Jaakko Wallenius's Blog (9)

A little message from the founder of this little community. I have namely recently started a brand new blog, called The Little Book of Humanity and it is at http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/ The very modest intention of The Little Book of Humanity is to gather into one blog the very best ideas of secular, humanist and atheist thinkers, writers, poets, philosophers and scientists of the past. The goal is to form a little guidebook on how to be a good hum… Continue

What is "Big Book of Humanity"? The basic idea is that it will gather together the best ideas of thinkers, writers, poets, philosophers and scientists of the past to form a comprehensive guidebook on how to be a good human inhabitant of this little blue planet. The "Big Book of Humanity" will be a result of collaborative effort. It is freely available and accessible to all in the Internet. BBoH is created with the open Wiki-model, where all willing collaborators can supply content and what most… Continue

I remember vividly how I experienced the Christian holiday Good Friday as an exceptionally long and boring day in my childhood. This feeling was for a without doubt in part caused by the name of that day as here in the Finnish language we call it the Long Friday (Pitkäperjantai). But mostly it was caused by the simple fact that in my childhood in the 60’s the television programming on the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were exceptionally gloomy and boring, sometimes even in a disturbing way th… Continue

One of the most worrying developments in the world at the moment is the initiative by the Islamic countries of making "defamation of religion" a universal crime in the future. This is one of the scariest things going on at the moment as passing of this resolution could lead to a world where atheists are routinely silenced and even jailed, as critisizing any religion would be a universal crime. All thinking people around the world should now raise their voices against this dangerous new developme… Continue

This group was created to act as a vehicle for promoting atheist blogs and I am truly proud to inform that I have created a brand new atheist blog named "The Atheist News" which is to be found at > http://atheistnews.blogs.fi Continue

Those immersing themselves in the history of Islam are often astonished to find out that the furious warriors from the desert were often welcomed with open arms as liberators in the in the Byzantine lands they so easily conquered. In the Byzantine Eastern Roman empire there was going on a series of pogroms of the different eastern heresies of Christianity and they were causing much consternation among the people of Syria and Egypt. Under attack were especially the different Monophysitistic sect… Continue

"The Age of Enlightenment and the Reformation did turn a completely new leaf in the history of the Western Europe. The stranglehold of Catholic Church was finally broken after terrible religious wars in the northern parts of Europe. The power of the church did not regain its former glory in even in the southern parts of the continent." The rest of this little essay can be found at http://beinghuman.blogs.fi Continue

"A citizen of today’s Iran would feel right at home in medieval France or Finland, as theocracies are always very similar in their basic character. When power of the ruling class is based on the monopoly of knowledge, the most important thing is to keep competing knowledge hidden and unavailable to the majority of population." Here's only a sampler; the whole essay it at http://beinghuman.blogs.fi Continue

I think I should show good example as the first member of this network by shamlessly promoting my own blog at http://beinghuman.blogs.fi! Welcome to the weird world of finnish atheism. This blog is a companion to my Ajatuksia olemisesta -blog at the address http://uskoitseesi.blogs.fi. My aim is to summarize here the contents of that blog for the international audience. My finnish atheism-blog has raised considerable interest in Finland and its pages have been loaded over 50 000 times during t… Continue