Last night I attended a release party celebrating Hitchens’ “God is not great” being released in Swedish, with the title “Du store Gud?”, by Fri Tanke Förlag (Freethought Publishing). There was a discussion between Elisabeth Sandlund, the editor of a christian newspaper and Åke Ortmark, a prominent journalist who was recently elected onto the board of the Swedish Humanist Association (which I guess makes us colleagues). The editor, an obviously intelligent lady with a lot of what I’d have to call spunk, had been atheist for a long time but met god at the confirmation of her handicapped daughter.

All in all it was a fun, friendly discussion. She wasn’t a creationist and I think ethically she and I would agree on most things - although she’s against euthanasia and thinks that diagnosing handicaps in the womb and preventing these fetuses from growing is a slippery slope. We shouldn’t give the scientists free reins, she opined, forgetting that it’s not the knowledge that’s dangerous, but the application. She also made a few other slightly baffling comments; for instance she was under the impression that scientists are pursuing a final answer and would be happy the day we know everything there is to know. During my turn to speak in the discussion afterwards I pointed out that the very jobs of scientists depend on there being more questions to ask.

I also asked her a question that seemed to piss her off, as she didn’t answer and instead made herself seem like an idiot. She had been lamenting the misuse of christianity during the crusades and in catholic countries outlawing homosexuality and the like. I asked her if it isn’t a little problematic to believe that her version of christianity is the right one, when these other christians believe just as fervently as she does that they’re doing the right thing. Huffily, she said that by that logic, all atheists like Stalin.

Yeah, I have no idea how she made that connection. The old “atheism led to the Holocaust/gulags/whatever” fallacy has been debunked ad nauseam, but in this case it’s not even applicable. I wasn’t saying that her personal faith was responsible for crimes against humanity, or that she’s in any way connected to these, I was asking how she knows that she really happens to believe in the right version of christianity, when there’s so many of them. Perhaps I phrased the question poorly, though. I am, after all, only human. Unfortunately she rushed off afterwards, panting “I have to get home to my handicapped child!” (she referred to her daughter often, and it irked me. Clearly she thinks she’s special because her daughter has a mental handicap. I have nothing but contempt for people who use their handicapped children as arguments in a debate, it’s so obviously fishing for sympathy), so there wasn’t time to resolve the matter.

Other than this, nothing out of the ordinary was said. Ortmark failed to answer a question from a christian about objective morality, probably because he as a Humanist doesn’t believe in any such thing and hence didn’t even understand the question. Sandlund repeated the old fallacy that Swedish ethics = Christian ethics, and failed to answer all the questions that normally lead people to reject god, such as the problem of theodicy, and complacently stated that she’s happy to hand over those problems to God, and that in fact, she feels it strengthens her faith that she doesn’t know everything. A lovely bit of rationalising - “This is a problem that might dent my faith. Therefore, I must believe it strengthens my faith.”

In short, the message to take home was that even nice, intelligent christians are still, well, christians. They still have an imaginary friend and they still believe in miracles, contrary to all evidence.

christianity, humanism, åke ortmark

Reader kai shared this interesting story: Why Flowers have Lost their Scent (making it more difficult for bees to find them), and points out that perhaps the most interesting bit of the story is the deluge of irate comments denying global warming. Global warming denialism is of course nothing new, but it’s interesting that the denialists feel compelled to attack even a story that doesn’t even mention climate change.

People are accusing the story of being a sloppy bit of - well, either science, or science journalism, or both. They seem entirely incapable of separating the original study from the dumbed-down media version. Someone said that the stupid scientists should’ve moved away from their ivory towers universities and instead gone to the countryside to do the study, as apparently in the countryside there’s no pollution at all. Someone else snorted derisively about the scientists magical ability to sort out pollution from car exhausts from all the other kinds of pollution (planes, factories, what have you) - as if it cannot possibly have crossed the minds of the scientists to find out exactly what these different pollutants actually are and how much they contribute to average pollution.

In short, many commenters display an absolutely baffling lack of respect for these working scientists, seemingly assuming they’re paid off by liberal politicians who want to make people feel guilty about driving cars. When all the scientists have really done, as far as I can tell, is figure out that scent molecules from flowers are easily degraded by pollution. They claim there is “no separation between science and politics”, which is clearly a case of projection, as they themselves are unable to look past their denialist agenda to consider the actual science behind the story.

Pollution in various forms is affecting the world around us. One study isn’t going to tell us exactly to what extent. But to discount the effect of pollutants on flower scents entirely just because you can smell the roses (the people who said this must have missed that the flowers haven’t stopped producing scents, the scent just doesn’t reach as far as it used to - you’ll still be able to feel it if you’re standing in the damn rose garden!) … I don’t know whether to blame this on scientific illiteracy or just plain stupidity.

flowers, bees, science journalism, pollution, global warming

On reading Life - The Science of Biology I ran across the following statement:

Of course, humans are obviously much more complex than fish

We are? Which part of us, apart from the brain? I’m honestly confused. There’s no qualifying statement, no explanation as to how they measure complexity. Not only is “humans are more complex than fish” a rather drastic statement to make, but the way they do it - as if it’s a widely known and accepted fact - takes me aback.

But perhaps I’m just a dullard who missed some essential point during my education. If some enlightened reader would like to explain to me how we’re more complex than fish and how this is obvious, I would be much obliged.

biology, fish, humans, complexity

Apologies about the unannounced hiatus. Blogging will resume shortly.