The unification of church and state

The Swedish minister for education Jan Björklund and the Ministry of Education and Research (Utbildningsdepartementet) have recently, in a fit of lunacy, decided to oppose the suggested curriculum for religious studies in Swedish public schools. The new curriculum as suggested by the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) suggested a modernization, in that it would present all major world religions on an equal footing. This didn't go over so well with Björklund, who argues that Sweden is a predominantly Christian nation and thus the religious studies should be biased toward Christianity. Such utter nonsense and stupidity.

For your information, Björklund, the majority of Swedes consider themselves atheist or agnostic today. The religious apologists are becoming a minority (albeit at a slowing pace as of lately), which has to be seen as a slow but steady victory for reason and science. The fact that the majority of religious people in the nation belong to a certain religion shouldn't in the slightest affect the way we teach religion in schools, since the state definitely should remain agnostic in matters of what religion is "right". If we applied the same sort of thinking (catering to the majority) to other topics in Swedish schools, socialism would be the big focus in social studies and math wouldn't really be taught at all. Reality is not a democracy, and public opinion in matters of how the world works doesn't affect the way it actually works.

For the record, I would like to state that even though I am a pretty zealous atheist I do see the value of religious studies in schools. Maybe more so than some religious people do. The study of religion is a very important part of understanding the human condition and gaining better understanding of other cultures. So we should definitely be teaching children about religion, but no religion should be presented as the more interesting one. They're all equally interesting, and all equally deluded.

Finally, a big fuck you to Jan Björklund for taking a step backwards in terms of separating church and state, and betraying the supposed ideology your party once used to stand for. Today, I am ashamed to admit I voted (in part) for what I thought was a liberal party. I see now that I was wrong. And I'm also increasingly more ashamed to be Swedish, with an openly racist party in the parliament, and conservative ideas such as this one getting support. Time to pack up and leave?

Reverse science

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/vetenskap/gudomligt-ingripande-far-vetenskaplig-forklaring-1.1175282

This article, published today in a major Swedish newspaper, reports that a possible scientific explanation has been found for the parting of the red sea event from the bible. This is a horrific example of science being used in reverse, where you start with a conclusion and then work your way backwards to find evidence that will support that conclusion (conveniently ignoring evidence pointing the other way). This is not how the scientific method should be used. When examining claims such as this one, it would probably be a better idea to start by first trying to figure out whether or not the event actually took place.

This does nothing to support the claim that the parting of the red sea actually took place, nor does it even begin to explain how the event was in any way an act of god. Hooray for pseudoscience. It really bugs me when faith groups try to present their superstitions as science. Sort of like how racists dress up in suits to gain the support of the public.

The original paper can be found here.

Arrest the pope

Is attempting to arrest the pope a silly publicity stunt? I guess. But in the name of trying to raise awareness it does the job pretty well.

Loving father or sadistic madman?

This morning I spent a while pondering the claims of religious zealots, as I often do, and started to think about the God hypothesis from one of the few perspectives I am able to handle: the programmers perspective. I've created lots of universes using various computer programming languages, but none nearly as sophisticated as the one we find ourselves living in. I then went on to think a bit about the heaven/hell theory, and how it would fit into a universe simulation.

Let's say I'm a designer who has devoted my life to creating a really complex universe simulation. In fact, let's say it's a simulation identical to the universe we live in. I come up with the idea that I want to encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior for the individuals in my simulation. It makes no difference in this thought experiment what kind of standards I want to set for "good" and "bad" behavior.

It is assumed that I am free to intervene in the simulation in any way whenever I please, which seems to be a good fit with the god hypothesis as presented by christians, muslims, jews and other less common denominations of terrestrial faith. Now, let's think about what would be a good way to go about stimulating the kind of behavior that I want to see. To me, an obvious way of encouraging good behavior to spread is to make sure that individuals that behave well will have a greater chance of reproducing (and thus making sure that their genes for good behavior are inherited), and vice versa for bad behavior. This could be accomplished by making "bad" individuals less attractive to their mates and/or simply giving them a shorter lifespan by intervening in various ways. If you give this system a couple of thousand generations, the "good" behavior will spread and bad behavior will recede until eventually, the population in the simulation are almost exclusively by my definition "good". All fine and dandy.

Another option, since I am all-powerful, is simply to alter the conditions for the simulation and make sure that all individuals are born with the traits that I want. This seems more like painting a picture than creating a living universe, though, and we are assuming that that is what I want, a living universe populated by individuals with some sort of free will (or at least an illusion thereof).

Now, what seems to me like a rather wicked way of going about this, would be to instead do the following.

I implant a myth into the folklore of the population, that is spread only by word of mouth. This myth contains information about what I think is good or bad behavior, along with a warning to everyone that engages in bad behavior that they will be punished after death and promises of a reward for those that behave well, a reward that will also be given to them after death. This seems at first glance like something that could also work, and it might well do so. It does however show that I have a rather low sense of empathy for the individuals in the universe I've created, given that I still allow them to be born bad but order them to be good, or else. Doesn't this seem more like a "mad scientist" type of experiment than a "loving father" to you? The individuals have absolutely no way of verifying the claims in the folklore myth, and the faculties for critical thinking that they have been born with will instead tell them that those claims are no more likely to be true than those of the madman wearing the tinfoil hat screaming about alien invasions. And yet, they are expected to believe this without question or be punished for eternity in the afterlife. Why would you want to torture someone after they die? This is nothing short of sadism, and I find it a revolting thought that this is how the creator of the universe would act. If he does, he could at least have the decency to warn us about it.