My tale of me - Chris Jenkinson

I read “How can student politics learn lessons from Lib Dem election victories?” by Alexander Kemp with interest due to our recent NUS elections and upcoming student union elections at Manchester. The success of the Jewish society and Labour Students compared to the past whitewash by Student Respect/the Islamic Society, and an apparent 20% turnout increase since last year (I don’t have the exact figures), show that it is possible to stand and indeed to win.

He is entirely true to speak about the lack of interest from Lib Dems at university. We (Lib Dems at Manchester) did not stand any candidates, nor did we send out a message letting people know the NUS elections weren’t occurring. I know that I see NUS as almost a unwitting parody of the Monty Python and the Life of Brian revolutionary groups, which coupled with a whipping of delegates ensuring they do not have independence in many votes, makes me lean more towards disaffiliation than reforming from within (and perhaps my general natural distrust of large groupings, whether unions, corporations or government). But my friends in Labour Students at Manchester have told me several times that if the Lib Dems got involved then we could help “rescue” it and make it relevant.

The trouble I see is that if turnout at student union elections is low, how can we expect them to be representative, let alone NUS which is even more distantly linked to the “average” student? Perhaps Lib Dem groups on campuses across the UK would be better served encouraging people to vote and promoting reform such as online voting or referenda, rather than spending effort on targeting the existing politicised student in order to get Lib Dem candidates elected to NUS - especially if, as the claim goes, most students vote Lib Dem in general elections.

In the past I have been pretty strongly against the NUS as a useless, irrelevant talking shop not worth participating in. It is not listened to by the government, it is in financial crisis, and the average student sees it as a group of political careerists, if they know enough about it to have an opinion at all. But with the recent elections here I see my mind changing towards getting involved and helping to make it better. Whether or not I would vote to disaffiliate Manchester from the NUS, I’m not sure.

The question is a good one. Should Lib Dems get involved in NUS and help to reform from within, or is it not worth the effort - they would be more productive making their own student unions relevant to students and encouraging participation in local politics?

This week’s edition of Student Direct features the Islamic Society on its Societies page. The article is written by one Walead Quhill who stood for Life Sciences secretary in the Student Union council elections in 2006, and thankfully he wasn’t elected given he doesn’t seem to accept evolution as a valid scientific theory (or indeed understand probability theory either). Here’s some choice quotes.

Some people argue that this world was created through and chance there is no logic or science that can prove that this universe has come about by any divine purpose or design. That this great universe with all its orchestration just came together aimlessly without any direction. How can this be? For instance, if I took ten different coloured marbles, numbered them 1-10, placed them in a bag which then shook and asked you, with your eyes closed, to pull out marble number one and then marble number two and then three in order do you know what the chances of you pulling out these ten marbles in order are. The probability is 26 000 000:1!!! So what are the chances of the Universe being thrown together in a big bang and for the planets to all fall together perfectly in place just like that. Think about it.

First of all, those aren’t the odds. The odds for the given example are actually around 3.6 million to one, almost ten times more likely to occur than posited. But the real fallacy made here is that the formation of stars and planets is due entirely to chance. There is nothing lucky or unlucky about how gravity works. Gravity pulls objects together, even incredibly light ones, it just takes a lot of time. Fortunately we’ve had a lot of time - 13.7 billion years is the scientific consensus for the age of the universe.

The next argument is a rehash of the old teleological argument. Bridges, skyscrapers and cars are designed, and aren’t space stations impressive too for good measure. The human body is obviously much more complex than this, therefore it had to have been designed too! For someone who supposedly studies biology I am astounded. Firstly, complexity does not imply design. Evolution through natural selection is a simple and elegant explanation for how complexity can arise through random mutations in our DNA. Mutations are often random, but natural selection is quite clearly not random or due to chance. Time for some basic biology 101. Mutations which are useful in surviving and reproducing are more likely to be passed onto children, while mutations which are not useful will not be passed on. Therefore advantageous characteristics will be inherited while disadvantageous ones will not. If a bacterium has a mutated gene for resistance to a certain antibiotic while other bacteria do not and the antibiotic is added, the bacterium with the gene will survive and be able to reproduce, while the other bacteria will die. That’s natural selection.

The teleological argument is so ridiculous that even its supporters like the fine folks at Answers in Genesis have to resort to the biggest intellectual cop-out in history by just flat out asserting that since only things that have a beginning have a cause, they’ll just say that God didn’t have a beginning.

The article continues with its assertions like “Think about the stars and planets which are all in order, all precise and are not colliding or conflicting with each other but are all swimming along in an orbit which has been set for them”. Has he never heard of the Moon? It’s covered in craters! No collisions there then. In fact the most widely accepted theory for the origin of the Moon is that it was created in a giant collision between a Mars-sized object and Earth.

Think about the oceans, the fish, the insects, the birds, the plants, micro-organisms, the alternation of the night and day, the chemical elements some of which have not yet been discovered and cannot be detected with the most sophisticated of instruments and yet each one of them has a law which they follow. Did all of this synchronisation, balance, harmony, variation, design, maintenance, operation and infinite numeration happen by chance? Also, do these things function continuously and perfectly and keep on reproducing and maintaining themselves all by chance. Of course not, that would be totally illogical and in the least I hope we can all agree that which ever way the Universe came to be, it is totally outside the realms of human capability.

Presumably in addition to not knowing about the Moon, he has also not heard of disease.

What is totally illogical are his assertions and his conclusion that just because he doesn’t understand things, they obviously must have been created by a divine being. Well I don’t really understand how come glue is sticky, but I’m going to find out, I’m not going to just make it up.

I would have more respect for religion including Christianity and Islam if they did not have to resort to misrepresenting scientific facts and theories in frequently dishonest ways in order to gain adherents. Maybe there is a place for religion; but it certainly does not deserve a place in intellectual discourse. I finish with a quote from the writer Kahlil Gibran:

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.