Catholic priests raping nuns...

Ok, I know that all people can make mistakes and that there are many atheists who have done bad things, however, I must say that the priests belonging to the catholic church manages to make my jaw drop again and again. It was not too long ago that we heard about catholic priests (who are supposed to be celibate) abusing boys sexually. I personally don't mind that priests have sex as long as it is consensual (even though it strongly contradict their own moral teachings), but the way in which a large number of catholic priests have systematically abused boys in an inferior position, I think, is appalling. The fact that church leaders don't report such abuse to the authorities (e.g. the police) who are supposed to deal with it is likewise disgusting.

Now as if this was not enough, I just heard on one of my favorite podcasts, Reasonable Doubts, that catholic priests (primarily in Africa) have been raping nuns more or less systematically. The vatican has been receiving reports and of course, as usual, don't tell the authorities. In this article in the independent, you can find a description of one nun who was raped by a priest. The nun got pregnant, however, the "father" convinced (or forced?) her to have an abortion. You would think that is where it ends but its not. The nun actually dies during the surgery to remove the fetus, and guess which priest takes care of the funeral - yes you guessed it - the rapist.

This case may be particularly nasty but there are apparently many reports of nuns who have been convinced by fathers to take contraceptive pills. Again, personally I'am not against contraceptives but according to the catholic church the pill is a big no no. How these priests can live with themselves I do not understand...

The pope: condoms don't help against HIV

It is perhaps old news that the Catholic Church is not a fan of condoms; however, they are rarely as blunt about it as the other day. Pope Benedictines, a man who seems to be dreaming of past times (medieval times), has now publicly announced that condoms is not the way to go if you want to stop HIV. Indeed, the pope is even claiming that condoms make the problem worse because people have more sex.

What evidence does he have for this claim? None, of course, the Catholic Church does not seem to know what evidence means. Their method for finding the truth is asking the pope and whatever he says is the truth, never mind that there are numerous studies showing that the pope is simply wrong in his statement.

Rarely does the distinction between the scientific method and the catholic (or religious) way become so clear. Do you want to trust what the pope says just because he is the pope, or do you want to trust people who have actually gone out and looked at the effects of condom use? Know that choosing the latter will make you a heretic in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Religion or Science? Irrationality or Rationality? Your choice...

States in bad shape = religiosity

A recent Gallup poll has shown an impressive positive correlation between how religious the inhabitants are and how bad they are of. In other words, this means that if you have a nation that is in a poor state, then your people are likely to turn to religion for guidance, or meaning or whatever you would like to call it. There is of course another possibility namely that first a people become religious, and then the state starts to tear apart. I personally don't believe in the latter possibility, rather, as I have argued here, I think that religion is where people who have lost meaning try to find their answers.

This gallup poll should also be seen as an important piece of information in the debate on whether religion makes people happier. There are indeed a few studies that have looked at this, and they tend to show that people who have religion, everything else being equal, are happier than people who are not religous. 

This gallup poll shows, however, that on a global scale, religious people are not happier than non-religious people (assuming that the average citizen in Bangladesh or Congo kinshasa are not as happy as the average American or Swede). 

Apollonius of Tyana

About 2000 years ago a pregnant woman got a visit from a heavenly agent who told the mother-to-be that her son would be the son of God. His birth which was associated with some supernatural signs and as a boy he made himself a name among the religious leader. When he got older he left his home to walk around from town to town and convinced people to give up on their material belongings and instead focus on the spiritual dimension of life.

His followers were convinced that their teacher was divine, and indeed he was able to heal the sick as well as casting out daemons. Towards the end of his life he was prosecuted by the roman authorities, and then he disappeared. However, even after he were gone, his followers continued to believe in him and there are even reports of him showing up after he was dead. He came down from heaven to convince the spectators that there is a life after death.

Does this man sound familiar to you? Who am I talking about? Many books have been written about this pagan philosopher. His name is Apollonius of Tyana and his historical existence is not disputed due to the fact that there are several independent sources. These survive in spite of the fact that the catholic church actively tried to destroy all records of Apollonius existence. Apollonius followers had heard about Jesus and they believe he was a fake.

I did not hear about this man Apollonius until recently and I must admit that I was quite surprised to hear that Jesus is not unique at all, at least not if you go by historical documents which is really the only proper way to go about if you do not want use subjective arguments such as "I feel (or know) that Jesus existed and that he did all those things written about in the gospel".

I have found a number of webpages claiming that a lot of what is written in the New Testament was really about Apollonius and that only later was names changed. This could explain some of the discrepancies between different books of the bible, but I guess it is very hard to tell one way or the other. I am no historian so I will merely say that I find it unlikely that those who wrote the New Testament had not been influenced by the books or tales about Apollonius in any sense. The stories of Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana simply have too much in common with each other for everything to just be random chance

Here is another blogpost from "atheism and happiness"

The New Testament and “Russian scandal”

There are many ways in which The New Testament is a great book. It has been read by many people (to say the least), it gives many people guidance in their lives and has done so for many years, and it also serves as historical evidence for the character named Jesus.

It is on this last point that I want to expand here. Having recently listened to two different courses from the always fabulous "Teaching Company", one exclusively about The New Testament, and one on "The foundations of western civilization P1", I have been fueled in my skepticism towards these books as any more than a fiction which one can interpret and then depending on who you are, help you do good things or bad things. (By the way, feel free to send comments and point out if I make any blatant mistakes – I have never read the book in their entirety)

Jesus was never famous during his lifetime it seems. Apart from the bible he is barely mentioned in any historical documents. So what we know about Jesus we know mainly from the gospels in The New Testament.

Mark, which is generally regarded as the earliest of these gospels was written, according to most historians, about 70AD, that is almost 40 years after the death of Christ (the exact year of this event is also very uncertain). 40 years in an age where very few people had access to any written sources and where perhaps even fewer could read. This means that the story of Jesus must have been passed on verbally for about 30 years or so.

Anyone who have ever played Chinese whispers (I just saw that this game also goes under the name of "Arab phone" or "Russian scandal" =)), knows that this is a problem. In Chinese whispers a message is passed along in a ring eventually coming back to the person who formulated the message. The final message is compared to the original message and there is invariably an astounding difference between the two.

The normal way to play this game is to have a group of children passing along a short message, say ten words or so, with little personal significance and hence little motive amongst the children to change the message in any way. In contrast, The New Testament is a rather long message, and the people who have passed it along have had every reason to alter the story to make Jesus sound better and greater than he actually was (does anyone seriously believe that he can turn water into wine?). What would 30 years of Chinese whispers with people who would have a strong interest in changing the story do to tales about Jesus? Well, let's just say that it would be no less of a miracle should the story be accurate and precise.

Religion as refuge

Christianity as well as most other religions are, I believe, false in the sense that their view of the world do not agree with the world as we perceive it. However, one might ask why false theories flourish so much. Would so many people believe in something which is false? My answer to this is obviously, yes they would! Here I want to propose one explanation of why there is religion.

Last time I wrote about Plato who grew up in wartime. I do not think that it is a coincidence that his republic, his utopia, is a state which would be very static. Everyone has their role, and there is left no room for progress, scientific or otherwise, in this state. Could it be that Plato somewhere desired something lasting and permanent? His idea of ideas similarly refers to something which is constant albeit not in our world.

Stoicism is another example of a philosophy which seeks something permanent beyond the world that we perceive. This philosophy advice us that the path to happiness is to ignore all calamities in your life. Do not let people irritate you. If your wife dies then there is no point in grief, after all what good does it do that you are also unhappy?

I am not entirely sure how the concept of philosophy and that of religion is connected. However, in this case I see religion as just another instance of the search for something permanent. I do not know whether there is any data on the hypothesis that I am just about to spell out, I was not able to find any when I did a google search, however, if true it would fit perfectly with where I am going here. I think that as hardships disappear from a society, more people become atheist, and vice versa. When life is rough people rely on religion or philosophies of endurance such as stoicism to achieve something permanent. Religion is in other words just an expression of people longing for a safe haven, something they need to cope with the hardships around them. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so, many people really do need religion, however, some of the consequences of such beliefs have been devastating as I have indicated in other posts (I think).

Some personal experience can also be used as evidence of the point I am trying to make. I remember when I was little and did not know whether I believed in God or not. Perhaps this is an after construction, but as I remember it, I used to pray to God about only when I was in some sort of trouble or when I needed something, not when everything was going well for me. It was as if God was some sort of last resort when I could not handle the situation myself. I do not think that I am the only young boy exhibiting this type of behavior. Further I do not think it is even limited to boys. In Denmark where I was born and lived until I was seven, the most religious part, traditionally, is western Jylland. Coincidentally, this is also where people have traditionally made a living of fishing. Many people who went out a random day to catch fish never came back. What can you do about this (in the absence of supercomputers that predict the weather)?, not much except pray to God , who will in most cases answer your prays...

Much of the inspiration to this post came from Bertrand Russell and his book ”History of western philosophy”, a book that I highly recommends. He sums up the point I tried to make above in these words:

”The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy. It is derived, no doubt, from love of home and desire for a refuge from danger; we find, accordingly, that it is most passionate in those whose lives are most exposed to catastrophe. Religion seeks permanence in two forms, God and immortality. In God is no variableness neither shadow of turning; the life after death is eternal and unchanging. The cheerfulness of the nineteenth century turned men against these static conceptions, and modern liberal theology believes that there is progress in heaven and evolution in the Godhead. But even in this conception there is something permanent, namely progress itself and its immanent goal. And a dose of disaster is likely to bring men's hopes back to their older super-terrestrial forms: if life on earth is despaired of, it is only in heaven that peace can be sought.”

Plato and totalitarianism

Plato (see picture) was a philosopher born at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war which raged from about 430BC to 400BC. Plato is correctly given a lot of credit for being a very influential philosopher, indeed he thought and wrote about most areas of philosophy during his lifetime. For this he is very much admired, so much in fact that critical voices tend to drown in this ocean of admiration. However, since I started reading "History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell (one of my favorite philosophers by the way) I have gained a new perspective on Plato, one which I will share here.

In "The Republic" Plato writes about Utopia, that is, the ideal society. It is indeed a very charming and interesting book, much more engaging then many contemporary books that I have read. Socrates, the protagonist in The Republic is a man of great charisma and charm, and as a reader it is difficult not to be seduced.

Nevertheless, if you take away the the charm that is undeniably great in this book, what you are in essence left with is a state that would have made Josef Stalin and Hitler envious, had it ever been created. Society, we are told, is to be divided up into three different classes of citizens, guardians who are to rule, soldiers who will fight and workers who will (you guessed it), work. The guardians decide who, in the next generation, will become the guardian and who will be the worker/soldier. In other words, what Plato is advocating is that we decide at birth whether a child will be ruling over others, fight for the state, or carry out all the dirty work. We have A, B, and C citizens i.e. what we have is fascism, in its most pure form.

A short defense of Plato may be in order here. I do not think that he was being selfish when he advocated this fascistic society, it was not to make life comfortable for himself and other philosophers. Rather, his argument is that rulers should be chosen according to how good they are at ruling, not according to how many people like that ruler. Just like you want a shoemaker to make your shoes, or a soldier to fight your wars you would like a ruler who is educated in his/her profession. The problem with this, as Bertrand Russell points out, is that it is all but impossible to decide who is a good ruler, and if we get a bad ruler who we then cannot get rid of (in a democracy you would typically replace a bad ruler), then the consequences can be very serious indeed. I believe that there is no education that you can give a person that will ensure that he or she will be a good leader, therefore democracy is to be preferred.


Plato was also a fan of positive eugenics in which you arrange the society so that men judged as having desirable traits get more children as well as negative eugenics in which you prevent "inferior" people from getting children. We are told that when a child is born it is to be taken away from its mother so that she will never know which child is hers. If the child is judged by the doctors to be deformed or if it simply has inferior parents, it will be put away in a mysterious place "as it ought to be". Is it just me who thinks this sounds uncomfortably similar to Nazi Germany? Like I said, Hitler and Plato would have had a lot of ideals in common.

Strict censorship of information is another policy dear to Plato. We are told that any book that portrays Gods doing something un-virtuous are to be forbidden because Gods only do acts that are good (yeah right). This of course meant banning all works of Homer where you finds Gods that are jealous, envious, evil, cheating, you name it. As if that was not enough, Plato also want censorship of every book in which people are fearful or afraid to die. The reason is that the soldiers could be affected in a negative way if they read about the horrors of war.

To sum up, if Plato had been given free hands he would have created a fascist eugenic society society with very strict censorship. Hardly utopia for a modern person (I hope). Such a society, like the Christian-based societies that existed in the dark middle ages would also have a detrimental effect on creative thought and on science. All such a society can hope to achieve is success against other societies of roughly equal size (as long as that society does not start to encourage progress). Bertrand Russell suggests that Plato may have been influenced by the fact that he grew up during war-time. There is a clear tendency among people who live in turbulent times to desire stability, and as just mentioned, that is what Plato's Republic may potentially achieve.

Debunking christianity

In this post I would like to promote another blog which I have just been reading. It is called Debunking Christianity (http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/) and it seems to be high quality posts. Here is the authors (there are several different contributors) own description of their blog:

"This Blog has been created for the purpose of debunking Evangelical Christianity. We are ex-Christians, ex-ministers, and even ex-apologists for the Christian faith. We are now freethinkers, skeptics, agnostics, and atheists. With the diversity of our combined strengths we seek to debunk Christianity."

The reason I stumpled upon this blog was that I was investigating the birth date of Jesus Christ. In a lecture I listened to recently I heard that historical records indeed confirms that there was a census in Bethlelem. However, the census was not in year 0, but in 8BC, and it was only for Romans. And I thought that Jesus was born in year 0?

Apparently this is not the only problematic detail concerning the birth of Jesus, I qoute again from debunking christianity. The authors deserves alot of credit for the fact that they have extensive references to other texts, including the bible.

"Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, if Luke is taken literally, according to E. P. Sanders [The Historical Figure of Jesus (Penguin Press, 1993, pp. 84-91)]. What husband would take a nine-month pregnant woman on such a trek from Nazareth at that time when only heads of households were obligated to register for a census when the census would’ve been stretched out over a period of weeks or even months? But if he did, why did he not take better precautions for the birth? Why not take Mary to her relative Elizabeth’s home just a few miles away from Bethlehem for the birth of her baby? According to Luke’s own genealogy (3:23-38) David had lived 42 generations earlier. Why should everyone have had to register for a census in the town of one of his ancestors forty-two generations earlier? There would be millions of ancestors by that time, and the whole empire would have been uprooted. Why 42 generations and not 35, or 16? If it was just required of the lineage of King David to register for the census, what was Augustus thinking when he ordered it? He had a King, Herod. “Under no circumstances could the reason for Joseph’s journey be, as Luke says, that he was ‘of the house and lineage of David,’ because that was of no interest to the Romans in this context.” [Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Putting Away Childish Things, (p.10)]. The fact is, even if there was a worldwide Roman census that included Galilee at this specific time, there is evidence that Census takers taxed people based upon the land they owned, so they traveled to where people lived."

Do we have a soul?

It is easy to get lost in a discussion about the existence or nonexistence of the soul. However, quite frequently conflicts do not arise because people disagree, but rather because they are using different definitions of the soul. Depending on the definition used I either believe or do not believe in the existence of a soul. A common though not very useful definition of "the soul" is what we really are, the core of our selves, or something like that. I would perhaps be inclined to call this "personality" rather than soul, but if that is what is meant by soul then yes, I think I do have one.

If on the other hand the soul is seen as something which is necessarily immaterial, then I do not believe in it. Hypothetically, should someone make an exact replica of me, with the exact same atoms in the exact same places, nothing more would be required. The replica and I would be impossible to distinguish from each other. The replica would react to any stimuli like me, would have the same childhood memories, be attracted to the same things, and just like me the replica would be disgusted by the smell of an orange.

This would not last long though. If me and my replica would continue our lives, then gradually subtle environmental differences would form us in non-identical ways, resulting in some small differences. These differences would ultimately affect the choices of me and my replica and consequently our preference would diverge. This, in turn, would lead to escalating environmental differences and increasingly different personalities or, if you prefer, souls. The resulting differences between me and my replica would be reflected in the way our atoms are put together, so we would no longer contain the exact same atoms. Nevertheless, there would probably be many striking similarities as well. There are examples of genetically identical twins that have grown up in very different environment, and still similarities have been extremely apparent.

What do I base this belief on? My main piece of evidence is that there does not seem to be any part of the personality that cannot be affected by brain injury. In my neuropsychology course I read about many patients with exotic brain injuries. A famous patient called HM, who is still alive, is unable to form any new memories. As a result he still thinks that he is 25 years old and he does not recognize the researchers who have visited him every day for several decades. Another older case is that of Phineas Gage who got a metal stick shot up through the frontal part of the brain. To everyone's amazement Gage did not die from the injury, however, according to his colleagues he was not the same after the injury. Following the injury he started swearing and behaved inappropriately to the extent that he lost his job. However, the most striking case that I can remember only vaguely is that of a responsible normal woman with three kids. Due to a tumor in her brain she suddenly underwent a radical personality change. Her behavior went from normative to completely reckless, and from being a good and faithful wife, she became extremely uninhibited and promiscuous…

One needs merely to take a look at a severe case of Alzheimer disease to see that material changes in the brain can change a person beyond recognition. Some would say that there is always something left, that even though Anna is now eating her own feces and hitting her children when they come to visit, she is still Anna, somewhere inside. I don't think so. Sure, she is still called Anna, and one can still recognize her appearance, but other than that Anna is not Anna anymore. The soul of Anna is very different from the soul Anna used to have before she got Alzheimer.

In sum, due to the fact that there seems to be no sacred part of the personality, nothing which cannot be affected by changes of a material nature. Due to this I do not believe that we have an immaterial soul. Normally I try to avoid the word altogether because of the confusion that arises, but this is my current thoughts on this issue. The discussion here has many important implications, for instance it should affect how to think about free will vs. determinism. I have written about that here.

My review of Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion"

I have now completed my extensive review of Richard Dawkins latest book, The God Delusion. My word counter tells me that the entire review is about 10,000 words long. The book has received massive attention, and Dawkins has visited many Universities as well as talkshows to speak about his book. You can take part of some of it by going here.

Here follows links to my reviews on all the different chapters...

Chapter 1 - A deeply religious non-believer
Chapter 2 - The God hypothesis
Chapter 3 - Arguments for God's existence
Chapter 4 - Why there is almost certainly no God
Chapter 5 - The roots of religion
Chapter 6 - The roots of morality
Chapter 7 - The good book and the changing moral zeitgeist
Chapter 8 - What's wrong with religion? Why be so hostile
Chapter 9 - Childhood, abuse, and escape from religion
Chapter 10 - A much needed gap?

Happy reading!

The God Delusion, Chapter 10 – A much needed gap?

Is a belief in God beneficial? Do we need God in our lives? Richard Dawkins discusses this issue in chapter 10 of the God Delusion. The first point he makes is that, whether or not a belief in God is beneficial in terms of psychological health or whatever, says nothing about the existence of God. There are studies indicating that religious people, on average are happier and healthier than atheists. The difference was not big but it was significant. However, it would be very erroneous to conclude that just because religion is correlated with happiness, God must exist… Dawkins writes:

"Religion's power to console doesn't make it true. Even if we make a huge concession; even if it were conclusively demonstrated that belief in God's existence is completely essential to human psychological and emotional well-being; even if all atheists were despairing neurotics driven to suicide by relentless cosmic angst - none of this would contribute the tiniest jot or tittle of evidence that religious belief is true. It might be evidence in favour of the desirability of convincing yourself that God exists, even if he doesn't."

Personally I do think that the world would be a better place if people would have an evidence based world view. Politicians today often get stuck when religious arguments are brought to the table. Should Jerusalem be in the possession of the Israeli, or the Palestinian's? How do you argue with Bush when he claims that the Iraq invasion was a mission given to him by God? There is just not so much you can say in response to such an argument. To be fair, this was not his primary argument for going to war, but my point stands nevertheless.

I do not believe in God, yet I consider myself happy and I enjoy my life. When I face misfortunes I do not pray to God to help me, rather I try to come up with a concrete and effective solution to whatever it is I am facing. I realize of course that I have been born in a wealthy part of the world and that my miseries are nothing compared to the miseries that the average human being must face, yet even for them I think that it would be better not to rely on God to console and fix things. An additional bonus that you get as an atheist, at least to the extent that atheists do not believe in reincarnation, is that you value your time here on earth more. I do not believe that I will be reborn when I die, therefore I want to make the best of the time that I have here on this planet. For this reason I am also unlikely to end up as a suicide bomber. Only a very religious person would sacrifice something as valuable as his or her own life in order to kill other innocent people.

In short, there are plenty of reasons to be grateful for our time here on earth. One does not need God to have some substance in life. My life is filled with substance, and I think that for most people, even for religious people, the principal sources of happiness lie outside of the realm of religion. I end with these words from the God Delusion which illustrates my point well.

"But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave? A love of nature, or what the great entomologist E. O. Wilson has called Biophilia"

The God Delusion, Part 9 – Childhood, abuse, and escape from religion

Chapter nine in The God Delusion, as the name suggests, deals with the way in which children are indoctrinated into faiths. In my opinion chapter nine is the most controversial one in the entire book. Personally I agree with most of what Dawkins writes, though occasionally I can have some understanding for a certain degree of child indoctrination. It is after all difficult to act in a completely neutral way towards children without letting your ideology shine through at all. I expect that it is even more difficult if you believe passionately in something as many religious people do. Personally when a child asks me about my beliefs I always say that I do not believe in any God, but I am also quick to point out that there are people who thinks otherwise. I will gladly explain why I do not believe in a God, but I try to not force the child into adapting my views. I also try to ask children what they think, thus encouraging them to think for themselves. These are my ideals, but I admit that sometimes I don't live up to them entirely, and I cannot expect religious people to do so if I do not… Dawkins writes (and I think he may be going a bit too far here).

"In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out or lock them in a dungeon."

Nevertheless, the damage that results form child labeling and child indoctrination is undeniable. Suicide bombers often commit their deeds because it will bring financial support to their family, however, I do not think they would have done what they do was it not for their strong religious faith. As Dawkins often points out, it is also very weird that we label children as Muslim or Christian considering how complicated belief systems really are. Have they read the bible and reflected on its validity? I seriously doubt it… It is entirely equivalent to labeling children according to some political affiliation, e.g. "a communist child", or a "social democrat child". Children should be taught how to think, not what to think. Dawkins writes:

"I thank my own parents for taking the view that children should be taught not so much what to think as how to think. If, having been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the Bible is literally true or that the movements of the planets rule their lives, that is their privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, and not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure."

In Sweden there is an ongoing debate (S) about whether confessional private schools should be allowed or not. Today we have a compromise in which religious movements are allowed to run schools as long as they do not have any religious perspectives in the normal subjects. They are however allowed to have some isolated religious events such as morning-prayer. As a liberal I find it hard to have a strong opinion in this debate. The essential question for me is how much the religious events in these schools contribute to indoctrination of children as well as whether going to such a school will prevent the children from meeting people with different ideologies. For instance, the Plymouth Brothers (S), a sect that has been allowed to start a private school in Sweden, have an ideology that explicitly says that it is not allowed to eat in the company of a "devil worshipper" like myself. Dawkins writes (and this I agree with completely):

"Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether any are 'valid', let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so."

Another theme in chapter nine is the obsession that some people have with preservation of religious diversity which they see as positive seemingly independent of the consequences. The argument goes something like this. Who are we to judge that say female circumcision is wrong - that is their culture and we should respect that. In one American TV-program the ritual sacrifice of a young Inca girl was hailed as being exotic and a wonderful example of cultural diversity (the event took place about 500 years ago). Dawkins writes:

"Humphrey's point - and mine - is that, regardless of whether she was a willing victim or not, there is strong reason to suppose that she would not have been willing if she had been in full possession of the facts. For example, suppose she had known that the sun is really a ball of hydrogen, hotter than a million degrees Kelvin, converting itself into helium by nuclear fusion, and that it originally formed from a disc of gas out of which the rest of the solar system, including Earth, also condensed . . . Presumably, then, she would not have worshipped it as a god, and this would have altered her perspective on being sacrificed to propitiate it."…

"Humphrey makes the point that no adult woman who has somehow missed out on circumcision as a child volunteers for the operation later in life."

To sum everything up, though I think it is categorically wrong to impose your view on children I can understand that in practice this may be difficult to attain to a perfect degree. Beliefs will inevitably shine through. However, I cheer everyone who encourages autonomous thought in children. Ask them what do you think?, do you believe in God?, how do you think the world came to be?, and other questions like that? Let them have their say and let them know that they can believe what they want. At the very least, don't be like pastor Roberts who is running a Hell House in which children are taught what will happen to them if they would be so evil as to have an abortion (they have very generous age limits compared to for instance Hollywood, see picture). Pastor Roberts says:

"I would rather for them to understand that Hell is a place that they absolutely do not want to go. I would rather reach them with that message at twelve than to not reach them with that message and have them live a life of sin and to never find the Lord Jesus Christ. And if they end up having nightmares, as a result of experiencing this, I think there's a higher good that would ultimately be achieved and accomplished in their life than simply having nightmares."

The God Delusion, part 8 – What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile

I do not think that religion is the only source of evil in this world. Humans have an instinct to form groups, and to amplify the differences between the in-group and the out-group. I am myself a fan of Manchester United, and for some weird reason I can get a little bit upset when someone criticize a player in the team or something similarly harmless. Now, I would never act on such feeling, however, there are fans or hooligans who in fact get into fights for such reasons, unbelievable as that may sound… I think that mankind will probably always find something to fight about, however, I also think that religion is the worst culprit of all when it comes to creating conflicts between groups. In chapter eight of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins addresses the very frequent question "what is wrong with religion"?

The danger of Islamic fundamentalism is obvious to most people. Last weekend I watched the movie United 93. Even though I have seen those planes fly into the world trade center thousands of times I still just cannot understand or accept that any human being can plan and execute such a deed which intentionally strikes against civilians, many of whom have had absolutely nothing to do with the miseries that the Muslim world has experienced. To take a plane full of civilians in great despair and then fly that plane right into a building with more such civilians is an act that must require a lot of faith. 9/11 was no zenith of terrorism. According to “The Religion of Peace.com” Islamic terrorists have carried out more than 9500 deadly terror attacks since 9/11.

Islam is not the only religion with blood on its hands though. In Africa, countless massacres has been carried out in the name of Christianity. See for example Joseph Kony (see picture), proclaimed spirit medium and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

So where does religious extremism stem from, what causes it? I have not read any studies on this, and if someone could enlighten me then I would be grateful. However, I think it is beyond reasonable doubt that religion has to take part of the blame. In particular, the problem with almost all religions is that they teach the young that blind faith is a virtue. To doubt in God when there is no evidence is for some reason a horrible crime. As a consequence, religious people often cannot tell you what it would take for them to stop believing. This is one of the things that separates science and religion. Dawkins writes:

But my belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming.

There are well documented differences in peoples' tendency to be open minded. Some individuals are born with a taste for absolute rules and principles and a great dislike for grey-scale ethics and knowledge. One could add to the speculation above that if individuals of this kind, who score low on openness, is brought up in say a Christian family, then it is probable that this individual will become more extreme in his/her faith than the parents. Maybe, unlike the parents, the youngster decides that the bible must be read literally and then he read from the bible that “He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed” (Exodus 22.20), right there you have the birth of an extremist. Dawkins explains it perhaps more elegantly than me when he writes:

The teachings of 'moderate' religion, though not extremist in themselves are an open invitation to extremism.

The religious movement in the United States seems to have abandoned the founding fathers' ideal of a true secular state. The intelligent design movement tries to bring religion into the classroom, a goal which may become a problem for them since the creator is not specified. Meanwhile there are the so called pro-life politicians (ironically, the same politicians tends to be strong proponents of the death penalty), who want a ban on abortion for faith based reasons. The religious movement in America has culminated (I hope) in a group referred to by outsiders as The American Taliban. I can find no difference between their rhetoric and that of Osama Bin Laden. According to Ann Coulter:

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

Anyways, the main problem with faith and the answer to the question "what is wrong with religion" is that it idealizes faith without evidence. It is really hard to argue with someone who merely says "this is what I believe, and nothing can change that". Such an attitude makes it impossible to have discussion that is of any use. I will end with the following quote from Bertrand Russell (see picture) (which can also be found in The God Delusion):

Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.

Relativism

It is of course true that we cannot know anything for certain. For all we know, we may be living in "The Matrix", and everything we see is mere computer simulations. Likewise, we can never know for sure that a theory is true in an objective sense. I consider these two statements as uncontroversial, however, when relativists go one step further and argue that all theories are equivalent since no theory can be proven, that is when I must disagree…

People who use this reasoning have completely forgotten about the concept of evidence and prediction. Though a theory can never be proven in the absolute sense it can be better or worse at describing reality. Just as simple example there are people who claim that the world is spherical (or almost spherical), and there are those who claim that it is flat (based on religious reasoning I might add). What predictions does each of these two theories make? Well, one very simple prediction is that a round earth should cast "round" or banana shaped shadows on the moon when the earth is between the sun and the moon. If the earth was flat on the other hand, the shadow should be flat as well. Everyone who has ever gone out to watch the moon knows that the round earth theory gives the more accurate prediction. We cannot know for certain that the earth is round, but the predictions it makes agree with what we see. When a prediction is correct we can call that evidence. My point is simply that people do not walk around and think that the earth being flat and the earth being round are two equivalent theories just because neither can be proven. Almost everyone believes that the earth is round because there is so much evidence in favor of that theory.

I have previously argued that in fact it does not really matter whether a theory is true in the objective sense. As long as a particular theory is very good at predicting the world as we see it, it is a good theory and we should simply act as if it was true. It is this mentality together with the scientific method, which reduces the risk of seeing evidence where there is none that has brought us to where we are today. Here it is important to remember that if a theory is true in the objective sense, then all predictions derived from that theory would have to be true as well.

Relativists also like to point fingers at the scientific method. One frequent argument that you hear from relativists is that throughout history there has been paradigm shifts in almost all sciences. In astronomy for example we have gone from the Copernican system, to the Newtonian, to Einstein's relativity. Furthermore they claim that these paradigm shifts occur, not because latter theories are more accurate, but due to cultural factors. Relativists who use this argument, first of all, forget that history is also a science. They are using evidence which has been produced using the scientific method – the very same method which they are criticizing. Clearly hypocritical...

Besides, it is clear to me that all shifts in astronomy have been progressive. The details of the various paradigm shifts may have been influenced by sociological factors, however, the main reason for all the shifts have been that they make better predictions. Newton's theory of gravitation gives a better description than Copernicus theory, and Einstein's theory of relativity make better predictions than Newton's theory. Old theories are exchanged with new ones when the new ones are better at describing the world as we perceive it.

This will be all I write about relativism for now, but check back later if you want to read more. For some reason I end up in discussions about relativism very often, and therefore I also have many thoughts on the subject. Many of the arguments that I present here have been influenced by this book (see picture above), which I recommend to everyone.

The God Delusion, Part 7 – The Good book and the changing moral zeitgeist

In chapter seven of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins attacks the book from which some Christians claim to get their moral code from, I am speaking of course about the Old Testament. However, Dawkins makes it clear that he is not criticizing the moral or conduct of Christians per say, rather, he argues that Christians, like other mortals in fact do not derive their morals from the bible…

"We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories. Such picking and choosing is a matter of personal decision, just as much, or as little, as the atheist's decision to follow this moral precept or that was a personal decision, without an absolute foundation."

That people "pick and choose" among the moral guidelines in the bible becomes extremely obvious when you take into account what is actually advocated in the Old Testament. I believe that not even fundamentalist a Christians would send his or her daughter into the hands of rapists and murders (see Judges 19:23-4). I also wonder how many fundamentalist Christians actually think that God is doing the right thing when he commands the stoning of a poor man who worked on the Sabbath!? And then again there are people who believe strongly in their own interpretation of the bible, and based on that interpretation they commit horrible crimes… Richard Dawkins writes:

"As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, 'Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.' Blaise Pascal (he of the wager) said something similar: 'Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

Criticizing the Old Testament is like shooting a dead elephant, not very difficult. To me it is quite incomprehensible how people today can believe literally everything that is written in the Old Testament. It is even more difficult for me to understand why someone would want to get their morals from this book. Luckily Yahweh's son(?) Jesus came along. I hope that those who believe that Richard Dawkins is a fundamentalist atheist who hits out at anything and everything associated with religion, will read the following quote carefully…

Well, there's no denying that, from a moral point of view, Jesus is a huge improvement over the cruel ogre of the Old Testament. Indeed Jesus, if he existed (or whoever wrote his script if he didn't) was surely one of the great ethical innovators of history. The Sermon on the Mount is way ahead of its time. His 'turn the other cheek' anticipated Gandhi and Martin Luther King by two thousand years. It was not for nothing that I wrote an article called 'Atheists for Jesus' (and was later delighted to be presented with a T-shirt bearing the legend).

I also see Jesus as a role model in more than one respect and I think his philosophy is good, albeit not perfect. I admire Jesus in the same way that I admire other philosophers such Bentham, Mill, Rawls and Kant. All these men have influenced the way I think about good and bad, but I don't think any of these men have THE ethical philosophy. Similarly, Jesus as he is described in the New Testament has many good ideas and thoughts, but he is not always an example to follow. Dawkins writes.

Jesus' family values, it has to be admitted, were not such as one might wish to focus on. He was short, to the point of brusqueness, with his own mother, and he encouraged his disciples to abandon their families to follow him. 'If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Speaking about Jesus, I have also always asked myself why? Why did God have to incarnate himself, ridicule his incarnation, and then finally have him crucified just in order to forgive us? Why couldn't God, who is after all omnipotent and omniscient, just forgive our sins without going through all the trouble? I don't think I have ever gotten a straight answer to that question…

A couple a weeks ago I was asked the question which always pops up in discussions such as this one: What about Stalin and Hitler, they were atheists and they were evil!? Doesn't that mean that atheism makes people evil? No it doesn't. In my mind it is not important what a particular person or dictator believes. What matters to me is the behavior and actions of the person in question. Quite often a person's beliefs influence the behavior of the believer and then the beliefs becomes relevant. Religion I believe, in general, has a bad influence on people's behavior, in particular when we are talking about world leaders since they become more rigid and difficult to negotiate with. Atheism, I would argue, has no such effect on behavior. Hitler probably was religious (read the book if you want further justification of this point), but Joseph Stalin was certainly an atheist. Did atheism make Stalin commit his crimes, I believe not. Did his Islamic conviction make Osama Bin Laden commit his crimes, yes they probably did…

What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does.

The God Delusion, Part 6 – Roots of morality

In chapter six of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins deals with the roots of morality. There seems to be a major concern amongst religious people that should people become atheists there would no longer be any reason to behave morally. After all, why would anyone behave in a good way if there was no after-life reward, and if there was no hell fire, what would stop people from murder and rape??? On the question, "If there is no God, why be good?" Dawkins writes:

Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: 'Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, applepolishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.' As Einstein said, 'If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.'

So what is the danger associated with atheism and in particular, a belief in the Theory of Evolution? It seems to me that many people mistakenly believe that the theory of evolution teaches us how to maximize fitness and perhaps more dangerously that maximizing fitness is necessarily a good thing…. There is nothing in the theory of evolution which tells us how we should act, that is for us to decide. Dawkins writes:

A great deal of the opposition to the teaching of evolution has no connection with evolution itself, or with anything scientific, but is spurred on by moral outrage. This ranges from the naive 'If you teach children that they evolved from monkeys, then they will act like monkeys…

I have written about this before in my post "Ethics of an atheist", but it is important so I will say it again. I think that the role of the Theory of Evolution is not to tell us how to act i.e. we should not derive our morality from the theory of evolution. Rather, I think, the theory of evolution can be used to make informed guessed about how people are likely to act in various situations. On a larger scale, I think that Evolution can help us predict which policies are likely to succeed as well as which ones are likely to fail because they violate our instincts? I think that in many ways a communistic society, as it is described in theory, would be quite nice. Marx's (see picture) slogan "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs" may be sexist, but aside from that it sounds like a very sensible principle to my ears. Unfortunately I think that a society based on this principle would never work, simply because it is human nature to want more than one need (this is probably the reason it never has worked to)… Largely for this reason I favor a market-based society. For those who are interested in this line of thought I recommend Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue (the last chapter is about implications for society). Dawkins writes that:

A great majority of religious people, I am sure, are moral and responsible human beings. However, the following letter to Brian Flemming, as well as countless historical episodes (9/11, Crusades, Inquisition etc), shows that religious belief indeed does not make people immune from primitive "ape like" behavior…

You've definitely got some nerve. I'd love to take a knife, gut you fools, and scream with joy as your insides spill out in front of you. You are attempting to ignite a holy war in which some day I, and others like me, may have the pleasure of taking action like the above mentioned…

Dawkins then points out the absurdity in defending an omnipotent omniscient God. Isn't it enough that all atheists will burn in hell forever after we die? Can't your God just punish us if he wants to, or perhaps this is where your faith breaks down? My advice to those who feel the need to fight in the name of God is, why not let God take care of it, should he exist then it should be a piece of cake…

So where does morality come from? Without going into the details the Theory of Evolution provides a perfectly valid explanation of the phenomenon. In experiments where people are given ethical dilemmas, religious people and atheists give pretty much the same answers, again suggesting that religion doesn't make you more moral... How did morality evolve? Here, to confine the length of this post, I will simply refer to Matt Ridley's The Origin of Virtue, which deals exhaustively with the subject...