1 John 2 - KJB

15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

How can we expect this planet to become the great place it could be, as long as such a huge portion of the world population abides by such a tenet?

That's it, I want that Richard Dawkins doll next to my bed, so that I can hear that "Of course there is no god, don't be silly!" every night before I fall asleep.

Surprise

Just when I thought that my family couldn't surprise me any more, for bad or for good, my aunt shows up home with a copy of L’athéisme expliqué aux croyants (Explaining atheism to the believers) by Paul Desalmand for me, telling me to read it quickly because she wants to give it a try as well, she wants to know more about the way I see things. She's the person who had never failed, while talking to my parents, to reassure them, telling them that she too was once an atheist at my age, that it was a phase and that I would eventually grow out of it. That, of course, added even more to my surprise when she said she wanted to get more familiar with atheism. At that point I saw a great opportunity I couldn't possibly miss, even if it makes me a cynical person exploiting people's weak spots. I ran upstairs and into my room, grabbed my copy of The God Delusion, ran downstairs again with an idiotic smile on my face and gave her the book, offering her a short introduction to the life and opinions of the author.

At that point she said something that made me realise how she, probably like many if not most other believers, relies on a form of clutch-like belief rather than real conviction. She said something that made me consider taking that book back from her. She said, in a somewhat plaintive, mournful tone, "you know I have few certainties in my life, and that god is one of them...is this book going to upset me?". For a few seconds I was at a loss for words. The situation really made me doubt what I, up to that moment, had thought of as the best of intentions. She's sometimes slightly intrusive, sometimes overjoyous in an annoying way, she's sometimes patronising, but she's my aunt. However different our opinions I have no desire to hurt her intentionally in any way, she's part of my family and has been always present for me and my sister. I'm not sure why I did what I did, if I was convinced that it was for a greater good or if I thought that, after all, not even Dawkins could shake her faith despite her latest revelation, but I still replied "I think you're going to find it interesting. He's a Brit, by the way, he has a great sense of humour..."

I don't know if she's actually going to read the book, if it's going to destroy her faith and if that would trigger a positive or a negative reaction, but a part of me thought - and, in a way, still thinks - that she deserved to hear both sides of the story. This is Italy, after all, and I doubt she or my parents - despite their university education - ever had the opportunity to familiarise with the idea of atheism in an unbiased way. Even if she says she was once an atheist when she was my age, I think that all she did was "getting mad" at the Christian god without actually abandoning the conviction that said deity existed. Right now I can only hope that Dawkins' bluntness won't prove too much for her.

Belief and image

There are days - some days more than others - it becomes glaring to me how the real problem with belief in a metaphysical entity is not the belief per se, rather the ties it establishes with a person's public image. Better said, believers become dangerous - for themselves and for others - whenever they're confronted with the general, public opinion of the community they live in. There is no other reason why a mother would be ashamed of having her atheist son next to her on the day of her 25th wedding anniversary, even knowing that he will refuse to take communion, or why - just to be fair with Christianity and with my parents - a Muslim father would stone her daughter to death to punish her for whatever he considers dishonourable for the family.

It so happens that in this country being an atheist is, apparently, still considered a shameful condition, to be kept secret and hidden from the relatives - some of whom I've never met or never will again. However, I think I have reached a level of maturity and of psychological exhaustion that will not allow me to sell out on my convictions again, regardless of the havoc it will wreak upon my family. I will not take communion. I will be there, should they want me to, to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of my parents, not to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of my parents in the presence of unknown relatives and alleged deities.

Ironical. They raised me and taught me how to be a sentient being, prone to question and able to reason. Funny that they should now be afraid of the outcome.

Il lato utile di internet

Dato che un po' di sano attivismo non fa mai male, invito tutti i lettori italiani del mio blog e chiunque capiti da queste parti e abbia un account su Facebook, ad aderire alla causa Associazione Luca Coscioni per la Libertà di Ricerca Scientifica. Obiettivi dell'associazione sono:

1. Promuovere la libertà di cura e di ricerca scientifica
2. Promuovere l'assistenza personale autogestita dei malati e dei disabili
3. Offrire sostegno ai malati che vogliono interrompere un trattamento sanitario al quale siano sottoposti contro la loro volontà
4. Promuovere l'indagine conoscitiva sull'eutanasia clandestina e calendarizzare il dibattito parlamentare sulla legalizzazione dell'eutanasia
5. Battersi affinché ogni cittadino possa liberamente accedere alle tecniche di fecondazione assistita
   

Grazie a tutti coloro che decideranno di contribuire allo sviluppo del paese.

The defensive atheist?

Yet again I find myself racking my brains and torturing my liver in a probably futile attempt to understand the inner functioning of the minds of many of my fellow Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Seriously, there is something deeply confusing, something very wrong in people. For reasons I still haven't quite put my fingers on, a self-proclaimed former atheist - now admittedly an agnostic, although I'd definitely describe him as dangerously shifting towards the bane of belief - can sometimes feel the need to put me at tremendously high risk of brain cancer by posting shit such as:

For a body of people who view the non-existence of God as fact, they are remarkably defensive about it. Why is this so? [...] Is the classic form of atheist... the good old, nope no God nothing to see here, nothing to say, dont care... dying out to be replaced by this new breed of atheist armed with texts, videos and autographed picutres of their God Dawkins fully prepared to fight to the death in order to prove their belief is true?

And the sad thing is that he's not the only one but is accompanied by many other people, unfortunately theists and atheists alike. My very personal understanding of all this is that, however absurd it might be to a sane, rational person, commitment to whatever cause is praised and admired, except when it comes from an atheist. If that happens, s/he becomes a "believer in a religion like all others," and a pedantic one at that. "You have just as much proof as everyone else," and crap along those lines are seriously starting to be unbearable to me, and I'm only 21. I guess there is really no effective way to change those people's minds - might be for lack of one in the first place - so I'd probably do better simply getting used to the idea of being called a "believer in the religion of atheism." After all, rational arguments don't seem to have much of an effect on that kind of people, and probably never will. But, albeit in a very twisted way, I think their behaviour might also be seen as a good sign. I mean, after all they are starting to act pretty defensively, despite their claims. For most of human history we've been ignored, insulted, condemned, persecuted and killed, whereas now they are feeling that way - although I am yet to hear of a single killing perpetuated in the name of atheism. The way I see it, they simply want us to shut up, sit back and stop trying to make them think, because brain activity is too painful to them. Somehow, even though we are a minority, they're starting to see us as a threat worth taking seriously, and that fills me with great optimism and bright hope for the future of the human species. Let's keep up the great work.

#3

Yes, I know it's already the third entry today but, as often in my life, I have no one's shoulder to cry on, no one willing to play the happy punching bag for me. No one I wish to bore and tire with my silly problems, at any rate, not with their unbearable stench of teen TV series. I'm not really sure how I've come to this. Just yesterday I thought I had found some renewed happiness, something that could open up new possibilities in my life, something great, but - as I know all too well, even though I seem to forget it quite often - life has a terrible sense of humour. Action, reaction, inexorable law of this beautifully cruel universe. When something new seems to pop up on the horizon, something else drags you back, plunging you into memories you though, you hoped, you had left behind you for good. I was once asked whether I'd consider using a pill capable of deleting certain memories and, back then, I was quick to dismiss the question with a somewhat proud and cool-sounding answer, eager to remember everyone listening that our past experiences and our memories make us the persons we are. In retrospect...what on earth was I thinking? I'd so fuckin' take that pill now...

Go figure...

This has probably happened to all of you at least once. You're debating with a theist, crushing all the poor excuses for a rational argument he or she manages to come up with, and, at a certain point, the aforementioned believer pulls out of his or her sleeve what he or she thinks of as a settling, irrefutable argument: if someone as smart as Einstein believed in god, then god must exist. Now, ignoring the epic non sequitur - pointing it out to them won't make a damn difference, as we all know - what they usually do is cling to those few, extremely poetic and woolly statements Einstein happened to utter to explain his sense of awe at the intricacy of the universe and his justified lack of faith in a personal god. Some of them even go as far as to claim that Albert most likely converted on his deathbed "like even the staunchest atheists do," clearly ignoring that a) they were not there and b) they don't freakin' know every staunch atheist who walked, walks and will ever walk on this planet.

But I recently discovered that a few theists can be even more original than that. Apparently, the very fact that Einstein, in many of his statements, pronounced the word god means that he acknowledged its existence. I know you're all laughing, but I swear someone actually said that. When presented with the logical consequence of such a reasoning, that J. R. R. Tolkien obviously had to believe in the existence of Middle Earth, of the Elves, of the Hobbits and their Shire, for he frequently talked or wrote about them, this new particular breed of theist claims that god has been in existence far longer than any creation of Tolkien's. No, seriously, that was their way out.

There are days I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.

Quote of the day.

The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.
-Al-Ma‘arri

For unbelief is no intrinsically western phenomenon.

Inside post.

First things first: this entry will be one full of things taken for granted and not revealed, full of references to things few, if any, of my readers and friends have a clue about. For this reason, you might as well just stop reading and do something more useful, like sticking your fingers in a power outlet. I'm writing this for myself.

This day, Saturday, May 17, 2008, started like a very average day. Woke up, urinated, turned on the PC, forgot to have breakfast. The hours passed me by rather fast and in quite an uneventful fashion. I did read a few chapters of Eureka Street - a pretty funny book by Robert McLiam Wilsom I'm supposed to read for one of my exams - but that's about the most useful thing I did today, at least so far. I was sure I'd find myself rotting in bed at 2 AM struggling to fall asleep and chasing annoying thoughts out of my head before I could even say hyperdrive, but I was wrong.

'Tis indeed a soft afternoon, my Irish teacher would say. As the sky outside was raging, something in me started to as well. And it happened, unexpected and not quite as powerful as my blurry and distant memories seemed to depict it, but it did freakin' happen - twice, actually - and it feels like a new beginning - or at least the hopeful state I'm in makes it seem that way. What can I say, I'm happy. What might be little more than a pleasant way to fill an afternoon is for me a great achievement and wonderful news, lighting once more a little spark of that hope I had almost completely lost after a long time of pointless attempts and of utter resignation. My life looks a bit brighter, at the moment.

No, you can't know what I'm talking about, so don't ask.

A neuron interviewed.

"Christians? Never heard of them..."

Thanks to Tiska for making my day.

I do hope.

Shaka, I'm only going to say one thing after reading all of the material that you have written here in response to the original post. That something is that I really feel sorry for you. Obviously, you have nothing to believe in and nothing to hope for in life. What a waste to look at your life and believe that all you are going to do is exist for a few years and disappear after that. How sad, and I truly feel sorry for you.

"ilovetrees" on the Religion&Beliefs Channel on www.mailfriends.com

It is my opinion that the greatest issue when discussing faith and belief with believers - online or offline - is not the utter inability most of them seem to come pre-packaged with to grasp a rational argument or to produce anything even vaguely resembling one. It's not even their tendency, when all else fails, to attack you personally so that you will be forced to reply, earning yourself a 7-day ban - much to the disappointment of those who think a moderator should be smart. It's not even their being patronising bastards without a real reason. The real problem with theists - besides the fact that they do exist - is that they do all of the aforementioned at the same freakin' time. Seriously, I know I sound like a professional hater right now, but after some six or seven years spent trying to explain, to no avail, to believers that the fine-tuning argument is a terribly idiotic one, you kind of start running out of patience and occasionally turn into a blunter and unrefined copy of Christopher Hitchens, and that's not a pretty sight.

I don't know, I guess I will simply never fathom the perverse logic behind the functioning of what we call political correctness. I will never give in, sit back and allow stupidity to go unpunished. I tried not to care, I swear I did, but I simply have too much of a sense of civic duty to allow myself not to care. Sometimes I do think that my life would be much easier if I simply embraced the principle of live and let live, but really, would it? After a deeper and more thorough analysis it becomes clear that said principle, when elevated to the status of dogma, is just as dangerous as the barbaric idea of faith itself. It completely annihilates a person's ability to think critically and to assess the threat posed by this or that political, philosophical or ideological stance. Definitely not the way for whomever, like me, has made of critical thinking a reason of life. As such, I will not stop being a royal pain in the arse and stinging people until they realise that their very Sartrian fears are entirely unjustified, that a godless life is the highest example of human self-determination and that the limits of the existential freedom we are bound to are set by our inevitable and hard-wired tendency to stick together in groups governed by social contracts. I will not stop until people like the aforementioned idiot understand that atheism is far from being the end of all hope, rather a great source of it, and that the awareness of our finiteness, when globally accepted, can be a great fillip for our attempts at building something worth remembering and passing on to our children. Call me a hopeless idealist - I admit I can be one too, at times - but I still hope that the future generations will hear about wars of religion only during their dull history classes. Yes, I do hope, because my godlessness allows me - sometimes forces me - to think that human rationality will one day prevail over blind faith. Sure, our present constantly frustrates my expectations and hopes, and that's exactly why I keep on fighting for what I think - not believe, like some fools captiously wish to make it seem.

I am often accused of being a fight-starter, a hate-monger, an angry and childish person, and all sorts of negative adjectives you could possibly come up with - including those that should earn someone on a public forum a ban, but strangely do not when a believer uses them. I'm also often told that the reason why I am the person I am, hateful and full of contempt, is my very rejection of the idea of a supreme creator. Wrong. The reason why I often appear to be angry is because some people actually think they know me well enough and think highly enough of themselves to play the little psychologists and come up with such theories. As the post I quoted above - as well as the whole history of mankind - proves, belief in a supreme deity with a split personality doesn't really make you any maturer than rejecting such belief. The concept of faith in whatever deity has spilt more blood than any other on our long journey as a species, even more than the two other terrible plagues of mankind, nationalism and pride. It is this knowledge, however ignored by many, that makes the patronising efforts of so many believers even more unbearable than it would otherwise be.

However, I have already dignified that idiotic comment with much longer a reply than it would actually deserve.

I can't really be arsed to think of a title.

I haven't posted anything for quite a while and, for how saddening it is, I don't really have anything to write about.

Of course, I could spend a long while writing about the way Vatican astronomers are now ready to admit that their deity might have created life elsewhere in the universe and that we do not own the copyright on it. Can you imagine their faces on the day humanity establishes a first contact with an alien civilisation, only to find out that our extraterrestrial "brothers" have grown out of their theistic phase centuries ago? That would definitely be a priceless moment. But still, regardless of how powerful a blow this admission is to the dominating anthropocentrism, it is not really interesting. We all know the Catholic Church would say or do close to anything in order to survive. I could also sting all the believers in a personal, almighty deity, asking them for what mystical reason said god has decided that more than 20,000 people and counting had to die in an earthquake. Or, maybe, muse away about the recent finding of a missive of Einstein's written about one year before his death and in which he outlined quite clearly his views on religion and superstition - which, come to think of it, is just about the same thing.

But somehow all this seems pretty superfluous, unnecessary. Sounds very existentialistic, doesn't it? Well, maybe I'm simply tired and will manage to get back to blogging as soon as I'm done with the cursed exams. Time will tell.

There's a first time for everything, they say.

While I don't feel like elevating such a broad statement to the status of dogma, I can agree on the fact that life is unpredictable enough and long enough to allow for quite a variety of experiences, some good, some bad. Where is this going, you might be asking in your head. Well, I'm getting there.

This afternoon, for about fifteen minutes, I experienced what I can pretty confidently define as the first, and hopefully last, panic attack of my life. I know that such a degree of confidence in pulling out of my magical hat such a precise diagnosis sounds pretty laughable, given that it was admittedly the first one I ever experienced, but - if I may take the liberty of resorting to a clichéd statement - I think I know what I felt for those fifteen, endless minutes.

Why am I writing this? Well, the most obvious answer would be that this is my own personal blog and I can do whatever I feel like with it. But actually the main reason is that I remember reading that one of the principle of CBT (Cognitive behavioural therapy) is keeping a sort of diary, a record of such experiences and of the feelings associated with it, in order to be able to analyse them and cope with them more effectively. So, here we go...

It all started while I was talking to my good friend Niki - who, btw, happens to be a brilliant girl and a great photographer, although that deserves a blog entry of its own - and all of a sudden I started feeling in such a way my knowledge of natural languages allowed me to describe merely as "restless," for lack of a better term. I remember being unable to sit still, feeling as if there had been some evasive, dodgy, latent background thought going on in my head I couldn't quite put my fingers on. That went on for several minutes, in a crescendo, sucking all of my mind's computing power - to use a technological metaphor. I consider myself to be relatively skilled in the noble art of the written word, yet I find myself utterly unable to describe exactly what I felt during those endless minutes. Anxiety somehow feels too mild a word in this context, but again, all words seem somewhat inappropriate, lacking. I felt fear, although of what escapes me. I felt the burning desire to leave the room, to run, to flee outside, as if something had been there, chasing me. Only an underlying sparkle of rational awareness prevented me from running outside, either from the door or from my window - something that would have proven relatively unhealthy, being my room located on the second floor.

Pride aside, I guess all my previous reading about the phenomenon helped me to diagnose it while everything was still happening and to maintain a relatively high degree of control over myself. People say even the apparently most insignificant experience can somehow change a person's life. Again, while I'm not too eager to take the statement as universal dogma, I can say such a happening can actually change the way you think about particular things. It made me realise how often I had underestimated such episodes when told about them by other people who had experienced them, how eager I was to dismiss such reports as creations of a mind prone to overdoing things. Bullshit. Now I know how utterly frightening such an experience can be, and whoever happened, or will happen, to go through something like that has my utmost sympathy.

Non ha colonne d'Ercole il pensiero.

Non ha colonne d'Ercole il pensiero.
La tua anima piccola,
diabolica pigrizia, se le crea.
Né Ulisse né Colombo sospettavano
le mille e mille isole in attesa.

Te aspettano interi continenti.
Dormono dentro il tuo cervello: osa!
Il mondo è da creare.

Maria Luisa Spaziani

E-Mail 2

Here comes the not-lost, rather misplaced second e-mail I had mentioned before. It was hiding in the spam folder of my mail box - where it might very well belong, I must say. Stupid as it might seem, someone still seems to feel like challenging Richard Dawkins...oh well...

Hello.

My name is Gerry Rzeppa and I've written a short children's book in answer to the works of Richard Dawkins. Unlike his ponderous tomes, however, mine has lots of pictures, rhymes, and can be read, cover to cover, in ten minutes.

I'm offering the doctor $64,000 of my very own money if he will join me before a live audience to answer a single question about my little poem. I'll read the story aloud and pose the mystery query. He'll answer and walk away with the loot. Simple as that.

You can view the official challenge here:

www.rzeppa-vs-dawkins.com

And you can read my little story by clicking thru from the challenge site or going directly here:

www.someofthepartsbook.com

Thank you for your consideration.

E-Mail

As promised, although a bit later than promised, here comes one of the mails (I seem to have somehow lost the others...) I wrote about in my previous entry. I am personally not going to buy or read the book advertised - because I don't need it, because I don't have the time to and because I find the whole thing a bit spammy, and that has somewhat pissed me off. However, I simply figured that there might be someone even remotely interested in it - or in the challenge mentioned towards the end of the mail - so here it comes.

Greetings Fabio,

Looking over your website, you seem to present yourself as a rational thinker with liberal, humanist views. It is for this reason that the following Press Release
may be of interest to you.

As a person interested in ideas and knowledge, you – as many other humans throughout history – may have wondered why humans behave as they do?
Why human behavior comprises of Jekyll and Hyde polarities? On one hand: they are capable of self-sacrifice for others, capable of incredible generosity and
compassion for the weak and the destitute. On the other: they can be devious; selfish beyond reason; hateful of others – be it humans or animals – to an
extent of lusting for murder: whether in hunting defenseless animals for trophies, or seeking other humans in violent physical conflicts.

Of course – as many others – you may have assumed that ‘human nature’ is an unexplainable entity of human behavior: an element of human mental activity
that is prone to a fundamental inexplicable flaws: be that of the brain, or emotions, or genetics, or stimuli, or soul. A reason for that perception can be obtained
from a fact that after all the multitudes of luminary writers and playwrights, famous scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists having revealed all that they
could about human behavior and human perceptions of themselves, none of these people had actually resolved and explained exactly why humans behave as
they do.

But why is that so? Why has it been impossible for humans to live in peace and accord on this planet, despite so many people having prayed and selflessly
sacrificed their lives, for thousands of years, for such a disappointing outcome?

The answers to these dilemmas come in a book, titled: ‘Revelations of a Human Space Navigator’; subtitled: “What humans fear to know: the physical truth
of everything in existence, including themselves’; by Victor Senchenko.


Aha! Quick as a flash, the level of your disbelief has just probably risen into stratosphere.

That’s because:
A. You may presume that humans already know nearly everything there is to know. After all, look at all they have supposedly achieved.
B. You may presume that such knowledge is unattainable, so that the idea of obtaining such knowledge is preposterous.
C. Perhaps (despite not having examined the book for yourself), you can’t believe that a single person – especially one you’ve never heard of – could possibly provide such knowledge. It has to be some hoax!
D. Many other variations of those above, accompanied by expletives.

These, of course, are natural human reactions. Reactions to dismiss outright a claim without having it first examined. Such reactions are understandable.
They occur because humans don’t know who and what they are.

They don’t know what? Is this some stupid joke?

Hardly a joke, for it’s the physical truth. Test yourself.

You know you have a consciousness, but what is that consciousness? Why is there consciousness only during your waking hours? What is that feeling of
happiness that you feel so very seldom; constantly sought to be explained by many in notions, such as religion? Why is there no happiness in being an
oppressor of others, despite many bullies being addicted to being bullies? What exactly is the guilt you feel when being overly selfish, or a bully?
(Why so many soldiers experience depression after a period of experiencing exposure at any warfront? that depression being called by whatever terminology.)
Why is rage so popular, despite that it achieves nothing but mental and physical destruction, and a feeling of gloom and depression?

There are multitudes of such questions that are answered in this book: questions that had been attempted of being explained by multitudes of methods and
means; none of which were ever conclusive, or even close to the mark. Were this not so, humans would have long ago altered the behaviors of their societies;
thereby developing heaven upon earth, where all life forms – including that of humans – would live in harmony of mutual existence, instead of human
devastation of all on this planet.

And that is exactly the intent of this book: to explain to the current human species exactly who and what they are, so that the future of their species may
have a chance of survival into millions of years; a chance to which – as a consciousness possessing life forms – they have a right to; no different to a right
to life of your direct offspring.

In defending the uniqueness and originality of these revelations, the author issues a challenge to Any and Every person on the planet who purchases this
book: were that person to provide the author with a physical proof that his revelations had already existed at any period of the Human Age, (as knowledge
not derived or sourced from this book), then the author, himself, will refund that person the full purchase price of the book.

For any additional information, please visit http://www.victorsenchenko.com

Media Contact:
VictorSenchenko.com Media Team,
victorsenchenko.mediateam@victorsenchenko.com