: Why I'm an atheist.

I occasionally get questions from people on why I'm an atheist. So, I thought I'd write a bit about it.

Type of atheist

As I see it, there are two main types of atheist. There's the absolute atheist, that flat out denies that there is a god or gods. And then there's the agnostic atheist, that simply doesn't believe in any god or gods, without denying their possible existence. I see myself as an agnostic atheist, as, the way I see it, there is no way I or anyone else can prove the non-existence of any kind of deity. It's highly improbable that one (or more) exist, but that's as close as we can get. So, the way I see it, it's just as foolish to deny the existence of deities as it is to believe in them.

Upbringing

As far as I can remember, religion was never a part of our life when I grew up. Neither of my parents are, as far as I know, religious in any way. The biggest proof I have of this, is that neither me nor my siblings were, uh, baptized? Not sure if that's the correct term, but you probably understand what I mean. Either way... I can't remember really hearing much about religion, or even really knowing what religion or christianity was, until I started school. It was a non-issue for us, and I'm thankful for that.

School and the bible

I don't think I learned about the bible, or the stories within it, until we started having christianity classes in school. I may have heard some of the stories before that, like the one about Noah's Ark, but most likely thought of them as fantasy. I can't really remember. But what I do remember is that once we started learning about it in school, I couldn't really understand how some people believed those stories to be true. It seemed so ridiculous to me. They were nice stories, at least the ones we read back then, but nothing more.

My dad eventually pulled me out of the christianity class and got me over on an alternative class that focused on all religions and other non-religious life-views. Unfortunately, when we moved to my mom, I had to go back to regular christianity classes. I don't know why, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that my then step-father was a christian. Whatever the case, it didn't take long before the christianity classes were replaced by something more similar to the alternative classes country-wide.

Observing the world

As I grew older, and payed more attention to the world around me, the concept of a god or gods seemed even more ridiculous. Particularly a benevolent and all-powerful god. There are so much evil and misfortune in the world, it's impossible for me to understand how anyone can believe that such a thing exist. 

If a potential god truly was benevolent, why would he turn his back on all the people around the world that live in pain, fear and stress 24/7, only because they were accidentally born in a region of the world that teaches them to believe in another god? There's no logic in that. On the other hand, if a potential god is either not benevolent or not all-powerful, what is the point in believing in it? 

So, yeah. Based on the state of the world today, there is either no god to believe in, or no point in believing in whatever god there is.

Evolution and biology

Learning about evolution, and subsequently a bit about biology through Richard Dawkins, it became even clearer to me that there's no point in believing in a god. As you know, the bible teaches that all creatures were created and have always been the same. Looking at evolution, there's no doubt that this is false. Particularly when you look at vestigial structures or organs, which is parts of a species that used to be important but no longer have a function. 

In humans, the most "famous" examples of vestigial structures are the appendix, which were once used to digest grass, leaves, etc, and the tailbone, which were once an actual tail.

In animals, some of the most famous examples of vestigial structures are; 

- Leg-bones in whales, a remnant from when the whales ancestors still had actual legs and walked on land.

- Wings on ostriches, emus, penguins, and other birds that can no longer fly.

- Eyes that can no longer actually see in cave-dwelling fish and salamanders.

Neither of these things serve any purpose anymore in these creatures, so if humans and animals were created perfectly, why are they there?

Absence of proof

Other than holy books and texts, which is only good for self-referencing proof, there is no proof of any sort that there is any kind of god or gods. To this day I haven't heard or read about a single proposed proof that can't be explained by other causes or pure chance. Particularly the argument that the Earth have "perfect" conditions for life and therefore must have been designed. 

There's an uncountable amount of planets in the universe; It's purely accidental that our planet was able to sustain what we know as life. And to say that our planet have perfect conditions for life, is just plain wrong. It has good, but far from perfect, conditions for, again, what we know as life. On the best days we have good conditions for life. But most of the time there are some kind of extreme condition for someone, somewhere, who are barely able to hang on, and often can not.

Also, there is nothing to suggest that there aren't other kinds of life on one or more of the uncountable other planets in the universe, life that we might not be able to recognize as life. In which case, there's nothing perfect or special about our planet or our version of life. And if we are the only life in the universe? What would then be the point for a creator to create everything else? Why is it there?

If anything, the universe is proof of the non-existence of gods.

Multiple and geographic religions

Then, finally, there's the problem of multiple religions. If there actually is one religion that is true, and one god or pantheon of gods that actually exist, why are there so many different religions around the world? Why is there doubt about what religion is the true religion? Why do so many millions of people believe that one religion is true, and so many other millions of people believe that another religion is true? It makes absolutely no sense.

And, of course, the problem of geographic religion. In most cases, what religion you belong to is decided by what part of the world you were born in, or what part of the world your family originally came from. If you had been born in another family, in another part of the world, you would've had an entirely different view of the world, and an entirely different religious view. The fact that no religious people is able to see that, baffles me.

So, yeah. That's much of the reason why I'm an atheist.

: Shut-in prevention.

I finally went to a LAN, a private LAN, again this weekend. I haven't been to one of those in about a year and a half. During 2011 I only went to two LANs in total, both public; DokkaLAN in May and HusetLAN in October. So going to a private LAN again was really nice. And with just the right people too. I mean, there were others that I, personally, wished had also been there, but there was no one I felt were out of place, so to speak. Unfortunately, there's not many LAN-games out there for me at the moment, that I feel like playing. There are a few coming out this year, but at the moment there's really none. But I still had a good time.
Thanks for inviting me again, Marius and Veronica. =)

At the moment I'm at Gjøvik, visiting my sister and her family. I hope to be able to visit a couple of friends while I'm here as well. Either way, the whole point of me being here is that I really don't want to go back to being a shut-in, like I was before I met Wenche, and before I got my diagnosis. So yeah, I'm trying to just get out and be around people.

I'm going back to Wenche's place this weekend. For two reasons. First; It's her birthday this Saturday. And I really want to celebrate it with her. It might be a bit weird, particularly with her family there on Saturday, but... We'll figure it out. The second reason is that I still have a lot of stuff there, that I need to get. So I'm gonna do that while I'm there as well.

: Suicide.

A friend of mine considered suicide a while ago. I'm not gonna mention his name here, I'll leave that up to him if he wants to share it. Some of you might know who I'm talking about, though, as he has written his own blog post about it.

I wouldn't call this post a response to him exactly, particularly as it's been such a long time now, but it's an explanation of sorts on my views and thoughts about suicide.

Some of you might know, particularly if you read one of my recent posts, that the thought of committing suicide has crossed my mind more than once during the last ten years. When your life seems to be an eternal uphill struggle on a giant hill of ice, it doesn't take much to fall from time to time, and the climb back up can be hell. But there is one thing that has kept those thoughts from evolving, one thing that has kept me from falling all the way down to the bottom.

In January of '94, 18 years ago now, my uncle Gustav committed suicide. I don't really know why he did it, I'm not sure if anyone really knows, and I'm not gonna speculate. That's not why I'm talking about him. What I do want to talk about is his amazing talent with computers. He was a computer wizard, plain and simple. He was completely self-taught, having started out with nothing more than a command line on his first computer, and had programmed a lot of stuff all by himself over the years. He was the kind of guy that took computer classes, where he basically took over the entire class and taught the teachers. I've also heard that some of the courses he took he only showed up on test-days, and still aced the tests. Don't know if that's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is.

I was still too young to really be affected by what happened at the time. We didn't have too much contact with him either, as far as I remember. But I've thought a lot about him in recent years, and particularly after I got really interested in computers myself. And one of the things that bothers me the most about it all is all the possibilities a guy like him would have if he was still alive today. Back in '94 I don't think there really was too much use for someone with his skills yet, there wasn't really a computer culture in Norway yet, as far as I know. And as I said, I'm not writing this to speculate about why he did what he did, but I'm pretty sure that the lack of opportunities for him to really utilize his talent at the time played a significant role in his decision.

And that is the one thing that have kept me from ending my life; Thinking about all the possibilities my uncle missed out on by ending his life, and therefore also thinking about all the possibilities that I might miss out on by ending mine. Even though I don't have any real talent, at least not in the same way he had, as far as I know. But you never know what might happen.


There's nothing certain about the future. Even if your life seems bad right now, something might happen at some point that changes it for the better.

: Alone again...

So... Yeah. I am single again. Wenche and I ended our relationship on Monday, after being together for a year and almost two months. No, I do not want to write about what happened. There's not much to say anyway. We're different, with different standards. That's about it.

What matters is, we parted ways as friends. I still love her, and I believe she still loves me, at least in a way. And, who knows, if I ever get my issues sorted out, we might give it another try..? But that's a big if. And it's definitely not gonna happen over night. So... Yeah. Who knows what the future might bring...

Going to a LAN this weekend. Will be nice.

: Chaos and emptiness.

As my Facebook-friends might have noticed, things aren't going too well at the moment. I'm not gonna talk about the actual situation, but I want to talk about the cause behind it.

I have a sleep disorder called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, or DSPS for short. I've talked about it a bit in one of my recent posts, but in short, it means that the time of day when I can actually have a restful sleep is locked to the same time every single day. In my case, it's between ~6am and ~2pm.

I've had this for as long as I can remember, but up until November of last year I had no idea what it actually was or how to deal with it. I tried everything I, and anyone I talked to about it, could think of, and nothing worked. So I couldn't function properly, and was unable to finish school, unable to get a job, unable to keep appointments early in the day, etc. Everything I tried failed because of this, and I gave up. On everything. I didn't care anymore, about anything. All I cared about was getting my social security money somehow, so I could survive, and let the days just... Flow by. Things got a little better after I got some weaker form of the meds I take today, and got a "government sponsored" job, but I had to struggle hard to make it work, and it very often failed.

During all this time I stopped doing anything. I didn't take care of my apartment in any way. I barely got out the door. If I had to go to the store, I hitched a ride with my grandparents, and never thanked them. I had contact with my friends through LANs, which worked out nicely since LANs follow my sleep pattern, but I often wasn't really a part of it, I was just there. The thought of committing suicide struck my mind a few times, but you can read about that later, in another post I'm writing. My point is, I didn't really care about anything anymore.

It's now been a bit over a year since I got out of this hell. I met the wonderful Wenche, and soon after I got the DSPS-diagnosis and new meds. I've changed a lot since then. The problem is, I still have a hell of a lot more to change. Many of those bad habits and thoughts that I acquired back then is still with me, and they're stuck pretty deep. So I end up doing many mistakes because of it. Too many. I can fix all this, though, but it takes time. And I need help.

The absolutely worst part of all of this, though, is that I've completely lost all goals and thoughts about the future. I still am, in many ways, barely holding on, by taking things one day at a time. I'm scared of thinking too far ahead, I'm scared of making plans, because every single plan I've ever made has failed. No exceptions. It came to the point a few years ago, that I could no longer think about the future. Whenever someone asked me what I wanted to do with my life, my mind just went blank. There was nothing in the future. It didn't exist, or I didn't exist in it. And the more people asked me about it, the more it changed from just a blank to a sort of dark void, that made me feel ill. Not even when I got the "government sponsored" job, which I loved, did it change, 'cause from day one, in the back of my mind, I "knew" that I'd never be hired as a full-time employee. And it's still like this today.

I don't know how to fix this. I don't know if it -can- be fixed. The only goal I have set for myself at this time is to get in shape. And even that I can barely motivate myself to do. The thought of me getting a real job and keep it is just absurd to me, my mind refuses to believe it's possible. I've just lost all faith in myself, and it's been gone for a very long time.

I guess I should try to get some professional help somehow, but my experiences with that doesn't leave me much hope either...

: Going to the Netherlands again!

I'm going back to the Netherlands again in February. It's the 25-year wedding anniversary for my moms cousin, Aldert, and his wife Josée. As far as I know it's just my mother, her boyfriend, and I that are going. We're leaving the 2nd, and coming back the 6th. This will be my third time going there in less than nine months. Vewt!

Unfortunately, I still don't know enough Dutch to be able to actually speak it. I have found a woman on Dokka who's willing to teach me, an old friend of my grandmother, but I have barely been at Dokka the last few months, so I have unfortunately not been able to learn anything from her yet. I'm gonna contact her as soon as possible now, though, and hopefully I'll learn at least a few things before we're going. If she has time.

: No christmas post.

So, it's been a couple of weeks since my last post. I haven't really been in the mood to write, not even on my in-progress posts, and even though it's been christmas there hasn't been a lot to write about. It's been pretty uneventful, really. And I can't say I've felt any christmas spirit this year either. Oh well.

I'm currently at home. I've been gone for three weeks, so I'm staying at home for a while this time, even though I don't really have any particular reason. I've decided to use this time to work on my apartment again. It's not as bad as it has been, but it could still be a lot better. I particularly hope to be able to have LANs here at my apartment again. I've even created a Facebook-page for my apartment for LAN-purposes. =P

So far those plans haven't worked out. Last night I started playing Magicka, which I haven't really been able to do before as it crashes all the time on my desktop computer, but it works perfectly on my laptop, and completely forgot the time. So today I slept till almost 3pm, and have felt like crap all day.

Now I'm gonna go to bed. And tomorrow, I'll start fixing stuff here.