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

Tonight, the president of the Swedish Humanist Association, Christer Sturmark, will meet Ulf Ekman, the founder of a prominent evangelical, charismatic christian cult in a debate. The cult in question is called Livets Ord, lit. Word of Life. It was invented by Ulf Ekman in 1983 (the year of my birth, incidentally). Some would probably object to my calling it a cult, especially since they’ve toned down the more controversial stuff in order to be more accepted in mainstream society. But a lot of to me very scary beliefs remain; the guilt and shame complex, the idea that homosexuality is a sin, and that women should submit to their husbands (even though men and women are supposedly equal under god - how they reconcile the two is an interesting exercise in twisted “equal but different” logic).

The debate takes place in Livets Ord’s home town, Uppsala, in fact in their own buildings, and there’s likely to be a lot of cult members there. Me and a few other Humanists will attend but we’re probably most definitely going to be a minority. Those of you who know Swedish can follow the debate live from Livets Ord’s webpage. It will also be aired on SVT2 on friday at 9:30 in the morning.

livets ord, ulf ekman, christer sturmark, humanism, christianity

Welcome to Life Before Death and the latest edition of Carnival of the Godless! I’m your hostess, Felicia, and originally I had big plans on making this carnival something … speshul. Then I realised that nothing I could possibly come up with would in any way add to the quality of the many, many posts submitted, which is why I’ve simply elected to let them present themselves with representative (or sometimes not so representative) quotes. So, without further ado:

HankFox.com: The Good Stuff - “I don’t know a single atheist, I’m not sure I’ve even MET one, who hated humanity, or wanted anything bad to happen to anybody.”
Also at HankFox.com: The Brassican Heresy and Atheist Questions.

The View from Here: Benny Hinn - What a Friend He Has in Jesus - “Despite the overwhelming evidence that Hinn is the lowest form of con man, exploiting the emotional and spiritual needs of the desperate, viewers, many of whom can ill afford it, will no doubt continue to donate millions of dollars annually in the hope of realizing some small improvement in their lives.”

The Barefoot Bum: Fine Tuning - “In short, the Fine Tuning argument is speculative, probabilistically meaningless, and, even if true, doesn’t establish anything interesting. I think it’s safe to say that, after Pascal’s Wager, it’s the second worst apologetic ever.”

Epsilon Clue: Where Are all the Reflective Christians? - “These people do believe in a magic man in the sky who helps them find their car keys /…/ So why aren’t the intelligent, reflective Christians telling them they’re full of shit?”

defryer.com: The Multiple Stages of Faith - “‘Faithlessness’ as a definition of the absence faith is really only used in a religious context since no one really knows or cares about our extent of faith in any other context. No one is ostracized (except possibly on a local level) for their lack of faith in government or purity of food or future direction of the stock market.”

Greta Christina: On Illness, Bodies, and This Weird Free Will Thing - “If there is no God and no soul, and everything we are is comprised of physical things and the relationships between physical things… then when you change those physical things, the self changes as well. Our selves are not in our own hands nearly as much as we like to think.”
Also from Greta Christina: The Meaning of Death, Part 3 of Many: Fear, Grief, and Actually Experiencing Your Emotions

A Swedish American in Sweden: Sweden Separates the Church and State - “I don’t buy creationism, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a subject that should be taught in public schools. At the same time though skeptical of the complete banning of a subject or idea.”

Rational Apologetics: God is Evil - “God doesn’t care if we’re good or not — he only cares if we stroke his ego.”
Also at Rational Apologetics: The Elijah Challenge

The Skwib: The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Wacky Ancient Greek Atheist Edition) - “soul is just an exceedingly fine and spherical kind of atom - or perhaps superstition - in any case, it’s not that different from a goat.”

Surgeonsblog: Funnyman - “The mind reels. It’s like walking into a crime scene, wading through body parts, and, because the perpetrator wrote “Hah hah” in blood on the wall, saying he must have a humorous streak.”

Wild Philosophy: My Favorite Moral Bible Passages - “To summarize, morality requires that we beat our children, control our women, or burn, stone, or sell them, execute homosexuals, cast the sick out of our society to fend for themselves, and completely and utterly destroy any society with which we are at war (except for their virgin girl children, whom we are free to rape). Truly, God is great, and will reward us with many slaves if we keep His ways!”

Free Thinking Joy: Religion is mental horror vacui - “Whereas religions must fill the mental vacuum at any price, using gods and other stuffing material, science just tries to construct useful theories that grow into the empty space, but never filling it completely.”

Alexander the Atheist: Zeus Endorsement - “Rather than engage in voter fraud to ensure a win for Zeus I have decided, instead, to officially endorse him as my candidate of choice for the Coolest Fabricated Deity in an attempt to stem the tide of this Odin fanaticism.”
Also from Alexander: End Times: 2,000 Years and Counting

Skeptic’s Play: The moutnain theologians - “Soon he realizes that the mountain goes much higher, but the path is poorly marked and obscured in fog. He points it out to the theologians, but they cannot see the markings.”

Fannie’s Room: Blasphemy! (Part I) - “I think the idea that God is some sort of male being is a quaint man-made idea.”

ShakaOfEarth: ‘Earth Worship’ on the rise among evangelical youth - “Wouldn’t a smart parent allow their child to explore all the different faiths? Oh wait, Evangelical like to brainwash their kids and hate anything that even looks like it might allow their offspring to learn about reality.”

Bay of Fundie: Fundie Atheists - “For all practical purposes, God does not exist. If there is not now nor has there ever been any evidence for a god, then in practical, real-world terms, it is identical to making the statement that a god does not exist.”

Atheist Revolution: “In God We Trust” Must Go - “How do you suppose American Christians would feel about using currency on which “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is the greatest) was printed? How about “We Believe in Evolution,” “Secular Democracy,” or a similar slogan?”

Rational Responders: How to Respond to a Superlicious Christian - “As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, if you believe something without sufficient evidence, you are irrational.”

Atheist Ethicist: Hope - “Actually, I do grow warm and fuzzy in a blanket of science. Well, warm, at least.”

Homo Academicus: This Atheist - “…she is always asking me about my opinions or beliefs on all sorts of things, trying to see how far my atheism goes. I thought I’d save some time and just compile it all here.”

Long Live the Village Green: Upon the rack of this tough world… - “Before he died, I thanked my dad for being the best dad I could ever hope for. I told him how much I appreciated all the gifts he gave me: love for theatre and all the arts, for science and philosophy, for literature and history, for books and book collecting, and for Shakespeare!”

The Gaytheist Agenda: “Why do Atheists Hate America” - “…without faith and Christianity “America as we know it” would cease to exist. Of course to an extent that second part is true. Just imagine how much bigotry and oppression we could dispense with by eradicating Christianity alone.”

And finally, my own entry here at LBD: On Happiness: “The difference between atheists and religious people is that atheists are aware that our personal happiness is entirely up to ourselves and not some imaginary friend.”

carnival of the godless, atheism, religion, science

I’m cranky today. The reason is most likely a relapse into SAD, which I tend to suffer bouts of every winter. In light of this, one would assume today isn’t the best of days to write about happiness, but bear with me (and please excuse the somewhat rambling nature of this post).

Often in discussions about the relative virtues of atheism and religion, personal happiness is brought up. We atheists are told we cannot possibly be happy, or at least not as happy as christians/muslims/jews/whatevers. Because we don’t have god in our life. Immediately, atheists snap back that we are indeed happy, in fact we couldn’t be happier. We’re so happy, happy, happy that it’s a wonder we don’t explode. It’s like we forget, in our eagerness to prove to the religious that one can lead a fulfilling existence even lacking god, that happiness isn’t the standard human condition.

Am I basically happy with my life? Oh, yes. I have a lot to be very happy about, like my wonderful family, my amazing boyfriend, and biology. But am I happy all the time? Oh hell no. Are you?

Seriously. If anyone can honestly answer that they’re happy every minute of every day - because they feel god’s love or because they’re looking forward to the UFO coming to take them to Paradise Planet or whatever - I would have to question their sanity. Feelings of happiness and discontent is the mechanism by which our brains reward good behaviour and punish doing things that are bad for us. If we were perpetually happy, we would cease working toward a better life for ourselves and our loved ones. The human mind is a problem-solving tool, and it needs motivation.

That is not to say that depression is a good thing. If you’re always feeling like life is pointless, there is something wrong, and you should seek help. But my point here is that there is nothing wrong with admitting that you’re not always happy. In fact, I think it’s a problem for many that they feel unable to open up and admit to themselves and to others that they are not happy with something, be it their entire lives or just that horrible purple shirt their spouse insists on wearing to a nervous family dinner. And keeping those feelings bottled up, pretending that everything is perfectly fine when it’s not, is just about the worst thing you can do for your long-term happiness.

In the end, I think most people enjoy similar levels of happiness and unhappiness. Regardless of your circumstances your brain will still reward you with happy feelings when something good happens, and punish or motivate you with bad feelings when you need to do something to change your situation. The difference between atheists and religious people is that atheists are aware that our personal happiness is entirely up to ourselves and not some imaginary friend. We know that when bad things happen, it’s due to circumstances, enemies, or bad choices and that we are the only ones who can do something about it. And conversely, we also know that when good things happen, it’s due to circumstance, or our own actions, or the good will of other human beings. We never worry about being punished for faltering in our faith, and we never let some sky-god take credit when we have every right to be proud of ourselves or grateful to those around us.

As for my own current crankiness, I know most of it has got nothing to do with anything outside my own head. It’s an african mammal’s unfortunate reaction to lack of sunlight (and, well, exercise). If my brain were designed, I’d blame the designer, but as it is, all I can do is ride it out, and try to remember to eat properly and not snap at people too much.

atheism, happiness, religion, depression

For those who think that Sweden being one of the most secular countries in the world means that it’s free of religious nutjobs, think again. Daniel Ocampo Daza reports from a lecture at Uppsala University instigated by Credo, an evangelical christian student organisation:

The speaker Anders Gärdeborn brought up little else but the same ridiculous arguments, misconceptions and misinterpretations, exaggerations, faulty logic and outright lies that you’ve heard over and over, just as I suspected knew. Gärdeborn comes from the fundamentalist and literalistic organization Genesis which claims to “work for a christian view of the sciences and for the biblical view to be heard in the schools and society“. The biblical view being that god created earth its creatures and all of the universe in 6 days.

/…/

As my professor pointed out to me as we were talking prior to the presentation: would the university allow for an astrologer or a holocaust-denialist to come and give a lecture at the university’s facilities unquestioned? Most certainly not. But under the banner of not discriminating against the christian students I guess it is entirely possible, which is telling of why we’re still dealing with this particular brand of counterscientific trash at this level.

science, biology, evolution, creationism

I’m sure a lot of you have seen the news earlier this month of female muslim med students in the UK not wanting to have to bare their arms, even though hygiene rules state that doctors have to be bare below the elbow. Now a female muslim was denied a job at McDonald’s in Angered (Sweden) for the same reason, and she’s taking it to the Ombudsman against Ethnic Discrimination.

She says, “Alla ska ha samma möjligheter till ett arbete. Det här är diskriminering och det är inget man ska hålla käft om” - “Everyone should have the same possibilities to get a job. This is discrimination and it’s nothing you should shut up about.”

Frankly, this is ridiculous.

It’s one thing if people don’t want to comply with arbitrary dress codes. They can bring it up with their employer and try to explain why their religious dress is important to them. But this is about hygiene. It is something that affects other people. Freedom of religion is and should be a human right, but only so long as it doesn’t harm other people. Freedom of religion should not be possible to invoke to cut off the foreskins on male babies, or deny your child a life-saving blood transfusion - and the same goes for med students who don’t want to show their arms. Religion simply doesn’t come into it.

Unfortunately there appears to be a previous case where a female muslim dentist was allowed to wear longer sleeves than the dress code prescribes, so this girl might actually win. Ugh.

islam, muslims, hygiene, freedom of religion

This time it’s wikipedia that’s the culprit. And the pictures aren’t even offensive cartoons but medieval depictions, in some of which the dear prophet doesn’t have a face. New Humanist Blog reports here, linking to the NY Times.

Sometimes I really just want to tell every muslim who ever complained about other people’s transgressions of their arbitrary rules that their entire holy book offends me, as a freethinking human being, and that I demand it banned. Yeah, let’s make it an eye for an eye - I promise to stop drawing pics of Muhammad if you just get your religion off this planet. Argh!

Wikipedia to their credit explains on a FAQ page:

Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! And please stand by that decision!

Depressingly it seems wikipedia has more integrity than certain European politicians. Also depressingly, a friend points out that there seems to be more people upset about some Muhammad drawings than about Sayed Pervez Kambaksh being sentenced to death for distributing some material critical of Islam. Quoth my friend Dologan:

Sad that basic, human, secular empathy doesn’t seem to elicit a similar response [as religious fervour]… A 23-year old is going to be KILLED for simply reading the opinion that the Quran maybe doesn’t really tell you to oppress women, and most people simply just don’t fucking care.

So far this day hasn’t really done wonders for my faith in humanity.

islam, muhammad, kambaksh, wikipedia

Pharyngula regulars will already have seen this but it’s too good not to repost:

Put like this, who can argue?

Also, a warning: Posting might be a little sporadic over the next week (as it has been since the weekend) due to me being very busy right now.

science, religion, bible

Nima Daryamadj is a columnist for one of Sweden’s major tabloids and has written a few very good ones on the subject of religion and spirituality. Here is a post from his blog that I have translated and am reposting with his permission. I don’t really think it requires more by way of introduction…

ETA: Apparently I had a brainfart and forgot to translate a word when I first posted this. Apologies.

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Last year in december I got in touch with Pernilla Ouis, ((lektor)) lecturer at Malmö Högskola. I was told that Save the Children had censored her research paper on sexual violence against girls in the Middle East.

Save the Children (SC) have offices in different parts of the world. The office that handles the Middle East and North African region is called SCS-MENA (Save the Children Sweden - Middle East and North Africa). In 2006, Ouis was a consult for SC and was commissioned by SCS-MENA to lead a research project to do a situation analysis in the countries of Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine. The analyses concerned honour violence, early marriage and sexual abuse of girls.

When the report was almost done, SC required certain parts of it to be removed, supposedly because they were not in accordance with SC:s core values.

On May 7, Moa Roshanfar from the regional office in Lebanon wrote the following:

/…/ The problem for us at Save the Children is that the text about violence creates a polarisation between different groups, between west and east, between western and muslim societies. We want to be a radical voice and challenge men’s violence against women and children, but not in a way that separates cultures from each other and may lead to us and them-thinking. Below follows a few concrete examples in the text that either need to be clarified or changed, that can be understood as offending, generalising and may be viewed as polarising. Often in the text the words “culture”, “traditions”, “communities”, “societies” etc. are used, it’s important to be clear on what is meant. /…/

Then she gives examples of polarising paragraphs:

“Since sexual relationships outside wedlock are associated with strong religious taboos in this Muslim setting, sexual abuse in the MENA region is a special problematic topic for children.”

If the research shows that muslim sexual morals makes it difficult for children to tell others about sexual abuse, why are you not allowed to say this?

“It was suggested to have separate FGD with male teenagers as well. The male opinions, perspectives and experiences are important since we are dealing with gender-based violence in patriarchal communities.”

Here it was problematic to say “gender-based violence in patriarchial communities”. As Ouis herself answers: To exclude that the Middle East is generally patriarchal would be a faulty analysis that I as a scientist would feel ashamed of. Of course it’s a patriarchal society!

Let’s take a break: Maybe Pernilla Ouis isn’t a scientist but a “scientist”? Maybe she’s a rabid closet racist who hates people from the Middle East and Islam? Maybe the report is part of a hidden agenda to defame these?

Ouis is an arabic name. Pernilla has been married to an arab, whose name she chose to keep even after the divorce. Additionally, she converted to Islam in 1986 and has been a muslim for over 20 years. Not exactly a description of a hater of Islam and the Middle East.

Those suspicions dealt with, where were we? More polarising sentences:

“Playing games and bicycling for example are not accepted for girls in many honour societies because of…”

Ouis: That girls in many honour cultures are not allowed to play like boys or ride a bike (for fear of losing their virginity/hymen) is an acknowledged fact. It’s an important piece of information. Why should it be left out? Girls have told us about this. Should their evidence be silenced?

The blame of sexual assault and rape is on the victim, not the offender; in honour cultures…”

Ouis: The guilt is on the victim in honour cultures (in our western society too, if a comparison has to be made!). All the people we’ve interviewed say this and their answers also show how they’ve internalised this thinking. Should I lie about this and keep it in the dark? Motivate this, please. Is lying in accordance with SC:s core values?

After this, it becomes even more absurd:

“The acts that can do so are various, but it seems that in Yemen only wearing a decorated, but still Islamic, dress or laugh in the street is…”

“…children suggested that the Islamic dress…”

Apparently it is problematic to call the clothes of yemenitic girls “islamic”, despite the fact that 1) it IS islamic clothing and 2) the girls themselves used that term!

The children in Yemen called their clothes “Islamic dress” and said that if it had even the smallest decoration it could be viewed as immoral. They were only allowed to wear black, from head to toe. Islamic clothing has different names in different cultures; sometimes it’s called abaya, jilbab or hijab (which means different things, but still), but the term “Islamic dress” is to me a neutral term. How could it be offending? It’s what the children said!

“…and not to be debated openly in public, since it damages the self-image of many Muslims…”

Ouis: Of course the self-image of Muslims is damaged by discussing sexual violence against children. Sexuality is important for the self-image of a society and it’s problematic to discuss openly. This is the case in the west as well. Why do you think certain countries in the Muslim world don’t report any cases of HIV? Well, because it damages their self-image, as the disease is viewed as shameful and connected to sexual immorality.

In her letter Ouis points out that she’s been a Muslim for more than half her life, that she has a unique inside and outside perspective, has travelled a lot, written and read a lot about Islam, is an active participant in the debate about Islam in Sweden and often gets invited to tv, radio and government institutions.

---

The news were published yesterday in the newspaper Nima writes for. Today, Sanna Johnson from Save the Children responds in a different newspaper, claiming that Ouis’ report states that patriarchism and honour thinking is a problem exclusively in muslim societies.

Nima, who has read the report, states that this is not the case, which means that Johnson is either lying or incompetent. Given that Save the Children has expressly asked Ouis to lie by omission in her report, it seems the former isn’t so improbable.

Save the Children wants to find a way to criticise the individual instances of sexual abuse and honour violence without judging a whole culture. Essentially, they put political correctness and rampant “tolerance” before the advance of modern, secular thinking - equality. Given that their mission is to “creating real and lasting change for children in need”, it seems they’re really shooting themselves in the foot.

islam, save the children, sexual abuse, pernilla ouis, middle east

I’ve been interested in anthroposophy since I was a kid, probably because my parents took me along to the Rudolf Steiner Seminar in Järna quite a few times. Not that they were anthroposophists - we went to look at the gardens and browse their shop of various curious paraphernalia. While anthroposophy as a religion is, to be frank, batshit crazy, there is something to be said for the aesthetics. At one point in elementary school I wrote an essay on anthroposophy, for which I interviewed a woman working in one of their shops. I remember frantically taking notes, all the while thinking, “Oh my god. This woman actually BELIEVES what she’s saying?”

If you don’t understand why a 13-year-old would feel that way, you need to read up on anthroposophy.

Anyway, like most other people I have grown up thinking of anthroposophy as a sort of harmless hippie religion. More specifically, I never particularly minded waldorf schools, imagining that kids probably didn’t learn much but at least had a good time. It wasn’t that I took part of much waldorf propaganda, I simply never considered anthroposophy very threatening. However, lately I have begun reading a few blogs that tell a completely different story. One of them is zooey, who went to waldorf kindergarten and elementary school, and whose very personal account of these years I am reposting here. Photos by the author, edited by me.

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