Waiting for the world to end.

Like so many other people, I am looking forward to tomorrow. Most people do so because it is Saturday, and thus a day off from work. For some religious people however tomorrow is a very special Saturday. One may even go so far as to call it the most special Saturday of all time. Why so? According to Harold Camping, an American self-taught biblical scholar, May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. That’s right, the end of the world is very, very nigh. Apparently he reached this conclusion after calculating that tomorrow marks the 7000 year anniversary of Noah’s flood. At first he calculated the rapture to take place in 1994 but, as we all know, he was wrong. So why am I looking forward to tomorrow? As it turns out I will spend my Saturday at work, but as I am slaving away in front of my computer I will be warmed by the knowledge that I will soon get to feast upon the fantastic fiction that is doomsday backpedaling. I love doomsday prophesies for just that very reason: Religion takes a bold step and makes overt predictions about the real world. The end of the world isn’t some kind of unknowable, immeasurable magic thing that requires blind faith. Nope! We’re talking real life “2012” Hollywood mayhem for six months before the total destruction of the world, Ragnarok, Armageddon, the freakin’ end of times. Moreover, we will be able to instantly witness the faithful being sucked up into heaven! It will be a sight to remember.

Of course, that will leave the rest of us here on earth realizing all too late that we have been wrong all along. We’ll be stuck with the biggest “I told you so!” of all times, and boy will we be sorry!

Only, that’s not going to happen.

As you may realize upon reading this, no prediction about the end of the world has been right yet, and they haven’t been lacking in number. Here is one wonderful example of previous rapture predictions:

It is easy to dismiss this phenomenon as just another crackpot Christian making a fool of himself, and to some degree it is just that. There are groups on Facebook organizing pre-Armageddon parties and post-Rapture looting, and a number of Youtube clips poking fun at what you should think about before you are sucked into the sky. I even read about some atheists in the U.S. that are taking this opportunity to offer to take care of people’s pets after the rapture, and who are actually succeeding in getting people to pay them for this. While this feels like an asinine thing to do, you can’t help it but to laugh a bit on the inside at the stupidity of the whole thing. However, there is something serious to be drawn from this too. Firstly it proves yet again how whenever religion tries to make real claims about the physical world, claims that we can observe and disprove, it ends up making an ass of itself. Secondly, it exposes one of the main problems of blind faith (and to some degree, religious faith in general): the gullibility of its followers. The people who believe that the world is ending tomorrow are doing nothing logically wrong by doing so, because their framework used to interpret the world is not one built up around critical thinking and scientific reasoning. If something can be believed in the face of contradicting evidence then there is no reason to reject any idea as false – especially if this idea comes from a spiritual authority that you trust. Blind faith gives you a set of broken tools with which to make sense of the world and opens you to draw stupendously naïve conclusions based on nothing but empty words.

One way in which we can be sure that the world is not ending tomorrow is for example to look at the evidence for there even being a Noah’s flood in the first place. Since the story of a giant flood appears in many myths predating the bible it makes sense to draw the conclusion that there may at some point have been a huge flood in that region. There is however not a shred of evidence to suggest that the world was drowned 7000 years ago. To believe that the world is ending tomorrow requires you to be so ignorant of facts and logical reasoning that this idea deserves to be met with ridicule. I myself am looking forward to hearing the explanations that people will have for the world not ending. Don’t get me wrong; I do not relish in people’s suffering, and I do not doubt that some people are heading for a rude awakening. What I look forward to seeing is how, amazingly, though the prediction will turn out to be completely wrong, the people who believe it will come up with reasons why that won’t matter.

To make my point clear: anyone can make a prediction and be wrong. Scientists do it all the time. The difference is that people don’t quit their jobs and sell their houses over these predictions. Instead they say: prove it. Once proven, then you sell your house. If the Christian god popped down today and said “Hey, guess what? The world is ending tomorrow!” that would be all the evidence I need. In fact, if the whole world would be hit by a worldwide earthquake tomorrow and there were videos on every news outlet of people floating off the ground – guess what? My atheism is gone. Granted it wouldn’t be conclusive to say god did it but I would feel comfortable to call it a qualified guess.

Here is my prediction for tomorrow: It will be a Saturday like any other, only a lot of people will come up with illogical reasons why the world didn’t end and why this miscalculation shouldn’t affect their beliefs or their critical thinking.

Oh, and don’t sell your house just yet.

Putting faith in it's place.

The awesome first posts of my fellow writers leave me with a pinch of performance anxiety. And since I'm stuck writing an abstract for a dissertation at the moment, I'm not free to share any longwinded pieces of writing yet. My impatience is getting the best of me though, so I think I'll share something I put a little less effort into acquiring.

I saw this at a friend's house a few years ago and I hadn't been able to find it again up until tonight. It's an extremely low-key, didactic argument, directed toward people of faith, on why theistic reasoning  doesn't fit into a logical, human context. It isn't preaching to the choir so it has a special aspect to it that most atheism-promoting clips on youtube lack.

It was also upon viewing this that I finally let go of any remnants of my post-mormon, agnostic mindset. But that's an anecdote for another time.

Atheist countries and religious countries.

The Atheist Experience is a weekly cable access television show in Austin, Texas geared at a non-atheist audience. I found this clip about a comparison between religious and not-so-religious countries very interesting. If you have the time be sure to check it out!

Why Sweden Doesn't Have Any Faith In Itself

by Daniel Nord


Sweden wasn't always so secular. Go back less than 400 years to the early seventeenth century and this was a place where you ran the risk of being persecuted unless you were a Lutheran. That is, you could have proclaimed yourself a Protestant, but still be unwelcome to make your living on the King's soil if you belonged to another sub-branch of Protestantism. Not to mention if you were Jewish or Catholic. There was no need to try to come up with things to do on Sunday mornings as they were decided for you; churchgoing was obligatory. If you were one of the many tens of thousands who went away to fight holy wars in Poland and Germany (ironically on Calvinist-built warships), you better believe there would be a priest somewhere down on the lower decks to make sure you were paying tribute to the Almighty morning and evening.

In 2011, several polls point into the direction of a Swedish population that has declared itself 80% non-believing. This puts Sweden in the top spot as the world's currently most secularized country (just ahead of Vietnam).

What happened? It's not as if the early decades of the 1600's where the peak of any religious extremism in Sweden. Picture going back to the 60's and 70's of the same century and see innocent peoples' bodies being burned on the stakes during the witch-hunts (in Sweden, somewhat more mercifully compared to a number of its neighbors, these claimed-to-be followers of Satan were first decapitated). Think of watching this madness taking place in front of your eyes, and imagine if it was up to you to turn the country around to what it is today. Even if you could go to work straight after the last fire had been put out, wouldn't you feel a bit stressed?
What makes it even more profound is that any proper first steps towards secularism seem to have come much, much later. For example, as late as at the end of the 19th century, the Swedish Church would still apply the practice of husförhör (literally "house interrogation"), where the local priest would visit every household to make sure its members were sufficiently educated in the Christian teachings. Commonly explained away as a means of keeping track of how literate and able to write citizens were, it has been made clear through research that this was very much of secondary importance (priests did not even bother putting down notes regarding the writing abilities). Instead it really isn't until as late as at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century that there appears to be a wave of serious change materializing. The rise of social democracy in the 1950's and the strongly individualized and modernized society that followed with it is generally considered to have had a massive impact on what Sweden is today. A post-war phenomenon, it turns out, that did not leave any room for collective superstition.


One could think that a country like Sweden, precisely because of its history and current relation to religion, should be on the forefront of a healthy discussion on the implications of it. Such is not the state of things. Whereas it is admittedly true that in Sweden you might have more to explain if you are a believer rather than if you are a non-believer, this is something likely to be restricted to a half-drunk conversation in the kitchen during a dinner party. In public discourse, the tone is cautious at best.

There are several reasons why, and some of them are not unique to Sweden. Even if the small number of believers means you typically won't find yourself in a situation where you are being reminded about it, the basic argument that religion, because of its private character, should deserve a "free pass" in public discourse remains as relevant in Sweden as everywhere else. As has been pointed out before by people like Richard Dawkins and many others, one is allowed to be almost as brutal as one wishes when it comes to telling people they have the wrong ideas about music, art, or politics. But, apparently, when it is down to faith, even raising the topic is considered off-limit.
Also just as present is a widespread idea that religion is inherently something noble. You won't have to go out of your way to find people who will state things like "I can't bring myself to believe in this, but I admire people who do". This is a very revealing statement. As religion has largely come to play out its role in the society, it is a notion that implies that the few who hold on to it are in possession of some sort of admirable persistence (in something that presumably must be a genuine force of good). This only goes on to show that there is a thorough ignorance underlying peoples' idea of the actual content of religion. Good actions done by believers are usually credit to their faith; bad actions for which they are responsible and for which they many times have support in their holy books are instead carried out "in the name of" religion (in itself a patronizing position, where one declares to understand the believer's faith better than he or she does).

But then there is also the Sweden factor.
What you have to know about this little Scandinavian democracy, is that it doesn't pride itself on a whole lot. There is however this one thing Sweden can account for, and that is being at the forefront of social development. Topics like gender equality, education and tolerance are to Swedes not only important matters, but the type of ones that almost seem to substitute a national identity. Certainly nothing Swedes would want to find themselves being backward at should it be only to one other nation on the planet. The idea alone is as unplausible to Swedish people as it would be to Americans to know that there was another country that had a more pure version of the American Dream. Now, since monotheistic religions are largely made up of values that are diametrically opposed to the above mentioned, it ought to be fantastically easy to a modern, liberal human being to make up the mind about them. And still, and pathetically, it is not.
In a combination of ignorance and a mad idea that tolerance means tolerating everything - including intolerance - Sweden has become a country where critique of anything means the breaking of the illogical rule system set up in silent agreement. Sure, slavery is disgusting. Murder is wrong. And genocide is absolutely terrible. But Christianity, to some extent promoting all of these? Let's not go there, someone could be offended. And should someone blow himself up in the streets in an attempt to get to paradise and get 72 virgins (a view that may not be disbelieved by a true believer as the Koran is the holy word of Allah), just make sure the first part of the aftermath discussion is centered around how a bunch of xenophobic crackpots don't profit from it. This has all of course been made infinitely worse by the entrance of the extreme-right Sweden Democrats into the Swedish parliament. With its root in the 90's neo-nazi movement, the party has promoted itself as a truth-speaking element that wants to halt (Muslim) immigration. Commonly given the very problematic label of being "islamophobic" (a term that can be compared to "judaismphobia" in relation to antisemitism), this in part has allowed a group with filthy intentions to in many respects gain a patent on questions not only of immigration, but a third of all iron-age mysticism still practised today.

The situation as it presents itself is that of a country that should be leading on the religion debate, but that through ignorance on the topic of faith and a very misdirected ambition of coming across as tolerant, doesn't find itself ready to criticize the type of dogmas that make up the very opposite of what it holds dear. Change can only come from greater knowledge on the subject, knowledge that must not and cannot be a tireless attempt to rid religion of all of its responsibilities. But also from a realization that saying yes to the good, also means to say no to the bad.

Atheism in religious clothing.

Atheism is not faith. Stop it.

A friend of mine was on a date with a cute girl a few months back. As the date wore on they entered into deeper conversations about the nature of the world and the meaning of life. It was during this conversation that the girl, upon realizing that my friend was an Atheist, asked “Oh, so you only believe in science?” That was their first and last date.

There seems to be a notion that science is to Atheism what Christianity is to religion. This is not too uncommon in the religious discourse when arguing about the existence of God. Famous Atheist proponents like Richard Dawkins are often critiqued for being like any other televangelist when they go on book tours spreading their message of secularism and non belief. One can see why this rhetoric is appealing since the term Atheism is used as though it were a competing faith in religious debates; “Christianity leads to X, Atheism leads to Y”. It is also a logical response when asked about your faith. Rather than saying “I don’t believe in any gods” one answers “Atheism” in the same way as one would answer “Catholicism” or “Hinduism”. This semantically aligns it with the other faiths, as one faith among many.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Like many have pointed out before me, we wouldn’t be tempted to suggest that the non belief in, say, dragons is a faith in itself. There is nothing that ties the world’s dragon deniers together other than their non-belief; there are no traditions, no rules, no houses of worship. The same lack of communion goes for Atheism. This is merely a name to sum up the phrase “I don’t believe in any gods”. One can argue that a belief in the scientific method is naturally common among atheists as it is often religion’s failure to pass scientific scrutiny that draws one away from it. However, a scientific disposition is not a prerequisite for atheism, and not even an identifier for lacking faith in the supernatural. It is important to understand that there is nothing intrinsically scientific about atheism, because atheism is simply non belief. This is all the more self evident when one considers the fact that any religious person is an Atheist in respect to every religion other than their own. Still, no one would be tempted to claim that the non belief in Sikhism is what creates a sense of community among Mormons. Granted it can be argued that atheists are united by the fact that they are the only group of people that does not believe in any gods at all, but this is no more significant than the fact that vegetarians are the only ones in the cafeteria who aren’t eating any meat. They do not inherently share anything other than that.

What a person who claims that atheism is just like any other religion is actually saying is that atheists hold scientific beliefs just like religious people hold religious beliefs. A little Yes, but mostly No.

If this is to be true then the terms belief and faith must be diluted so much so as to lose all of their semantic use. If flipping the switch in your bedroom and then drawing the conclusion it was this action that made the room light up is an act of faith, then yes. In that case any assumption that we make about the world around us is a matter of faith. If so, we all hold the belief that eating will make us less hungry, but this is clearly not the correct use of the term. We see evidence that every time we flip the switch in our room the light goes on and we can repeat this experiment a hundred times over to be certain. If very curious we can even go on and read about the workings of electricity and how light bulbs function. We draw conclusions based on what seems to work. Even if we were told that indeed it was not the flipping of the switch which turned on the light, but the clapping of our hands, we would probably discard this new thesis and stick with what worked. In fact, this is how everyone, religious and non religious alike, makes sense of and functions in the world. Compare this to exclusively religious practices like prayer or miracles. A miracle is a suspension of the laws of physics, ie. something happens that is not supposed to be able to happen. To believe that an unusual event is an act of divine intervention is a matter of faith because there is nothing that logically leads us to this conclusion. Say your mother is cured in the hospital after the doctors have flung their arms in the air and screamed that all hope is lost. Claiming that this is a miracle, that a god intervened to save her, is not something that we can call a logical or reasonable claim. Not only would you first have to work out why this god focused on her specifically when people die in horrible agony every day, but you would also have to discount all of the far more probable scientific explanations. In no other aspect of your life would you go “I don’t know how this happened, therefore it must have been magic”, but for some reason this explanation is ready at hand whenever we get something we really want but didn’t think we would get. If your remote controller to your tv stops working for a while and then suddenly comes back to life you would rather attribute it to a glitch in the batteries than to a god breathing new life into the device.

Everyone “believes” in science to some degree, just as everyone is atheist to some degree. If this were not true then prayer would be the number one prescription drug, and everyone would believe in every god imaginable. When our child falls mortally ill no one (with a scant few exceptions) will hesitate for a second to choose a skilled doctor over a prayer to our respective god. However, as mentioned above, this trust that we put in science is not in any way similar to that of religious faith. Atheism means nothing more than not believing in any gods. In no way is it a religion in itself. Being consistent when it comes to scientific inquiries about the nature of life is the exact opposite of fanatic. Science changes all the time because there is no god given truth and is therefore as far as one can possibly get from taking someone on their word that there was once a magical being who dictated the dos and don’ts of this world.
So please – stop it.