A small spontanious digression (in Poland we say: 'From another barrel')

I can realize my skills in getting ideas across are actually poor. I often sound reckless when I utter my thoughts about issues I feel strongly about (after all I have the right to it - I'm young : ). I mean people after a short discussion with me often think I am too unserious to be worth listening to. And that is really my pain in the neck. I do not try to say that I am always right - I just hardly ever manage to say something just as I think. Words always change the outcome. When I read some of my previous msg's on your site I found them sounding quite 'flat' (I of course do not blame anybody but myself). I wish there was some way to confer thoughts directly (like those brain electrodes from sci-fi films ; ). I guess it is so because I did not learn to communicate very well when I was younger. I had different views than people around me and in most cases I did not see much of a chance to be understood by them. I have been a rationalist ever since I can remember (but I just did not want, did not have enough 'inner courage' to admit that reconciling faith and science is not possible - NB: most of my, very smart, friends still believe it). So most of the time I would just think: "OK, let you be wrong, I do not care. You will not understand my arguments anyway and you will only say I am weird'. And I have an annoying tendency to put things too briefly (I am glad that I finally met you - a guy intelligent enough to get all my thought short-cuts : ). But I am working on it. I hope you get what I mean. If not I'll explain it telepathically ; )

Got to go, I'll get back to other points in the next letter.

Is that from another barrel thing about beer or shotguns? Leave that kind of stuff in, don't mark it for exclusion unless you are admitting to something shameful or deeply personal. Stuff like that keeps it from being flat.

When I have arguments with people in the shop (staff, not customers) about politics or religion or the like I never manage to say what I really mean. Such conversations are too fast. People grab hold of one phrase and take it the wrong way. We end up arguing about the words of the argument. In text form I can get closer to true communication, but that too is a long way from being perfect. Words can have different meanings for people who use the same language. Sometimes I know that a particular word I use in my thoughts has a much more precise meaning to me than it does to everybody else, I cannot communicate that thought. I suspect that will always be the case. When we use things other than words, like gestures, pictures, music and so on the meanings are even more likely to be misunderstood. I too would love to be able to plug myself into somebody else's brain directly, and use their words and thoughts to express mine.

The barrel? I am quite sure that the Poles mean the one for beer, sauerkraut or salted herrings, in Polish - "beczka". It is for the simple reason that we have another word for the shotgun barrel - "lufa". So as you can see the similarity is not striking. But your interpretation is interesting. Actually the idiom does seem to make sense the other way too. Maybe it will get soaked by the new world-English with the other meaning? I think that when English-speaking world becomes reality there will be a lot more new loan-words and idioms from other countries in that language. I think you can learn something about how this is going to look simply by reading my (and other foreigners') letters. My English is a mixture of AmE, BrE and is influenced by the Polish way of building sentences (and I can bet I sometimes use improper words - esp. prepositions - only because they would fit into Polish sentence when translated). And I have no qualms about not using pure American or pure British English - I think any mix is OK as long as people understand it.

Deceptive words

I noticed that most thinker-type people complain about that (but gossipmongers, who spend more time talking than thinking, seem to ignore the problem : ). AFAIAC people with similar mentality are likely to guess what the other one meant even if he/she did not make it clear enough, while there will be more misunderstandings between two very different ones, just as you wrote. I also think that unnecessary explaining can be seen as disparaging by some people (including me), esp. in direct conversation (writing is a bit different since you cannot know at which point the other guy really twigs - you can only anticipate it). When someone tells me he gets what I mean I just move on and not try to make him happy with some "shovelogy" (I just couldn't help but translate that unrivaled Polish term describing the way of putting knowledge into sb's head that can be compared to shoveling soil into a bucket - e.g. explaining a joke to some nitwit). If only my former biology teacher followed the same rule..

Women, healthy food and vegetarians

I noticed that some people, esp. teenage girls, become vegetarian just because they want to get slimmer. It doesn't seem to be the luckiest idea to me since those kids have little notion about nutrition. The basic rule for them is avoid pork chops because they make you fat and ugly. I eat them about twice a week, true that I do much physical work, but I'm leaner than most of those dollies that do not want to eat breakfast. In extremal cases orthodox vegetarianism ends up in hospital because of iron and B12 deficiency. I know one granny who probably saved her grand-daughter from that - she made vegetable soups and secretly added mixed meat to them. Was that cheating? If yes then long live the cheaters! : )

Technical notes about your site Some pages are cut short. I don't know why. The ones that did not work for me were: The Great Car Culture, all Letters of Mark (I want to read it - it's good!), It's Our Money! and 100 Miles of Thought. I had downloaded the entire site onto my hard drive a couple of weeks ago and thought that those pages were not complete because the download could have been interrupted. On Tuesday I checked them on-line and they looked just the same. What's going on? I also tried to find your site from another computer and I couldn't make it even after 15 minutes of searching! (I am quite forgetful - I just did not remember the address). I found a lot of other pages with surname "Wilett" on it, lots of atheistic sites and other similar stuff but no trace of The Meme Machine! You really should submit it to some web catalog or search engine. Perhaps your not having done so has some justification, I don't know what the procedure is. But it can't stay like this - the world is missing too much : ) And now something extra - 'other search resources' at the bottom of the page (with no results for the query "Martin Wilett") delivered by HotBot looked something like that:

o Get expertise on "Martin Wilett" at InfoRocket.com -- hmm.. that could be interesting

o Search Amazon.com for "Martin Wilett" -- I wish you this came true someday : )

o Find the lowest price for "Martin Wilett" at Auction.com :-D no comment...

From this Monday on I will have much less time for e-mails (studies..) but I'll write at least once a week. So now you will be able to have some rest from my chattering

- Michal the Merciful

I my... ! I feel SOO stupid for twisting your surname. I thought the search must have been unsusscessful because of this a few hours after sending that message and then I checked...

Please do not feel offended. In Poland making even an unintentional mistake in someone's surname is considered a MAJOR insult. I guess it's like this all over the world. People are right when they say I am too scatterbrained. I often forget too obvious things. I am a good material for a chaotic professor, a subject of many anecdotes. I thought I could write about possible causes of that (my being so messy), not because I want to defend myself (that too ; ) but because that helped me understand certain things.

I think that for last 2 or 3 years I used to be a FREE!!!-thinker (extremely open-minded kid -- whatever stupid idea you could come up with, even conspiracy theories, I would think it over). It was a kind of agnostic-fortean mix, with one significant difference - I did not believe in any supernatural forces (but I did not take them out of reckoning). I just tried to find some scientific explanation for things like Feng-Shui or water divining. That was a really hard time. I did not actually know what I thought (human brain is not a super-chip supporting parallel processing). Everything seemed more or (much) less possible to me and all my thoughts were fuzzy. I had trashed all the stereotypes as well as mental footholds treating them as dogmas. The worst insult for me then was "limited". The only rule I accepted was: "Everything is relative" so I did not believe in objective Truth. Perhaps I was right then but I do not care now as I feel much better having some concrete views. Even if they are not completely right I am open to discussion and can always change them. I did not understand that until I came across your page "Open Mind". I think that that short piece of writing saved me from becoming insane (which I think is inevitable after several years of having chaos in one's brain). Now I've settled down but remains of that chaotic information processinng style are still stuck somewhere in my subconciousness. It's going to take some time until I weed them out.

Apart from that we do not have doubled letters in Polish names ; ) So now you know the brief history of my mental evolution. Were it not for religion it would have been much easier and less painful. But now I am really proud of who I became.

Also thanks to you Martin WiLLett! : )

Michal the Cured

Proof for the non-existence of the soul

That's what we all seek, isn't it? I really admire specialists working on neural networks in order to create an artificial mind which could prove that humans are not anyhow "gifted". If they succeeded, all believers would have a hard nut to crack. Cool, eh? But I think the scientists cannot make it now because they forget about one small detail: HORMONES. It's impossible to create an intelligent bot with feelings without using any substitute for hormones! (I could give further explanations if you want but I think they are not necessary). I used to be interested in neural networks but I never came across any project that would take something more than the mere network, receptors and effectors into consideration. Or maybe my news is dated? I wish it was. It's just hard to imagine that so wise people forgot about such a significant thing. I know that the faithful will defend themselves even after that ultimate (or not?) proof is provided - they can for example say that God gave the bot a new soul. But their position would be really softened anyway. So what do you know about progress in neural network research?

I am with you part of the way. Neural network computers will never be alive like we are with just large numbers of connections. They need some purpose. Hormones is a shorthand for purpose. I am not sure whether all we try to do and be is determined simply by hormones but they obviously play a big part.

Who I am is determined by the size and shape of my brain but also the interaction between my built-in desires and the world around me. I was born with a desire to please, to make people proud, to learn, to communicate, to win, to achieve, to enjoy pleasure and avoid pain, to seek sex, to enjoy it, to succeed in it. We all have these mixes of motives and drives. Whether they are actually caused directly by chemicals is not the crucial point. Simply designing a neural network with the ability to learn and chose will not make it a synthetic life, to be such a thing the creature would need to have some underlying intentions or purposes.

We have evolved to be as smart as we are because of the complexity of the basic conditional happiness programming we have. We are happy when certain biologically defined states are fulfilled; adequate air, water and food, warmth, stimulation, respect, security and so on. If we find ourselves in a situation that makes us unhappy we seek to rectify it. So if we find ourselves outside a bar in the middle of the night in the rain we start to use our intelligence to work out a strategy to return to a happier state, such as getting home, or failing that getting somewhere out of the rain in the short term. Once we have sorted out that strategy we then turn to other matters such as the next meal, sex, working for success in a career and so on.

To be smart first takes a capacity to find your current status inadequate or sub-optimal, or to put it another way you have to be unhappy to be smart. To make a clever machine you have to build in a capacity to suffer, or at the very least to be less happy, so that a desire to become happier can lead to a desire to act. I will know we are on the way to getting intelligent robots when they start getting moody. The current crop are just dumb, you could forever keep putting out your foot in front of them and they would just stop, and keep on doing so until their batteries were exhausted. I will know the intelligent robot has arrived when it complains "If you moved your foot out of the way I could get on with something useful" and it will have reached the heights of intelligence when it can do it sarcastically too.

Maybe the fact that our whole life is about serving our own purposes makes us think there must be an ultimate purpose to our lives. We have purpose behind every action. So do the fictional characters we have in our minds, the characters who represent other people. Is not the idea of the spirit of the river, the sun god or the great sky spirit just a simple extrapolation of an obvious model? In our human world everything happens for a reason, nothing just happens. There is always a reason. So when the reason is not apparent it is easily invented; fate, destiny, god.

It is easy to remember Double U, double L double T :-)

I was more offended by the idea that I had not done my search engine submissions correctly. It is a task that you can never do perfectly as the search engines change. New engines come along or gain in importance, older engines and directories combine and they change the way they operate. I use an automated service to add it the top engines but whenever I chance across a search engine I check it out to see if it knows me. I usually check on 'atheist, atheism, meme' which should be enough to get my site in the first three screen fulls. If it doesn't I then submit my URL manually if I can. I have tried to add meta tags to other pages to help the process along but it is a very dull thing to do. I know I should do it and the effort put in will see some reward but I find it as exciting as cleaning my shoes.

Thank you for your comments about freethinking. A lot of people your age need to learn this lesson. You must start to filter your brain in your late teens or early twenties or you will go insane or lose all the benefits of your education. I think teachers love unfiltered minds, it makes their task of shovelling in information easier. But when you get to your age you need to develop more discipline in order that you can study for yourself and achieve something by it. The combination of knowledge, curiosity and the discipline of filtering and focussing should help you achieve academic success and lead you on to continuing learning for life. Treating all pieces of information and opinion as equal is ridiculous.

Stereotypes.

They are a tool. Imagine that you are walking down a street and a dog walks past you, a mongrel, about knee high, it is walking along ignoring you. Kick the dog. What happens? In your mind's eye you have a picture of a likely reaction from the dog, a stereotype. Stereotypes are useful when they are accurate, very unhelpful when they are inaccurate. Did your dog bite you or run away? I guess it is about a 50/50 call. Stereotypes are good when they help and bad when they don't, it is as simple as that. I suppose I should also add that they are harmful when you give them too much weight or do not see them as simply an initial guess as to the likely truth but see them as truth itself. So don't just kick the dog, make a threat towards it first, then base your decision to kick on the dog's reaction to the threat. (Illustration of dog kicking for rhetorical purposes only, I do not recommend kicking dogs.)

I did not suspect you of not knowing how to submit a site to a search engine. I just thought that it may require a fee (you never know what to expect in these capitalistic times, the "Find the lowest price..." piece assured me of this) or that some catalogs do not accept such "blasphemous" sites ; ) Sorry, my time is up. I've got to go, meet with people who are as tired of all week's learning as me, get drunk and dance until tomorrow. I'll write when I get over the hangover : )

I treat stereotypes as "ready-made reaction schemes", thought shortcuts, a kind of "processed and cached data". They are damned generalizations but when the situation requires a fast reaction and there's no time for thinking they are very useful.

For example you have a strange hairstyle and you see a pack of bald guys in black leather jackets. You think "They probably are Nazis and Nazis do not like people that are different, I'd better do not get in their way". This is a stereotype, a fixed array of thoughts. It's just judging by appearances, those men could for example be more "thinking", less biased and fight-seeking than others sharing their label. Not even to mention that they do not need to have Nazi views, thay might just be dressing in a similar way. But considering them dangerous doesn't do any harm to anybody, it can even save you. I try to use stereotypes only in that way which is not harmful but helpful. It's the stupid that made us develop bad connotations about stereotypes. The view that all stereotypes are bad is ...a stereotype, just as "All generalizations are dangerous." is a generalization. Some are of course wrong. For example if somebody asked me whether I am for capital punishment I'd say "Yes". And if that would not be followed by a discussion, that man would probably use his own "tape". So he'd think I am for killing people -- I don't mind breaking the 5th Commandment -- I am merciless -- I am an immoral man -- I am EVIL and ARROGANT because I usurpate God's right to decide about the life and death. Such a way of thinking can be caused by "mental laziness", too limited mind (I am still for freethinking but in a tamed form : ) and Christian brainwashing. Apart from that most people who cannot think for themselves are influenced more by demagoguery than logical arguments. Whenever someone manages to use some well-sounding cliches in a discussion he claims the victory and the masses suport him. That's why atheists can lose discussions with believers when outnumbered.

I've included photos of castle in Malbork, the greatest Teutonic keep - after WWII and now after rebuilding. What is interesting about it is that the castle remained unscathed until 1945 and then the Soviet army destroyed it when they "liberated" Poland from German occupation. There were some German soldiers hidden in the keep but the Russians did not have to blow up the entire castle - it would just be enough if they assaulted it in a "standard way". But they used it as a pretext - in fact they wanted to test some new rockets... (note: I am not prejudiced against any nation, I am just saying it as it is : )

I know what you meant about communication short cuts. I did understand what you meant in that last email but it wasn't all there in the text, we obviously think in very similar ways. Stereotypes can be a big help, when they are accurate, and a liability when they are not. It is easy to start thinking a whole chain of deductions from a small amount of fact. The danger is not with stereotypes as such but with their over-arrogant use, when people are not aware when their decisions are based on stereotypes. Trying to abandon stereotypes is futile, they will always be there and it is healthier to be aware of them than to deny them, it is also easier to change them when you know they exist.

People in Britain are so uptight about black people that they often make themselves appear ridiculous. It is very common for boxing commentators to talk about the boxer in the white trunks with the blue stripe rather than say the obvious, like "Golota is the white man". They seem to be terrified of the idea that people might think that they have noticed that a particular person is black. To notice that a black man is black seems to be the same as joining the Ku Klux Klan and lynching him. People should just notice the obvious, acknowledge it and give it the significance it merits, which is very little.

I think you might have been a bit hard on the Russians (or should we say Soviets?) over the damage to that castle. I can imagine that if I was leading a soviet army invasion I too would have used excessive force, in war the commander's primary duty is to minimize losses of his forces while achieving his objectives. A siege would have been costly in time and troops. If flattening the castle was the objective it would have been flattened, it seems to me like the objective was to stop the castle being used as a stronghold of German resistance. If that required major damage on the castle that was the way it had to be. You cannot blame the Russians for taking the castle or the Germans for not surrendering, total war nearly destroyed the castle, there was no alternative.

War is a nasty business. Wars are caused by nations. The definition of a nation is based around war. California is not a nation, it cannot start a war, Guatemala is because it can. By getting rid of the structure of nations war will become impossible. As a first stage organizations of nation states like the European Union are probably the best way forward. The EU has no enemy, unlike NATO, I can never imagine a structure like the EU ever starting a war. I wish I knew how to proceed to the next stage, the founding of a world-wide union of democratic states who drop their claim to be nations and their right to wage war. But perhaps this will happen in time.

When I was your age it would have been very difficult to imagine a world in which I was writing to a Pole, publishing directly to the planet and the Communist Party of Russia was contesting elections and losing. Back then survival to the year 2000 without a major war looked far from certain. It is very difficult to remember exactly how the world was back then, every plan for the future came with the caveat, "if the world is still here then". Many of the people I went to University with were campaigning with CND, the campaign for nuclear disarmament, an organization whose emblem has become known by ignorant Americans as "the peace symbol". I was quite clear about my position, I wanted to get rid of all nuclear weapons, in phases, starting with the ones aimed at me. It seemed that many students in CND were effectively taking their orders from the Kremlin, they said that to ask the Soviet Union to reduce its weapons was naive so we should get rid of all of ours first as a gesture of good faith. To me that seemed more like a gesture of stupidity.

I even came across people who said, entirely seriously, that Britain's armed forces should be replaced by an answering machine with a message, in Russian, saying "We surrender". Did you ever believe that NATO was a threat to Poland or Russia? Did your people believe it? The impression I got was that the Warsaw Pact countries were practising an invasion of Germany, and NATO was practising defence. I never came across anybody who (sober) talked about invading or starting a war. We were genuinely scared that one day some lunatic general in the Kremlin might decide to turn an exercise into the real thing. It was also obvious to us that if the Warsaw Pact had invaded then German territory would have been lost rapidly and within an hour or two of tanks crossing the border US generals would be asking for permission to use nuclear weapons. At that point things would get very nasty very quickly. Did you see things in a similar way or very different? In a sense all teenagers feel like that they are not likely to be alive at 40 but for my generation that thought was not simply an instinctive prejudice more suitable for life hunting on the savannah, it was a rational fear.

Military pacts

I had never thought NATO could be able to simply assault any other pact or state - its member countries are too democratric (and mature, I hope) to agree for that kind of action. After the WWII I do not believe that any conflict similar in size is likely to occur, at least until people remember what the outcome was - millions of people killed, thousands of cities razed to the ground.. I think Poland was one of the most injured countries. Apart from above-mentioned losses we (look, I wrote "we" : ) ) were practically devoid of intelligentsia. And who was responsible for that? - not only Hitler (he focused on Jews more) but Russians. Have you heard of Katyn? I guess yes, if not I'll explain: it is a famous place where NKVD practiced mass underhand executions of Polish officers (and when it came out they tried to put the blame on Germans). Thats only the tip of the iceberg. Rusians as well as Germans wanted to absorb Poland to gain new rich territories and workforce stupid enough to be unbable to realize what's happening and defend themselves (that's why they killed selectively - professors and officers in the first place). Actually they almost made it...That's why I feel so strongly about them - but I have nothing against contemporary Russians - I only detest what those people did then, but they are already dead.

Sometimes you have to judge a whole group of people basing your opinion on only one unit you know but it should never be done the other way. I agree that war is a free-for-all. But NKVD and the Soviet Army were well known in Poland for using a steam hammer to crack a nut. And it's not simply the fault of the people who performed the very actions, it's because of their nasty system which often even turned against them. I know well that Russian soldiers (and civillians too) were "cannon fodder". That's what I hate most about war mentality - similar people have to kill each hother only because they were born in different countries. And all of them in the name of patriotism kill other patriots because they were told that it's right and glorious.

Malbork.

I gather that there was only a handful of Germans so Russians did not even have bother with that "keep". They might have simply afforded not to give a shift to it, Germans were already lost anyway. Apart from that Russians must have been pissed off that they did not make it with conquering Poland. So when they retreated they took apart or destroyed everything within their reach. They even dismantled railway tracks and took them to Russia! The same applies to the castle (and many cities). I see it as "If we cannot have it, nobody will - WHACK!" (keep in mind that I'm talking about particular peole in the past, not the entire nation, I really admire great Russian scientists; nation is a too big assemblage to be treated as "unity").

I don't like discussions about history, not because I feel somehow hurt by the past but because it's impossible to be sure what really happened. You never know which historian is right. History is a branch of knowledge that is based on questionable basis, you cannot check the past. When you discuss real science like biology or physics you also believe that some theories are true without seeing any proof but you know that you can check it whenever you like, or at least the solution will be found in the future. I believe paleontologists more than historians - they do not claim to know what Australopithecus thought and when people talk about history they try to guess "What general so and so tried to achieve by engaging in battle of xxx?" My opinions are only mere guesses too - they are as good as anybody else's.

"Read these pages first" page Great job! I wouldn't do that better myself ; ) But it is nothing new to me. When I was reading your site I noticed that you have a tendency (or should I say "gift"?) to put my thoughts better than I would do it (of course you couldn't know they are mine too, you didn't know me then). For example I was positively surprised when I read "Living with drugs". I am for drug legalization too for the same reasons you give but I could never manage to write it so clearly (before reading I hoped we differ here and it'll make an interesting debate but tough luck... ) . That's why I like your site so much - there I find better ways to explain my own views to others (and sometimes even to myself). I hope you don't mind this sort of plagiarizing ; )

"Cold atheist shell"

I noticed that when people learn I am an atheist they instantly assume that I must be sad and cold and from that moment they see my being cheerful as a kind of mask, they say I'm preending, trying to lie to myself because "You cannot be really happy if you do not believe in God". It's just the kind of stereotype that I exemplified with the capital punishment. The "shell" is not my creation, it's the figment of their imagination, the filter that they use when they look at me. That's why I am very careful about who I tell about my lack of faith. Some people will never be ready for atheism, even if it finally "conquers" the entire world.

How can you be happy?

How can you be happy if you don't believe in God? What an irritating question! It annoys me intensely. Part of the self deception process of Christianity is to ascribe every positive experience to God. So that warm comfortable glow inside is God, that sunset is God and even that early morning erection is a gift from God. In that kind of mindset it becomes impossible to consider life without that belief. Like a heroin addict, they think how could life without God be enjoyable in any way? The answer is straight forward. There is no God, any happiness you are currently experiencing is there for you after you drop your irrational belief. Life without God is just as much happy, unpredictable and difficult as life with him.

Katyn

Yes, I was very much aware of Katyn. It is usually known as the Katyn Forest Massacre. I did not mention it in case I got some vitally important detail wrong. I know that the Nazi and Soviet apologists each try to blame the other side. I have not studied the history in detail, not actively studied it at all. Just sat watching the History Channel with a glass of cider in my hand. It seems like one of those chapters of history which has no winners, only big losers and bigger losers. I just looked up this from one of my embarrassingly large collection of cheap CD ROM encyclopaedias:-

Katyn massacre

A massacre of 14 000 Polish army officers in May 1940 in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, Belarus. The officers were shot and buried, and their mass graves were discovered by German occupying forces in 1943. Soviet authorities persistently denied responsibility for the massacre, blaming it on the Germans. In 1989 the Soviet-Polish historical commission (set up in 1987 to establish the truth) reported that the crime was most probably committed by the Soviet security service (NKVD).

That seems to be the consensus view we get these days. I wonder if you have any comments to add or is that a reasonable summary?

There is the question of what effect an event like that would have on a nation. I know from my own experience that the losses in our biggest war, WW1, had a profound effect on our society and our family. Nobody's life was unaffected. A great many of our finest and most talented people were killed before they had a chance to make a mark. It also had effects on those left behind. A great aunt of mine died a virgin after a long life in which her intelligence and aptitude were obvious, without that war she would almost certainly have made a good marriage and had a successful family, that might have paradoxically reduced the chances of the success of her less bright sister, my grandmother. Because of that war everything is different and the ripples of that event still grow today. I have to conclude that Poland would have been very different if those officers had lived, although I am not sure in how many different ways.

I suppose that Germany and the Soviet Union were so bitterly opposed to each other that a terrible conflict was inevitable. I don't think the British Tommies ever hated the Germans in quite the same way as the Soviets did. I get the impression that in both world wars the British troops were mostly fighting the opposing army and state, only the feeble minded were fighting the Germans out of personal hate. But maybe again that is just the spin put on things after the event. I vividly remember hearing a very bright elderly man talking (in 1999) about his experiences in the invasion of Normandy, he told of the utter glee he and his comrades had when coming upon a valley full of dead Germans while fighting their way inland. I knew him well, it was not the kind of thing I would have expected of him. A war like that in which men saw death all around them, and had been doing so for several years, would change their perceptions of the values of things. The war in the west of Russia and across Poland was probably the worst bit of fighting in human history, the scars will run very deep.

Another question occurred to me yesterday. If Christians were given one Christmas wish and they had to chose either

1] An end to all wars or

2] All mankind comes to believe in Jesus as their personal saviour

Which do you think they would choose? That is one to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up! I'll have to post it to some Christian newsgroups, it should be good for a bit of rabid response.

Happiness without God

It works well for me. I reconciled myself with the idea that this life is the only one I have a long time ago. And I do not have any qualms when I drink or dance during the Lent ; ) I am happier than ever before: I am free to think what I like and when I help someone I simply do it for that particular person, not to deserve my reward in Heaven, not because Jesus told so. And that's what I like most about atheism. But some people are just too weak to manage without faith (note: I wrote weak, not stupid). They find comfort in prayer when they are down, they think It will be better in heaven when they see some unsolvable ethical problem or some great injustice that cannot be remedied. Faith is a painkiller for them, it helps them survive hard times without nervous breakdown. Such people are usually tolerant, want worlwide peace, like wildlife, want to become better and better. And they do. I don't care that their beliefs are wrong - they are good people. They want to improve the world and they see that it in a similar way as I do. And they do not want to convert everyone to their religion, they just keep it for themselves.I know they will not benefit from becoming atheists. So I have no intention of deconverting them. Why should I?

Katyn

I have nothing to add. The piece of information you provided just agrees with the latest widely accepted notion about that issue.

Hard experiences affecting mentality (but not mine)

I understand what you mean, I know that people after undergoing a big shock are likely to change their worldview. But I can see it and try to be as objective as possible. I wonder if I can do it. Of course a significant part of my views will probably change over time but I think it will happen only when I find some better arguments for certain things than I see now, just like in a rational discussion. The core way of seeing the world will remain the same (I hope) because I think it's right. I have heard of people losing faith or even becoming godhaters after some personal disaster and I consider them obviously wrong. I think I am immune to that sort of being affected by events. They are just life demagoguery, not arguments for or against anything. Shit happens.. But so what?

I liked your question to Christians (and answered it on behalf of some of them). But it would work better for Muslims - spreading their religion is one of the most important points of their doctrine. I have another teaser, meant especially for priests:

"Why do you think baptizing should be performed on infants and not on mature people who really want it? Though Jesus was baptized when he was 30 (more or less)."

I wonder how they would explain it avoiding the inconvenient term indoctrination ; )

Michal

Thanks for the message. A full reply is due in the next few days, maybe tomorrow, maybe Tuesday. Only one day off next week :-(

Christmas, Humbug.

They should do it like the Olympics or the World Cup, every four years.

I will have a lot less spare time now until about February when the sales finish. But I should be able to earn more money too.

Shit happens, but so what?

What a great motto. Could you translate that into Latin? It would make a good motto for a family crest. If not Latin why not Polish? I could put it on my website and nobody would know what it meant, I like the idea.

Relax! I don't mind your being busy : ) I can understand it. I am happy you liked my motto, I'll see if I can find anyone who knows Latin well enough.

What do you call somebody who is fluent in two languages? Bilingual.

What do you call somebody who is fluent in several languages? Multilingual.

What do you call somebody who is not fluent in any language? American.

Have you got any good jokes?

What is Christmas like for an atheist in Poland? Or a Catholic come to that. Do you have Polish folk tradition or do all your images come from American movies and Coca Cola posters? I suppose you can usually expect snow at Christmas, unlike us English, the white Christmas is like the virgin bride, very rare, and certainly less common than in the old days, although everybody believes it is the way things should be.

Do you think in English when you read and write English, or do you translate?

I don't quite see your point about converting believers. If people are fundamentally good but have a wrong belief how can changing their wrong belief be harmful? Do you expect moral Christians to become amoral atheists? Are you amoral? Why should you expect anybody else to lose their morality when they lose their mistaken beliefs?

I was brought up with a very clear set of morality and Christian teachings. I am a Christian atheist, I follow much of the moral and political teachings of Jesus. That is not because I have followed those teachings but that they are wise, I believe in right and wrong and caring for the poor and treating all men as my neighbour not just those within the tribe or nation. I also believe in doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. The difference is I do not believe that Jesus was the son of God because that is absurd and inconsistent with my worldview. However, most of his teachings were excellent. It seems that those who cling most to his divinity seem to care least about what he actually proclaimed.

Why not talk to your good believing friends in these terms? Show them that morality need not be based on a fear of death or God's vengeance. Belief in God need not be the anchor for their lives.

Take the belief out of a man and you get a better and wiser man, not a monster.