to be a fairly wide ranging and rambling post (no sniggering at the back). I've been talking over at Bronze Dog's place about gun control and a couple of things struck me. That and my responses were about to exceed the Blogger comment limit and I thought "Hey if only I had a neglected and half-arsed space on the Internet where people could see my thoughts manifested as text on a computer screen." So I decided to do a blog post instead.

I apologise (especially to Bronze Dog) for initiating a game of blog tag.

And for those who have read my posts in the past, be warned. I treat unsupported or poorly presented gun control arguments with the same contempt I have for woo arguments. Just saying.

About me and guns

In order to preempt the inevitable future accusations of being some gun hating liberal let me first dismiss the 'gun hating' part. I like guns. Guns are cool. In the right hands.

I shot .22 inch and 5.56 mm target rifles at paper targets regularly between the ages of 13 and 18, after some pretty comprehensive training. Before 13 I was also into archery. After university I qualified as a marksmanship coach through the ATC/RAF - I was trained by a police marksman, people who had represented the UK at pistol target shooting and a serving member of the RAF Regiment. I was the shooting officer for my ATC squadron and during this time my cadets became the best L98 shooting team in Trent Wing, ATC. I was a pretty good shooting coach and was thinking about going for my range certificate so that I could be a Range Conducting Officer. I trained other people how to use guns and how to shoot them properly and accurately. I was incredibly anal about safety, I lost count of the number of times I threatened to throw people off my firing point because they were not concentrating. I still tell my kids when they aim a water pistol at me that the first rule of weapon safety is "Never point a weapon at anybody whether loaded or unloaded."

I say this just to establish the fact that I have no problem with guns themselves and that I know a thing or two about them, people using them, what they can do and what people need to know about them. This does not make my views the authoritative views on the subject though - like I said, I'm just preempting the inevitable.

And I just remembered that when I was still doing the shooting stuff we all hated people who called them guns.

Why 'Of Skeptics'

And here is where I'll start to piss people off.

I've found in my travels through the skeptical blogosphere that critical thinking often stops when people get to a personal political or social viewpoint. Just look at the number of skeptics and atheists who also happen to be Libertarians as well. Don't tell me that someone who thinks unregulated companies can do better than governments at protecting individual interests and liberties is a critical thinker.

Gun control is one of those issues, I have found. On quite a few occasions already in the brief discussion over at the Bronze Blog I have found skeptics making inconsistent and unsupported arguments; arguments not supported by the facts; guesses and statements based on nothing but inaccurate or uninformed opinions. At times logic even seems to be taking a vacation.

And yet these are people who when arguing about religion or pseudo-science are careful to make well crafted, well researched and well supported posts. These are people whose opinions I've admired from a blogging point of view as well presented and argued. I'll go into the specifics later, but is this the case that Shermer makes for why smart people believe weird things in action?

So anyway, as well as looking at the arguments presented so far in the Bronze Blog thread, I'm going to be looking at this: what seems to me to be the suspension of critical thinking in relation to personally held views.

My experience with anti-gun control arguments

I've had a few arguments about gun control in the past. Hell I used to be anti-gun control and I did, in the past, use some of the arguments I'm about to list.

Anyway, I have noticed that the same arguments come up again and again. Some good, some bad. Some terrible.

1. It's in the Constitution.
2. It's a liberty the government can't take away or has to justify taking away.
3. You can't/shouldn't ban gun ownership because people like shooting/owning guns.
4. Target shooting is a sport.
5. Hunting.
6. They can be used for self defence.
7. Banning guns doesn't stop gun crime.
8. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
9. X and Y massacres were committed with illegal guns so banning guns wouldn't have stopped them.
10. Massacres are rare so why ban guns or how do you know banning guns stops them.
11. Civilian guns are different to military guns so don't need to be banned.
12. You're just a gun hating liberal.
13. So what if guns are made to kill, that doesn't mean they are wrong or should be banned.
14. Swimming pools/cars kill more people than guns, should we ban them?
15. You just don't understand where I'm coming from and that's why you don't get it.
16. EDITED 27/8 to add this after Techskeptic reminded me: Citizens need to be armed to defend themselves from tyranny and government oppression.

That's not a comprehensive list I'm sure, but these are ones I hear often (or variations of them), or have just recently heard in this latest discussion. I'm not going to be looking at all of these, because not all of them came up this time. And there's another reason - I don't intend to put down my complete argument about gun control.

Why not?

Here's where I am really going to piss people off - I see many similarities between anti-gun control arguments and the way they are phrased and presented and the way many proponents of woo and religion phrase and present their arguments.

In particular I am talking about creationists or the proponents of 'Big Pharma bad, alternative medicine good' arguments. The creationist tactic is to attack Evolution (the argument of their opponents) but to ignore calls for them to explain their position and the evidence for it. The same is true of those pushing alternative medicine and attacking Big Pharma, they like to attack incidences of 'allopathic' medicine killing people etc and don't think they need to examine their own arguments.

So, I'm not going to present my arguments (at least not yet) because I don't want my opponents (those against gun control) to focus on that rather than explaining and defending their own position first. Unfortunately, at least one of them admits they feel they don't have to do so.

So, how are these skeptics like those others?

Does the notion of someone claiming they don't have to defend their position when you do sound familiar to anyone of a skeptical bent? It should if you spend any time in the skeptical blogosphere.

When a religious believer says there is a god and they don't need to prove it because the person saying there isn't one is the one making the claim, how do skeptics respond?

So why do some skeptics say they don't have to defend the freedom to own guns, it just is a liberty they should have; and the person saying it isn't is the one who is making a claim they need to defend?

Why has the burden of proof shifted from the person making the positive claim to the person assuming the negative until presented with evidence showing otherwise?

How many times as a skeptic have you heard this:

You don't understand why [insert alternative medicine] works because you have a different mindset/paradigm/set of axioms to the Oriental/Traditional medicine one?

Well, how is that different to:

You don't understand why gun ownership is a liberty I don't need to defend because you have a different mindset/paradigm/set of axioms that says it is OK to take away liberties?

Regardless of what I might or might not believe, someone should be able to defend the reasoning and evidence behind their belief. The reasoning and evidence speak for themselves. I thought that is what skeptics and critical thinkers believed.

The argument

OK, so on to specifics.

Early on, Dunc wrote:

Whilst I think we may have gone a bit too far here in the UK (what with banning all handguns)

This prompted me to respond:

Why does your average citizen need access to firearms?

Until someone can satisfactorily explain why gun ownership is a necessary right, why is there any debate?

For instance, why do you say that a ban on all handguns is going too far Dunc? Why is it? Why should people be allowed ownership of something whose sole intended purpose is to kill?

And so it began.

Dunc responded:

I regard target shooting as a perfectly legitimate pass-time - it's an Olympic sport, after all. Next you'll be asking me why I've got a takedown recurve bow under my bed... It's certainly not for shooting anything live - I've only got target points.

Which is arguments 3 and 4 from the list above with a hint of number 12 thrown in.

People liking shooting is not a justifiable reason for allowing it - it's an argument from personal preferences. I listed some other things that people like to do that are also banned or illegal. Liking something is no good reason to assume it is right or justified. This could be argued to be a form of the Appeal to Popularity, or more accurately the Appeal to Common Practice.

James K then added this:

Many people held to the belief that it is up to the government to justify taking away a liberty, rather than it being up to you to justify keeping it.

This is argument number 2 from the list. I responded that I am not the government. I wanted him to explain to me, not the government, why this liberty was one that shouldn't be taken away. This was a chance for an anti-gun control proponent to explain his position.

I had also earlier in the discussion asked why private citizens had a right to own something that is designed with the purpose of killing. Almost all guns don't have another purpose, they are designed to kill. As I later pointed out, even the ones that aren't designed specifically to kill can still be used very easily to do so and without any modification.

James K responded:

As for the "designed to kill" part. This is the Genetic Fallacy, it doesn't matter what its designed to do, all that matters are the costs and benefits.

Here's the Genetic Fallacy. What I wrote is not the Genetic Fallacy.

I responded that my question is not an example of the Genetic Fallacy, I made no claim that guns are wrong or true or false because they are designed to kill or that gun ownership is wrong or true or false because guns are designed to kill. I asked why it is a liberty to own something designed to do this.

Note that I understand perfectly well that some firearms are designed just for target shooting, but they are highly specialised and the overwhelming majority of gun owners do not own this type of firearm.

James K further wrote:

In Freakonomics, Levitt notes that swimming pools kill more children than guns, so should swimming pools be illegal? People don't need pools after all.

This is argument 14 from the list, although I more commonly hear it as cars rather than swimming pools.

The problem with this is that it does not compare like with like - swimming pools are not designed to kill. If anything, this is evidence that things that can kill should be more tightly controlled or supervised. Which, lo and behold, is actually an argument for gun control.

Dunc then posted:

Well, I simply don't think that a total ban is either justified or necessary.

What someone thinks is irrelevant isn't it? Would you accept a creationist argument because it is what they think? He highlights that gun control in the UK was very strict anyway before firearms were banned outright and that he thinks this goes too far. I happen to agree - but Dunc does not explain why it goes too far other than to reiterate that some people who used to target shoot before the ban now can't.

So what? Why is that a reasonable and sound argument for relaxing the gun control laws? Some people like to stone adulterers, should we all adopt Sharia law?

Dunc then raises a good point, that handgun crime does not appear to have fallen since the ban, by linking to this 2001 article. This 2008 article shows that gun crime continued to rise until 2006, and then started to fall. All this at a time when crime in general was also rising it must be noted. Was the fall down to the firearms act, or are there other factors at work? Was the rise evidence that the laws didn't work or evidence of other factors? It certainly seems that the British laws were a failure if they were intended to reduce gun crime, but again was that down to bad law or other factors? The raw numbers don't tell us.

But then, were the laws a failure? They apparently didn't reduce gun crime - but there have been no Hungerfords or Dunblanes since then at a time when they seem to be increasingly frequent around the world. Of course, this involves playing 'what ifs' and 'what might have beens' - as Dunc notes those incidents were so shocking because they were so rare anyway.

But what of deaths from firearms not related to crime - something the strict firearms laws certainly do help prevent? This article gives compelling evidence. In the year 2001 (when gun crime was rising in the UK) the USA suffered 5.92 firearms suicides and 0.36 deaths from accidents per 100,000 people. In England and Wales it was 0.2 and 0.03 respectively, for Scotland 0.2 and 0.02. This page highlights that in 2006 55% of gun related deaths in the US were suicides. It highlights that handguns, whilst only making up one third of the firearms owned in the US account for two thirds of the firearm related deaths. It highlights that a gun in the home is 11 times more likely to be used to commit suicide than to be used in self defence. It highlights that a gun in the home increases the risk of homicide by a family member by 3 times and the risk of suicide by 5 times compared to homes where no gun is present.

This article then also points to the rise of the use of imitation firearms in gun crime - which as far as I can tell were not affected by stricter controls until 2004.

This also suggests that the increase between 1998/99 and 2001/2 may be down to certain police forces also introducing new crime reporting standards.

This (in section 3) also makes the point that firearms used in reported offences are often assumed to be real firearms because it is often impossible to tell if they are real or imitation in many cases. How much of the rise can be attributed to the use of more available imitation weapons rather than the heavily controlled real weapons? In the same section the point is made again that reporting of firearms offences changed on April 1 1998.

The same report includes gun crime trends since 1968 - the trend is generally up with some dips. The sharpest rises occur after 1998. The use of handguns in crime has fallen in five of the 6 years from 2001 to the time of the report.

Look at this and tell me strict gun control doesn't reduce, very significantly, gun related crime (in this case firearms homicides per 100,000 people). England and Wales have the second lowest rate. Japan is the only country with a lower rate, and the laws there are similar in severity to the UK.

The truth is that it is not as simple as Dunc implies. Gun crime figures are not even half of the story.

I also find that this is somewhat of a strawman - where did I say that gun control was just about reducing gun crime? Where did I say that gun control succeeds or fails based solely on the effect it has on the incidence of gun related crime? Or is gun crime simply the easiest thing to look at and rest your case on for the anti gun control argument?

Again I am forced to ask - where was the skeptical and critical thinking? Where was the diligence often given to many other arguments elsewhere?

Dunc later writes:

Common-or-garden shootings, on the other hand, have become much more common.

Which is not strictly true - firearms related offences have increased, not simply shootings (and here I am really being a pedant). He then writes:

I'm generally in favour of the presumption of positive liberty: things should be legal unless there is a good for them not to be.

How much of a good reason do you need? Many of the figures given above suggest a good reason, do they not? What sort of threshold do you set? What is the justification for this threshold? Furthermore, your presumption is inconsistent. Why allow semi-automatic handguns for example, but not semi-automatic assault rifles? If you allow semi-automatic, why not fully automatic? Why allow rifles but not machine guns? If machine guns why not rocket propelled grenade launchers?

Any of the arguments that can be raised in favour of handguns can be used in favour of machine guns, should we allow machine guns under this presumption of positive liberty? If not, why not? What is the difference? What is your justification for this difference?

Dunc continues:

I'm not convinced that a complete ban is either necessary or even useful - I think the previous regulatory regime was sufficient. (I'm pretty sure that the weapons used for both Hungerford and Dunblane were illegally held.)

This latter part is wrong, both Michael Ryan and Thomas Hamilton were legal gun owners using legally owned weapons. The previous regime was not sufficient for the people they killed. What is the threshold?

And here is another example of what I was talking about earlier. I've seen Dunc make long posts filled with citations about things as relatively trivial as GM crops elsewhere. Yet here, on a topic as important as gun control, "I'm pretty sure" is good enough for him to claim something. It took me less than 3 minutes to use Google to find out that Ryan and Hamilton used legally owned weapons - why didn't Dunc? If accuracy is important for debates about GM crops, why not gun control? If an alternative medicine proponent wrote "I'm pretty sure that homeopathy works." would it be acceptable to skeptics? Then, in a classic piece of woo like behaviour, Dunc seems to have ignored the fact that I pointed out this was wrong. In this debate it is important that you acknowledge what you get factually wrong - people don't remember the corrections but the original claim. That's what creationists rely on.

Dunc finishes that post with:

Fox hunting (with hounds) is a different matter, because that's an animal cruelty issue. That's a perfectly good reason to ban it, IMHO.

Here I find it hard not to be snide - there's the famous British obsession with animal welfare.

Why are the deaths of animals good reason to ban something, but not the deaths of human beings?

James K returned:

The reason I cite the genetic fallacy is that you assume that the fact that guns are designed to kill is in any way relevant. The intention with which an object was created is wholly irrelevant to evaluating that object.

I did not say that the intention with which an object was created was relevant to the evaluation of the object. I was asking why the intention with which the object was created is apparently not relevant to the right of someone to possess it as part of their individual liberties.

Berlzebub then posted:

As others have pointed out, the original firearms were developed for battlefield use. However, they now have civilian versions that have the "sole purpose" of target shooting (too heavy to carry around), and hunting. Of course, they can be retasked to take the life of a person, but that's an action on the part of the individual not the firearm.

I responded by asking what was the difference between a civilian weapon and a military one. I should have made the point clearer by asking, what is the difference between a civilian owned semi-automatic assault rifle (which my father in law has) and a military semi-automatic assault rifle?

What exactly makes something that can shoot a paper target different to something that can shoot a real person?

I have fired target shooting 'versions' of military weapons - they are not too heavy to carry around, that's simply complete nonsense with no factual basis. Tell me, how could one shoot a rifle that was too heavy to carry around?

What makes a hunting rifle unable to kill a person? How many people need a hunting rifle for something other than sport (if you count blasting an unsuspecting animal from 200 yards with a high powered rifle using a telescopic sight a sport)? What do you need to specifically do to a civilian target rifle to retask it to shoot people? I'll give a hint to people who have never shot a firearm before - bugger all.

The important thing to note here is that most privately owned weapons are useless for target shooting as a sport or hobby, and most people don't use them for this anyway - I'm not even sure if my father in law has actually fired his AK-47 yet - a weapon that is useless for target shooting, hunting and self defence at close quarters in the home anyway. If the weapon is useless for its supposed purposes then why is it necessary to be allowed to have one?

Furthermore, as I pointed out over there, even a .22 air rifle can kill. As a young boy's family found out in the UK yesterday. Take a good long look at the picture of that boy and tell me you really can't think of a good reason for banning all private firearms, without sounding like an uncaring shitbag.

At least we don't hunt foxes anymore. Look how civilised and free we are.

James K then came back with more of argument 2 from my list. He also added this:

Gun death follow a classic Pareto Principle pattern, the vast majority of gun deaths are caused by a small fraction of gun owners, specifically gang members. Gang members are experts at accessing illegal goods, after all they do sell drugs. The way to stop these deaths is end the "War on Drugs", not by piling bad laws on top of other bad laws.

No citations, no supporting evidence. Just simple assertions. Would this be acceptable from a creationist or pseudo-scientist? Why did a skeptic think it was OK here then? I called James K on this after doing my own research, and he admitted he could not find the source he thought had claimed this and withdrew the claim. But that isn't what people will remember is it? Who remembers newspaper retractions?

I found that the figures flatly contradict the claims he made. For instance, this page shows that homicides by a family member, friend or acquaintance with a gun are far more common than homicides by a stranger with a gun. This page shows a similar trend - there are far more gun deaths through circumstances other than gangs than those related to gangs. In 2005, in the US, 71% of homicides were committed with a firearm.

If I could find this out, why couldn't James K before he made the claims? Why did he feel he didn't have to? Why did he basically abandon his critical thinking skills and skepticism?

James K then reverts back to argument by swimming pool:

Guns do more than kill, the provide pleasure (target shooters and hunters), food (hunters), peace of mind (self defence weapons). These are real benefits that are lost if guns are banned. Once again I use swimming pools as an analogy. They also provide intangible gains like pleasure, and they kill a lot of people every year. Do you support banning swimming pools? If not, why not?

First, as I already mentioned, you are not even close to comparing like with like. Swimming pools are not weapons designed to kill. Second, your use of swimming pools is helping to prove the gun control point - things that can be dangerous require close supervision and control. Third, you are twisting and basically ignoring the facts.

How many swimming pools are used in homicides compared to firearms?

How many swimming pools are used in suicides compared to firearms?

How many swimming pools are used in muggings compared to firearms?

How many swimming pools are used in armed robberies compared to firearms?

How many swimming pools are used in sexual assaults compared to firearms?

How many swimming pools are used in kidnappings compared to firearms?

How many swimming pools are used in gang fights compared to firearms?

How many swimming pools have been used in school shootings compared to firearms?

Do you really need me to go on in order to demonstrate how utterly ridiculous this attempted comparison is?

Fine, I will anyway. In the US in 2006 there were 30,896 deaths from firearms. In the same year there were 4,279 deaths from drowning. Note that is drowning in total and NOT just deaths related to swimming pools. 1,139 of those deaths come in the age group 0-19 years of age. 688 of those are in the age group of 0-9 years of age. Could it be that the swimming pool argument is not as simple as James K is making out?

How about the other version of this argument, cars? Well, in 2006 in the US there were 45,509 motor vehicle related deaths. Why, that's more than firearms. However the figures on motor vehicle deaths can mislead. In 2004 there were 243,023,485 registered vehicles on the road. There were 136,430,651 passenger vehicles. According to this page, in 1994 there were 192,000,000 guns in the US owned by just 44,000,000 Americans. Many more people are exposed to motor vehicles than guns.

Again, the cars argument simply works in favour of gun control anyway - it just shows that closer and stricter supervision of things that can be dangerous is needed because of the number of deaths involved. Have you seen how badly people drive in this country?

Then we had some of argument number 15. Which is basically just a version of the woo argument about 'western science versus eastern mysticism/ traditionalism'. Do skeptics ever accept this argument? So why should I now with this debate?

James K wrote:

That's what I mean about different premises. I don't think anything you just said addresses any of my points, and its clear you feel the same about what I said. We're just talking past each other.

He used another classic woo tactic here by also claiming I had not really addressed any of his points even though I had specifically addressed them, and then he has the cheek to get upset when I point this out!

James K then goes on to write:

Bringing pleasure is the best reason for anything, what is life for, but to find pleasure in it? If there are large offsetting harms in an action, then there may be space for controls on those things, but only if the harm is clearly established and the control proposal can be demonstrated to work.

Which is more of argument 3. Enjoyment of something is not a sound or justifiable reason for something to be legal or a liberty. I also asked how the harms are judged, how is the harm clearly established in relation to the pleasure that is gained? Why is it that if there is large offsetting harm James K only considers there 'may' be space for controls? I also asked for James K to define how he is using pleasure. In his next response, he answered none of my questions.

Ignoring difficult questions is also another favoured tactic of creationists and woos.

The Null Hypothesis

Here's where things got really interesting for me. Here's a brief explanation of the null hypothesis.

I stated that in gun control arguments I believe that the null hypothesis is that it is not a necessary freedom to own a gun. Dunc and James K are arguing that it is a liberty ot own a gun They have made the claim that gun ownership should be allowed - the null hypothesis is therefore that it shouldn't be. It is not up to anyone to demonstrate the null hypothesis.

Remember the argument started with me asking why Dunc thought something was the case, and what good arguments for gun control were. That means anyone who answered is making the claim that needs to be supported. The negation of their claim is the null hypothesis.

Dunc and James K simply responded by redefining the null hypothesis.

Dunc wrote:

Well, that's where we differ. I view the null position as "everything is permitted". If you think something should not be permitted, the burden of justification lies on you.

In other words, Dunc is saying that the null hypothesis is the claim that gun ownership is a liberty that should be freely available and gun control is the claim that needs to disprove the null hypothesis. Or he is saying the null hypothesis is "This is the case until someone can show otherwise". Anyone happy with that?

Apply that logic to God and suddenly it is atheists who have to disprove God because the null hypothesis is that God exists (everything is permitted). Anyone happy with that? So why should we accept that as a skeptical argument against gun control?

The null hypothesis is surely "This is not the case until someone shows otherwise". Applied to gun control this is "gun ownership is not a liberty that requires no justification."

But look closer at what Dunc says after this:

Is the default "everything is permitted", or "nothing is permitted"? I take the former, you take the latter.

His default position is that 'everything is permitted'. Forgetting gun control for now, is anyone comfortable with that in regards to other areas? Do I really have to prove that a persons liberty to have sex with children should be taken away and until then it is OK, and it continues to be OK if I can't find a good reason for it not to be? Are we really happy to argue that the only reason the freedom to murder someone is not a liberty is because currently the state has a good defensible argument to make it illegal? If someone can find a good justification should the liberty to murder become legal?

James K responds with semantics.

"Do people have aright [sic] to won [sic] guns?" is an ought question, not an is question. The rules about null hypotheses apply only to is questions.

Really? Well I am asking "Is gun ownership a fundamental and/or necessary liberty and can someone explain why?" So, luckily for me, the null hypothesis applies then. Isn't it fun what you can do when you play semantics?

Then he writes:

Scepticism, reason and evidence are all useful, but things are always more complicated when dealing with human questions.

Which is basically an admission that he thinks critical thinking counts when it does, but doesn't when it doesn't. Which is the point I am trying to make about skepticism suddenly being abandoned when a personal view is in question.

Then James K finishes with this:

To have a proper hypothesis, let alone a null hypothesis you have to have a factual question. "Does gun control significantly reduce violent deaths?" is a factual question, the null hypothesis is no.

Which is handy. I've quite easily and clearly proved the negation of this null hypothesis with the statistics included above. Yes, gun control significantly reduces violent deaths AND injuries. Next.

To finish up

It's been a long post and no doubt some people by this point are going to be pissed off - tough, I make no apologies for the arguments presented. Like I said at the start a poorly presented and supported argument deserves strong responses no matter who it is from - and should probably get a harsher response if the proponent is supposed to be a critical thinker or skeptic - we should hold ourselves to higher standards.

Higher standards doesn't include inconsistencies, bad analogies, lazy fact checking, guessing, factual inaccuracies, ignoring difficult questions, ignoring what we get wrong, re-writing the rules to suit you, adopting debate tactics you would condemn in others and using logical fallacies.

I've looked at anti-gun control arguments from skeptics and find them sorely wanting.

My opinion remains unchanged.

Embiggen!