I was going to post about honey tonight but I’m too tired.* I will leave it for tomorrow and instead point you in the way of the latest Carnival of the Godless over at Ain’t Christian?.

In reference to the host’s comment on my entry; I actually haven’t seen the South Park episode on atheism. Not a big fan. Please don’t kill me.

* Valid excuse: I have just survived Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Five hours and then some of music that sucks the air from your lungs and leaves your ears feeling numb. Although I didn’t see any resemblance whatsoever to the actual myth of Ragnarök.

carnival of the godless, wagner, honey

I suppose it says quite a lot about me that I am much sadder about Alex’s death than I ever was about, for instance, Princess Diana. (In fact, when she died, I had absolutely no idea who she were, and hence it was difficult to feel whatsoever mortified. Actually, I still don’t really know.) The loss of Alex strikes closer to home. I know what it’s like to lose an animal friend, albeit the ones I have lost have been rather smaller and less intelligent. And Alex went way before his time - there was so much more he could have taught us about how the mind works.

I feel loss at his death, and I can only imagine what those who knew him personally must be feeling. My condolences to Dr Pepperberg.

alex, african grey, pepperberg

Blogmeet in Stockholm on 11 September. I might even be there!

One major complaint people seem to have about a worldview free of supernatural elements is the perceived lack of meaning. Especially when confronted with evolution, some people will go “but that renders it all pointless”! The irony is that not only do I as a person lack an objective and final answer to “What is the meaning of life?” but that I also simply can’t define the word. As a future biologist, one would assume that I could at least answer it from a scientific perspective. What does “life” mean? What is life?

The rather curious answer is, we don’t really know. Seed Magazine has a story on this. I think it’s pretty good, and I agree with several of the points made by the philosopher Carol Cleland. Until we find life that is radically different from the kind we have here on earth, it’s going to be very difficult to define what life actually is. And besides, does it really matter? We seem to have some intuitive feel for how to divide biological systems from other systems, perhaps that is enough for the time being.

One thing Cleland says strikes me as a bit weird though:

Cleland, for example, doubts that Darwinian evolution, the core of the NASA definition of life, is essential. “I think those arguments are weak,” she says. She envisions alien microbes filled with enzymes but lacking genes. The enzymes build more enzymes and the microbes split in two. They couldn’t evolve through Darwinian evolution, because they wouldn’t have genes. But they might still change, as their environment changed. Cleland doesn’t claim any evidence that such things exist, but she argues that scientists can’t rule them out.

Strictly speaking, if you’re talking about evolution the way Darwin saw it, genes don’t come into it. Darwin made no mention of them, because he had no idea what genes were. In fact, that he didn’t know the mechanism for inheritance was his main issue with his own theory, as far as I’ve understood it.

Also, enzymes building more enzymes whereafter microbes split in two does not seem like a process outside of natural selection. The mechanism of inheritance may be different from what we’re used to, but it’s pretty much how biologists today envision the origin of life. Anything that replicates is subject to selection - Richard Dawkins has even chosen to define “gene” as being “a unit of selection” in at least one of his books. By that logic, a self-replicating enzyme of any chemical composition is a gene in itself.

Still, one wonders what a creationist would make of the fact that a biologist can’t even define their subject of study. Not only is “species” a nebulous concept but life itself can’t be defined! Is this god messing with our brains, or simply failing to make nature clear-cut and well organised like we used to assume it was back in the days when we didn’t really know much about it?

life, biology, evolution, natural selection

… in Swedish Parliament should really be the title of this lovely piece of news (here’s the same in Swedish). In short, ambassadors from 20 muslim countries have been invited to a dialogue about Mohammad caricatures. The ambassadors will bring a list of “demands” to prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

I tried to pick out a quote from the Egyptian ambassador from the article, but he says pretty much the same thing over and over again: It’s not us, it’s you. Sweden should make it unlawful to wound the feelings of sensitive muslims by drawing their prophet. Sweden should teach its youths that freedom of speech is only okay so long as you don’t piss anyone off (especially muslims). Sweden should deal with islamophobia with a permanent parliamentary committee. Obviously there’s not a word about muslim leaders standing up and calming their followers down.

Now, the meeting hasn’t happened yet, and when it does no press will be there, so I can’t say for sure that the prime minister and his associates will crawl around and try to placate these righteous men. For all I know, Reinfeldt is planning on finally thumping his fist into a handy table and saying, “You know what? This is Sweden. We have human rights. One of them is freedom of speech. We won’t give that up, ever. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come here, you don’t have to read our newspapers or watch Swedish TV.” Yeah. He might do that.

But just in case, if you have a spine to spare, please send it to Sweden. I think we’re going to need them over the next while.

sweden, muslims, reinfeldt, freedom of speech

Richard Dawkins has reviewed Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great (hat tip to Pharyngula).

I hadn’t actually planned on reading it, because I doubt it will tell me anything new. And really, I am already sufficiently rallied and standing up for my atheism. However, it does seem like an entertaining read. Perhaps I could do with something to reignite my passion for the secularist cause.

Man, that sounds a bit creepy, doesn’t it?

It ties in with my post about the useless infighting among atheists. I feel I should clarify my own position when it comes to the loud polemics that certain people think are hurting “the cause”. I think these “New Atheists” are doing one hell of a job helping fellow non-believers come out of the closet and stand up for themselves. While I certainly understand that a lot of religious people will find the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens off-putting and that what they write and say may in some twisted way support the views some religious factions have of atheists as angry and disrespectful, I still think that is very much a minor problem. After all, deconverting people from religion is not the point here. Jason Rosenhouse at EvolutionBlog wrote a good post about all this recently.

I could use myself as anecdotal evidence: Had it not been for Richard Dawkins, I would probably never have gotten involved in the secularist movement at all, and I know I’m not alone in this. In the US, it’s even more important with loud-mouthed role models that encourage people to stand up and be counted. “New Atheists” on tour in the states frequently report large audiences of atheists completely baffled that they’re not alone.

There’s a lot more of us than many think, and the “New Atheists” are bringing us out in the open. That’s what they’re for. Not to convince religious people that they’re wrong, not to make atheists look good, but to make people understand that we do exist in the first place.

dawkins, hitchens, god is not great, atheism, new atheists

Because it’s … umm … true, I guess.

The truth.

(Annoyingly, the more I stare at the word, the more meaningless it becomes. In fact, it’s beginning to sound downright ridiculous. “Truth.” Ehehehe. Hehe.)

truth

Since I started getting involved in various non-religious movements I’ve become more and more aware of the tremendous amounts of completely useless infighting going on. It comes in several flavours, but today I’m going to write about the war between vocal atheists such as Dawkins/Dennett/Harris/Hitchens and their supporters, and quieter, more subdued atheists who think being anti-religious is counter productive.

Case in point, have a look at this post at Pharyngula, and the thread that ensues: Sometimes, conflict is the only answer.

Now, I’m a fan of the metaphor of “being in the same boat”. We as atheists are presumably all in the same boat, and most of us want to go in the same direction. Some people will claim that the two groups mentioned above are trying to go in different directions. I don’t think so. I think instead of rowing in different directions, they have picked up their oars and are beating each other over the head with them. (I also happen to think that one camp is more guilty of this than the other, but that’s my personal opinion and rather beside the point.)

Or, to make the metaphor a little bigger, let’s say we’re on a ship, a big one. A big ship has many tasks that needs to be done for it to sail properly in one direction and not stand still, go in circles or run aground. Some hands will be climbing around the rigging, some will be splicing lines, others will be at the bilge pump, yet others manning the oars. There are plenty of tasks to go around and all of them need to be done.

Instead, some people are sitting around complaining about what others are doing. For instance, they might spend hours finding every fault they can possibly spot in Richard Dawkins’ documentaries. What the hell is the point of that? If you have an idea on, for instance, how to collaborate with a religious organisation to increase civic equality for atheists, go ahead and work on it. Just do it. Forget what you think about Dawkins or Harris or PZ Myers, just do what you think is best.

If everyone stopped complaining about what others are doing, stopped telling others what they think they ought to be doing, and instead focussed on doing what they themselves do best, our ship would sail so much faster.

Oh and for the record, I’m fully aware of the hypocrisy of complaining about complainers, but someone has to call attention to the situation. And I swear I’ll only do it this once. (Well. I’ll try.)

ETA: For my personal views on “New Atheism”, see this later post.

atheism, whining, dawkins, pz myers

So I found this great page that can tell you how you’re feeling at the moment. Based on your date of birth.

Just like I find it fun to occasionally read my horoscope to see what sort of generalised crap they can come up with, I dutifully filled in my date of birth. I mean, who knows, there’s biology involved, perhaps they’re on to something! Ahaha. Hahaha.

So: My eyebrows ever so slightly raised, I read a perfect description of how I’m feeling at the moment. This happens sometimes; astrologers get lucky, Biorhythms will be right sometimes too. But seriously, it was truly spot-on!

Which made it all the more hilarious when I realised I put my birthdate in wrong.

astrology, biorhythm, pseudoscience, superstition

Most people who have found this blog through search engines recently have been looking for various variations of Mohammad caricatures and Nerikes Allehanda. However, today I had a visitor who searched for, and I quote, “DEATH AND BEES”. Since I don’t want to disappoint anyone, here’s some information about death and bees.

Normal people have nothing to fear from bee-stings. They hurt like hell for a while, you swell a bit and then there’s the goddamned itchiness to deal with for days. Bee venom is a carefully composed cocktail of peptide snippets designed to annoy the hell out of anyone who gets stung, teaching you to stay the frack away from bee colonies. Of course, these days, most beekeepers (at least in Sweden) keep bees who really could care less about humans. The only times you get stung is when you yourself make a mistake, such as squashing a bee or kicking over a hive. Even then, you have the satisfaction of knowing that most of the bees that sting you die a horrible death of having their insides torn apart as their stinger sticks in your skin.

Now, if you are truly allergic, instead of a mildly (or incredibly, in some cases, such as mine) annoying local reaction, you will suffer anaphylaxis. If you’re not prepared, this leads to death, which can happen within half an hour. Anaphylactic shocks are so dangerous they always go first in emergency wards - wait a few minutes too long and you’re dead. Essentially, what happens is that your body reacts way more than it ought to to the venom, and ends up shutting itself down. If you don’t choke to death as your throat swells, eventually you die anyway as your heart simply stops beating. Taking a cortisone pill may help give you a little extra time, but what you really need is a shot of adrenaline.

Now that you’re sufficiently freaked out I guess I ought to tell you that this only happens to a few people and most of those are beekeepers. Most other people never get any bee-stings at all. But if you get a sting and you start feeling lightheaded and nauseous, your armpits, groin, palms and the soles of your feet start itching, then the whole torso, and if your throat starts to feel swollen - that’s when you find someone to drive you to the hospital, pronto.

Of course, non-allergic people can also die of bee-stings if they have the misfortune of blundering into a lot of really angry bees (such as the africanised variety). If you get ten stings inside your throat, it really doesn’t matter how desensitised you are to bee-stings because you’re going to swell and choke anyway…

All in all, death by bee-sting is very rare. A quick google only gave me one statistic: In Australia during the years 1960-1981, only 27 people died from bee-stings. That’s hardly anything.

bees, bee-stings, allergy