The Antichristian Phenomenon

As a bit of a closet atheist when it comes to one segment of my family, religious discussions between my father and I can be…awkward, at best. After all, he’s a Catholic, raised me to be Catholic, and assumes that despite our differing political beliefs that I still am. Usually this isn’t a problem, but alas, the recent controversy around the National Day of Prayer, every May in America, inevitably brought it up. You’ve all heard the arguments, I needn’t re-hash them for you. What was disconcerting to me was to hear the statement that non-Christians, specifically atheists, should leave the country. I’ve heard the sentiment many a time online, on television, on the radio, etc…hearing it from a parent is another experience. As most atheists are aware, that sort of experience is quite unpleasant, and a little terrifying.

Because of it, I wanted to talk about the sort of mentality that lead to the statement and why it, and Christianity as a whole, should concern Americans more than Islam. While this website isn’t specific to America at all, the world is nevertheless affected by America’s policies—for better or for (in my opinion) much, much worse. Compared to other developed Christian countries, the United States is obsessed with it’s religion. We’re a diverse country, but the majority group—that is, those who practice Christianity—feel that the country “belongs to them”. And they are willing to enforce that belief. That, ladies and gentlemen, makes Christianity a greater threat to “our freedom” than Islam ever was.

Now, I won’t pretend America is the beautiful shining “land of the free” it’s made out to be. We all know better.

The mindset, it’s a rather common one in America and, I’m sure, in much of the Christian world. I imagine it’s a fascinating thing to feel that an entire country and it’s history, laws, and resources belong to you. While as a white, able-bodied person I am privileged, it is one thing to be in a privileged group and another to feel that said group is entitled to something as, for example, white supremacist groups feel. And Christian nationalism is the religious and cultural equivalent of white supremacy, and the two are intimately entwined.

Now: a quick bit of sidetracking. If you don’t care about semantics, just skip this paragraph. To build on ACP’s previous post—What is religion?—I will give my own definition of religion. A definition is possible, as most can agree on which things are religions and which are not, except for when an ulterior motive is involved. One of the problems with definition is that while a religion often acts as a social group, it is possible to adopt the rules and even partially the culture of a religion yet be disconnected from the group. Adding to the problem is that religions rarely follow their own rules, are too organic to be considered organizations (rather, organizations exist within a religion, and religions exist outside of organization). The cultural and often racial aspects of religion are too strong to deny—race and culture go hand in hand, and religions change entirely when adopted by new cultural groups. A religion is looser than an organization and tighter than simply being “like-minded”—it is a loose group of people who share specific beliefs concerning the supernatural, from which extends a shared culture and morality as well as different interpretations of the beliefs, which may be enforced by organizations representing the religion. Anyway, that’s  the definition I’ll be using—mostly I just discussed it because I’d like to encourage the definition to be talked about.

Onwards:

The danger of Christianity in America is twofold. First, it is a negative influence on decisions which affect the entire country and, two, Christian nationalism threatens to turn the country into more of a theocracy than it already is, at the cost of non-Christians in America and around the world. Islam only poses a true threat to freedom in the countries where it has legal clout—for the same reasons Christianity is dangerous in Christian countries. Outside of Islamic governments, Islam poses little threat to the rights of Americans and others. That sounds rather insane to say, but consider that Islam’s only threat to America lies in its few radical extremists’ ability to cause fear by taking lives. Yet the actual number of lives they take is small compared to even the seasonal flu.

To the average American, even the Christian ones who are only moderate or Christian in name, Christianity poses a greater threat. The reason is that as a Christian-controlled government with significant support from certain politically inclined sects, America’s policies are not being decided on facts and reason but on faith, which can fit any preconceived viewpoint. It’s not just an accident of human nature—it’s what Christian nationalists want.

Like extremist Muslims, the Christian establishment (as well as the other Judeo-Christian religions) uses terrorism to enforce it’s morality. Where radical Islamists use direct violence and threats of direct violence, Christian organizations use other methods to induce fear (the threat of Hell, for example). Not a big deal, right, after all, so does every political group. There are a few problems, however. Unlike white supremacy groups and specific political parties, Christianity is not a fringe political group, nor is it’s pull kept to one side of the political spectrum. Christianity exerts a pull over anyone who proclaims themselves to be a Christian, even if they disagree with the specific message. The fear of Hell can influence any Christian.

And Christians have long since declared war on secular America. As Atheist Revolution recently mentioned, America’s top Republican presidential candidates for 2012 have made it clear there is room only for the Christian god in the nation they plan to run. In the documentary Jesus Camp, Christian fanatics train children to be “soldiers of God” in order to “fix this country”. We’ve all heard the rhetoric—“take this nation back for Christ”. Christians have for years been attempting to force religion back into the classroom, and continue to expect shows of faith from citizens. The sense of Christian entitlement in this country is so strong that non-Christians are often told to simply leave the country if they don’t like it—the presumption being that Christians own the nation. All of this leaves an increasingly small amount of space for an increasingly larger group—that is, those in America who desire secular government. History has shown that formerly powerful groups who have lost their power and feel (justified or not) oppressed lash out legally and violently.

Radical Islamists can frighten Americans who fail to put death tolls into perspective. Their real power lies in their ability to frighten critics of Islam—and that is truly terrible—but the overall effect of censoring criticism of Islam does little to really harm this country and much of the world. If Islamists really wanted to destroy America and Western culture—as we are constantly told—they need only give Christian nationalists more power.

“The thing about religion is that it provides a powerful language through which you can justify any ideology.” —Reeza Aslan, author of God Or No God.

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I have uploaded my thesis about Satanism in black metal on Academia.edu and it will thus be fully viewable for everyone as an online resource. The file conversion didn’t seem to like some format editing in the original version, but it should not distract the reading experience too much. I have changed the file  from .doc (mostly because it felt too public and easy to access and change the content) into .pdf. Now the online version will appear as it does in the original paper.

No one is allowed to reproduce my thesis without my permission. Any attempts to claim authorship and profit out of my thesis will be strictly forbidden.

Abstract for those too lazy to read it on Academia.edu:
Satanism and antichristianity have always had prominent roles in black metal. While most musicians and fans would claim that true evil is organized religion and even more so Christianity, black metal also appears as a new religious movement, making this statement highly paradoxical. One way to understand this is the constant search for an authentic masculine identity, and how the modern consumerist society is perceived to create a social climate that make some groups within the society feel alienated. Such a group includes heterosexual, working class men that made up most of the early black metal scene.
With the help of the anti-aesthetic, which can take such expressions as self-mutilations and in the forms of opinions that it is good for humans to suffer instead of being happy, black metal men attempt to find their True Selves by separating that which they find masculine from the feminine – where Satanism and antichristianity become tools to do this. By idolizing and revering Satan as the perfect man, black metal men have started a war against Christianity to conquer which they think always belonged to them – namely their masculine identity from the on-going “feminization”.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 6, 2010, as a National Day of Prayer.  I call upon the citizens of our Nation to pray, or otherwise give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I invite all people of faith to join me in asking for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection as we meet the challenges before us.”

But Mr. President, my (lack of) faith does not have any equivalent to prayer, I don’t have any God to give thanks to, or ask for guidance or protection. You “call upon” me to do what, then?

Even if we put aside the fact that prayer has not been proven to provide a result more consistent than the randomness that would occur naturally, even if we grant that some people “enrich” their lives with it (without questioning exactly how talking to themselves enriches their lives, of course), and even if we acknowledge the role in the history of the United states played by Christianity… I’m sorry, I mean, “a generic concept of religion without referring to any specific denomination or faith but slightly alluding to Christianity, so as not to blatantly exclude or offend anyone except atheists and agnostics”, then it still begs the question, what about those of us who DON’T pray, for whatever personal reason? Effectively, you’ve just told us to participate in a religious exercise, and no matter how much of a “universal” spin you try to place on it, the fact remains that it is not universal. The fact that it is fundamentally unique to specific spiritual worldviews indicates that the government should keep its hands out, or violate the freedoms of those who do not hold the worldview that includes the exercise.

This fact makes these words incredibly hollow:


Let us rejoice for the blessing of freedom both to believe and to live our beliefs, and for the many other freedoms and opportunities that bring us together as one Nation.

Yes, the blessing of freedom to live our beliefs. That implies that no government official ever tells you what you should be doing in your personal, private, spiritual life. EVER. Well, Mr. President, by issuing your Proclaimation “calling the citizens… to pray”, you are doing just that.

Slightly lost, I arrived at Chapmans Torg and was expecting some gathering or sign to point the way as to where to go. I knew the address, but there was nothing. Eventually I figured out that the entrance in fact was a vegetarian/vegan restaurant, and I saw some of my classmates already sitting inside. We were welcomed by our “lecturer”, whose name I never caught, but he was a pretty short, very considerate Indian man. He reminded me much of my Russian friend in personality and manners. There was a room further inside the restaurant where he had placed some cushions on the floor so we could all sit down. He started by introducing the Hare Krishna movement and the cosmology revolving it. Although I study Social Anthropology as my main field, I know shamefully little about Hinduism and Hare Krishna. For me Hare Krishna is a name only, and I had a loose idea of there being some scandals where group members were involved, but I didn’t know what it was, and I still don’t, and no one ever bothered to ask. Suffice to say, I arrived with a very open mind, although slightly disappointed over that I had mixed up the dates and thought we were originally supposed to visit the local Scientology church instead of Hare Krishna. In a very typical manner, I started to lead the “conversation” with a few others. It turned out to be one of the best spent two hours ever in my life actually, and it made me realize why I am educating myself in the field I am actually doing, and that I would have no problem spending days, months, maybe even years with people so different to me and just learn their ways of living. I have the outmost respect of our “lecturer” that he took the time to answer our questions and explain the movement for free I should add, and to me he seemed like a pretty simple man very satisfied with his life and his religious beliefs. He wasn’t one of the most faithful, as he was just a normal member of the movement, and thus didn’t follow many of the more extreme ascetic values such as fasting, which he said he had tried once but it was too hard for him or refraining from having sex, and I think that presentation worked very well. He could explain the religion from a point of view everyone could understand, and he was really good at explaining, often using different kind of metaphors to get a point across.
Being the person that I am, of course I questioned him many, many times. I sure hope he didn’t find me offensive, and I very much appreciated the time he took with me, especially considering that I know so little about Hare Krishna. Having to attend my grandfather’s funeral last week made me miss out the presentation of the group unfortunately, but now in retrospect it might actually have been the better choice. In Social Anthropology, one of the biggest fears is to trying to fit certain ideas or groups of people into a box either because of lack of understanding or prejudice. I felt this wasn’t the case today, and I really see it as one of the first examples I had at “working in the field”. More or less all studies in Social Anthropology today are done in the forms of fieldwork studies. Other types of studies are possible but generally frowned upon because of the lack of an emic (inside) perspective. Having little to no foreknowledge thus allowed me to be there with without prejudice, and I got to take part of how our “lecturer” viewed the Hare Krishna movement and his journey from warm India to cold Sweden. In a way, having him telling about his religious beliefs and the religion he practices was some kind of lifestory. He grew up in middleclass India, and professed to be some kind of atheist, studying as an engineer at some Indian university. (At this point I also realize how bad it was of me to not take any notes when he was talking! I thought he would actually lecture in the actual sense, so I didn’t think I would need any… Hence the citation marks.) One of his roommates from the UK or Australia had left some tapes (this was in the 80s) and he (our “lecturer”) decided to give them some listens before tossing them away, and it turns out they are records of some Hare Krishna lectures. The tapes intrigued him, and I can recognize my own curiosity in his own, now that I am sitting home at my computer writing down my two hour encounter, because regardless of scandals and mystery, Hare Krishna is a religion that fascinates and captures.

He explained that Hare Krishna worships Krishna, the one god. Krishna is generally referred to as “lord”. He said that Vishnu is a great god as well, if I remember correctly an avatar or aspect of Krishna, but according to some Sanskrit interpretations (there are obviously over 600 of them!), Krishna himself said that he is the creator of everything, as well as the end. One thing which surprised me was that Hare Krishna had a great focus on the individual rather than being holistic, which I didn’t expect considering that it’s a sect (here used to refer a branch of a main religion) of Hinduism, and I know that Hinduism puts a great focus on a holistic cosmology. He explained that Hare Krishna has a holistic view too, but the main goal is to create your own individuality so you can finally meet Krishna as a person. There are thus different kinds of stages that occur in the afterlife where you will either retain your individuality or you won’t. Retaining your individuality was thus greater than becoming a part of Krishna, whereas I had thought it to be the opposite. In this regard Hare Krishna thus sounds very similar to Christianity in the personal relationship you are supposed to have with god, or at least attempt to have. Such activities as prayers (repeating certain phrases constantly for a certain amount of time) and performing yoga are all means to get closer to god or create a communication with god. I also asked our “lecturer” about who the first guru was (prophet/apostle in some kind of sense, although the term “guru” just means “teacher”), since Hare Krishna was started by a guru who taught created the Krishna movement in the West. In Hare Krishna, and other forms of Hinduism, there must be some kind of teacher because humans are imperfect and it is thus impossible for a human to suddenly one day just realize all the great mysteries of god. Here too I notice a similarity with Christianity. Gurus are thus needed to spread the knowledge and messages further to the coming generations. Here I had to ask him who the first guru was, since it’s an interesting question. I actually think they solved the problem pretty well, at least when comparing to Christianity. Our “lecturer” explained that the very first guru was Brahma (sp?), and he taught the humans about Krishna. Of course the disconnection is still there, as Brahma is considered a divine being, even though he has a material body. In such a sense Brahma is in fact very similar to Jesus, who too, was sent to Earth to teach the word of god but at the same time being god in flesh. Now that I am writing about it, I forgot to ask if Hare Krishna consider all other deities to be mere parts of Krishna or whether they are entities of their own, but this is certainly an interesting aspect which should be explored further, although maybe not today. I do however know that there is some dispute among the academics whether Hinduism as an official religion should be considered polytheistic or monotheistic. At least the Brahma solution is better than “being inspired by god” or such nonsense. Even if god inspires us, and there is certainly proof that our beliefs in god at least can, it still doesn’t solve the problem that humans are imperfect and thus everything we do will be imperfect. Our “lecturer” did however seem to believe in some kind of perfect spirituality, where one reaches such a spiritual insight that it can be considered perfect to those who do not understand it. The guru who started the Hare Krishna movement was considered such a person for example. Therefore I suppose that it is logical in such a sense that a being such as Brahma can teach humans to reach such spiritual state of perfection that they too can become gurus.

As the “conversation” continued, it was unavoidable that we would eventually be touching such subjects as women’s rights and how women are treated in India and inside the Hare Krishna movement. It was explained that there have been female gurus, but they were no modern ones that our “lecturer” knew of that existed today, and not within the Hare Krishna movement, but there had been one 400 years ago. He further explained that women were never asked to take upon such a position, but when they wanted to no one stopped them. This was slightly surprising as well considering how patriarchal India is still today, even though it’s changing and has been changing rather rapidly throughout the past years. Within the Catholic Church female priests are forbidden and even in Sweden which is considered one of the most equal countries in the world, some male priests frown upon female priests. The “conversation” then went onto discussing the polygamy versus monogamy issue, and what view the Hare Krishna movement has on taking many wives. Our “lecturer” explained that it’s very uncommon for men to marry more than one woman today, but it happens often in the more rural parts of India, where having many wives might even symbolize a man’s social status. The more wives a man can afford to sustain the higher social status he has. Generally speaking though, no one’s looking down upon a man if he takes more than one wife, but the question is whether he can afford to be married to more than one. Naturally children were brought up after that. Hare Krishna believes that a parent should teach their children to be as good citizens as possible, and this is in fact the only reason why a member of Hare Krishna would have children, and thus didn’t fit too well with me. While I can understand that a member of Hare Krishna may consider their way of life to be the best one, and there are certainly aspects that I don’t mind at least, I do not agree with teaching a child that their way of living would naturally be the best one. However, our “lecturer” also said that it is not a failure for a parent if the child doesn’t follow the way of Krishna but takes a different path, and almost retorted to something like “god’s way is mysterious”. He didn’t express it in such a sense, but that our consciousness together with karma can more or less influence our lives both directly and indirectly. This also includes the religion or lack thereof we may follow.

At this point I had to ask what he thought about other religious beliefs or even making up your own, or what it meant to lead a “pious” life but yet not worship any god. To that he retorted, loosely quoted from memory, “that it’s like a road with many mailboxes, where some never received any mail to pick up”. He thus seemed to believe that some religions (most probably the ones he knew of and which shared similar ideas to his own) have more legitimacy than others. Some religions don’t worship any gods, Shinto being a more well-known example, but on the other hand, is it important if there would be some “answer” on the other side if you aren’t expecting any? Atheism and humanism comes to mind. I wasn’t asking it straight out because I didn’t think of formulating it in such a way, but I was of course thinking of the morality issue that many Christians throw around with in atheist/Christian discussions. I do think that he did believe that people can still lead pious lives though, without actually believing. There was no patronizing or threats such as “…but this will happen when you die!” sort of deal, just a simple answer that if you aren’t expecting anything of the religious or metaphysical nature, then probably nothing will happen. I think this is very interesting because it shows how important it may be for us to actually believe without there being anything to necessarily believe in. The belief itself is somehow more important than the worship, and I do believe it still boils down to what ways that works for each individuals that can help them to their self-empowerment, which I wrote about in a previous article here at the ACP. One of my classmates asked him whether he would’ve picked another religion, would it have been introduced to him in another environment, but she also said that he had answered it already in that he thought that Hare Krishna had all the right answers (that fit with him). But what I disagreed with here is that ultimately he believed that there must be some great divine authority that carries the knowledge over to humanity. We are ourselves unable to form our own answers to our existence. I do not believe in authorities, and people who know me well will probably also know that I like to form my own answers, not be given any. This is very true when it comes to my “spiritual” beliefs as well, as I do not share any ideas that move into the metaphysical and even if metaphysics would be true, I also ultimately believe that metaphysics is merely physics. I also do not share the sentiment that there would be a great divine being that controls all. I suppose that for some people it might give them relief knowing that they are not in control of everything and thus the cause of every action they take, in a way becomes some kind of excuse or crutch to say that “well, at least it wasn’t my fault it happened this way it happened”. I believe I am in control of my own life in that I can directly affect the world around me according the actions I take, or for the actions I choose not to for the matter. The free will versus causality is a tricky question. While I believe in free will in such a sense that I believe that we are free to decide our actions to a certain extent by becoming aware of our options, we are also controlled by causality because we are all part of a causal flow. When I feel hungry I feel hungry because my stomach just sent information to my brain that it’s empty, so my brain generates some signal substances that makes me feel hungry, but I at that moment I also got the option to eat and not eat, or if looking back into a previous moment in time, I could’ve eaten later to avoid becoming hungry, since I can calculate the causal flow that I will become hungry at a certain point. Eating before that point will thus change the causal flow. However, I am digressing; this is about my study visit at the Hare Krishna, not about the problems with Cartesian dualism.

Since I am already on the free will versus causality, Hare Krishna shares some peculiar ideas on the subject matter. First of all, every human being has a consciousness. It is something we can learn to control with increasing spiritual awareness. Our consciousness is thus similar to our normal mental processes and Descartes’ formulation “cogito, ergo sum” comes to mind, in a very literary sense. This is an idea strongly shared within Hare Krishna, and is also reflected in such terms as “civilized animals”. I can either learn to control my consciousness and become closer to god by doing so (read leading an ascetic and pious life) or I can be like an animal and merely act on my instincts. Consciousness is thus something that we can control with our “free wills”, and it may even be able to affect the environment around us. An example was when one of my classmates asked if our “lecturer” believed in Astrology, and he said he did, although “99% are fake”. He told us a story about one of his father’s coworkers who got his fate read by a local Astrologist whom he claimed was good at reading when people had bad luck. So this coworker got his fate read, and the Astrologist said that on a certain Monday he would be hurt by a very sharp object. So the coworker refused to go outside on that Monday, hoping that by limiting his movement that day he would reduce the risk of getting hurt. However, he had forgotten the antlers of a deer that hang on the wall above the sofa he had decided to sit in, and the antlers fell down and penetrated his chest. To this my classmate retorted that it could’ve as well actually been his consciousness that had been so focused on not getting hurt by this sharp object this very day that he actually got hurt. So in a way it’s like cognitive psychology where they speak about self-fulfilling prophecies. If you think something bad will happen, something bad will in fact happen because you will unconsciously expose yourself to such risks and may even cause them yourself without being aware that you are doing so. Then lastly there is karma. Most people are probably accustomed with the term that if we do good actions, we get good karma and if we do bad actions then we get bad karma. Depending on what kind of karma we have, it will also affect the environment around us. Karma also accumulates among a group of people so if a group of people do a lot of bad actions, the karma within that group will be generally bad. Karma is some kind of higher power of justice. If a person leads a very pious life but goes through many struggles, he or she may ultimately be rewarded thanks to karma; similarly, a person who leads a bad life might get punished. At this point asking about Haiti felt very natural, knowing that some Christian groups are so avid exclaiming that the earthquake in fact was caused by the god as punishment because of the Haiti people being so sinless or some equally silly nonsense. To this our “lecturer” explained that there are two things that can cause an earthquake. There are some demigods that control such things as the weather, and thus naturally also earthquakes, but earthquakes can also be caused by too much accumulated bad karma. I do not know which answer he believed was the right one here, but I felt he was treading very carefully in this matter considering how touchy the subject is, hence the vague answer.

At this point however, my two hours were up and we had to leave. It had been an interesting evening and I am really looking forward to the Scientology study visit in two weeks.

First of all, Happy/Merry whatever-holiday-you-celebrate. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the day off work and school and putting on a few pounds with tasty cookies.

Full article below the jump: (more…)

It appears to be more important to rail against a preconceived notion of a concept rather than engage the idea itself.  What do you think this ad is saying about those children in the image?  Why are they so happy?  Is the message based on who the children are?

No, its not.  It doesn’t matter who those kids are, the point is that they’re kids.  They could be happy, sad, cute, or ugly, and the message would stay the same.  It also stays the same regardless of what religion their parents are members of… which happens to be Christianity.

The  idea that somehow the fact that these kid’s parents are Christian undermines the message of the advertisement is absolute nonsense.  It wouldn’t be reinforced if their parents were atheists.  The fact is, those kids are way too young to really choose whether or not they believe in any religion, so as the ad says, DON’T LABEL THEM.  They are not “Christian children”, they are children of Christian parents.  It is not ironic in any way that their parents are Christians.  This ad is not about their parents, its about them.

Additionally, they probably chose happy looking kids not to make any statement on religion itself, but because a picture of a smiling person is better suited to advertising.  Why do you think soap and underwear and laxative advertisements have “smiling” people?  Same reason this ad does, it grabs attention.  Also, look closely at their faces, they’re not *really* smiling and happy–just like every other lame ad photo, they’re being told to smile for the camera.  Their smiles are insincere zygomatic-only smiles, not the sincere Ducenne smile, which also entails the involuntary contraction of the orbicularis oculi, which creates “crow’s feet” at the corners of the eye. Due to the fact this muscle contraction is completely involuntary and unable to be recreated at will (short of artificial stimulation with electricity) when people are genuinely happy, they can’t help showing it, and they can’t force themselves to appear happy when they’re really not.

So they didn’t REALLY choose genuinely “happy and free” children.  They chose children who LOOKED “happy and free” because they possess the ability to “smile” on command… just like every other model in advertising.  Look closely at the next few ads and magazine covers you see with “smiling” models, you’ll find this phenomenon of not-really-smiling universal.

(And before the inevitable accusation–it would be exactly the same if the parents were Muslim.)

We’re used to Hollywood portraying Atheists as cynical and bitter personalities who only need the slightest push to see the light as part of their redemption (or alternatively serve as a handy character to kill for being too rational.) Usually we can point out and avoid movies which play on those ridiculous archetypes but sometimes this nonsense comes at you from where you least expect it.

Such was my experience with Dragon Age, which after my recent escapades during its procurement, now gives me another reason to blog in relation to it. You see, this game not only features de-facto atheists as part of your band of “heroes”, not only does it feature them in a profoundly Holywood way but it goes at that extra step to make sure we get the point.

As far as I’ve progressed in the game, I’ve encountered two characters who can be rightly proclaimed as atheists. One of them is the Wild Witch Morrigan which even though is a mage shows a strong disbelief to “The Maker” (A monotheistic deity whose religion is similar to the Christian one) and the other is Shale, a stone Golem which I’ve only had with me for a bit and speaks like an agnostic but already shows strong tendencies towards atheism.

You get the religious views of those two characters mainly by having them in your party at the same time as you have the ultra religious Leliana which then strikes up casual dialogue with either of them on this topic while you’re walking in cities. From those ambient discussions, you quickly realize the beliefs of the two atheists while also getting the classic Holywood trope about atheism. Even though the discussions are quite humorous at times and entertaining in their own right, especially at the parts where Morrigan wonders why she should believe in anything without proof, they quickly turn annoying when instead of showing a person who has a solid basis in their worldview, they paint those characters as insecure and afraid (deep down).

“I’m feel sorry for how isolated and alone you must feel in your life” Leliene says at the end of an exasperating discussion with Morrigan. “Er…I…none of your business.” retorts Morrigan, making obvious to all that she does indeed feel isolated and lonely. I couldn’t help but feel why she couldn’t answer like I would.  “You’re mistaken, I’m far from lonely” or even “I like it that way.” In short, any kind of retort that an atheist who is not insecure in his life would give.

But that’s not the worst of it, far from it in fact, if that was all I wouldn’t really mind it. What really annoys me is not simply that those two are cynical, bitter or whatever but that they’re both downright evil! And this is quite the explicit kind of evil mind you, not the vague moral choices that seen from the right perspective might lead to some interesting ethical questions, but the “who cares for suffering, just give me unlimited power no matter the costs” kind of evil that only exist in the cartoonish villains of Hollywood. Morrigan is by far the worse of course, abundantly disproving when I even think of helping the downtrodden and blatantly approving of only the most vile acts (examples: -5 approval for simply convincing a merchant not to exploit the desperate refugees. +7 approval for opting to allow the evil demon to possess a child.)

Shale on the other hand openly admits in disliking humans, consider itself a far superior being, has no issue with wanton violence and is of course, quite hearless about it. This wouldn’t be an issue in itself but when coupled with it openly promoting rationalism and critical thinking, once more one tends to say “Now hold on a goddamn minute!”

Now let me here point out that I have no problem with there being evil Atheists in games. Not at all. However I’d like some basis on this evil which here simply doesn’t exist. Morrigan seems to be wishing the evil options for the sake of being evil. The excuses for the disapproval the character gives are laughable only only serve to point out the shallowness of her worldview which makes the fact that she ignores the obvious result of doing the good thing as benefiting our own mission even more annoying. For example, during a mission where I had to convince a king to help me, I reached his castle only to find that undead were pouring out of it and attacking a nearby village. It made perfect sense to protect the village during the attack and then once the undead were destroyed or lessened, I would go in the castle. Then the obviously thankful King would be more willing to help me out. However for Morrigan helping the village was a big no-no so I got penalized for doing the sensible thing.

So evil atheists are not a problem but when you have only the (blatant) Atheists as goddamn evil bastards while the theists are all little goody-two-shoes angels who approve of all the good stuff (and of course the game doesn’t give any proper moral choices, only caricaturish black&white options) and only care for helping the poor, then one can’t help but make the appropriate assumptions.

While the game could have put a nice perspective into the oppression of organized religion in the form of the templars, we’re rather told that they’re in fact right for being so oppressive since all those people they oppress are kind obviously powerhungry fucks. So again religion + authority + strict rules  = good while individualism + atheism + freethought = bad.

For me thus, the problem does not simply simply lie in the fact that some Atheists are portrayed as powerhungry bastards, it lies in the fact that all atheists are such while all the theists are, quite explicitly, good. Would it hurt to have some of the theist heroes be intolerant of, say elves and dwarves (maybe some are, I haven’t seen all of them yet). Would it hurt to have some of them disproving of alternate sexualities? And on the same track, it wouldn’t hurt if some of the atheists weren’t total bastards all the time. It really pokes me in the wrong way where either I have to make total dickish choices with my character (eat babies!) or to lose the only two characters I like since they will disapprove of me so much.

Unfortunately this is a perfect example of the Hollywood-type worldview, on games which enter the same mainstream as movies. When the budgets and risks get into the same range, only the same safe bets in displayed morals and ideas can be played and thus culture might just as well go down the same shallow drain. I’m afraid that as long as profits are on the line, morality will always remain black and white and cuddle the theists who wish to claim the moral high ground. After all, in aggregate, they have the most money don’t they?

Just a quick article from me today. Swedish newspaper Metro had a small article in the Gothenburg version this morning about how the Swedish organization JO (Justitieombudsmannen), which is a political organ supposed to function as a report system for citizens, has now postulated that it was wrong to take down pictures of Satan pooping on a cruxified Jesus at a punk rock festival in the town of Linköping.

It can also be noted that the Autotune version of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking has now gained such popularity that it was mentioned on Nanok!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

Embedding fails.

I wrote this in Kriegsphilosophie in relation to my views about marriage:

Ultimately I don’t believe in love, I believe in intelligence. For me, it is not the love that makes me love a person so to speak, it’s the intelligence found inside. A majority of Westerners still focus on that love is required to love in a relationship. That I happened to love someone is more of a side-effect of what I found inside a person, rather than love itself.

I guess what I really want to say is that I am aiming a social critique against the notion of how we view love. A lot of people say, “it’s nice to love”, but is it really the love we should be living for? Love, just like marriage, is just a symbol given a meaning, but I think a human being can be meaningful without symbols.

And I thought I could challenge some Christians with their view about love as a symbol as well, if you really read what I said carefully.

Love has no meaning outside a cultural context. Humans give it an instrinsic meaning because we believe in its meaning. For an animal, love is equal to air, simply because an animal cannot understand the symbolic meaning humans attach to love in their respective cultures.

If we also look at how Christians actually behave to their countrymen, it also turns out that the person they are projecting their love to is rather secondary. It rather seems to be the communal notion of love that is important than actually loving people, where the persons to whom you are projecting the love to are more important then the love you are projecting. That means that love itself becomes redundant as a symbolic carrier, and it would furthermore mean that you are more genuinely interested to those you are talking to instead of “spreading love”, and telling people how much “you love”. Because it seems what you are really after are just people who too, share this view inside a community, so in reality, it at least feels like you don’t really care about the people at all as long you have an agreement about the “love” itself.

This also holds very true in regards of what I have previously experienced. Remember, this is a challenge, not necessarily a claim I made to attack anyone or anyone’s beliefs.

My anthropology teacher gave me a very interesting angle to look at Christianity today. First of all, let me outline what my new course is about, and I will roughly translate the title of the course into English: “Worldviews, power and support”. From the title alone, I think it is pretty evident what this course is about, it will mostly deal with political and economical anthropology and how one can study these two things in a society as an anthropologist.

Then, let me outline a quote from Max Weber, a famous German who formed one of the first and well-known definitions of power:

“[P]ower is the possibility for one or for many to realize their own will in communial action, even against the resistance of others.”

Christianity then, is a huge institution both politically, economically and socially, so it is very much possible to look into the system of Christianity and come up with a conclusion about what is power, how it is used and who is using it. My teacher further eplains that the use of power is often internalized by those who who do not actually benefit from the actual practices of the one in power and he gave an example when he was doing field research in an African country whose name is probably not Zimbabwe but very close to it. His field was mostly compromized by studying an African tribe called Alyamba, but for some reason he also visited other parts of the country and thus also a school where he witnessed quite a cruel treatment of the children, not too different to how we treated our own children in school just fifty or so years ago (and in Sweden the corporal punishment of children was not banned from the Swedish national law book until as late as the 1970s, where it says that corporal punishment was allowed during certain circumstances).

He went on to explain that upon his arrival, he saw all the children of that school kneeing with bare knees (in this country all children were wearing typical uniforms, so skirs for girls and shorts for boys) on the rough pebble that constituted a majority of the campus (I understood it as some sort of pebble, I may be wrong, but it doesn’t matter much here in the terms of serving as an analogy). He was lucky being able to ask one boy what was going on and the boy replied with something such as: “We are being punished for our own sake.”  This rings a bell in me, and I think many of you understand why. It sounded an awful lot like Christianity, being punished for your own sake.  This boy further explained that this punishment happened every day so all the students would shape up and not behave as badly as they would without it, and in a very twisted way, he somehow had managed to see it as positive thing, hence it has become internalized.

My teacher then went on explaining that this is common when power is used or abused; internalizing the structure helps to maintain the current system and is often justified in this sort of manner, it is actually for our own sake we are being punished, even though from the outsider’s point of view, it is quite rediculous. A poor boy being forced to knee on sharp pebbles for gods know how long under the steaking African sun is not a very nice treatment of kids no matter how you see it and certainly does not serve any actual meaning to the boy in question. We can factually prove that this sort of treatment will not improve this boy’s or any other boys’ or girls’ behavior, and there is most likely nothing wrong with it in the first place.

It is further explained that a truly good leader will be able to mask these sort of things justifying it with reasons given above; no matter how rediculous it may seem (the Genocide, the Dark Ages anyone?). Now, what really made me start to think is to whom and why are Christians maintaining this sort of power system? Why do Christians keep insisting that they are sinners and therefore must pray or do whatever pointless ritual to cleanse themselves when God obviously is not nearby and can keep an eye on them, enforcing their behavior is so need be?

I don’t quite feel expressing that Christianity is a meme, a scheme (not to be confused with meme) or even an expression of a bunch of symbols can properly explain this. This is obviously overcourse to me right now, I simply lack the current knowledge of this sort of field to properly even theorize of what could be a cause or a reason.

Max Weber also outlines a few defintions of different types of authority, I am sure they can be meaningful in this sort of discourse but my teacher has yet to explain to us what they all mean so I will leave it for now. Maybe someone else has any ideas?

Yes, I do understand that Christians may be considered disillusional and therefore no more explanation is needed, hence, their leader (God, any priest or other religious leader?) exists but only in their minds, their punishment is primarily delivered all by themselves, but this doesn’t hold up as an explanation from an anthropological point of view. So while I definitely consider it an unserious option as an answer it’s not really what I am looking for here.

It’s interesting and I wish I could dig in it further. Maybe I can do a more proper analysis after the end of this course.