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The God Delusion, Part 6 – Roots of morality
2007-08-05 09:21:00
In chapter six of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins deals with the roots of morality. There seems to be a major concern amongst religious people that should people become atheists there would no longer be any reason to behave morally. After all, why would anyone behave in a good way if there was no after-life reward, and if there was no hell fire, what would stop people from murder and rape??? On the question, "If there is no God, why be good?" Dawkins writes: Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: 'Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, applepolishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring you


Irrational fear 2: Nuclear power
2007-07-31 18:44:00
Last time I wrote about pesticides and how we are worried to death about 0.01% of the pesticides that we ingest (the synthetic ones) instead of the 99% which seem to be as bad if not worse. Another area which I think is often associated with irrational fear is nuclear power. The word "nuclear" seems to elicit a knee-jerk kind of reaction in many people. Take for instance Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging (NMR for short), a very powerful and quite safe diagnostic method. People were very reluctant to use this method, seemingly only because it had "Nuclear" in the name. In part because of this fear they have now changed the name to Magnetic Resonace Imaging (MRI for short), and the technology has been a major boost to diagnostics as well as to research.The following arguments are to a large extent a reflection on Richard Muller's (see picture below) paper with the title "The witch of Yucca Mountain". I can warmly recommend the article but if you want the same information in video forma


Irrational fear 1: Pesticides
2007-07-19 00:04:00
About three months ago I wrote a post on natural foods and the highly exaggerated danger associated with pesticides. I cited research done by Bruce Ames (see picture), Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UC Berkeley. In this very interesting interview, Bruce Ames gives his view on organic foods. In the following excerpt from this interview Ames explains that the reason why he is against spending more resources on natural foods is not that it contains more carcinogens but rather that the production and in consequence also the products is more expensive. More expensive fruits and vegetables means less consumption which will result in more cancers:Ames: Yes. I'm much more interested in preventing cancer. Then we have to get out to the public what's important. If you tell them about trivia all the time, they get completely confused, and it's counterproductive. I just think all this business of organic food is nonsense basically. We should be eating more fruits and vegeta


The God Delusion, Part 4, Why there is almost certainly no God
2007-07-04 10:29:00
I am not the only blogger who is discussing The God Delusion. If you want a view that is really different from mine you can go to the Apologetics homepage where you will find comprehensive criticism of Richard Dawkins latest book. Deepak Chopra whom I recently criticized for his abuse of quantum physics also taken the challenge of trying to break the arguments put forth in The God Delusion. Needless to say I don't think that the Apologetics or Chopra are able to break the very strong message in the God delusion, but that should be up to you readers to decide. After having met the many arguments or proofs for God, one by one, in chapter four Richard Dawkins goes on to describe not only why we do not need a God to describe our world but also why such a God in fact is quite implausible. He starts out by explaining why the alternative to a creator God, Charles Darwin's (see picture) Theory of Evolution, is not, as many people tend to think, the same as blind chance. It is really quite we


The God Delusion, Part 3 – Arguments for God’s existence
2007-07-01 22:15:00
In the third chapter of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins meets all the most famous arguments that theologians through time have put forth to validate their belief in God. On the first few pages Dawkins goes through Thomas Aquinas (see picture) five proofs of God. The first three are essentially the same and all says that something cannot be created from nothing, ergo God. The response here is simply that God is also something and therefore, according to the logics, cannot come from nothing so this is not really a solution. Dawkins also finds space to cite what I think was a funny little paradox that Karen Owens once posted. Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change His future mind? An omniscient God must know what will happen in the future, including what he will, himself, do. If the entire future is already spelled out, then it should be pretty hard to change your mind right? Aquinas also gave the argument from degree which is not really an argument


The God Delusion, Part 2
2007-06-29 16:39:00
In the second chapter of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins defines the concepts that he will later use throughout his book. Concepts such as religion, God, and faith will be defined in quite diverse ways depending on who you ask. I have met many people who claim that science, like religion, is just another form of faith. However, there is an important difference that is always overlooked by people making such claims, namely that scientific theories will change if evidence requires it to. Yes, yes, there is often a lag due to traditions, politics, and economics, but the scientific community did eventually accept that the earth was round, that the earth is about 5 billion years old and that the earth is not the center of the Universe etc. What is faith? Dawkins puts it well in The Selfish Gene: "But that, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe somethingâ€â€it doesn't matter whatâ€â€in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting


Deepak Chopra, “quantum", and Ig Nobel prizes
2007-06-21 19:45:00
For all science fans out there who have not heard about the Ig Nobel prizes yet, I hereby order you to go and buy the book: The Ig Nobel Prizes: The Annals of Improbable Research! The Ig Nobel prizes are dealt out annually at Harvard University, for indisputably ingenious research. Forget stem cells and neutrinos, and instead read about how pigeons have been trained to discriminate between paintings by Picasso and Monet, how scientist have created a computer program that detects when your cat walks on your keyboard, the optimal way of dunking your biscuit, or about solid evidence for the already well known fact that if you drop your sandwich it will fall with the butter side down! One man who has been honored with an Ig Nobel Prize is my great idol, Deepak Chopra. The official statement said the following: "Deepak Chopra of the Chopra center for well being, La Jolla, California, for his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic


Other Blogs
2007-06-20 19:52:00
As an inspiration for my Blog I often read other blogs. Even though I would like everyone to read my blog more than anyone elses' I feel obligated to admit that there are a lot of good blogs out there. I thought I would list a few of them here. I want to apologize in advance to my English speaking readers for the fact that many of the blogs that I read are in Swedish. There are many blogs out there that, like my own, discusses atheism, religion, and evolution. One excellent, recently born blog is Allotetraploid. The author of this blog not only lives in the same city as I, he is also interested in the exact same things, religion, psychology and biology. I look forward to taking a beer with him someday J. I am a member of the Swedish organization Humanisterna, and it is good news that Felicia Giljam, the organizer of Humanisternas youth group has once again, after a long pause, started posting on her Blog Furiku. The day before yesterday I received a comment on my post from another blo


The God Delusion Part 1
2007-06-17 10:44:00
My intention with this short series of blog posts is to discuss Richard Dawkins latest book The God Delusion (see picture). I think that The God Delusion is a good book, and I think that it is a book that should be read, especially if you are interested in science and religion and the relation between the two. You can accuse Richard Dawkins of a lot of things, but I have never seen anyone claiming that he is a bad writer. Indeed his clear and lucid style is some of the best I have ever read. If that is not reason enough for you, then consider the impact that this book has already had. Go to YouTube and search for Dawkins and you will see that he has been invited to every imaginable talk show to discuss his latest work. Here, for example, you will find a heated discussion with the renowned Bill O'Reily (not a very pleasant man if you ask me). I would not claim that The God Delusion is a very original book. Most of the arguments and discussions in the book have appeared elsewhere befor


American’s belief in God, Heaven, The Devil, and Hell
2007-06-14 16:39:00
A few days ago I wrote about a Gallup poll which asked about the American peoples' belief in the theory of evolution. On today's daily briefing yet another interesting poll was presented. This time Gallup had asked whether people believe in God as well as other deities. Depending on how the question was phrased 86-76% of the American people say that they believe in God (you get the lower figure if you distinguish between God and "A universal spirit". A perhaps more interesting result appeared when people were asked whether they believe in God, Heaven, Angles, the Devil, and Hell. You can see the results of this question in the figure above. Apparently, more people believe in Heaven than in Hell. I would like to ask any Christians out there how this result can be explained. If good people go to Heaven when they die, shouldn't bad people (or atheists like my self) logically go to hell? How can you believe in one and not the other? Don't get me wrong though, I think it is good that pe


Americans’ belief in evolution
2007-06-13 10:54:00
I would very much like to recommend Gallups daily briefings which presents, in video format, interesting data from Gallup polls on a daily basis. Today for example, Gallup presents the latest figures on the 2008 presidential election. They ask, "who would you vote for today, Clinton or Gulliani (the two front runners for either party).In yesterdays briefing Gallup presented a survey probing about Americans' belief in the theory of evolution. Apparently, three of the republican presidential candidates claimed not to believe in evolution (none of the front runners thank God). I am almost hoping that they said so only because of their voters. An unbelievable 48% of the Americans' who were asked in this survey said that they did not believe in evolution. Why do some people not believe in the extremely well established theory of evolution? When you ask those who do not believe in evolution a large majority says that evolution contradicts their religious beliefs. In other words they chose


Pragmatism
2007-06-11 10:33:00
If you would press me I would have to admit to being a pragmatic. It is, if you will, my preferred philosophy of science. Pragmatism in a nutshell simply says that if a theory is good at predicting the world as we perceive it and if it is useful in the sense that it allows us to create new technologies, then we will accept that theory and use it as if it was true. Sometimes pragmatic theories are false even though they are pragmatic. Take Newtonian physics for example. Newton's laws can explain an almost limitless amount of experimental observations. The only problem is that it is false. Experiments which are designed so that one outcome would support Newton's theory and the other outcome Einstein's theory shows clearly that the latter set of laws provide you with the more accurate predictions. Yet, because they are so practical, we still use Newton's much less confusing laws for a lot of approximations. So in this case we say that because Newton's laws works really well for almo


The Mating Act of a Ladybird
2007-06-06 01:03:00
To describe the copulative behavior of a ladybird, or a coccinellidae as it is called among scientists, is actually quite hard due to the fact that the category contains at least 5000 different species (I wonder if they can tell the difference between us and say a gorilla). The account that I will give here will no doubt be oversimplified and perhaps only applies to a fraction of the 5000 different species, but it is nevertheless a fascinating type behavior.So imagine that you are a female ladybird. Because you are already four days old you feel it is really about time that you get a hold of yourself and cease to live your life in an aimless fashion. You feel that it is time to get pregnant. While wandering about on your green plant reflecting on where your life has gone you suddenly look up and see an attractive male about 2 cm ahead (which is about how far a ladybird can see). You feel really flattered when this handsome stud mounts you, but then, when he is just about to insert his


A few interesting facts from "Molecular biology of the cell"
2006-11-10 23:30:00
Here follows a few of the astonishing facts that you will learn if you read "Molecular Biology of the Cell" by Alberts et. al.Did you know that- During cell division your DNA is replicated at a speed of 1million nucleotide base pairs per second, and yet a mistake only occurs one time for every 1billion base pairs!- Each nucleus in your body contains aproximately 2 meters of DNA in a nucleus that is six micrometers in diameter, this is equivalent to packing 40 kilometers of fine thread into a tennisball!- All the ATP in our body (about one billion molecules) is used and recycled every 1-2 minutes. That means that we use and recycle 10000000 molecules of ATP per second!- A extension of a grove in an enzyme by one nanometer can reduce its efficiency in carrying out its reaction by more than a thousand fold!


Why we need the theory of evolution to explain HIV
2006-11-11 00:04:00
If you are wondering why the HIV virus unlike other viruses kills you and if you have not accepted the catholic explanation that all Africans who get aids are sinners and deserved it you might want to continue reading.The reason that our otherwise extremely impressive immune system is not able to cope with the HIV virus in the long run, is that the virus has a very high mutation and proliferation rate. Following any type of virus infection, the number of viruses in your body will go up exponentially, however, once your immune system is able to recognize the virus it will mobilize its troops (the white blood cells) and destroy the invader.The same thing happens when someone is infected with HIV, first the number of viruses go up, then down. However, because of its rapid mutation rate, some of the HIV viruses will change so much that the immune system no longer recognize the virus. This new virus, which has evolved by natural selection will proliferate. Our immune system will soon be abl
Läs mer: evolution

Experimental evidence of evolution
2006-11-11 10:36:00
For those who say that the theory of evolution is a belief just like intelligent design is a belief, here is another piece of evidence for you. The two species shown to the left are involved in a "red queen" antagonistic co-evolution race. The wasp feeds on the larvae of the house fly, and because wasps that eat more larvae are more likely to survive and have offspring, the population as a whole become more and more efficient predators. The fly on the other hand must develop defenses against these wasps. Those larvae that are unable to defend themselves against the predator will die and therefore cannot contribute any genes to the next generation. In sum while the wasps become more and more efficient killers, the flies get better at protecting themselves, thus the relative frequencies remain stable.What happens though if you, for each new generation, take out, say all the surviving flies, that is, all the flies that were able to survive the attacks from the wasps, and instead introduce


Ethics of an atheist
2006-11-12 10:27:00
One common misconcepetion about atheists is that they do not care about anything, after all, why would anyone want to be good unless they are rewarded with a place in heaven?, and what would stop someone who do not fear the eternal fire in hell from rape and murder?I think statements such as these say more about religious people than it does about atheists. It reveals that the only reason they are acting morally is because of the reward that they believe will be given to them.For me there is really no egoistic reason for behaving morally, it is just something I try to do for its own sake, acting morally is simply good. I think that ethics in the 21st century should not be based on an ancient book of fiction which advocates "turning the other cheek" on one page and stoning to death those who do not share your faith on another page. Rather, I advocate thinking rationally about ethics.I personally subscribe to some form of utilitarianism, meaning that we should try to maximize happiness i


Should we use stem cells?
2006-11-13 17:55:00
"Stem cells fend off lung cancer".I just read a news article with this headline in the journal Science. Apparently, because stem cells are rather similar to cancer cells, the immune system adaptation that occur when you inject stem cells into the lung, will subsequently help the immune system kill cancer cells as well. That is, the immune system treats stem cells as invaders, why they develop a defense against these cells. If the same immune system, on a subsequent occasion, encounters a cancer cell it will, because of the strong resemblance, wrongly "assume" that it is another stem cell and therefore get rid of it. Out of 25 mice that were given stem cells, 20 were able to kill a subsequent cancer. A slightly altered compound increased the cancer survival rate to 100%!!! This should be compared to the 0% survival rate experienced by mice that did not get any compound.Of course, this does not mean that we can cure cancer in humans, at least not yet. Mice for some reason tend to respond


Trofim Lysenko - why we should not mix ideology and science
2006-11-21 20:33:00
What happens when ideology becomes more important than scientifical critical thinking?Trofim Lysenko (see picture), quickly became a very prominent "scientist" in the soviet union following an article printed in Pravda (aka "the truth") about this barefooted peasant who "solved problems". Even though he had little education and was barely literate Lysenko progressed rapidly in the soviet system and it did not take many years before he controlled much of the agricultural policy in the soviet union. Lysenko was a practical man who cared about practical issues rather than theoretical nonsense. When something appealed to Lysenko's intuition there was really no need for rigorous testing, consider for instance his citation "In order to obtain a certain result, you must want to obtain precisely that result; if you want to obtain a certain result you will obtain it". When he had achieved a powerful position in the soviet union Lysenko's intuition became so important that criticzing him was a
Läs mer: science

Benefits of Omega 3 supplements?
2007-06-04 17:15:00
Yesterday a woman from a company that sells Omega 3 fatty acid (see picture) capsules called me up and gave me a nice cheap offer that I would later accept. I have been taking Omega 3 supplement in different periods in my life and think I have experienced some sight improvement in my overall health. Whether this experience is due to the Omega 3 fatty acids, the placebo effect or just me fooling myself into believing that they do something to me, I don't know and I would certainly not make any strong claims about their efficacy based on what I have felt. I have reasoned that they are probably not harmful, I don't eat a lot of fish, and well they might be good for you, so I will try it.Just for the fun of it I asked the woman how omega3 could help me. I was, I must admit, astonished by the list she provided me with. Here are some of her suggestions: "It stabilizes mood", "It makes you sleep better", "I reduces cholesterol", "I reduces the risk of dying from heart problems", "it brings


The Sokal Affair
2007-05-31 23:44:00
Following up on my previous post "Postmodern writings", I thought I would write a few words about the Sokal affair. Everyone who knows me well enough must be very tired of my endless references to the Sokal affair, but I think it is a big deal, and in my opinion it has dire implications for those who respect postmodernism. So what is it all about? In 1996 Alan Sokal, a physicist then working at New York University who was skeptical towards the incomprehensible and to him seemingly meaningless postmodern literature, decided to test his hypothesis that these people will publish anything as long as it sound right"¦ How did he test this? Sokal wrote an article called Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, an article which anyone with some knowledge on physics would see was rubbish. Even I, with a rather limited education in physics, would get suspicious when I see someone suggesting that quantum gravity has progressive political implicatio


Postmodern Writings
2007-05-29 21:56:00
When I was in high school I was not always the best student. However, I have always been a pretty good writer and using this skill I have managed to pass more or less every exam. It seems to me that people have some type of mechanism, learned or innate, that says "if something sounds real smart and intelligent then it probably is, and if you don't understand it then it is probably because the person who wrote it is really really smart". Throughout high school and even to some extent at University I have, consciously or unconsciously, taken advantage of this mechanism to cover up gaps in my knowledge. Whenever I have had nothing intelligent to say I have just written something that sounds good but doesn't really mean anything.However, over time I have developed a growing distaste for writings which conceal whatever ideas the text is meant to inform us about. Perhaps because of my background I get really suspicious about texts which seem unnecessarily complex. Is this just nonsense th


Our debt to research animals...
2006-11-26 22:06:00
If you google for "animal research" and then switch to the pictures section you will see many very upsetting pictures depicting animals that have been used in research. I first want to point out that these pictures are not representative of the way it looks in most laboratories. Secondly, the animals in the pictures may not have suffered to anywhere near the extent that people uploading these pictures want to make you believe.I do not think that being a laboratory animal is a great life for an animal, however, nor do I think that it is the worst fate an animal can suffer. I would personally much rather be a laboratory rat than a cow or a chicken that is slaughtered to become food for us. There are a number of reasons why animal research is not as bad as some people want us to believe. First of all, only in a minority of all the conducted experiments do the animals experience any pain, and when they do they are nearly always given anesthetics (one exception to this is when pain is the r


South Africa finally starting to realize what AIDS is"¦
2006-12-15 14:33:00
Each time I have read about AIDS policies in South Africa I have been amazed. South Africa is, as far as I know, a relatively developed country if you compare it to other nations in the same area, yet somehow they have managed to avoid reading about AIDS research for at least a decennium. Only a few years ago president Mbeki (picture) questioned whether HIV and AIDS were related(!). Since then his unbelievable ignorance has generated headlines on a regular basis. On one of his particularly bright moment Mbeki said that he did not know anyone who had died in AIDS. Not long before he uttered these words his own press secretary had succumbed to the disease, not to mention the 600 people who die from AIDS in South Africa every single day! The climax happened in august this year when South African representatives visited the international AIDS conference, proudly exhibiting their best cures against the disease, such as beets and garlic. They were severely ridiculed because of this, and a


Universal human behaviors
2006-12-29 13:57:00
There is a trend amongst scholars in sociology and gender sciences to argue that more or less everything is social constructions. Relationships and roles in the society are constructed by humans in our conversations. Hence, they argue, there are almost no universal behaviors. Anthropologists writing about strange habits in different societies are often cited to show that there is great variability between people living in different places, and indeed there is. However, it is often overlooked that there are many similarities between different cultures as well. I argue that even though there are many differences between people in different societies that stand out, there are also many, more fundamental, behaviors which do not vary between different cultures. These behaviors seem so natural to us that we barely notice them...Take beauty for instance. Is it true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Research suggests not! People from cultures all around the globe agree on what faces a


Evolution is NOT blind chance
2007-01-11 11:06:00
At one point in Woody Allen´s excellent movie Match Point, the main characters, all coming from the British upper class, are having a conversation about the meaning of life. Chris Wilton (see picture) played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, comments that scientists are becoming more and more certain that there is no meaning to life, that we are all here by blind chance (after which the other in the company desperately tries to change the subject. I do not know whether this is what Woody Allen believes, a fast google search suggested that he was an atheist so maybe he is just having Chris say this because it is something people often think. In any case, this is something you hear again and again, and it is quite tedious to be frank. It is also a cause of concern if you ask me. If people hear that evolution is the same as blind chance when they go to the cinema, have a chat at the pub or turn on the telly, then they might start to believe that it is in fact so, even though it is not.(Warning, s
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Get smart! Two great resources for people with "learning hunger"
2007-01-16 18:15:00
Except for a weak period that I had during my teens I have always been a very curious person who loves learning. However, never before have I learned at a rate that is comparable to my current learning pace. What is this all about? I will tell you!About two months ago I discovered two fantastic knowledge resources and since then I have been listening or watching lectures when I am on the bus, taking a walk, doing the dishes, cooking, running, playing soccer etc (OK, that last one was not true, but its close). I really really recommend both of these websites to anyone who likes to learn things.The two sources are:1. Berkeley webcast2. The Teaching CompanyThe first one is University of California, Berkeley's webcast (see picture). Here you can watch or listen to lectures in many different field ranging from biology, physics and chemistry, to philosophy economics and non-violence. I am currently watching "physics for future presidents", which is a great great great (I don´t know how els
Läs mer: smart

The difference between science, faith and religion
2007-01-21 12:59:00
I am sure everyone who have been reading this blog occasionally will know by now that I am a science freak. I think that science is the way to gain knowledge. Many people say that science is narrow minded, that believing in science will confine the scope of our knowledge, but I disagree. Science, for me, is an open minded and modest approach when it comes to discover new things. Science is based on evidence. However, evidence is not necessarily gathered in a laboratory by people in white lab coats, evidence can be all sorts of things. As defined by oxford concise dictionary, evidence is "the available facts, circumstances, etc. supporting or otherwise a belief, proposition, etc., or indicating whether or not a thing is true or valid".So what does not count as evidence you might wonder. My own answer to this, which I have not thought so much about, is things that can just as well be explained by chance. Often, when I discuss homeopathic medicine or other alternative approaches to medici
Läs mer: religion
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