On my old Swedish blog I once complained about the “fascistic superstition” of a Swedish community site called helgon.net. Although clearly open to all sorts of worldviews and lifestyles (being a community aimed specifically at the alternative crowd), they still insisted on showing your astrological sign on your profile. I fill in my birthdate, and they claim I’m a disciplined, ambitious capricorn with tendencies to be conservative, boring and greedy.

Um… right.

So anyway, now I’ve joined Facebook, and there I encounter a different kind of bigoted assumption: That I have “Religious views”. Two of the by Facebook predefined “religious views” are Atheism and Agnosticism. Now, I don’t know about you guys but I certainly don’t consider Atheism a religion, nor Agnosticism. Also, I was missing my own preferred worldview on the list, Humanism.

I’ve left a suggestion to Facebook that they change “Religious views” into “Worldview” and include a few non-religious worldviews in their predefined list, such as Humanism, Rationalism, Materialism, Freethinker etc. They make a big deal about everyone being welcome to join Facebook, so they really ought to make everyone feel welcome as well and not marginalise us non-religious people. Should they ignore me I guess we’re gonna have to start a petition…

facebook, worldviews, religion

The Secular Muslim group SEMUS that I wrote about in a previous post have now backed off and decided not to publish Vilks’ Mohammad caricatures after all. The reason was that he also drew a caricature of a jew, after having been provoked by a journalist who claimed he would never dare to insult jews like he insults muslims. SEMUS are apparently afraid of legal consequences of publishing anti-semitic material. That reasoning would be fine, if anyone had at any point suggested they do such a thing. The jew caricature had nothing to do with the set of Mohammad drawings and were not to be part of any exhibition.

Meanwhile an Iranian top diplomat suggested that there’s a grand conspiracy behind publishing these drawings, a conspiracy designed to ruin the relations between Sweden and Iran. The Iranian president then decided it’s obviously the Zionists that are behind the whole thing.

Good lord, this is depressing.

The one interesting thing that’s come out of this mess for me personally is that I’ve been thinking about this Swedish word: “kränka” (v.), “kränkt” (adj.) and “kränkning” (n.). I’ve come to realise there’s no English equivalent that really corresponds. Despite the fact that English has a much larger vocabulary than Swedish, there are a few important concepts missing.

The verb “kränka” can mean violate, infringe or transgress. The way it’s most commonly used in Sweden, however, it means something more on the lines of insult, offend, hurt or outrage. And the way it’s bandied about in all worldview-related debate these days, you’d think that people have nothing to do other than feeling offended. Muslims are “kränkta” by Mohammad caricatures. Christians are “kränkta” by photos of Jesus in a homosexual context.

Moreover, the moment Humanists such as myself pipe up with claims like “children shouldn’t be forced to go to church on the final day of school” (as is often the case in Sweden, as many schools don’t have proper auditoriums to gather in) or “hotels, unless they have a christian profile, shouldn’t promote christianity before other religions by allowing gideon bibles”, christians will counter with “oh dear, the poor Humanists feel “kränkta” by a harmless end-of-school ceremony and a bible in a drawer, what next, will they want to change the Swedish flag because it displays a crucifix?”

Well, no. And as far as I’m aware, no Humanist ever used the word “kränkt” about themselves in this context. We tend to be a lot sturdier than that. In fact, the only people who seem to use the word are those who think that religion and religious practices should be awarded some special kind of respect in society.

I, of course, do not respect religion. I respect people’s right to think and believe whatever they want. But there’s no obligation for anyone to respect other people’s actual opinions. If someone feels “kränkt” by a drawing or something equally inane, well, that’s their right - and their problem.

mohammad caricature, insults, religion, respect

I’m sorry about the dearth of posts here recently - I had just gotten started and then there’s a hiatus. Really, there’s no excuse, except for the honey harvest which waits for no man.

Here, I hope you’ll make do with a couple of Dawkins’ videos. They’re pretty much self-explanatory - some madman brought creationism into the EU, and the Swedish Humanist Association decided to fight back. We acquired the help of Richard Dawkins, as you can see in these videos. Hopefully the rest will be on YouTube sometime soon - Steve Jones was also there and I really liked his speech. The Q&A session was good as well.

Part one:

Part two, where yours truly is visible towards the very end - the girl on the left in the white t-shirt. The man with the beautiful long hair next to me is my significant other, and the really happy dude is my brother. Clip also includes the infamous banana video:

dawkins, eu, evolution, creationism, indoctrination

The circus around Vilks’ drawings continues. In a column in today’s DN points out that the caricatures aren’t really of Muhammad at all. In fact, they were intended to point out that the art community of Sweden’s really a hen house. Full of chickens.

Right next to the column, the picture of Mohammad as a roundabout dog is published.

Meanwhile, Minaret - the muslim culture journal - really has backed off and decided not to participate in anything to do with the drawings. Apparently, they are an attack on islam and all muslims. Muhammed Omar, editor-in-chief, even has the gall to compare it to anti-semitism. Nima Daryamadj rightly points out that there’s a bit of a difference between heckling a large group of people who were systematically executed in living memory and heckling this one guy who has been dead for the past 1400 years, and whom most of humanity doesn’t attach any particular significance to anyway.

islam, antisemitism, mohammad caricatures

The upcoming DreamWorks film “Bee Movie“, while still a couple of months away, already offends my sensibilities. For one, I dislike Jerry Seinfeld. But that’s really a minor point.

My main gripe is the sex of the main protagonist, for two reasons.

Ever since I was a little girl I’ve been vaguely upset at the lack of heroines in Disney and other movies. The damsels in distress of old-style Disney never particularly appealed to me. Then there was the occasional “strong woman” in a sidekick or love interest type role, but they always ended up needing to be saved as well. Oh, and of course, there’s Mulan - at last a true female hero! But she has to dress up like a man. Like, duh.

Do they really think kids don’t notice this? I mean, ok, back in the days of Disney’s Snow White, you really couldn’t expect the film makers to have female role models at the forefront of their minds. But these days? I would’ve expected Harry Potter to be a girl. I would’ve expected things to be different.

Especially when making movies about ants or bees.

I mean, Antz, I could forgive, because Z was Woody Allen. A Bug’s Life was just a pale copy of Antz, so I guess I can let it slip without comment (except to note that ants aren’t bugs). But Bee Movie? They’re gonna do the same to bees now?

The official site describes Bee Movie as “a comedy that will change everything you think you know about bees”. Well, yeah! I for one had no idea bees go to university. Nor that honeybees are striped like wasps with bodies like bumblebees. But what I really don’t get is how they’ve missed this one fundamental thing about bees that pretty much everyone who’ve heard of the animal knows: Male bees don’t work! In fact, half of the year, they don’t even exist, on account of being slaughtered each autumn.

I have a nagging feeling I’m taking all this much too seriously - but if it turns out Mr Barry B. Benson has a stinger too, I’m gonna kill someone.

bee movie, dreamworks, honeybees

A good while ago on the Brights’ forum someone asked why genes replicate. There were a number of replies describing how the first self-replicating molecules might have turned up, the start of evolution. The poster replied with “Yes but… why? What is the purpose?” Confusion ensued.

There are a number of ways to answer “Why do genes replicate?”. One might say, “Because they can.” Or, “Because otherwise they wouldn’t be genes.” Or, “They just do. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it.” Essentially, the question is impossible to answer, because - unless you believe in destiny or god or something - there is no purpose.

Eventually, the topic starter understood our confusion, and his own. If you have grown up believing in god, if you’ve always been surrounded by people assuming everyone and everything in the world has a reason for being there, you might unwittingly be applying that assumption on everything yourself. And that can make it very difficult to fully grasp evolution.

Genes replicate for the same reason mountains are eroded by water. It’s a physical process that happens if the conditions are right. There is no ultimate purpose to it; the water has no reason to erode the mountain, it just does. Genes don’t replicate because they want to stay in the gene pool, it just so happens that those that replicate better stay in the gene pool longer.

In short, a gene’s gotta do what a gene’s gotta do. That’s really all there is to it.

evolution, genes, natural selection

Lately there’s been a bit of a fuss over a Swedish artist who had the gall to draw another Mohammad caricature. The drawing I’ve seen, portraying the prophet as a roundabout dog, is really rather ugly and I wouldn’t blame galleries for not displaying it for that reason, but obviously the issue is more complicated than that. The drawings have been refused by two art galleries and only the second claimed it was because of the art itself rather than security issues.

Now, one may have many things to say about that, but for most of us with a secular perspective, the main problem is that regardless of how ugly your drawing is, you should have the possibility to hang it on a wall in a gallery without suffering threats to your life (or the gallery). The artist, Lars Vilks, has suffered some threats after posting some of his controversial art online, and while it’s understandable that galleries would not want to take the risk that people get hurt … it shouldn’t have to be this way.

Anyway. Journalists aplenty have commented the whole deal and they all say “Oh yes, someone has to show these drawings, we have to protect freedom of speech!”, but the newspapers are all conspicuously free of Mohammad caricatures. Finally, the recently established group Sekulära Muslimer i Sverige (”Secular Muslims in Sweden”) together with the muslim magazine Minaret decided to arrange for the pictures to be shown, as well as inviting the artist to a “conversation”. Vilks agreed, and I thought, hurrah, this is truly wonderful news!

Except today on the radio, a journalist claimed that Minaret has backed off and decided not to participate after all. I have so far been unable to find any information to substantiate this claim but if it’s true, well … I really don’t have any comments.

The whole thing is just a testament to the sad state of freedom of speech vs freedom of religion in Sweden, and probably the rest of Europe.

islam, freedom of speech, mohammad caricatures

My father, as ardent an evolutionist (if I may be so bold as to use that word - I know there are ismophobes out there) as I am, has an acquaintance who is trying to figure out how everything works. Yes, you heard right, EVERYTHING. This includes life and how life got here.

Unfortunately, he seems to have fallen for some version of the argument against evolution stating that it’s just so unlikely that it can’t be true. I don’t know the specifics of his objections, but he seems to be thinking that random mutations cannot cause the evolution of complexity. Dad’s attempts at explaining that natural selection is by no means random have so far been futile.

Now, this man is about to embark on a journey across the atlantic in a small sailing boat with one companion. (This is by no means an extraordinary event in his life, as sailing the oceans in tiny boats is pretty much all he does, when he’s not building new boats.) He will likely have a fair amount of time to read and think about things, so my dad asked me if I know of a book that could explain evolution to him. Unfortunately, I can’t, so I’m asking you, dear reader, for help.

It needs to bring up the probability problem, and I think it would be good if it had an explanation of basic genetics and developmental biology, as I suspect he has a very vague grasp of what mutations actually do to an organism. It should be written for the layman, but not be dumbed down. This man is absolutely not stupid, he’s very thoughtful and thorough.

Please leave suggestions in a comment; the boat leaves on friday next week so we’re short on time!

evolution, probability, natural selection

Look mum, he followed me home, can I keep him?

conspiracy theories

The other night, I rewatched most of Richard Dawkins’ two-part documentary The Root of All Evil? (remember the question mark, he had to fight for it!). Overall, I liked it, but I had some criticism that I actually got the chance to deliver to him personally last year, which he then asked me to write down and send to him. That was when I first heard he was planning on a new set of documentaries. Since then, I have been eagerly waiting to see if his producers would take my critique to heart.

So, I have finally watched the long-anticipated first part of Dawkins’ new documentary, Enemies of Reason. I must say they have made a splendid job. Dawkins is quite obviously more experienced this time round - the script is better, and he is more relaxed in front of the camera. (Of course this might be related to him not having to face down Ted Haggard this time. But still.)

I would also say that the program is more well-rounded in terms of what is brought up and who’s interviewed. I especially enjoyed the interview with Derren Brown, although was slightly let down by him not doing a cold reading on Dawkins himself. That would have been a sight for sore eyes! Especially since the medium Dawkins had just visited was such a complete failure.

At one point they do a test of self-professed (what else) “dowsers”, whose task it is to find bottles of water in a double-blind test. They all fail, obviously. I have seen something similar up close when the Swedish Humanist Association arranged a test on Swedish television where a tarot expert were confronted with fifteen black boxes. In each box there was a different book. All she had to do was place the name tags for the books on the right box. We’d even been so kind as to give her a list of the books beforehand so she could prepare. Needless to say, she didn’t succeed - in fact, she didn’t get one of them right. And she did the exact same thing as the dowsers: After the initial shock, she started inventing excuses for why she hadn’t made it.

Parallels to The Root of All Evil? can be found. Dawkins explores various superstitious practices and beliefs, talks about science and reason, and finally drives the point home that in the same way as religious moderates enable and directly or indirectly protect their extremist brethren, the seemingly harmless wishy-washy spiritualist nonsense is simply a symptom of the same disease that gives rise to science-hating postmodernism, paranoid conspiracy theories and self-serving quackery.

Finally (I can hear you all thinking it!), what was my criticism and did they listen? Well, in the first series, there were several instances where science is represented with cold, hard imagery of lonely people surrounded by machines, whereas religion is represented with warm, fuzzy images of people coming together, singing and chanting. In a documentary trying to speak for science and reason, I do think we could do our best not to fall for the all-too-common prejudice that science is hard, cold and boring, and that scientists are all lonely and socially impaired. Especially since Dawkins has a way with words like no other when it comes to describing how wondrous this world really is.

And, to my great satisfaction, it actually does seem like they listened - to someone, if not me. Apart from some historical black-and-white footage of old experiments, what we get when Dawkins speaks of science is flowers, beautiful landscapes, people smiling, and so forth. Good job!

enemies of reason, root of all evil, richard dawkins, dawkins, superstition