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Table of ContentsBeing Human.......................................................................................................................................................1
Beginning of the Beginning................................................................................................................................2
A letter to the Editor...........................................................................................................................................5
This much I can believe......................................................................................................................................7
Religion as Ideology............................................................................................................................................9
Return of the Medieval World.........................................................................................................................12
Feedback for Post "Return of the Medieval World"..............................................................................16
The Crusades and Us........................................................................................................................................19
Filling the Vacuum............................................................................................................................................22
800 years after the Conquest............................................................................................................................25
Feedback for Post "800 years after the Conquest".................................................................................28
Virus of Faith.....................................................................................................................................................29
Sam Harris on Faith.........................................................................................................................................32
Religion is a Danger..........................................................................................................................................36
Can Science be a substitute for Religion?.......................................................................................................39Feedback for Post "Can Science be a substitute for Religion?"............................................................43
Do we need Religion for Morals?....................................................................................................................44
What is the Bible?.............................................................................................................................................47
Feedback for Post "What is the Bible?".................................................................................................50
Christmas without Jesus...................................................................................................................................52
Feedback for Post "Christmas without Jesus".......................................................................................55
What is the Meaning of Life?...........................................................................................................................56Feedback for Post "What is the Meaning of Life?"...............................................................................59
What makes Holy Books holy?........................................................................................................................60
Feedback for Post "What makes Holy Books holy?"............................................................................63
The burden of the Free Will.............................................................................................................................64
Feedback for Post "The burden of the Free Will"..................................................................................67
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Table of ContentsA Hall of Fame for the Founders of Religions................................................................................................68
Feedback for Post "A Hall of Fame for the Founders of Religions".....................................................71
Can Science be a substitute for Religion?, Part Two.....................................................................................73
Feedback for Post "Can Science be a substitute for Religion?, Part Two"............................................76
Why do Congregations need to meet regularly?............................................................................................78
Faith and Ideology............................................................................................................................................81
Feedback for Post "Faith and Ideology"................................................................................................84
Author's friends................................................................................................................................................85
About the author...............................................................................................................................................86
Pageviews...........................................................................................................................................................87
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Being Human
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Beginning of the Beginning
Welcome to the weird world of finnish atheism. This blog is a companion to my Ajatuksia olemisesta -blog at
the address http://uskoitseesi.blogs.fi. My aim is to summarize here the contents of that blog for the
international audience.
My finnish atheism-blog has raised considerable interest in Finland and its pages have been loaded over 50
000 times during the past year.
What makes me think that anybody in the wider world would be interested in thougts of a finnish journalist,
who has during the last year embedded himself in the world of the newest atheistic literature?
I really can't know for sure in advance if there is any such interest, but nothing will stop me from trying!
Ajatuksia olemisesta -blog came in to being a year ago, when I spent my winter vacation -week studying Sam
Harris and Richard Dawkins and watching the amazing videos from the Beyond Belief -seminar.
I have been an atheist all my life, but especially Sam Harris made me think about things in a wider perspective
and finally I came to the conclusion that also I could have something to give to the world.
After that I have read among others a lot of Christopher Hitchens, Pascal Boyer, Daniel Dennett, Victor J.
Stenger and Michel Onfray. I think I now have a quite clear picture of what the newest surge of atheist
thinkers and writers are talking about.
I will start translating a condensed version of my finnish writings. I will do the work myself, and I would be
very grateful of any critisism. The work will be painfully slow, as I already am fully employed as an active
journalist in the day and entrepreneur in the evenings and week-ends.
Here is a few words about myself, which I have written earlier as an intruduction in my one of my websites:
As an entrepreneur I offer computer-related aid in my hometown, which is situated about 54 kilometers
northwest of the Finnish capital city Helsinki.
My hometown is a peaceful inland city of 36 000 inhabitants and is known in Finland as a famous
apple-growing region. Therefore my hometown likes to call itself The Apple Village.
I am a journalist who likes to play with computers. I also like to help people with computer-related problems.
Normally I edit the economics-section of the local newspaper, but twice a month I take leave of normal dailyhumdrum of economics and try to tell my readers about things that I think every computer-user should know.
I am also a regular contributor for the Finland s largest computer magazine Mikrobitti for which I do
computer-related news-stories.
I have also written a comprehensive guidebook of the OpenOffice 1.0 -suite. The already obsolete book was
published by Edita-publishing but is no longer available in Finland.
by jaskaw @ 02.12.2007 - 19:13:54
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This much I can believe
I believe that man created god as his own image.
I believe that the science or morals that were current 2000 years ago are not usable anymore. Nobody believes
any of the truths that were believed 2000 years ago. We don t believe that earth is flat or that is okay to have
slaves as people really believed 2000 years ago.
Despite this some people believe that 2000 years ago was discovered a final solution to the basic questions of
life and death and nothing further needs to be discovered 2000 years later.
This forthcoming collection of writings bites to the core of these old and tired beliefs that are still current in
our societies for various historical ja sociological reasons.
Inspiration for these writings comes mainly from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher
Hitchens, Michel Onfray and Pascal Boyer, whose books and videos have been the basic source of for all of
this work that will unfold before your very eyes on this blog in the coming weeks and months.
The final eye-opener for me was Sam Harris's remarkable appearance in a ITConversations podcast. Heuttered out loud the same thoughts that I had been harboring since I was a 13-yard old schoolboy.
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Religion as Ideology
Lately I have been perplexed by the fact that religions often can t be criticized in the same manner as other
ideologies or belief-systems. Nobody takes offence if I say that communism is a old-fashioned and stiff
system of thought, but if I say the same things about Islam, I will be accused of racism or islamophobia.
However, religion is not a genetic feature of any man. It is a learned ideology or belief-system in exactly the
same way as communism or fascism.
Our thinking is blurred by the fact that religions are to a large extent inherited in families, since these
belief-systems are learned at home or at school. This learning almost always happens when we are not mature
enough to make up our own mind in these matters.
Religious ideologies are often followed in families for several or even dozens of generations. Religion
becomes a often a self-evident fact. People often don t even realize that are any other options than the
traditional religion of their family and neighborhood.
This is a fact of life especially in the communities that have no clear-cut boundaries between the religious and
secular authorities. Religious ideology can be the main motivator for the whole community and criticizing the
religion can be interpreted as treason.
The whole idea of changing one s religion can be totally alien in these societies and they simply can t
understand the fact that religion is a ideology and not a unchangeable part of personality.
Especially difficult the chance of heart is in the Islamic countries where death is often the ultimate penalty for
renouncing the Islam. Christians should not forget that giving up religion warranted death penalty in the
Europe also for centuries.
In the face of it, it can be hard to remember that criticizing a faith is not the same as criticizing a person that
adheres to that faith, as often as it is understood in that manner. One can always be easily cured from
following a rotten ideology, as it requires nothing more than a chance of heart.
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Christianity and Islam are different than communism in that they claim that their main selling points are not of
human origin and they cannot therefore be criticized in the same manner as other ideologies are. They are
above thence above all criticism and it is often blasphemy even to criticize them.
Islamic world is a just now in a very similar situation as the communist world was a couple of decades ago. A
tremendous ideological pressure is forced in the members of these societies and criticizing the ruling ideology
is often not real possibility at all.
Islamic world is often seen in the West as a monolithic mass, as the old communist world was seen. Often we
know nothing about the pressures that are building under the faade of ideological unity.
The hold Islam has in these societies is far greater than the hold communism had in the satellite countries. In
Islamic countries there is a far greater number of dedicated followers of the ruling ideology than communism
ever had. Neighborhood watches and spying of all citizens are easily organized.
Long rule has made the Islamic system of teaching the default way. In several countries a very large
proportion of population will never know of anything else than the truths of Islam.
There can be an illusion of a unified population, as could arise in the communist era. A traveler in the oldSoviet Union could wander for weeks without encountering anybody that would profess to opposing the
regime. There are Islamic countries where a wrong word about religion can land you in very deep trouble
indeed.
However Islam needs not to be an oppressive force in societies. Turkey is a fine example of a Islamic country
where religion has been sidestepped and society as a whole has been largely freed of its stranglehold. This
road is open to all Islamic countries, if the matter is taken seriously and necessary action is taken.
Religion can be a private matter also in Islamic countries as it has been in the Christian West for a long time
now. Christianity had in the medieval times a stranglehold of all the western societies for centuries that pales
the grip of today s Islam. Christianity s example shows very clearly that religions can mutate and evolve
when societies around them are changing.
The renaissance of the Islamic world cannot however begin before religion releases its icy grip from the neck
of these societies. Islamic religion must first give up it s earthly powers, as Christianity has already done in
the West.
It is in our own interests to do everything we can to facilitate and accelerate this kind peaceful chance in the
Islamic world, as the ideologically unified Islamic communities in our midst are a growing threat to our
liberties, if they persist in pursuing political and ideological goals that are incompatible with otherwise
commonly held goals in our societies.
This essay is something I originally wrote a couple of years before I discovered the work of Sam Harris and
Richard Dawkins. Ireprint it here because it raised just the issues that made me light up instantly when I
discovered their thoughts. Message of this piece is also still very current...
by jaskaw @ 15.12.2007 - 23:23:43
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Return of the Medieval World
The very basic problem with the modern Islam is that it has been frozen in a state of no development for
several centuries. In contrast most Christian denominations have evolved and changed considerably during the
last centuries. They have been forced to change because of the upheaval in their social environment.
Unchanging Islam is dragging the societies around it back to states of development that these societies have in
fact passed a long time ago. Islam tries to force societies back to social values that have universally been
discarded a long time ago, as societies have evolved.
Especially the status of women has changed radically in societies outside the realm of Islam, but Islamic
world tries stubbornly to hold on to medieval patriarchates patterns of conduct. Islam forces women to
situation that simply could not and cannot be tolerated in developed western societies anymore.
Basic problem is that Islam holds the values and thoughts of its adherents locked in a way that no other large
world-religion does anymore.
In developed western and Asian societies religion has been transferred to a matter of personal conscience.
Religion does not have power over arts, science or education anywhere outside Islam.
Collapsing power of religion is in fact the one single most decisive factor that has propelled the western world
to its road to prosperity and social evolution.
Freedom of thought has made possible the countless new discoveries and new ways of doing things. This
development has fostered progress in all levels of our societies. Our whole societies have risen to a new level
of achievement because of freedom of thought.
The same positive development has been going on also in the realms of eastern world religions. They don t
try to stop all new thinking, as Islam does in it s worse.
The mainstream religions of Japan and Korea can currently be seen as ways of understanding the society and a
mode of conduct, and not the all-encompassing way of life and thinking that Islam has evolved to.
I believe that the way religion holds down new thinking is enormously crucial to any society s economic and
social development. I believe that economic growth has a very strict correlation with freedom of thought that
the ruling religion permits in any society.
Modern science, modern way of thinking and modern way of seeing fellow humans all originated in Ancient
Greece. The reason for this explosion of new ideas was in their religion or the lack of it.
This religion of the Greeks had one enormously important quality that made this phenomena possible. It was
the first state religion that did not interfere in thoughts of the individuals.
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It was good enough to honor and respect these gods, but they did not care what their followers were doing and
thinking in their spare time. And by Jove, think they did!
This fantastic development came to an abrupt end when extremely stiff and inflexible Christian state church
came to power in empire of Rome. The social and economic development of Christian western societies froze
for centuries as freedom of thought was completely annihilated.
Only the new beginning brought on by renaissance and age of Enlightenment made these shackles of religion
go away. Slowly the western societies could attain again the state of development that had been reached athousand years ago in a society where freedom of thought was possible.
In this light it is possible to see why the Islamic world is so badly and sadly left behind in the economic and
sociological development that has made western societies the current economic powerhouses of the world.
In Islamic fundamentalist movement sees westernization and rise of individual choice as the prime cause of
problems that their societies are now facing. I think that on the contrary the basic problem in their societies is
lack of freedom and individual incentive that drives economic and social development in western societies.
Religion that prohibits free thought and new ways of doing things slows down the development of its society.
These societies will fall more and more behind in economic, social and cultural development if nothing isdone.
Western economic and military supremacy are now seen as a direct insult to Islam. Every human being wants
to be proud of his own country and his surroundings. As Islam was absolute ruler of very big portion of this
planet not so long ago, the current state of affairs is very difficult to accept in the Islamic world. It creates
shame, which transforms into a rage that can erupt very violently.
Let s take a little thought-experiment. Would United Stated have evolved to what it currently is, if it would
have been governed be the Christian fundamentalist movement from the day one?
The creators of US of A were extremely secular folks and they very suspicious of any religious involvement
in affairs of the government. This policy paid very soon handsome dividends, as the ensuing freedom of
thought propelled United States among other things to its current trajectory of development and power.
The same development can be kick started also in Muslim world, if this religion renounces its position of
secular power, as the western and eastern state religions have already done in a good measure.
Christian churches or Japanese Shinto have no more secular power, but they exist in affluent societies that can
take proper care also of the sick and elderly and provide a safe environment for spiritual growth of its
members.
A similar development is always possible also in Islamic world. This religion needs not to be thrown
completely overboard, but it must adjust itself to the changing world. Only thing that is missing is the ability
of its religious leaders to accept the changes that have been taking place around them.
Islam has been a force of change in its history. When Islam was young, it was a liberating force for millions
who had been languishing under the iron rule of christian state church in the Byzantine world.
In those days Islam was new and undogmatic and its conquests opened a tremendous opportunity for science
and new thinking. The teachings of Ancient Greece could be studied again and science made a tremendous
leap forward in the islamic world.
Those heydays of Islam are now nothing but a cherished memory, as Islam has evolved to its recent position
as the most dogmatic and stiff religion there is. However history clearly shows that Islam can also be a force
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of change.
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I've had similar thoughts about Islam and its relationship to Europe, but I don't see any likelihood of its
mullahs giving up their theocratic power. This is because that vests them with untouchable authority and
keeps the questioning voices silent by threatening heresy and fatwa. In exactly the same way, Christian
reformers were threatened with excommunication and burning by the theocracy of the Roman Catholic
church, as wielded by numerous subordinate states. If you look at what happened to Jan Hus in the early 15th
century and contrast his fate with that of Martin Luther 100 years later, you can see what effect the printing
press had on generating popular support for reforming voices.
I don't hear many moderate reformers in the Islamic world because there is no equivalent power given to the
press and the popular culture actively discourages dissent. The idea of debating "eternal verities" is notencouraged, as Erasmus and Aquinas would have done to search out the truth, but is decried as a fracturing of
the uma (community).
Until they can get over the fear of discussion, they will continue to be governed by reactionaries and
isolationists who, paradoxically, seek to impose their doctrine on everyone else.
Jeremy Minton [Visitor]
02.02.2009 @ 14:50
If Western commentators wish to lecture the Islamic world (or anyone else for that matter) they might find
their homilies go down better were they to avoid lecturing from a period of moral superiority. Not only is it
impolite, it shows a poor understanding of ones own social and political history.
American citizens might find the trumpeting of democratic values sound a little hollow from a country which
was still practising racial segregation two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of
Independence. The United Kingdom (that fearless champion of women's rights) did not grant the vote to the
female half of the population until the mid 1920s and when they did so it had much less to do with the decline
of religion as a social force than with the fact that the country had killed off several million of its own young
men. And it was not until the 1970s that legislation was passed to prohibit pay discrimination on grounds of
gender.
Islamic fundamentalism (like its Christian cousin in the US - the one the which condemns homosexuals, wants
to deny women the right to control of their own bodies; that acts to block medical research which might cure
terrible diseases...) thrives in a product of ignorance and imposed helplessness which translates into rage. If
we in the West were serious about reducing the impact of fundamentalism then we could start by reducing the
things which feed it. We stop selling guns and cluster bombs and implements of torture to dictators who will
use them on their own people and on innocent civilians. We could stop exploiting local resources to feed our
own insatiably profligate life-styles. We could stop trying to fix our own insatiable demand for drugs by
dropping bombs and defoliants on subsistence farmers.
Only if we ever get around to improving our own behaviour with regards to the environment and the people
who share our planet will it be either sensible or morally justifiable for us to start lecturing the rest of the
world.
Zaid [Visitor]
02.02.2009 @ 15:45
I like what you have to say. Speaking as a Muslim, I have to agree, that currently, the way we practice our
religion is actually holding us back. Once a upon time, the Islamic world was the pinnacle of scientific
progress.
But today, the religion that bred such wonder is actually having the opposite effect.
But i think every great empire experiences this. Being crunched under weight of it's own greatness.
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The Crusades and Us
There is a surprisingly widespread belief also in the West that the Islamic world is still suffering from trauma
caused by the Crusades. It is believed that this trauma is still causing major friction in the relationships
between the West and Islamic world.
This is typical western self-flagellation, where it always our own fault if somebody hates us.
If Crusades have caused so widespread trauma in the Islamic world, why is there not similar trauma in the
western world from the bloody wars of conquests that brought then completely Christian Egypt, Syria and
Northern Africa under Islamic rule or from the much more recent Muslim onslaughts on Balkans, when the
Romanians, Bulgarians or people of Greece were brought under the rule of Islam following bloody wars of
conquest?
If the wild swordsmen from the desert would not have brought these areas under the rule of Islam, they would
not have suffered the economic and social consequences of rule by a stagnant, stiff and unbending religion
that has hindered the economic, social and cultural development of these areas during the last few centuries.
On the contrary I believe that the hatred flowing freely in the Islamic world comes form much more recent
things. There is much hurt pride and low self-esteem that are a direct consequence of the fact that freedom
from grip of an all-encompassing state religion has propelled the west to a social and economic development
that has seen no rivals before in the history of mankind.
In the same time Islamic world has suffered in the grips of a rigid, dogmatic and stiff religious system that
prohibits similar developments.
There is no real reason why this situation needs to be the case. After its initial conquests the Islamic world
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was for centuries far more advanced and free in cultural and economic terms than the western world. Western
Europe suffered in that time under the iron rule of dogmatic, stiff and unbending Christianity of that era.
New Islamic rulers were welcomed with open arms all over the Byzantine and western Roman areas they
conquered, as these areas were experiencing a period of pogroms of Christians harboring heretical thoughts.
The Arabic rulers were a tiny minority in their newly acquired territories and they needed to thread carefully
not to incite revolt. Islamic religion was also a very new and un-dogmatic phenomenon. All this combined
created a flourish of culture and economic wealth that is remembered fondly in the Islamic world.
The fall of Christian mental dictatorship in the West following the Renaissance, Reformation and Age of
Enlightenment released there immense powers of imagination and creation, that propelled these countries to
their path of growth and ultimate military power.
In the same time Islamic world experienced a exactly reversed development. Islamic faith and religion froze
during centuries of Middle Age to a extremely dogmatic system of thought that prohibited all new thinking in
all areas that were under its rule. This loss of mental freedom also froze the economic development of the
Islamic world.
Islamic world was soon left behind in all areas of development. Ultimately large areas of the Islamic worldwere even falling under the rule of western nations that were benefiting from their newly found freedom of
thought.
Western rule of the large parts of the old Ottoman empire after the WWI was a final insult to the Islamic
community. It showed very concretely how the balance of power had shifted. This moment should have been
a moment for retrospect and analysis for the reasons of the weakness of the Islamic world, but the moment
was wasted.
The Islamic world has no chance of recovering its former glory if it does not see the crucial importance of
ability of bringing new ideas to mold the society.
Any society that is frozen to long gone social mores and passions is doomed when world around is chancing
in astonishing speed.
Islam can manage such a chance, but only if its adherents realize the reasons for its current weakness.
Christianity did undergo just this kind of change a few hundred years ago and it paid handsome dividends to
all societies adhering to it.
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Filling the Vacuum
Religions were created to fill a vacuum in minds of the people. All major world religions were created at a
time when people did know next to nothing about their environment, world or the universe. The role of
religion was to fill that vacuum and give same kind of an explanation of the world for those wanted or needed
one.
In the then prevailing state of total ignorance things could still be explained away in a very coarse way by
simply making up stories that sounded plausible in some way. These stories simply don t hold up to closer
examination anymore.
The need for such coarse explanations has vanished with the rise of science. We do now have satisfactory
explanations for the structure and workings of the whole universe. We don t need those old stories that
nomads told to each other on the evenings to pass the time away anymore.
Christian European state churches have been recently wise enough to bow away always when new
information has been discovered and more of the original vacuum of knowledge has been filled with real
information.
However it must be pointed out that at first also the western churches did all they could to stem the tide of
science and real information.
Eventually however western churches had to give away under the pressure when findings of the science
changed the societies around them irreparably. Churches lifted their arms in despair and surrendered quietly at
the onslaught of victorious science.
The European Lutheran churches were transformed enormously in the process. They are not real users of
power anymore, but they have been changed into toothless caretakers of rituals and soothers of minds. The
seekers of real scientific facts don t need to fear for their life in their realms, as their predecessors did just a
few hundred years ago.
Religion has no real role in the Western Europe in explaining the workings of the universe anymore. People
who try to still do so are treated as maniacs in most parts of Western Europe. Unfortunately situation is not as
rosy in other parts of the world; especially in the United States and the Islamic world.
The fundamentalist movements in the USA and Islamic world are still trying to hold back the scientific
explanations of our world. They cling to explanations of the universe that are quite universally found to be
simply outdated and false.
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800 years after the Conquest
There is a quite recent monument in my Finnish home town Lohja that commemorates the date when 800
years had passed since inhabitants of this area were converted to Christianity.
Tradition tells that on that day there arrived a group of swordsmen from the West that invited localinhabitant to update their religion to a more modern version.
Almost all Finns are in agreement in that the end result was for the best. Those swordsmen brought Finland to
the hemisphere of the Western culture. Because of them Finland did not became a part of the diocese of the
Muscovite patriarch and eventually the Russian hemisphere.
The Western European countries have since those days undergone a miraculous transformation into a one of
the most tolerant multicultural societies the world has ever seen. The Finns of today would have great
difficulties in adjusting themselves to a more intolerant or dogmatic faith.
Even the version of Christianity that is preached behind the eastern border of Finland is much more backward
and intolerant as this our very own Lutheran Church is now.
Albeit, things were not this great 800 years ago. Christianity of that day did in fact have no understanding or
tolerance for any deviations from any of its beliefs. Everybody else was a pagan that needed to be brought
under the sway of Christianity.
The fine gentlemen that were on a excursion in my hometown 800 years ago were absolutely certain that they
had the final knowledge of the final and absolute truths about everything. They were also absolutely certain
that any beliefs hold by the local people were wrong and meant nothing.
Undoubtedly the gentlemen participating in the exercise were motivated by ideology of the church. But in the
background there was a quite secular quest for power that was fulfilled with these Crusades sanctioned by thePope.
This on the surface very religious excursion was in fact to a great extent only a shield for secular hunger of
conquest and new domains.
A similar conquest and destruction of local customs and culture would be universally condemned today. There
is no historical records of those bygone days and we don t know for sure what happened during those fateful
summer days on 800 years ago.
We can still safely assume that my forefathers did not voluntarily gather to be stripped of their age old
customs and rituals and freedom.
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It is a quite distinctive possibility that there was also much ugly violence before the well armed swordsmen
from the West could make the local peasants came to the conclusion that Christianity was the way to go in the
future. All we know for certain is that history is always written by the winners.
We can of course hope that our forefathers very anxious to get rid of their ancient customs and they willingly
gathered to hear of the new religion the foreign swordsmen were bringing with them.
It is too painful to think that our own Western civilized society would have its beginnings in a surprise attackmade by band of foreign mercenaries attacking a peaceful population minding its own business.
Those people were our own forefathers whose old culture and traditions were suppressed completely during
the next few centuries.
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Feedback for Post "800 years after the Conquest"
John [Visitor]
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21.12.2007 @ 12:29
Blogs are great arent they it is a superb way for people to say what they want without having to get webspace,
etc etc. I love blogging and it appears lots more people do too.
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Virus of Faith
One of main themes in Richard Dawkins great book 'The God Delusion' is the virus of faith that infects people
often in their early childhood.
He points out that evolution has developed a child s brain in such a way that small children quite
automatically accepts all the things that are presented to them from a position of authority.
Richard Dawkins says out that this feature has been extremely useful and even crucial for the continued
existence of humanity. It is not possible to have a child himself testing the truth in claims such as Don t go
to the river, as the crocodiles will eat you' or 'Don't jump from the cliff'.
Very often those who did not believe their elders at all would not have lived long enough to have offspring.
Religions learned very soon to misuse this inbuilt feature of man. It is the real reason why all the modern
monotheistic religions want to get hold of children as soon as they start understanding spoken language.
The younger a child is subjected to the brainwashing of the religion, the better the chance of him of her
accepting these teachings without ever questioning them.
In a very similar vein the creators of modern belief-systems like Communism and Nazism wanted to get hold
of children at the kindergarten and they got magnificent results.
In the end, there were tens of millions of believers who did not question the value or contents of these
teachings learned in the early childhood, even though the reality around them would at he end often be
strongly contradictory to these teachings.
Things that are learned at the earliest childhood are the most persevering and they are often not treated as
learned things at all. This is the reason why church elders are so keen on getting hold of children at the earliest
moment possible.
When your ability at reasoning has not yet developed, even the most idiotic things can be treated as given
facts. Things learned in the earliest childhood can reside in one s mind for the rest of his of hers life without
carrier being aware of their origins.
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Richard Dawkins thinks that is distasteful even to talk about catholic of protestant children as religion is not a
genetically transmitted feature of any man. Religion is often learned from parents, but child is never a catholic
or protestant at birth.
You never say that a child is a stamp collector or chess player at birth, even if his parents are deeply into these
things. There is a still a widespread misconception that religion can be in a mysterious way transmitted to a
child at birth.
This view persists even though a child from protestant family will be raised as a Muslim if he is removed to aMuslim family soon after birth.
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Sam Harris on Faith
The American author and scientist Sam Harris thinks that our ability to criticize and make an analysis of
religions is more important than anything else that is in our own power to change.
Our world has been balkanized because of these incompatible religions, says Sam Harris. He reminds that all
these religions believe that their God has written the one book their very own religion is based on.
Sam Harris says that criticizing religions has been made to be a taboo. He points out that the evolution of
technology makes the terrorist inspired by religions more dangerous than ever before.
A man hiding in a cave in Afghanistan can cause tremendous havoc with his laptop computer. Therefore
fanatical followers of religions are a greater danger than ever before.
The ban imposed by the Catholic Church on use of condoms is in Sam Harris s mind a criminal offence,when millions of people are dying of AIDS in Africa every year. The taboo preventing criticizing religions
prevents as calling a spade a spade in also these matters.
Sam Harris reminds us that we can freely criticize the opinions of those who deny Holocaust or of the people
who think that Elvis is not dead. People are deemed crazy if they hold beliefs that are not testable at any way,
but when focus shifts to religions, the rules are changed.
Strong faith very often changes totally believer s way of thinking, says Sam Harris. A person who has taken
up a faith will see the whole world differently. He reminds that in the United States over half of the citizens
want to stop teaching of the evolution. Sam Harris says that faith is driving this country into wilderness of
ignorance.
These beliefs have also a direct impact on the foreign policy of the United States. The fact that many
Americans think God in his role as a universal real estate agent has given the state of Israel to Jews is
affecting country s foreign policy.
Also the stem cell research is in deep trouble in United States. Religious circles have attacked it, because
discarded human embryos are used in it.
Sam Harris demands that these kinds of beliefs should not be tolerated anymore. He asks how often we are
required to honor peoples erroneous beliefs regarding biology or history. Sam Harris asks why is it so that
when similar erroneous claims are made in the name of religion, they should be re respected?
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Religious moderation is a problem for Sam Harris, as he thinks that moderates are giving a cover for the
extremists behind which they can freely operate. Sam Harris points out the same religious moderates are just
the people who have created the rules that prohibit the criticizing of faiths and religions.
Sam Harris reminds us out that there are a very many kinds of religions. He asserts that Islam is a basically a
very violent religion, whose core beliefs include jihad and martyrdom. Sam Harris thinks that however it is
very difficult to imagine Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers. In same vain a Jain turned fundamentalist is only
evermore more nonviolent.
Sam Harris says that fundamentalist Islam is not caused by social or economical problems tai insufficient
education, but it is based on the basic principles of Islam. According to Sam Harris the greatest threat is a
situation where a man is educated enough to build a nuclear bomb, but at the same time he believes that he
will get 72 virgins in paradise after his death as a martyr.
Religious moderation is to Sam Harris moral bankruptcy as moderates stick to the nice and polite points of
their religions. According to Sam Harris even the Bible gives ample base for a cruel and violent belief-system
that can taken to use whenever it is needed.
Sam Harris says that even religious moderation can make it difficult to make rational decisions in a society.
Problems arise always when views are not based on facts, but age old stories and beliefs.
Sam Harris claims that the main problem with religion is that it prevents discussion and debate. Many people
think that they need no other justification for their opinions, if these opinions are based on religious beliefs.
According to Sam Harris only a religious person can say in conversation that nothing will change his opinion
as it is based on faith alone.
Sam Harris thinks that should be possible to talk about the holy books and things happening after death in a
similar vein as everything else in the society.
The most frightening thing for Sam Harris is the belief held by many fundamentalist Christians that the end is
near and Jesus will soon return to Earth.
He fears that nuclear holocaust would be a good thing for them, as it would tell them that the moment they
have waited for so long is at hand. This is an extremely dangerous idea for Sam Harris, especially if people
harboring this thought are involved in running a county in possession of nuclear weapons.
Sam Harris reminds us that because of religions there are people dying every moment. Religion is a divisive
factor in many societies. Sam Harris claims that even political differences or racial hatred cannot divide
societies as deeply as religions can. He thinks that to get rid of religious wars we should get rid of religious
dogmatism.
Mystical or spiritual experiences need not to be religious, says Sam Harris. He says that by meditation one can
achieve a strong spiritual experience without any religions being involved.
Sam Harris thinks that it is possible to create a society where people can face the idea of their inevitable death.
Sam Harris says that one doesn t need religion for that, but even death can be faced in a rational way.
Strong belief in life after death diminishes the fear of dying, but Sam Harris reminds that this belief can also
be very dangerous. Sam Harris points out that if there is a human being controlling an array of nuclear
weapons who has no fear of death, the end results can be catastrophic for the whole humanity.
This brief summary of Sam Harris s thinking is based mainly on a lecture given by him in the Long Now
Foundations Idea City 05 seminar. You can watch the actual 23 minutes long presentation at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3YOIImOoYM
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Religion is a Danger
Professor and best-seller author Richard Dawkins reminds us that even though we treat our century as a
Century of Reason, the religious extremists are on the move as strongly as ever before.
Why should science sneak quietly away always when religion is mentioned, asks Richard Dawkins. He thinks
that reasonable people should already say that enough is enough. The religious thinking is preventing open
debate in our societies and it divides people to separate mutually hostile groups. Richard Dawkins says that
religion is simply dangerous.
Richard Dawkins reminds us that a person is hold exemplary in religious circles if he or she can completely
forget about reality and can accept the all claims made by religions without demanding any proof for those
claims. The ability to face reality is to Richard Dawkins always a better option than giving false hope.
Richard Dawkins thinks that religion and science can never exist peacefully side by side, as science is based
on open analysis of the facts in the real world. Conclusions made in science can always be altered if new facts
are discovered. Faith on the other hands demands that critical analysis is pushed completely aside.
Science puts forward models and hypothesis that it tries to prove to be wrong. Church on the other hand puts
untested claims forward as final truths that can never be altered in any way.
In religions the mere fact that a claim is old can make it a proven fact. For example the claim that mother of
Jesus was risen to the Heavens in the moment of her death was conceived round the year 600, and during the
following centuries it was hoisted to be among the beliefs of the Catholic Church. It was finally formalized to
the catholic faith as recently as in the 1950 s. Now all Catholics must adhere to this belief.
Richard Dawkins says that we do now have the ability to understand the workings of the universe through the
knowledge that science provides to us, and religion is no more needed to explain anything.
The great discovery made by Charles Darwin was the fact that life as we know it has been evolving though
millions of years through natural selection. According to Richard Dawkins there has been no need for a great
designer. The misconception of great designer just brings up the question of who designed the designer.
Still the evangelical right of the United States is driving the Intelligent Design to supplant evolution as an
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explanation for cause of life. According to recent studies a whopping 45 percent of the Americans believe in
creation instead of evolution.
Richard Dawkins thinks that the greatest danger in fundamentalist thinking is the fact that their worldview is
often changed to a completely black and white one without any shades of gray. Fundamentalist forget that
world is a very complex place and they are retreating to a very childish certainty.
They need only one truth which is told to them by their evangelist who is often giving them also a set of
outright lies.
Richard Dawkins says that we are living in an age of deadly polarization, when religious fanaticism is also in
the rise in the Islamic world. The most frightening thing to Richard Dawkins is the fact that these fanatics do
think that they are doing the good thing.
The irrational base of religions feeds intolerance and hatred, says Richard Dawkins. Every religion claims that
its holy book is the right one. He says that even if the political problems may be the prime cause, the suicide
bombers are created only when people hold unchangeable notions of being holders of absolute and infinite
truths. Killing for a religion is according to Richard Dawkins wrong but also incredibly stupid thing to do.
Richard Dawkins reminds that all people are atheists towards most Gods. Even Christians are atheists, whenthe God in question is Baal, Thor or Neptune. Many just go one god further.
This presentation of Richard Dawkins central ideas is based loosely on the television documentary named
The God Delusion that Richard Dawkins made for the BBC.
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Can Science be a substitute for Religion?
The faith of an individual has no consequence for the society as a whole if this faith is kept as a private matter.
There is no problem in having an even very strongly held faith if other people are not required to live or act
according to it.
The same basic fact applies naturally to all ideologies. Any ideology does not endanger the democratic society
as long as it only tries to influence other members of the society so that they would want to adhere to it.
That s the way democracy should work, after all.
A faith is no more a private matter if because of this ideology there is a tendency to forcefully change even the
behavior of those who do not share this faith. These kinds of faiths can be criticized in the same way as any
other ideology is criticized.
Religion is a always a problem when it makes the members of a community to behave irrationally and when
followers of a faith try legislate or control other peoples life with rules based only on their own faith.
Faith-based ideologies are in fact a much bigger problem in this sense than ordinary political movements.
A normal political party can change its party line when situation or society changes as they inevitably always
do. When ideology is based mainly on a 2000 year old book, it is much more difficult to adjust it to a
changing world.
The western Christian churches have in fact undergone a tremendous change in recent era. The Western
churches of today don t want to kill the heretics, nor have they a desire to burn people they think as witches
anymore.
The changes in modern society are however happening in such a fast pace that the traditional religious
communities have had great trouble in following it. A sad fact is that in western societies only some religious
communities are those where women or gay people do not have the same rights as others.
If this is the case, is there anything that could take the role of religion in giving moral support to the members
of a society?
I think that a faith in science is the only alternative, if there must be a thing you must believe into. If you
believe in science you do believe in the whole accumulated wealth of knowledge the whole mankind has
collected during its existence.
The greatest thing is that the view and vision of the world around us would be updated as the knowledge of
this world is enhanced in any way, if you genuinely believe in science.
However there has been no will or preparedness to build any such faith based on science alone, as any faith is
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a definite no-no to scientific community as a whole, even if this faith would be based on the science itself. The
mere word faith carries too much ballast with it.
A faith is understood as not changing your views according to chancing facts. The scientific community at
large would have nothing whatsoever to do with any faith or religion.
Belief in science could however be the real modern way to believe. Why then in a society that in totally based
on science and its findings, there is not to my knowledge any true science-based faith or religion?
Living without a readymade and easy-to-learn belief-system requires so much from an individual that
everybody in a society will never have what it takes to do it. There should be on offer an alternative
belief-system that is based on science, which could be an alternative to modern faith-based religions.
There are a lot of people who belong to various religious communities for the comforting presence of other
people, friendship and spiritual experiences they would at the moment get from nowhere else. The very
thought of an all-knowing and vengeful God is in fact often alien to them.
There could be in existence communities for Believers of Science that could gather regularly to hear the latest
news in science where this need for companionship and presence of other people would be met. The
communities of Believers of Science could also offer spaces where mothers could load off their offspring for amoment as happens in various Sunday schools.
Mystical experiences are often a strong reason for membership in different faiths. Countering this would be a
real challenge for the Believers of Science. But especially Sam Harris has shown that also very scientifically
oriented person can also be involved in finding the frontiers of his mind and even can be experiencing altered
states of mind.
Extremely intensive moments reached with aid of meditation, incense, dim lights and intensive common
experience are possible also in a when retaining scientific frame of mind.
The biggest task for modern religions is arranging the various rites of passage the society needs. Religious
ceremonies are used to announce a new baby to the world, to tell that a boy has became a man, or a man and a
woman has became one of finally when death has taken its toll.
Believers of Science could easily create an organization where its experienced and wise members would go to
families telling them about the important thing to know in these moments of passage from a state of life to
another.
They would talk smoothly and wisely about life and its wonders drinking caffeine with the elders of the
family and they would comfort those in need of comforting. There would eventually of course be a need for
locations to hold these rites of passage.
I am sure that many others have already dwelled in this thought-game before. It covers all the major roles the
religious communities have left in the modern societies.
No part of these things requires any knowledge or belief in any supreme being. All these are regular tasks that
need to be done in any society, but religions are doing these things at the moment, as there is not offered any
real alternatives.
The big question is would even I myself join this organization I have jokingly called the Believers of Science?
I don t think so, as any membership in an organization that could be in any way hindering my free thought is
an anathema to me, as it is to almost all atheists. Therefore there are no real science-based faiths, as a faith by
definition should require laying an even rudimentary groundwork of rules.
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The atheist community is often compared to herd of cats; there are no common goals or even common rules of
anything, and that is for the best.
It is a shame though, as a lot of hatred, prejudice and oppression would disappear from the world, if people
would be cherishing real knowledge and not basing their lives on a document created in some ancient
communities of nomads.
by jaskaw @ 24.12.2007 - 02:26:43
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Feedback for Post "Can Science be a substitute forReligion?"
Nathanael Johnson [Visitor]
http://theheidihypothesis.blogspot.com/
21.09.2009 @ 00:17
"any membership in an organization that could be in any way hindering my free thought is an anathema tome"
The problem with many of the arguments rejecting religion is that they also end up rejecting community and
group forming. And the only way to get big projects (like reversing climate change and extending economic
equality) done is to get people working together. I think there are ways to form groups that don't hinder free
thinking - much. Admittedly, anytime you get people acting in a crowd there is some loss. But the other
choice - the one the world more and more embraces - beggars us completely. Extreme liberal individualism
sees group association of any kind as irrational. Without organization we must cast ourselves upon the
mercies of the market. And in doing so join the group of default, the that takes as its core precept the belief
that a mob of consumers is the force best equipped to guide civilization.
| Show subcomments
jaskaw pro
http://www.beinghuman.blogs.fi
21.09.2009 @ 08:34
I quite agree with you Nathanael, as I was really only speaking about forming an "atheist church", but I do
think an atheist should or even must be politically active and have higher purposes in life-
I really think an atheist should believe in such things as equality, social justice and furthering freedom of
thought, that do seamlessly fit into atheist way of thinking also:
Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed is the only thing that ever
has.- Margaret Mead
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Do we need Religion for Morals?
Often the main argument for religions is that only religion can bring morality to a society. It is even believed
in some circles that there can be no morality without religion.
The morality that is in use in our developed societies does however bear no resemblance to the morality that
was current in the nomadic society described in the Old Testament thousands of years ago.
Sam Harris reminds us, that we would not look lightly at the human sacrifice planned by Abraham and we
universally condemn slavery that was quite okay also for Jesus.
The morals preached by the western Christian churches have changed considerably after the Age of
Enlightenment. Western state churches have adjusted their views on morality according to the morals that has
been taken into use in societies around them.
If the Bible would still be the real source of our morals, would the church still be sanctioning also the rights of
the slave owner. Our current view of morality is definitely not based on Bible, but our morals are based on the
needs of the society itself.
A moral thing has always been the things that benefit the society and keep it harmonious. Immoral things are
those that disrupt the social fabric. Basic things that are thought to be moral or immoral are very universal in
all societies. Stealing, lying or killing is very universally forbidden as they always affect negatively the
smooth working of the community.
There has been however great variation in what is seen as immoral or moral. These views are in a constant
change in every society and they reflect heavily the current state of development in any society.
The creators of the Jewish faith did however in fact alter the universal social and moral codes they inherited
from their predecessors. They insisted that the age old and very universal moral codes codified in the Ten
Commandments applied only to members of their own faith and others could be treated as badly as you
pleased.
The current world religions that are based on these old Jewish stories have through their history upheld this
doctrine of different morals among the circle of believers and towards outsiders. They have very universally
acted cruelly and violently towards those who don t share same faith or those even worse offenders who
deviate from the one and only true religion.
Sam Harris has pointed out that if you claim that morals were invented by Jews of the old, you are
simultaneously claiming that Zoroastrians, Jain or Buddhist does not have morals.
These eastern religions have in fact one big moral difference in contrast to Islam or Christianity. Followers of
these religions have always had a moral inhibition towards destroying those who don t share the same faith.
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Followers of Islam or Christianity have never had such moral qualms, but through centuries the followers of
these faiths have actively been encouraged to attack those who don t share same religious tradition.
In undeveloped societies the priesthood had a responsibility for making sure that everybody followed the
morals codes in used in that society as the official machinery of the society was very thin or nonexistent. In
the developed Western countries these responsibilities have been wholly transferred to secular authorities a
long time ago.
The source of our current morals is not the church or its teachings in any way. The democratic legislative
process creates legislation and juridical system sees to it that it is obeyed. This legislation of course reflects
the moral code that is applied in the society at large and those morals have not been derived from any
religions for a long time now.
We in the Western Europe are in a extremely happy situation where our current morals are in fact derived
from the real and rational needs of the society around us and not from same old books.
These morals are also changing with the changing needs of the society. This happy situation could arise when
the secular power of the western churches was eroded beginning in the late 1800: s.
Sam Harris has rightly pointed out that there is no more criminality in the almost atheistic countries of the
Northern Europe than there is in the on the surface very Christian Southern European countries.
In fact the situation is often reversed, as our extremely secular northern welfare states create economic
situation where need to support oneself with crime is diminished.
Richard Dawkins for his part has pointed out that a situation where only the fear of punishment after death
prevents a human being from acting badly is in fact morally corrupt.
In conclusion it must be stressed that the founders of the new monotheistic religions did not in any way invent
morality and did not even create a new set of morals.
They inherited those morals from their predecessors who had an quite identical set of morals, as no society
cannot function without ground rules that tell which actions are approved and which are not.
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What is the Bible?
We know for certain that the Christian Bible is made up from two completely separate parts. The older part
consists of mostly 3000-4000 year old writings that are a compilation of old stories told and gathered by a
small Semitic nation that was living in the Near East in that time. There is great variety of texts that include
parables, poems, visions and various kinds of bed-time stories.
This older part of the Bible includes also a great deal of originally orally transmitted history of this small and
historically quite insignificant nation which is of a very doubtful authenticity as all orally transmitted tradition
and history always is. There is also a fictional story about the creation of the universe that had a vide
circulation in the Near East of that time.
The Bible that is in use in Christian world includes also a much newer part that is in fact not connected to the
older book. That newer part of Christian Bible tells the story of a preacher that lived roughly 2000 years ago
in the same area that the older book depicts.
Two of the world religions that think that Bible is a holy book haven t in fact taken this newer part to be apart of their own Bible which for them consists of only the older part.
This all is undeniable fact; the Bible is a historical fact. It is a collection of literary tradition of a small Near
East tribe. It is the base for a religion that was formed among that nation that was for a long time dispersed
around the world and without a country of its own.
The followers of a preacher that was transforming the older religion 2000 years ago have also taken these
older texts to be a basis of their own but much newer religion. That happened notwithstanding the fact that
followers of this new religion have often viewed followers of this older religion with contempt and even
hatred.
The big problem is that many people think that this book was not written by human beings at all, but was
written or transmitted to humans by God of their religion himself.
They are not surprised by the fact, that this God is as a writer very different in different parts of this book and
even frequently contradicts himself.
Many followers of these religions think that they can find the Final Truth from this book that was written in
an undeveloped and to q great degree illiterate semi-nomadic society several thousand years ago. They think
that teachings of this old book could be applied to a society that has evolved to be a fast-moving and complex
industrial network of nations.
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There are several things that help in upholding this strange belief. The vague and hard to decipher texts of the
Bible can often be interpreted to mean whatever the interpreter wants himself them to mean. It is a given fact,
that many of these texts have been used to support quite opposing notions during centuries.
The odd technical terms of an long-gone archaic world and the many translation errors have added
considerably to the vagueness of these texts, but have also added a quite mystical tone to these often in fact
very banal texts.
The basic human nature has of course been the same for tens of thousands of years and therefore we instantlyrecognize many characters appearing in these stories. We can also appreciate the fact how little the literary
expression has changed in few thousand years. Many biblical texts are still quite esthetically worthy examples
of good writing.
Unfortunately the world this old book describes is quite different from ours. Humanity has evolved in almost
every way since those days. Especially the morals used our societies are quite different than those days of
almost total ignorance.
The cruel and bloody Biblical world with its blood honors, human sacrifices and complete lack of respect for
people with different ethnic background is only a distant memory that has been surpassed in the western world
a very long time ago.
Principal problem is that the long gone values of this cruel semi-nomadic world are dragged to light of day
every time the Bible is used as a reference point for decisions in a modern society, as Sam Harris so finely
points out in his books.
People using Bible as a basis for their thinking are in fact dragging societies back to a time when a man s life
was worth nothing if he was from a wrong tribe and people could be killed just drawing water an wrong day
of the week as the Old Testament tells us.
by jaskaw @ 25.12.2007 - 20:02:43
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Feedback for Post "What is the Bible?"
marcelo [Visitor]
19.08.2009 @ 15:35
Could you recommend me a list of top5 books explaining why the bible is not the word of God. (for an
ex-fundamentalist christian)Please email me the answer if you can!
| Show subcomments
jaskaw pro
http://www.beinghuman.blogs.fi
22.08.2009 @ 22:30
This is a compilation of collected bits from Wikipedia on Biblical criticism, hope this helps a bit.
Modern biblical criticism begins with the 17th century philosophers and theologians - Thomas Hobbes,
Benedict Spinoza, Richard Simon and others - who began to ask questions about the origin of the biblical text,
especially the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,and Deuteronomy). They asked specifically who had written these books: according to tradition their author
was Moses, but these critics found contradictions and inconsistencies in the text that, they claimed, made
Mosaic authorship improbable.
Thomas L. Thompson, a leading minimalist scholar has written: "There is no evidence of a United Monarchy,
no evidence of a capital in Jerusalem or of any coherent, unified political force that dominated western
Palestine, let alone an empire of the size the legends describe. We do not have evidence for the existence of
kings named Saul, David or Solomon; nor do we have evidence for any temple at Jerusalem in this early
period. What we do know of Israel and Judah of the tenth century does not allow us to interpret this lack of
evidence as a gap in our knowledge and information about the past, a result merely of the accidental nature of
archeology. There is neither room nor context, no artifact or archive that points to such historical realities in
Palestine's tenth century. One cannot speak historically of a state without a population. Nor can one speak of a
capital without a town. Stories are not enough."
There are no contemporary independent documents other than the claimed accounts of the Books of Samuel,
which clearly shows too many anachronisms to have been a contemporary account. For example there is
mention of coined money (1 Samuel 13:21), late armor (1 Samuel 17-4-7, 38-39; 25:13), use of camels (1
Samuel 30:17) and cavalry (as distinct from chariotry) (1 Samuel 13:5, 2 Samuel 1:6), iron picks and axes (as
though they were common, 2 Samuel 12:31), sophisticated siege techniques (2 Samuel 20:15), there is a
gargantuan troop (2 Samuel 17:1), a battle with 20,000 casualties (2 Samuel 18:7), and refer to Kushite
paramilitary and servants, clearly giving evidence of a date in which Kushites were common, after the 26th
Dynasty of Egypt, the period of the last quarter of the 8th century BCE
Biblical minimalists generally hold that the Bible is principally a theological and apologetic work, and all
stories within it are of an aetiological character. The early stories are held to have a historical basis that was
reconstructed centuries later, and the stories possess at most only a few tiny fragments of genuine historical
memorywhich by their definition are only those points which are supported by archaeological discoveries.
In this view, all of the stories about the Biblical patriarchs are fictional, and the patriarchs mere legendary
eponyms to describe later historical realities. Further, Biblical minimalists hold that the twelve tribes of Israel
were a later construction, the stories of King David and King Saul were modeled upon later Irano-Hellenistic
examples, and that there is no archaeological evidence that the united kingdom of Israel, which the Bible says
that David and Solomon ruled over an empire from the Euphrates to Eilath, ever existed.
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In published books, one of the early advocates of the current school of thought known as Biblical minimalism
is Giovanni Garbini, Storia e ideologia nell'Israele antico (1986), translated into English as History and
Ideology in Ancient Israel (1988). In his footsteps followed Thomas L. Thompson with his lengthy Early
History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources (1992) and, building explicitly on
Thompson's book, P. R. Davies' shorter work, In Search of 'Ancient Israel' (1992). In the latter, Davies finds
historical Israel only in archaeological remains, Biblical Israel only in Scripture, and recent reconstructions of
"ancient Israel" are an unacceptable amalgam of the two. Thompson and Davies see the entire Hebrew Bible
(Old Testament) as the imaginative creation of a small community of Jews at Jerusalem during the period
which the Bible assigns to after the return from the Babylonian exile, from 539 BCE onward. Niels PeterLemche, Thompson's fellow faculty member at the University of Copenhagen, also followed with several
titles that show Thompson's influence, including The Israelites in history and tradition (1998). The presence of
both Thompson and Lemche at the same institution has led to the use of the term "Copenhagen school".
In 2001, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman published the book The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology's
New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts which advocated a view midway toward
Biblical minimalism and caused an uproar among many conservatives.
Jennifer Wallace describes archaeologist Israel Finkelstein's view in her article Shifting Ground in the Holy
Land, appearing in Smithsonian Magazine, May 2006:
"He [Finkelstein] cites the fact now accepted by most archaeologists that many of the cities Joshua is
supposed to have sacked in the late 13th century B.C. had ceased to exist by that time. Hazor was destroyed inthe middle of that century, Ai was abandoned before 2000 B.C. Even Jericho, where Joshua is said to have
brought the walls tumbling down by circling the city seven times with blaring trumpets, was destroyed in
1500 B.C. Now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Jericho site consists of crumbling pits and
trenches that testify to a century of fruitless digging."
The seminal figure in New Testament criticism was Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), who applied to
it the methodology of Greek and Latin textual studies and became convinced that very little of what it said
could be accepted as incontrovertibly true.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has had a major effect undermining some of the uniqueness of the
early message of the Jesus movement, through showing that 1st century Judaism was in fact far more diverse
than a reading of Josephus suggests. For example the expectation of the coming messiah, the beatitudes of the
Sermon on the Mount and much else of the early Christian movement are found to have existed within
apocalyptic Judaism of the period. This has had the effect of centering early Christianity much more within its
Jewish roots than was previously the case. It is now recognised that Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity are
only two of the many strands which survived the Jewish revolt of 66 to 70 CE.
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Christmas without Jesus
My wife and I have both been atheists from the early teens, but anybody visiting us in the Christmas time
would hardly notice any difference. Christmas tree is there, the traditional Finnish Christmas dishes are
cooking in the oven and the Christmas carols are playing in full blast.
And why not, as everybody with at least a rudimentary knowledge of history knows that Christmas has really
nothing to do with the Christian beliefs.
Christmas or Yule as the feast was originally called was a big event for the pagan Germanic nations long
before they were converted to Christianity.
Also the Romans had a big feast celebrating the Sol Invictus or the unconquerable sun on just on the same
days of December. The shortest day of the year was and is inevitably a great reason for a feast for all thenations living in the northern parts of Europe.
Christians realized soon that could not compete with these age old traditions as following the yearly ultimate
stages of sun is a extremely natural reason for having a feast.
They gave up suppressing these pagan festivities and instead created a convenient myth that claimed that the
alleged founder of their religion was born on that very day.
The creation of this new myth was done centuries after the formation of the church. The new story did
because of its convenience spread like wildfire throughout the Christian world.
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Nowadays you would hard pressed to find a Christian that did not genuinely believe that a boy named Jesus
was born on that very day of the year. This is a fact of life, even there is not a shred of evidence to support any
such claims, but lack of evidence has never been a hindrance in the matters of faith
Christmas has since developed to be a feast that celebrates the closeness of the Family and the spirit of giving.
At the same time its real religious connections have became almost nonexistent in most families in developed
Western world.
The main function of Christmas is to celebrate the family ties and to give an opportunity to cease all normalactivities. Because of this ceasefire of activity it is possible to find time to search for the inner peace and
harmony as there are no strict schedules or outside places to go.
Many people have a misconception that these feelings of inner peace and harmony must somehow be
connected to a religion, even though religion is not needed in any way in attaining these things.
The main thing in Christmas for many is the rare opportunity of the family to come together in a mood of
joyful feasting. This feeling of togetherness does however not need to have any religious connections
whatsoever.
I don t think that non-religio
