1. Oystein Elgaroy - the Christian defender who became an Atheist

Comment #195588 by Strappado on June 18, 2008 at 2:51 pm

Loke:

I have completely forgotten to compliment you on the translation. Sorry about that, you did a great job. Does Even Gran know that his piece has reached this forum?

Thanks! It's definitely a piece worth translating too, crammed with good quotes. I'll probably not attemt to translate stuff about natural constants though. :)
Nice nick btw. You've joined the dark side alright !

I suppose they noticed a rise in hits at Fri Tanke, so I guess Even Gran noticed. Plus he's probably checking out feeds like this one.

2. Oystein Elgaroy - the Christian defender who became an Atheist

Comment #195378 by Strappado on June 18, 2008 at 6:18 am

chuckgoecke

I believe a particularly dark genre of rock music, called Death Metal, was spawned in Norway. A friend, who's much more up on all the flavors of Metal rock, told me its because of the heavy handedness of the the Norwegian society's religion, that the youth feel compelled to rebel in the most extreme way possible. This seems a bit odd, since I thought Norway is surrounded by some of the least religious European states, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, etc.

Black Metal, not Death Metal :), but even so what happened in Norway was more of a (big) renaissance than actually spawning it. (I was heavily into it at the time)
Anyway, at the time, religion had definitely lost its grip in Norway so I think it's more of a rebellion against modern liberal altruist views (religious or not) rather than conservative religious dogma. I.e. it was not a rebellion against conservative priests but a rebellion against the "turning the other cheek" and "Love thy enemy" dogma.

At the same time, it's true that Sweden and Denmark have been much more liberal, while Norway has experienced a sort of puritanical coalition between social-democracy and Christianity, where everything that is "fun" (porn, alcohol, violent movies, drugs, gambling) had been outlawed, taxed or regulated in a most heavyhanded fashion compared to our neighbours. So while this has never been the concern of Black Metal, I think it explains the rebellious uproar against common morality.
Plus there was at the core simply a teenage fascination for doing the forbidden.
Norway is different today, thanks to globalisation and the internet, but at the time it was the epitome of the nanny state.


mordacious1:

"According to Ir-religion.com, over 70% of Norway is atheist.
edit: according to Wiki, the Church of Norway says only 9% are atheists. They also state that only 3% go to church more than once a month. Doesn't sound like they take the christian stuff that seriously."

The stats I've seen, and which makes sense, indicates roughly that 1/3 is Atheist, 1/3 is religious and 1/3 agnostic or have no clue. Sweden and Denmark have more Atheists but the Norwegian State church numbers have always been exaggerated simply for the fact that all of us became members at birth if one of our parents were members.
In any case, we don't have a lot to worry about in Norway with regards to religion. The state church has always been the main problem, but even so it's usually been rather empty on Sundays.
(There was a rather superficial reform recently in the state church)

Anyway, nice to see the article and translation was appreciated. :)

EDIT: How does the quote function work?
EDIT2: Thanks Black Wolf!

3. Was religion beneficial to the development of society? Is it now?

Comment #184855 by Strappado on May 26, 2008 at 9:51 am

"Was charcoal beneficial to the development of the economy? Is it now?"
The abacus?

Almost any great invention in the past have been surpassed by new modern inventions.

There is most no connection between what's been useful before and what's useful now. Even the famous conservative slogan ("If it's not broke, don't fix it") allows for fixing something - if it's broke.

It is fairly obvious today that religion is something that needs to be fixed one way or another. As Atheists we may want to get rid of it altogether, but even religious people will see that religion can't go on like it did hundreds of years ago, when it apparantly, gave us so much progress.

4. What's the evolutionary advantage of offering your place to an old woman on a bus?

Comment #184843 by Strappado on May 26, 2008 at 9:37 am

I remember when I was 17, one morning on the bus, I was sitting there with a bag next to me. The bag occuppied one seat, and voila, the famous old lady entered the bus.

At that time, I had issues with altruism, because I considered it to be hypocritical and just a way to receive favours while pretending to be so much better than everyone else. So that morning I decided, that I was not going to be the one to give place to the lady and I wanted to see if someone would give up their own seat to her.
(In hindsight, 15 years on, I'm a bit ashamed, and it was wrong to do it. The lady needed a seat after all.)

Still, it proved to be an interesting experiment, because what happened was that some man in his 40s sitting nearby me saw that I was not about to remove my bag, so he just put the bag in my lap and asked the lady to sit, while giving me a stern look.

Now this proved that refusal to help old ladies can give you problems.
In some other culture, I could have gotten more problems. Especially, if I did this all the time. Breaking social rules will often have a cost.

I have to stress that I'm nowadays quite helpful to old ladies and mothers who need help to get on or off the bus with their children.
It's not to avoid getting into trouble with other passengers, but because I've long since realized that a smile and a "thank you" is more rewarding than to sit on my ass, looking out of the window.

5. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #160296 by Strappado on April 13, 2008 at 10:54 pm

The best thing about Nazi Germany was the design. Bring back Hitler!

6. Bulldozers tear down giant religious teapot

Comment #138506 by Strappado on March 4, 2008 at 12:58 pm

I guess the next thing they want to destroy is Russell's Teapot. Good luck.

7. Atheists are just as dogmatic as theists, and the only reasonable person is an agnostic.

Comment #124214 by Strappado on February 8, 2008 at 7:35 pm

Being an agnostic would be logical if the two propositions "God exists" and "God does not exist" were equally reasonable. But they are not.

There are no scientific observances of God, while all other scientific observances fit in with Atheism.
So, while a nitpicking agnostic may say that this does not rule out the existance of God it gives a good statistical measure of the probability.

Agnostic: One who knows alot about logics, but nothing about statistics.

8. Hook, line and rapture

Comment #113227 by Strappado on January 19, 2008 at 3:29 am

Nice vid. On a similar note:

"One in four Americans anticipates the second coming of Christ in 2007."
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070103/24761.htm

9. Why do atheists care about what others believe when it doesn't affect atheists?

Comment #98694 by Strappado on December 14, 2007 at 4:18 am

Is anyone suggesting that Atheists inside WTC escaped 911 alive, that circumcision (or FGM) is impossible on Atheists, that creationist drivel does not affect education of atheists etc.?

Believers do not live in a vacuum, unfortunately, so their unfounded beliefs affects people around them.

10. The God Delusion in Turkey

Comment #96296 by Strappado on December 10, 2007 at 10:11 am

Irshad Manji has had great success with translating her book to various languages (Arab, Farsi, Malay and Urdu) used by Muslims, and allow it to be downloaded for free. http://www.irshadmanji.com/translations

My wish is that Richard Dawkins (and anyone else) does the same.
Translations obviously cost money, but on the other hand I hardly think that there's anything lost when it comes to sales. Saudi Arabs can't very much buy the God Delusion in shops, and a lot of people in the region aren't able to read a book like this in the original language, so a free, downloadable version in, say Arab, won't stump sales in other languages.

11. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #91206 by Strappado on November 27, 2007 at 3:32 pm

All the time. What kind of books do you think the creationists read?

When you want to communicate an idea to people, you need to be careful with your choice of words. If you pick a word that has lots of different meanings, then the dumb may misinterpret them and the cunning twist them.

When it comes to communication with "the masses" you can not afford to be arrogant.

12. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #91202 by Strappado on November 27, 2007 at 3:17 pm

I think what the sensible science lot here misses is that "theory" has unfortunate connotations. You can not insist that theory means this and that. Take a look at the thesaurus:

Main Entry: theory
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: belief
Synonyms: approach, argument, assumption, base, basis, code, codification, concept, conditions, conjecture, doctrine, dogma, feeling, formularization, foundation, grounds, guess, guesswork, hunch, hypothesis, idea, ideology, impression, method, outlook, philosophy, plan, plea, position, postulate, premise, presentiment, presumption, proposal, provision, rationale, scheme, shot*, speculation, stab*, supposal, suppose, supposition, surmise, suspicion, system, systemization, theorem, thesis, understanding

Antonyms: fact, proof, reality

Scientists need to respect that they don't have ownership of words, and can't demand that everyone associate the same thing with "theory" as they do. Hypothesis is different, because it's such a specific word... but theory? It can clearly mean anything. They could just as well have called it "The evolution thing".

I don't know if it should be called a law, because I realise that it will conflict with the other laws, but clearly there is something wrong with the word "theory". It was the right word at Darwin's time, but it's become an unnecessary liability.

Scientists have always had problems with communication. Many of them fear talking with journalists because they think they will distort whatever they say. So they end up sitting in their ivory tower. We can't afford that.

13. Teachers 'fear evolution lessons'

Comment #76436 by Strappado on October 5, 2007 at 9:41 pm

Why do I suddenly wish to become a teacher?

14. Norway flourishes as secular nation

Comment #76435 by Strappado on October 5, 2007 at 9:32 pm

I agree with the latter posts here.

While certainly being principally against state religion, I am starting to see that it may have kept the fundies at bay.
But it's going to disappear, because now, also the Christians have understood that a state religion is a religion that is defined by the state.

In any case, I think the old battle against the State Church and religious education that Atheists have been fighting must be directed aginst religion, not merely against these institutions. We can fight both of course, but I want to see a country without religion, not a country without control of the religions. Those are two very different things.

15. Norway flourishes as secular nation

Comment #76149 by Strappado on October 4, 2007 at 10:46 pm

I'm Norwegian myself, so this is good "news". I have been pushing that statistic of beliefs a lot. :)

Pieter: "Norway also has a lot of oil."
Actually, if you look at the other rich oil countries in the world you'll find that oil very often can have adverse effects. So it is actually quite an achievement to be able to pump up oil without just going crazy with all the money.

Apart from that, I agree that we can't attribute atheism as a source to all this welfare, but on the flipside it tend to settle arguments started by godfearing americans on how great a nation is if they believe in God. The case of Norway and many other European countries prove this argument to be wrong.

However, remember that Norway didn't become prosperous until about the early 90s or so. The foundations of secularism lies not in economy. We have religious education which probably has prevented the most hairraisng fundies to brainwash their children without them also getting input at school. This is something that USA lacks.

Actually, there's hundreds of reasons, but the old libertarian mantra that religon is a private matter isn't necessarily the best one for secularisation in the long run.

16. An Inquisition in science's name

Comment #54122 by Strappado on July 5, 2007 at 1:04 pm

I stopped reading at "1542".

17. Why Christopher Hitchens is not Great

Comment #40597 by Strappado on May 14, 2007 at 2:58 pm

"Why this headline is not great"

Is there no end to the extremely predictable headlines and titles that these people will use ("Dawkin's Delusion", "A letter to [whatever]" and so on.)

Kevin McCullough's first hardback title "The MuscleHead Revolution: Overturning Liberalism with Commonsense Thinking" is now available.

I will write a book myself and call it:

"The FaithHead Revolution: Overturning Commonsense thinking with Nonsense Thinking".