One of the best articles I have ever read about the aforementioned subject. Well worth a read.
 

It is generally common for atheists to consider that the arguments against religion boil down to science, the facts, debate, etc. It puzzles many why someone when faced with all the evidence for evolution for example would still choose to ignore it. I think that many atheists are ignoring the REAL issue, the true reason why it is hard for someone to reject their religion.

I was raised Christian all my life, in a VERY fundamentalist home. I was taught the earth was 6,000 years old created out of nothing, heaven, hell – the whole thing. I was taught how important it was to witness and attempt to “convert” others. I was taught that even bad things, really bad things, had some sort of divine reason and plan attached to them. I believed this into my early twenties.

When I was finally faced with the irrefutable facts, and raw science behind them, I let go – very reluctantly – of my cherished beliefs. It was not easy, It was like wrestling a priceless gem from someone who would just not let go of it.

When you reject religion, its not like – rejecting the earth is not flat for example. With something like this you can say “Oh ok, now I know” – but religion has a much darker and deep rooted hold on a person, and a much more profound effect.

There were times I was actually in tears thinking about the fact that there was no “afterlife” – and that those I had loved who had died – were really dead. They weren’t watching me, or having some hand in guiding me. They didn’t still “love me”. That was pretty depressing.

It is strange how religion gives you a way to reject the reality of death – which I guess does help to ‘ease your suffering’, that you “know they went to a better place” – but it also prevents proper mourning. When someone you love dies, and they tell you on their death bed that they will see you one day in heaven, you are more prepared for them to “die” because you know they aren’t really “dead”.

To reject heaven and accept atheism – is not merely about science, facts, beliefs, etc – it is about accepting the reality of all those who have died – being really dead. It is accepting the same reality about everyone you love NOW one day being – really dead. It is accepting the same reality about YOU one day.

The older you are, the more dear loved ones have passed away, the harder it will be to reject the notions of religion. To reject religion requires the re-mourning of everyone who you love who has died.

Death is just one piece of a very complex puzzle. If you have spent your whole life “living by faith” – and you have made decisions “by faith” that have resulted in really bad situations in your life, you now have to own up to the fact that these situations came about because of YOUR choices. You do not have God to take the burden of this. You can no longer say “This happened because God has some plan for my life”

By rejecting religion, you must also reject the notion that you can avoid responsibility for poor life situations. That too is a hard pill to swallow.

Next, you must reject the idea that your path is somehow guided, that God is walking with you, that you are not truly alone as you walk through life. Imagine a man walking through a room on planks of wood suspended over spikes with large holes to fall in if you take a wrong step. He always manages to take the right next step, but he is never afraid because he “knows” that this is a solid wood floor he is walking on. Now turn on the lights.

To reject religion means to accept the idea that you CAN fall – and fall HARD. It means you have to recognize that up until now you have been fortunate – but now you have to force yourself to think about your next steps.

If you have been spending your life “following Christ”, or witnessing to people, to the extent of even studying this in college, or spending hundreds and hundreds of hours reading and studying the Bible, praying, etc – only to find out that ALL of it was utterly and totally useless, then you have another hard pill to swallow. Imagine swallowing that pill as an older person.

To accept this means to accept that you have lived a large part of your life in vain, while thinking it was purposeful. Talking to such a person about atheism is similar to telling them that their whole life is without purpose, misguided, and that they have missed out on the only opportunity they will ever have to live life.

Surely one can then see why the concept of atheism is offensive and infuriating to so many people.

Then there is the concept of a personal relationship with God. The idea that God and you are “friends”. That you are somehow “above the world”. That you are living in a bubble safe and protected by God himself.

To reject religion, means accepting that you are just like everyone else – and in fact, worse off than most and behind the race because of your past religious belief. To someone who has spent a lifetime believing they are special in this regard, a piece of them is gone, never to return.

Worse than this, such a person values their imaginary relationship with God more than any aspect of their REAL personality. Who you really are takes second stage to your supposed relationship with the almighty.

Rejecting this is surely very difficult, as it entails rejecting a large part of the perceived value someone has in themselves.

I know I have not covered it all, but I hope I have helped to show that there is more to the picture of “religion vs atheism” than merely science, and facts.

The emotional side of religion is by far a larger and darker obstacle than any other that would stand in the way between someone’s freedom from delusion and accepting reality.

The BBC programme Horizon decides to see if they can win the James Randi Educational Foundation prize of US $1,000,000 by proving that homeopathy works. And let’s not flit about the question. They failed in proving anything.

And even though the programme is shown, chances are people will still believe in homeopathy. Why people persist in believing that all those quack-tales are anything but faith- and hope-based is beyond me. Delusional and irrational hope that there’re some magical quick-fix for life and death?

One of the more interesting parts:

atbarnes: how do you explain the posative results, in the two earlier experiments, shown in the documentary ?

James Randi: I strongly suspect that there might have been unknown and unrecognised influences brought to bear. Recent experiments on homeopathy done in the United States have shown that when one certain person was actively involved in the experimentation, they were always positive. When that person was absent, that experiment showed no results. This is an interesting thing to think about. I am also curious about why Dr Ellis changed her mind about participating in the Horizon experiments.

 
 
And his brilliant finishing statement:

James Randi: I was not surprised by the results of the Horizon experiments, but I remain willing to observe and consider any and all other tests that are done under similarly precise conditions. I do not expect that homeopathy will ever be established as a legitimate form of treatment, but I do expect that it will continue to be popular.

 
 
This man is my hero, and I’ll finish with this amazing angle on homeopathy. I couldn’t stop laughing when I first saw it. I still can’t.

Looking for Boxtorrents.com? This is what you’d find.

This is what greeted me today

For years and years now this site has been my one stop shop for almost everything anime and manga. I’ve left my computer on to seed for other people for countless of hours, and it’s been one of the mainstays in my life after I discovered it. An explanation has been posted here. The crux of the matter is this part:

[Box was evasive about donations]…curiosity got the best of us, and so Jarudin wrote a script to get an idea of just how much money we were getting from donations. Note that this was based entirely on how much upload credit donators have gotten, since we have no access to the Paypal account the donations went to. When Jarudin and I saw the results, we were shocked, to say the least. We won’t say how much exactly, but let’s just say that based on the numbers (after double/triple/quadruple-checking the numbers, even adding them up manually), we haven’t really needed any donations to keep the site operaable for a long time now.

Box has always been one of the symbols of altruism on the internet for me. Seems that money can bite anyone in the ass and make them less altruistic. Regardless of the actual truth of this I have every confidence in Jarudin and Malus, they’ve done an insanely good job on BoxTorrents the last years, and from everything I’ve seen these years Box hasn’t been active at all, and thus I’m not too fussed anymore.

BoxTorrents has been replaced with the new BakaBT.com.

BakaBT, BoxTorrent Replacement

Not sure how much new you can attribute to Apple, but marketing, hype, streamlining and quality could quite possibly be some of them. They don’t do a lot of innovations on their own really, but they tend to do some serious optimizations that Redmond could take notes of. Yesterday they announced a generally improved and faster iPhone (might be I want this one, not sure, still on the fence) with a bunch of new features (but still no multitasking and AMOLED screen? Wtf?), the latest OS announced, and Safari 4 released, hailed as the fastest browser on earth.

I suppose I can agree on the fastest browser on earth thing, it’s so fast it’s a bliss to use. Just one problem, a huge one, they removed the fucking Tabs On Top as they’re called, the ones where the tabs covered the useless, in the way, title bar instead of hogging extra screen-estate. Colour me annoyed, and colour me Chrome. Well, maybe not. The speed in Safari might be enough to want to use it instead of Chrome, but I doubt it. Chrome has the Omnibar, and no matter how I twist and turn it, it’s a massive time-saver. Safari has a really sweet Speed Dial they borrowed from Opera, and some awesome eye-candy, but are they enough to turn me to Safari instead of Chrome as my second-browser-of-choice? I don’t think so. Disregarding screen-estate it falls down to the Omnibar in Chrome. It’s ridiculously practical. So practical I’m puzzled why it hasn’t been copied across the board.

It’s so sad when talk about this without knowing what monopolization and exploiting one’s market position does, and how hard it fucks it up for people in general. It’s like whining about the local store being forced to take in an almost free product that’s actually healthier, better, and actually tastes nice instead of the old and sour cardboard they used to buy.

Now that that’s been said I disagree with the extra bundling of software. I’d rather they made a real “app store” or something like that instead of throwing in a pile of additional crap. Personally I think that smells like bloat, and I re-heally dislike that.

And another thing, people just don’t get it, that the browser market is massive. It’s so huge, and there are so massive amounts of cash involved here, in investments, technology, advertisements, positions, continued development, and so on, that you can’t compare it to other types of software on the computer just like that. People compare it with note, but last time I checked Notepad didn’t have massive amounts of cash involved in the same way that browsers do. It’s like comparing the actual stealing of a car, and making a copy of a picture of a car.

One of them is involved in huge sums of money, while the other one is potential sums of money at best.

Det er trist at folk uttaler seg uten å skjønne ka monopolisering og utnytting av markedsposisjon gjer, og kor hardt det føkker det til for allmennheita. Det er som å sutre over at den lokale butikken blir tvunget til å ta inn eit nesten gratis produkt som faktisk er sunnere, bedre, og smaker godt istadenfor å måtte ete på den gamle sure pappen dei kjøpte før.

Ein av dei er involvert i store summer med penger, mens den andre er knapt potensielle mengder med penger.

(Kjører litt oversettelses-trening når eg fyrst er i gong. Treng trening i å oversette, og norsk… :P)