Selfishness requires an individual´s sense of a self and an aversion to live through other people, that is, not seeking other people´s opinions of how his or her life is supposed to be lived. “Selfishness” is therefore not necessarily a bad thing for an individal that has no (or actually has an) other concept of existence.

Proceeding to killing, (if I have to state the obvious) it´s all about gaining power. The power to rule, subjugate, enforce, control whether the goal is political, financial or sexual in nature. All these manifestation of “selfishness” are powerful motivators for individuals who seize them when they consider the time to be right. Through selfishness you might gain your own ego, through killing you can enforce it upon others - making yourself the writer of history and ruler of the present and future as many of our historic “heroes” have done.

There might be a few “logical” reasons to why man is not supposed to kill one-another, but logic unfortunatley runs short. Speaking in the context of man as a collective, a collective social soul, there are a few advantages in as you put it “increasing our quality of living by working together”, however, man is no way a strict logical creature but a fallen one that will take any chance to seize power, be it through her own selfishness or brute force. For it is only through conflict, through competition that man have progressed through the ages, not through the brittle and poor decisions of the common but through the few individuals who, aware of their own egos and not willing to compromise, have brought change, enlightment and hopes for the future. The logical standpoint from which you argue is flawed in many ways, and by the fact that you consider “Z”´s questons so ridiculous you don´t see any logically positive effect from doing them at all is a crude testament of your own incompetence to criticize your views you have been told to hold. It just goes to show that the conception of “logics” is more complicated than presented. There are so many logical reasons for not killing and acting selfishly you don´t know where to start, you say? Then why do you take the absolute worst and contemptable example? It says NOTHING about the logics of the individual man, more clearly it denies the individual any existence at all. It says nothing about anything logic or even logics. Through your answer you´ve just confirmed what “Z” suspected.

Isn’t your question to Sandlund reversible? Isn’t it just as reasonable to ask a dedicated, utterly and completely convinced atheist (as yourself) the same question? How do you know that you really happen to believe in the right version of description of reality, when there are so many of them? Isn’t it problematic that you – and others who share your rigid opinions about the god-question – beyond any doubt whatsoever believe that your version of the construction and description of reality is by “empirical” definition the only corrrect one?

Isn’t it also a bit arrogant to claim – or actually demand – the falsification of someone else’s conviction about the constitution of reality and at the same time deny any posibility that your own specific conviction is in any way near even the possibility of falsification – as is usually the case when the topic God is touched upon by Dawkins/Hitchens/Sturmark disciples? (Is a mind that excludes any possibilty of the falsification of its own presuppositions even close to the ideal of a humans being’s open mind being the main and most important tool for reasons’s search of a deeper and more truthful understanding of reality?)

Can one really claim intellectual consistency and honesty when one subject others’ understandings of the construction and understanding of reality to scrutinizing questioning (mainly directed at a christian perspective that there is a God who relates to people and humanity) and at the same time rebuke that the same questions can and should be asked about one’s own understandings, convictions and presuppositions? This usually seems to be the case when Dawkins/Hitchens/Sturmark disciples argue that their “empirically” defined reality is untouchably correct and all other by the same definition is false.

It is a problem for the discussion that on the atheist’s side of the Swedish debate-arena today there seems to be a limited interest for important questions that connect to the way humans write, speak and relate to their inviroment and to reality. (Besides the physiological/neurological functions that cause or are caused by the human’s interaction with the enviroment that is.)

Usually there is little, if any, attention payed to for instance the understanding of human language and its functions in speech and writing, or to philosophical definitions of the realms of thinking, or to the fact that a theological question like that of theodicy cannot even be discussed outside of a theologically defined realm of thought, or to the fact that theological claims rarely claim what the regular secular Swedish atheist claim them to claim, or to the fact that there are massive amounts of thoughts by people like Kant, Kierkegaard, Sjestov, Dostojevski, Nietzsche and others that actually go into the depths of the questions concerning the constitution of human thinking about the human existential situation.

These are only a few of the questions that the average Swedish atheist of today usually don’t want to relate to, which causes a mindset about the world’s constitution that is constituated by the delusion that it isn’t a mindset but truth itself and that the own mindset is in no need of distinction or correction. The consequence usually being a complete lack on humbleness in relationship to other human beings’ understandings of reality, if their understandings are other than the atheists’ own. This in turn causes the less constructive patronizing attitude. The patronizing school of thought is quite apparent in the writings and speeches of Dawkins, Hitchens, Sturmark and their followers. It is not constructive, sad and at the same time baffling since the apparent lack of understanding of differing descriptions of reality usually comes from the ones that claim to understand the most.

I would like to suggest a reading of for instance Nietzsche, that deconstructed not only religion’s claims on absolute truth but also science’s absurd claims to constituate absolute truth (a short synopsis of one of his texts that relates to this topic is available in Swedish here: http://teologiforum.blogspot.com/2008/03/nietzsches-vad-betyder-asketiska-ideal.html).

A more humble and less patronizing attitude toward eachother would help us all to make the world both better and more intelligble.

(An attempt to critically relate to the Sturmark way of thinking is available in Swedish here: http://abobabopolitik.blogspot.com/2007/10/humanistbrister.html)

Kindly