Life Before Death

The university college previously in charge of the education of most (?) of Sweden’s elementary and high school teachers was merged into Stockholm University a while ago. I think the change was welcomed by most people, since the aforementioned university college was notoriously bad at its task. Now, however, anthroposophers and waldorf-cultists have been given reason to whine a bit. Which is obviously a reason to celebrate, if you prefer scientific truth to superstition.

Stockholm University has decided to cancel the four-year programme for waldorf teachers, which has been conducted in affiliation with the Rudolf Steiner school. The natural science faculty has expressed itself in no uncertain terms through deacon Stefan Nordlund, who according to Dagens Nyheter said this (my translation):

Some of the course literature isn’t just unscientific. It’s also dangerous and teaches faults that are worse than gibberish. We’re supported in our opinion by the humanities/social science faculty.

It’s always refreshing when sane people tell it like it is. In Sweden, the prevailing opinion of waldorf schools is that they’re nice cute places where kids get to paint, dance and play flute a lot instead of being forced to learn multiplication by rote. Not even the minister of education seems entirely aware of the crazy religious ideology running those schools - in a discussion with Christer Sturmark (president of the Swedish Humanist Association) on television he said that he wouldn’t like to entirely forbid religious independent schools as that might affect waldorf schools. As if that’s a bad thing. He, like most of everyone else, seems to think that waldorf is entirely benign.

Wet-on-wet painting cannot possibly harm our children!

anthroposophy, waldorf

The Astrological Magazine sez:

We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the publication of The Astrological Magazine will cease with the December 2007 issue.

Any commentary is really superfluous.

(hat tip to Jesper Jerkert at the Swedish Skeptic Society)

astrology

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?”

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.

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

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

As a testament to how lightly Swedish media take religious expressions, Dagens Nyheter (the #1 Swedish newspaper) contained a small and gently derisive notice today about the Norwegian princess Märtha Louise, who recently started a school where primarily women are taught how to listen to angels. Their homepage tells us their courses give you “tools to communicate with your angels and utilise them in your daily life”, for the modest fee of 1,500 euros per half-year.

From a certain point of view the whole concept is obviously made to be ridiculed. And refreshingly, Swedish media seem to treat the whole thing as a bit crazy. Cute, but crazy. Obviously this is because monarchy is involved - otherwise no one would have as much as arched an eyebrow.

superstition, angels, monarchy