Maps of Europe

Here's a link to several maps of Europe. It's coloured accoarding to interesting tidbits of information, such as the hair colour, eye colour, legal drinking age or when it's legal to have abortion.

Tells something about the differences between the European states.

Walking away from church

Today, I finally did something I had been pondering for five years or so.

I filed my resignation papers from church today (handily done via online-form. Thanks modern age!) and started thinking about the repercussions. Nothing too serious, but let me walk you through;

The things that have mostly kept me in this long were (1.) the idea that I believed in something, (2.) that church did Samaritan work both in Finland and abroad and (3.) that I wanted to upkeep the church buildings themselves as historical artefacts.

In turn, the biggest reason why I filed the papers was the (1.) sobering realization that I don't need outside-confirmation for my beliefs. I can read comics without belonging to Comics Society (but I belong anyway, because I enjoy the company and the perks); similarly I can choose to believe in things without belonging to Believing Society. I'm not using the perks and services that come with the membership, so why should I pay for them? Particularly as the membership is something 15 times more than in Comics Society.
Other reasons (less important) include the fact that (2.) while church does Samaritan work, this work consists of only 10,6% of the yearly budget. For every ten euros I pour in, only one goes to help other people. I could better use my money to give it to some other organisation(s), that only have one objective instead of several dozen.
I'm also not comfortable with the fact that (3.) while some of the the priests are very comfortable with the society we live in (as I have doubtlessly mentioned in the past) some are not. This particularly goes for the higher hierarchies and the northern provinces of the country.
Every time I hear about a priest refusing to work in the same church as another priest - because the another priest happens to be a she - I get a bit uneasy.
The final reason was missionary work. Thinking that I pay for something that sends people to Amazon, Africa etc. to talk about God and thus is a direct reason for vanishing nature religions tens of thousands of years old is just wrong. Even though I know it isn't what it was a century or or (perish the thought) millenium ago.


But here I am. Now I have to think where to give money - Red Cross? Some organisation that works against mental illnesses? It used to be so easy, just giving church money.. of course, explaining my belonging to church just because of its convenient nature (and with 90% of my money going to somewhere else) is not morally right either.

Shame about the buildings thought.

The picture is taken from Wikipedia, attributed to Creative Commons and can be found here.

About religion

Boing Boing-post that shows the unbelievable stupidity of humanity. On the comments there is this line, the reason I wrote this post;

But why is it so hard for people to accept that maybe, just maybe, the people who compiled the Bible and told stories over six thousand years ago were possibly trying to just figure it out, just like we are today?

It is attributed to AndrewJC, who is the author of post #19. This pretty much sums my views on religion, and thus deserves a post of its own. It's far better said than anything I did in the Jehova's Witnesses-post a while back.

Learning about Israel

Ponte Corvo sent me One Palestine, Complete, a book about Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. Heavy book, it seems to equal in page count with one of the later Harry Potter-books.

As I don't have that much knowledge about Israel (beyond that which was teached on the ninth grade of compulsory school (age 15), in high school (age 17) and newspapers thereafter) this is bound to be interesting read. If nothing else, it will afford a new perspective not mentioned in Finnish history books and media obsessed with the current events.

As I was thinking of my education, I remembered that my mother asked me to take my old school books with me when I left after the last visit. I therefore had my 9th grade book easily at hand, and decided to see what it said about Israel. I was somewhat surprised by the clunkiness of the text, but I should probably understand that not all people of that age were really comfortable with books. I decided to translate the chapter to show Finnish view on Israeli history looks like.
I have tried to make the translation easy to myself by keeping many Finnish turns of phrase that might not be entirely at home with the English language - I'm in a bit of a hurry with this text, as I'm leaving home for the weekend and I want this out of the way first.

My history book was called Horisontti - Napoleonista nykypäivään (Horisont - from Napoleon to modern day) and was written by Lappalainen et al, published by Otava in 1995.

The political situation of Middle-East in the mid1980s. The map shows the political areas of influence and local crisis points. A constant threat was that the small clashes on the area might develop into wars between the superpowers. Full fledged war was on between Iraq and Iran. There had been islamic revolution in Iran, where ajatollah Khomeini had ceased power from shaah [?] Riza Pehlevin. Iran was left in discord, which Iraq leader Saddam Hussein tried to take advantage of. The countries had arguments over borders and waterways. Hussein failed, but the war lasted nearly the whole 1980s.

Chapter 73: Middle-East in world politics
Area and its problems
The area shown in the map is called Middle-East. The area's belonging to it range from Egypt to Iran and also include Kypros and Turkey. Middle-East is a political, not geographical term. It is one of the focal points of world politics, and local skirmishes tend to unfold into international matters. The background of the problems is a mixed bag of religious, economical and geographical factors. Middle-East is the cradle of three world religions - judaism, Christianity and Islam. Of the 200 million people on the area the majority are muslims, who have divided into Sunni and Shiia-factions. Of Christians, there are also many factions. The different religious groups have often tried to force their own views with violence. The steepest differences are between the Jews and and arab-muslims.
[About the different nations on the area. ]

The Palestine Question
At the beginning of our recounting of time, Palestine was Judea-named province of Rome, where the majority of people were Jewish. When the Jews rose into rebellion, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 77. The name of Judea was switched into Palestine, and for Jews diaspora began, the scattering to different parts of the world.
After Romans Palestine has been under the control of Arabs, European crusaders and- after 16th century- Turks. When the Turkish realm started to weaken in the 19th century, a powerful Arab kinship was born, which was first targeted against Turkish control but also against European nations. They too started to be interested of the lands in control of the ebbing Empire. England and France took Egypt under their control when the Suez Channel was built. The First World War meant the final strike to Turkish control, and vast arab-areas were thrown under European control under mandates granted by League of Nations. Great Britain got Palestine, which it hand occupied during the war from Turkey.
During the World War Great Britain promised Jews national home in Palestine and assured that this move would not stamp the rights of Arabs. The promise was the beginning of Jews' exodus to Palestine. It was hastened in Europe - specially in Hitler's Germany - by persecution. On the year of 1918 84 000 of the people in Palestine were Jews - 11%, but by 1948 they were a third of population of two million. This led into clash of interests and violent incidents with Arabs and proceeded to situation where the Brits could no longer contain the situation. On the year 1947 Great Britain decided to subject the future of Palestine to UN to solve.

The birth of Israel and enlargement
The UN had two suggestions. The Arab states suggested proclaiming Palestine as independent nation, where both Arabs and Jews would live. The other suggestion maintained that the area should be divided into Arab and Jewish nations. The second suggestion got the favour of majority vote, and so the Brits left the country and Israel declared itself independent nation in May 1948. Immediately after Israel's neighbours attacked the young nation with the help of Iraqi and Saudi Arabian battalions from every side.
Israel won the war and expanded its area. This happened three times later, as the maps of the next page shows. In 1956 Egypt nationalized the Suez Channel, which led to Israel attacking with France and England against Egypt. In 1967 the president of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser closed Israel's access through Akaba Bay to Harbour of Eilat. This led to so-called Six Day war, during which Israel invaded the whole Siinai, strip of Gaza, West Bank and Golan's Heights as well as Arab East-Jerusalem. In 1973 Egypt tried again. Its forces crossed the Suez and dug into defensive lines. At the same time Syria attacked Golan. Israel got weaponry assistance from the United States and blocked the attack. UN tried to instill cease fire and sent to the area peacekeepers, which Middle-East already had had.
In addition to peace negotations UN insisted Israel to leave the occupied areas, but for no effect. On the other hand, peace offering from Egypt led to President of Egypt signing a peace treaty with Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin at Camp David in United States. Accoarding to the pact Israel forfeited in 1982 Siinai to Egypt and evacuated the settlements. Egypt in turn recognized the Israeli state and stopped making demands for the independence of Palestine. Arabs declared the Egypt president a traitor.

Refugees and terrorism
When Israel became independent in 1948, most of the Arabs on the area fled to neighbouring states, where they were relocated on camps designed as short-term solution. The amount of refugees was then 700 000-800 000. Similarly over half million Jews moved to Israel. When Israel in 1967 invaded West Bank, the amount of refugees rose to 1,5 million. Today there are over two million on Israeli occupied areas, and the same amount as refugees on Arab countries. All of them have dreamed of founding their own nation.
On the refugee camps people are uneasy, and on them many terrorism using Palestinian resistance organisations have gained support. The operation of these organisations was centred specially in Lebanon, when other border neighbours of Israel had extorted the guerilla fighters from their area in fear of revenge strikes. In 1982 Israel attacked Lebanon, invaded its capital Beirut and finally forces Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) to leave Lebanon.

Surprising pact
In 1987 started on Israeli occupied areas Palestinian uprising, intifada, to which Israel answered with force. The uprising seriously disturbed peace negotiations, which United States as middleman had been able to be initialized between Israel and and the Arabs. In the negotiations Arabs demanded Israel to leave the occupied areas, which Israel saw as important for its security. In September 1993 these negotiations surprisingly led into a pact which has been thought as historical: Israel and PLO recognized each other. At the same time Israeli cabinet agreed on pact which gave Gaza and the town of Jericho autonomy. This pact happened in 1994, when Israeli occupiers left Gaza and Jericho. The pact opened a door for the continued peace progress in the Middle East. In October 1994 Jordan as well did a peace treaty with Israel and in November of the same year Jordan and Syria tied peace between each other as well.

Jewish elder stepping to "promised land". Arabs feared Jews would gain majority in Palestine. They got the Brits to limit immigration as early as 1939. After Germany's surrender the limit was pushed down to 1 500 per month. This led to rampant illegal immigration, that Brits tried to stop even by shooting illegal crossers.

What the hell is wrong with organized religions?

I have been thinking of religions lately. Partly because of this entry (I was linked by my friend Vlad, who apparently has rather good grasp on things I like), partly because couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came to visit the Residence the other day. I was not around, but apparently they knocked on each flat door and asked from which countries the inhabitants are from. They then gave Watchtowers and Awake!-magazines in the languages of the countries mentioned. So now I have religious magazines in Finnish and English on the kitchen table.

I don't much base for organized religion. I trust the scientific approach as far as our normal life goes, and I quite agree with the idea of evolution and Newtonian physics (yes, I know they only apply as long as the objects travel slower than 10% of speed of light). When we step outside the area that can be observed and verified directly by our senses, I get a bit unsure. They say that it all started with a Big Bang, which seems like a sensible conclusion from the known facts. The same goes for post-Einstein physics. They say it allows pretty much everything from time travel to reaching distant stars in days. This may very well be so, and I do know that CD-players would be impossible to manufacture without Einstein's theories.

But when you start to think about it, REALLY think about it; the universe is so huge and big and infinite. There are no borders but it expands all the time. And every material is coming from the same spot and has just spread around. There may be evidence to support it - and I do want to believe - but it's too big. And the same goes for the religious alternatives.

But to be honest, I'm not very concerned. Some days I feel that there might be something out there, and on some days I don't. In general, I feel that it's more important to know what's inside than outside. And whatever you believe, they are your beliefs and don't really belong to anyone else. If I discover something that works to me, the last thing I want to hear is that I'm wrong. Incidentally, Lutheran church (at least in Finland) is pretty cool with the subject. Apparently they (we?) have priests who don't believe in Hell. And priests that only believe in God as a symbol for human goodness. And priests that don't believe that women can be priests, which pretty well shows the other side of the tolerance-argument, but I digress.

I do read about other religions; believes often tell something important about the culture and the person itself. And so I was reading Finnish Awake! at the kitchen table, while I was eating my breakfast müsli. I admit that I dont know much about Jehovahs Witnesses, other than they go from door to door and nobody seems to like them. It's all very vague.

There was a longish article in Young people ask-series titled Why is it wrong to date in secret?. It was basically the moral story of Jessica, with additional quotes and explanations from the Bible. Jessica's story goes as follows;

Jessica had to do a choice. Everything started when one of her classmates, Jeremy, told he was interested in her. Jessica says: "He was very good looking, and my friends said that you will never find a guy as honourable as him. Many girls were interested in him, but he only had eyes for me".

After a time, Jeremy asked Jessica out. She tells: "I explained to him that I am a Jehovah's Witness, and that I could not date anyone who was not a Witness. But then Jeremy got an idea; we could date without telling my parents.

[...] Surprisingly, Jessica accepts Jeremy's idea. "I was sure that if I dated him, I could make him love Jehovah", she says. [Then] Jessica [...] heard about another Christian girl in the same situation. "When I found out that she had ended her relationship, I knew what I had to do", Jessica says. Was ending the relationship easy? No! "He was the only boy who I had ever truly cared about", Jessica says. "I cried every day for weeks."

Jessica also knew something else: she loved Jehovah, and even if she had gotten sidetracked, she genuinely wanted to do what was right. In time, the pain went away. Jessica tells; "my relationship with Jehovah is now better than ever. I am really thankful that he gives to us at the right time the kind of guidance we need."

(From Herätkää!, June 2007)

The girl cried for weeks and imagine what the boy felt like. I don't really know what the teaching of the story was - other than "cults are bad for you, mmkay?" - But I'd like you to imagine what it would be like if there is no Witness community on the area. The article also mentions that dating is forbidden altogether if the people aren't old enough to marry and prepared to do so after relatively short dating.

Religion is what you make of it, what you believe in. You can try to convince others to believe in the same way, but it's rather inhuman to make people live in a way that makes them unhappy. Denying something purely because somebody says you should does sound a bit perverse for me, just because somebody may have probably said something against it, possibly, 3 000 years ago. As such I really like the relaxed attitude of the ground-level Lutheran church; the higher ups are not as much fun (few years ago they fired an employee for being gay).

I am, of course, a product of my society, and of my generation. People talk about traditions, values and history. Personally I think that for them to carry on, they should have some other things for going for them than just age. And not everything old is bad, but that story sends chills down my spine. Actually, I felt pretty bad for few days. The worst thing is that they didn't even think Jeremy's feelings were worth exploring. The only important thing is that Jessica had gotten closer to God!

Why Judaism Is Cool

Found this some time ago in Warren Ellis' dirty blog.

At the time I didn't think much of it. I found it disgusting, but that was about it. Today morning I was at shower and thought how much trouble those fucking idiots are going to destroy something so precious. Wouldn't it be much easier all around if these dimwits would just camp outside synagogues and mosques instead of going to the tropic getting eaten by mosquitos that probaply spread all sort of nasty diseases.

And then I thought some more of those "spreaders of word". I remember how they go door to door disturbing all sort of honest folk.

Jews never do that. Whatever you say about jews, they never interrupt you in the middle of your favorite show or bath. Thats a huge plus in My Personal Up and Down List.