For those who may not know, Stanton Friedman is a nuclear physicist and one of the most articulate voices for the reality of UFOs as extraterrestrial craft. Two nights ago, he appeared on the 'Larry King' show which also featured skeptic Bill Nye ('the Science Guy' and member of the Skeptic Society) and an astronomer involved with SETI work.
While Stanton attempted to make his case, especially in regard to the evidence for missile interference that occurred in 1967 in Montana, Nye kept interrupting and casting cutesy aspersions. Stanton attempted to defend his position and was promptly smacked down by King who barked, 'Don't interrupt, Stanton!'.
As far as I could see, that was it. Following that "mugging" by King (who never should have had the likes of Nye on) one scarcely heard another cogent peep from Mr. Friedman. Which was most unfortunate.
As a person who has taught critical thinking myself, I was absolutely ashamed of the act the two skeptics put on. It distracted from what could have been a serious discussion, and ended as more of a row than anything meaningful.
The difficulty in formulating UFO hypotheses, and interpreting UFO reports, is a first-hand experience for me. Not only have I investigated other people's reports and published the results[1] but I've observed a "UFO"myself. The incident occurred in March of 1962 while at the opening of a shopping center in Carol City, Florida. While awaiting the start of festivities I happened to look up at the night sky, being the amateur astronomer that I was. Amazingly, I witnessed a brilliant orange disc, at least the same diameter as a full Moon, moving rapidly from north to south.
It hovered for two to three seconds above the crowd at the shopping center and I detected the odd "Oooh" or "Aaah" from random spectators. Thus, I knew I was not having a simple hallucination (at least not by myself!) The most ironic and notable thing to me was the complete absence of sound. No whirring, like one would expect from a helicopter's propeller blades, or engine noise. The object - if "object" it was - appeared to be a light source rather than just reflecting light from elsewhere. After about three seconds it took off due south at what I estimated to be an incredible speed. As a seasoned sky observer, even at the age of 16, I was able to quickly eliminate all known man-made or natural objects from consideration. The exceptional luminous and dynamical behavior allowed this. Nevertheless, to this day I am not prepared to pinpoint a specific hypothesis in any dogmatic sense. Nor am I prepared to assert it as a "craft" from another planet.
To me, it was and remains a "UFO".
What IS a "UFO"? The late Prof. Allen J. Hynek (former Professor of Astronomy at Northwestern) offered the first truly scientific definition of the UFO:
“A UFO is the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance, trajectory and general dynamic behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified, after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one were possible.”
A common misperception is that UFOs are “flying saucers” or space ships. However, this is actually only one possible hypothesis among several. The main thrust of Hynek's definition is one must not automatically jump to any conclusion that conflates the UFO with an extraterrestrial craft.
But let us get back to Stanton Friedman and what he had to endure with Nye and the astronomer. To be sure, this is not the first time such an altercation has occurred, but with different subjects. It's interesting that not even the late Carl Sagan could refute Jacques Vallee's extensive reports (cf. Forbidden Science, North Atlantic Books, 1992) , nor did he even attempt to go after the sole UFO report in Edward U. Condon's Air Force commissioned Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects(1969, NY Times Books): Case 46, p. 396 from McMinnville Ore. (11 May, 1950) that concludes - and I quote, from p. 407:
"This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated: geometric, psychological and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object- silvery, metallic and disc shaped flew within sight of two witnesses. "
Vallee himself has also taken Sagan to task in this case, for proposing a scientific process:getting extraordinary evidence first, before forming a hypothesis on the basis of existing investigations and doing an extraordinary investigation. Nowhere else in science, or its possible objects of inquiry, are we expected to start with extraordinary evidence (which usually isn't available yet) then go to the process.
A perfect case is plasma double layers, which possibly occur in coronal arches and help to trigger solar flares. Despite the fact no one has proven these artifacts exist, they are regularly used to support the observations of certain solar flares.
So, here is where Sagan fell down, by allowing his skepticism to undermine his objectivity. Sagan himself has also been taken to task by the likes of astrophysicist Frank Tipler for instigating millions of dollars for planetary, or SETI research when "he hasn't demonstrated adequate criteria or justification for doing so". In particular, many of Sagan's papers to support or rev up funding for planetary explorations (like with the Viking probes) were entirely based on speculations to do with mathematical probabilities of life existing - say on Mars- rather than any inherent hard data for such. Such critiques could also be leveled at the astronomer skeptic who appeared alongside Nye.
Nye himself, sad to say, demonstrated the same promotion of skepticism for skepticism's sake in his appearance on King, which merely reinforces the sterility of his position. To be far more cogent, the REAL skeptic must take one step further. If his adversary makes a claim, he needs to make a counter claim or offer an alternative hypothesis, to neutralize it.
Thus, if Nye didn't accept Friedman's claim of an actual craft, the onus was on him to offer an alternative hypothesis as to what the interfering Montana UFO was.
It was, of course, acceptable for Bill Nye to simply withhold acceptance of Friedman et al's claim passively, but this usually makes the hard-edged skeptic position much more difficult to hold. If you adopt the passive stance, in other words, you really cannot be too aggressive in your take on the event, or use clever putdowns. You merely open yourself up as a target.
Something Mr Friedman would no doubt have alluded to had he not been "mugged" (shushed) by Larry King earlier!
[1] See Stahl,P.A.: Transient Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere - A Case Study, in The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 74, No. 3, June 1980.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Making Short of the Short Sellers
Within mere days of the Security and Exchange Commission's announcement of a tough new rule designed to limit "short selling" (now believed responsible for driving share prices of financial stocks into the tank) you can see and hear the howls of protest erupting from every quarter (e.g. 'SEC Short-Sale Rule Gets Negative Reviews', The Wall Street Journal, July 19, p. B1).
What is short selling, also called "shorting"? This occurs when financial (especially) share sellers aim to profit from share declines by selling borrowed shares then buying them back in the market at a lower price. In a more egregious variation, called a "naked short sell", the shares are sold without any arrangement to have borrowed them first. The end result? These shorting operators make a killing with little or no risk, and certainly none of the upfront exposure that normal purchasers of shares have. (So, in many respects they are like the oil commodity speculators who only have to produce 5% of the total purchase to speculate a much higher price). Prior to the SEC rule, by one report, it was estimate short sellers had creamed $11 billion of profits from their short sales.
What is amazing to me, especially in view of the much reported market timing ploys of a few years ago, is how many average Joes and Janes still entrust their hard earned money to Maul Street. This, despite all the recent markers that disclose it is a bad bet.
The cold, brutal and hard fact of the matter is that most Americans (unless they have at least $2-3 million in disposable wealth) had best stay out of the Maul Street casino. It is purely a game for the 'whales' (as huge bettors are called in Vegas). Even mutuals offer little or no assurance of getting anything more than chump change - unless you are remarkably lucky in your redemptions.
A Stanford University study- based on the median return of 62 mutual funds- showed that $1 invested in 1962 would have grown to $21.89 by 1992, on a pre-tax basis. The study disclosed that the $1 would have grown to only $9.87 on an after-tax basis. And the investor would have had to come up with $12.02 to pay the taxes. By contrast the study showed that a “conservative” investor who put assets into a U.S. Savings Bond in 1962, had every $1 become $10.93 by 1992.
It is easy to work out from these numbers which investor actually fared better over the thirty-year interval according to the study. Hint- hint: it wasn't the sucker in stocks. Unless mutuals investors do the math and watch the numbers they cannot be aware of how little they're actually taking home. (A point also made emphatically in The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 27, 2003, page D1, 'A Harsh Truth: Most of Your Investments Won't Make Money- Even in the Long Term', after assessing stocks, bonds and mutuals).
Recent articles appearing in MONEY magazine, and The Wall Street Journal bear this out, noting that in the past ten years the S&P 500 has barely eked out 1.6% a year, not even matching the gains of CDs or Treasuries. Plus, one has to contend with onerous expenses, fees )e.g. 12b-1) clobbering from every angle.
It is also well for small investors to understand that, to a large degree, they are in a game with a 'stacked deck'. Not only that, but under current laws their investments are almost entirely blind. Like buying a pig in a poke. This point was emphasized in a London Financial Times article (‘A Metaphorical Proposal’, Mar. 13, 2003, p. 11A) by Michael Skapinker. He cited remarks by Joseph Berardino – chief exec of Arthur Andersen- who noted how the current reporting system “fails to communicate essential information about the real risks facing companies” to the small investor.
The basic Wall Street pyramid game is elementary to grasp. Pundits, wags and paid flacks on cable business channels hype the various stocks, funds or instigate a "buzz" about them - to get suckers to buy in. The increasing buy-in inflates the price-to -earnings ratio (P-E ratio) and produces a bubble of high profits. The "Big boys" (mostly large, institutional investors, but also big money single investors) get tipped 1-2 days in advance and cash out, leaving the little guys to sink. If they're lucky they may earn a few bucks. Not much.
For example in the Financial Section of the Balt. Sun of 1/27/97, p.1C there was this little headline: INVESTORS COMPLAIN OF UNEVEN EXPOSURE :
Quote:
General Motors Corp. gave a welcome warning last month to a few close friends. One by one, the automaker called analysts at top brokerage firms on Dec. 18 to say that fourth quarter costs would be higher than expected. Word was quickly passed to those (brokerage) firms' big clients, whose sales of GM stock sent the shares tumbling $1.375 on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 38 points. Other investors had to wait until the next day - when nine analysts cut fourth quarter earnings estimates - to find out what GM said in private.
The thievery works eventually because most manjacks are conditioned to "buy and hold" rather than fold when the share price dives below a certain threshold. (Which ought to be the tip off). Thus, there are always ample marks left at the end game to be properly fleeced. Amazingly, they're always ready to play the game again, and pile their newly saved up money in.
I wised up in 1997 after the DOW was "juiced" and reading a lot of books and article on how the game was played, especially the psychological enticements to become "an investor". (I.e. you were "missing out" if you didn't plunk that cash into the Street). I cashed out of all the high risk equity and other funds before the 2000 bubble burst. I've stayed strictly with money market accounts, funds, and laddered CDs since. I did lose more than I'd like to have in a few bond funds, but also pulled out of all those in early 2000. (That was after I learned of the collateralized mortgage obligations or "toxic waste" piled into many of them)
Slow and steady is the way to go, albeit not "sexy" - and anyone who tells you any differently is trying to pick you off. I may not have millions at the end of the day, but won't have to go back to work prematurely because an IRA tanked by 40% or 50% - as many too trusting people are learning now.
The only real diversification in the end, is not to keep all the eggs in Maul Street's casino coffers. As Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin note in Your Money or Your Life, about 20% on the Street is perhaps the maximum, the rest in cash (money market) accounts, laddered CDs and Treasuries. That way - when the market tanks by 40-50% as it surely will when the next bubble bursts, you don't have to commence from square (X- 100) again. Particularly as all losses are compounded in a downmarket environment - since as I noted- Maul street will still exact its Shylock cut (in expenses, fees, commissions etc) even as you're reaping market losses! Add a 15% loss to a 5% load, and more than 3.5% in fees-expenses and the results are not very pretty.
However, the hype and media fomenting of the PR of the market mythology keeps most prospective retirees thinking that they must be in the market or they won't be able to retire. Even now, the media drumbeat has begun for people – with portfolios and 401ks still in tatters- to get back into the market game. “Buying opportunity” is the mantra issued to rope in millions more suckers. Meaanwhile, oldsters who've taken a beating in the current Bear market may be looking at another ten to twelve years of work to make up their losses - assuming they can find work!
The stock market's sole purpose, As E. Brockway observes in his The End of Economic Man, 1990, is to steal capital from the poor or middle class (that can least afford losses) and give it to the rich. The means to achieve this are not obvious, but all one needs to do really is pay attention to the financial news and especially how market manipulation rears its ugly head again and again.
One day, perhaps, people will learn how to protect their assets themselves, without being drumbeaten into being hostage to stock sharks, con artists, shorters, speculators and other denizens!
What is short selling, also called "shorting"? This occurs when financial (especially) share sellers aim to profit from share declines by selling borrowed shares then buying them back in the market at a lower price. In a more egregious variation, called a "naked short sell", the shares are sold without any arrangement to have borrowed them first. The end result? These shorting operators make a killing with little or no risk, and certainly none of the upfront exposure that normal purchasers of shares have. (So, in many respects they are like the oil commodity speculators who only have to produce 5% of the total purchase to speculate a much higher price). Prior to the SEC rule, by one report, it was estimate short sellers had creamed $11 billion of profits from their short sales.
What is amazing to me, especially in view of the much reported market timing ploys of a few years ago, is how many average Joes and Janes still entrust their hard earned money to Maul Street. This, despite all the recent markers that disclose it is a bad bet.
The cold, brutal and hard fact of the matter is that most Americans (unless they have at least $2-3 million in disposable wealth) had best stay out of the Maul Street casino. It is purely a game for the 'whales' (as huge bettors are called in Vegas). Even mutuals offer little or no assurance of getting anything more than chump change - unless you are remarkably lucky in your redemptions.
A Stanford University study- based on the median return of 62 mutual funds- showed that $1 invested in 1962 would have grown to $21.89 by 1992, on a pre-tax basis. The study disclosed that the $1 would have grown to only $9.87 on an after-tax basis. And the investor would have had to come up with $12.02 to pay the taxes. By contrast the study showed that a “conservative” investor who put assets into a U.S. Savings Bond in 1962, had every $1 become $10.93 by 1992.
It is easy to work out from these numbers which investor actually fared better over the thirty-year interval according to the study. Hint- hint: it wasn't the sucker in stocks. Unless mutuals investors do the math and watch the numbers they cannot be aware of how little they're actually taking home. (A point also made emphatically in The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 27, 2003, page D1, 'A Harsh Truth: Most of Your Investments Won't Make Money- Even in the Long Term', after assessing stocks, bonds and mutuals).
Recent articles appearing in MONEY magazine, and The Wall Street Journal bear this out, noting that in the past ten years the S&P 500 has barely eked out 1.6% a year, not even matching the gains of CDs or Treasuries. Plus, one has to contend with onerous expenses, fees )e.g. 12b-1) clobbering from every angle.
It is also well for small investors to understand that, to a large degree, they are in a game with a 'stacked deck'. Not only that, but under current laws their investments are almost entirely blind. Like buying a pig in a poke. This point was emphasized in a London Financial Times article (‘A Metaphorical Proposal’, Mar. 13, 2003, p. 11A) by Michael Skapinker. He cited remarks by Joseph Berardino – chief exec of Arthur Andersen- who noted how the current reporting system “fails to communicate essential information about the real risks facing companies” to the small investor.
The basic Wall Street pyramid game is elementary to grasp. Pundits, wags and paid flacks on cable business channels hype the various stocks, funds or instigate a "buzz" about them - to get suckers to buy in. The increasing buy-in inflates the price-to -earnings ratio (P-E ratio) and produces a bubble of high profits. The "Big boys" (mostly large, institutional investors, but also big money single investors) get tipped 1-2 days in advance and cash out, leaving the little guys to sink. If they're lucky they may earn a few bucks. Not much.
For example in the Financial Section of the Balt. Sun of 1/27/97, p.1C there was this little headline: INVESTORS COMPLAIN OF UNEVEN EXPOSURE :
Quote:
General Motors Corp. gave a welcome warning last month to a few close friends. One by one, the automaker called analysts at top brokerage firms on Dec. 18 to say that fourth quarter costs would be higher than expected. Word was quickly passed to those (brokerage) firms' big clients, whose sales of GM stock sent the shares tumbling $1.375 on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 38 points. Other investors had to wait until the next day - when nine analysts cut fourth quarter earnings estimates - to find out what GM said in private.
The thievery works eventually because most manjacks are conditioned to "buy and hold" rather than fold when the share price dives below a certain threshold. (Which ought to be the tip off). Thus, there are always ample marks left at the end game to be properly fleeced. Amazingly, they're always ready to play the game again, and pile their newly saved up money in.
I wised up in 1997 after the DOW was "juiced" and reading a lot of books and article on how the game was played, especially the psychological enticements to become "an investor". (I.e. you were "missing out" if you didn't plunk that cash into the Street). I cashed out of all the high risk equity and other funds before the 2000 bubble burst. I've stayed strictly with money market accounts, funds, and laddered CDs since. I did lose more than I'd like to have in a few bond funds, but also pulled out of all those in early 2000. (That was after I learned of the collateralized mortgage obligations or "toxic waste" piled into many of them)
Slow and steady is the way to go, albeit not "sexy" - and anyone who tells you any differently is trying to pick you off. I may not have millions at the end of the day, but won't have to go back to work prematurely because an IRA tanked by 40% or 50% - as many too trusting people are learning now.
The only real diversification in the end, is not to keep all the eggs in Maul Street's casino coffers. As Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin note in Your Money or Your Life, about 20% on the Street is perhaps the maximum, the rest in cash (money market) accounts, laddered CDs and Treasuries. That way - when the market tanks by 40-50% as it surely will when the next bubble bursts, you don't have to commence from square (X- 100) again. Particularly as all losses are compounded in a downmarket environment - since as I noted- Maul street will still exact its Shylock cut (in expenses, fees, commissions etc) even as you're reaping market losses! Add a 15% loss to a 5% load, and more than 3.5% in fees-expenses and the results are not very pretty.
However, the hype and media fomenting of the PR of the market mythology keeps most prospective retirees thinking that they must be in the market or they won't be able to retire. Even now, the media drumbeat has begun for people – with portfolios and 401ks still in tatters- to get back into the market game. “Buying opportunity” is the mantra issued to rope in millions more suckers. Meaanwhile, oldsters who've taken a beating in the current Bear market may be looking at another ten to twelve years of work to make up their losses - assuming they can find work!
The stock market's sole purpose, As E. Brockway observes in his The End of Economic Man, 1990, is to steal capital from the poor or middle class (that can least afford losses) and give it to the rich. The means to achieve this are not obvious, but all one needs to do really is pay attention to the financial news and especially how market manipulation rears its ugly head again and again.
One day, perhaps, people will learn how to protect their assets themselves, without being drumbeaten into being hostage to stock sharks, con artists, shorters, speculators and other denizens!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Fractional Gamma Functions
Earlier we explored how the Gamma function works. One of the more useful formulas for generalizing integral forms was found to be:
G(x + 1) = x G(x)
This will also be found very useful in working with fractional Gamnma functions, as I will show in this article. Most solutions of fractional G(x) entail already knowing at least one basic form, usually obtained from a special integral.
For example, working with most fractional halves we make use of the basic integral that generates:
G(1/2)
This is defined:
G(1/2) = INT (0 to oo) t^-1/2 exp(-t) dt
where 'INT' denotes an integral, taken in this case from 0 to infinity. The resulting integral yields:
G(1/2) = pi
Now let's see how it works, say to obtain G(-1/2):
From the basic Gamma function formula (letting x = -1/2) :
G(-1/2) = G(-1/2 + 1) = -1/2 G (-1/2)
Or:
G(-1/2) = -2 G(1/2) = -2 pi
That was easy enough. Now what about G(3/2)?
Use same sort of procedure:
G(3/2) = G(1 + 1/2) = 1/2 G(1/2) = pi/2
(Readers are invited here to find G(5/2) on their own!)
Another application, decimals - which are merely another form of fraction:
Say you wish to obtain G(-0.30)
(In this case, one already is assumed to know the basic Gamma function G(1.70) = 0.90864)
In this case, from the Gamma formula given earlier:
G(-0.30) = G (1 - 0.30) = -0.30 G (-0.30)
G(0.70)/ (-0.30) = G(-0.30)
But: G(0.70) = G(1.70)/ 0.70 = (0.90864)/ 0.70 = 1.29805
So: G(-0.30) = G(0.70)/ -0.30 = 1.29805/ -0.30 = -4.32683
Fractional sequences can also come into play, e.g.
Find: G(n + ½):
G(n + ½) = (n- ½) G(n – ½)
Since: we use x = (n – ½) in: G(x + 1) = xG(x)
Thus:
G([n – ½] + 1) = (n – ½) G(n – ½)
-> G(n + ½) = (n – ½) G(n – ½)
And we can go further, focusing on treating the right hand side:
(n – ½) G(n – ½) = (n – ½) (n – 3/2) G(n –3/2)
= (n - 1/2)(n - 3/2) . .. . .3/2* 1/2 * G(1/2)
But, G(1/2) = pi, so:
G(n + 1/2) = (2n -1)/2 * (2n -3)/2 . . .. 3/2* 1/2* (pi)^1/2
Further factoring and additional algebra will yield:
G(n + 1/2) = (2n)! (pi)^1/2 / 2^n n!
This is left as an exercise for the ambitious reader!
G(x + 1) = x G(x)
This will also be found very useful in working with fractional Gamnma functions, as I will show in this article. Most solutions of fractional G(x) entail already knowing at least one basic form, usually obtained from a special integral.
For example, working with most fractional halves we make use of the basic integral that generates:
G(1/2)
This is defined:
G(1/2) = INT (0 to oo) t^-1/2 exp(-t) dt
where 'INT' denotes an integral, taken in this case from 0 to infinity. The resulting integral yields:
G(1/2) = pi
Now let's see how it works, say to obtain G(-1/2):
From the basic Gamma function formula (letting x = -1/2) :
G(-1/2) = G(-1/2 + 1) = -1/2 G (-1/2)
Or:
G(-1/2) = -2 G(1/2) = -2 pi
That was easy enough. Now what about G(3/2)?
Use same sort of procedure:
G(3/2) = G(1 + 1/2) = 1/2 G(1/2) = pi/2
(Readers are invited here to find G(5/2) on their own!)
Another application, decimals - which are merely another form of fraction:
Say you wish to obtain G(-0.30)
(In this case, one already is assumed to know the basic Gamma function G(1.70) = 0.90864)
In this case, from the Gamma formula given earlier:
G(-0.30) = G (1 - 0.30) = -0.30 G (-0.30)
G(0.70)/ (-0.30) = G(-0.30)
But: G(0.70) = G(1.70)/ 0.70 = (0.90864)/ 0.70 = 1.29805
So: G(-0.30) = G(0.70)/ -0.30 = 1.29805/ -0.30 = -4.32683
Fractional sequences can also come into play, e.g.
Find: G(n + ½):
G(n + ½) = (n- ½) G(n – ½)
Since: we use x = (n – ½) in: G(x + 1) = xG(x)
Thus:
G([n – ½] + 1) = (n – ½) G(n – ½)
-> G(n + ½) = (n – ½) G(n – ½)
And we can go further, focusing on treating the right hand side:
(n – ½) G(n – ½) = (n – ½) (n – 3/2) G(n –3/2)
= (n - 1/2)(n - 3/2) . .. . .3/2* 1/2 * G(1/2)
But, G(1/2) = pi, so:
G(n + 1/2) = (2n -1)/2 * (2n -3)/2 . . .. 3/2* 1/2* (pi)^1/2
Further factoring and additional algebra will yield:
G(n + 1/2) = (2n)! (pi)^1/2 / 2^n n!
This is left as an exercise for the ambitious reader!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
HOW TO CURE RELIGIOUSLY PSYCHOTIC PEOPLE
The question of curing the religiously crazed or psychotic is one that has emerged on many forums I’ve frequented. Some, of course, are horrified at the very notion that one would wish to “cure” the religious, since they don’t identify it as a disease or mental aberration. Thus, there is an impetus to “leave religion alone”.
However, if you treat religion as taboo and "out of bounds" for commentary or prescriptive cure, you essentially give mental dysfunction (which often operates under religious cover) a free pass. You also leave religious memes unexamined. Including those that emerge as when attention is drawn to the heaven-hell myth, viz. via the "Hell House" horrors now being used by evangelicals to prepare children for what they will face if they become "unbelievers". In these odious performances, kids are forced to watch plays depicting infidels being tortured and burned by Demons. Many come away in partial or full psychoses.
These scenes - "real" (based on biblical bunkum) or imaginary ("Hell House")- also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?
These sanctimonious, insufferable Christianoids (especially) insist that they have earned their 'just rewards" and they mean to enjoy them. Even at the expense of cousin Tommie, Uncle Fred, Aunt Millie or Grandpa Ed - seen now perpetually frying and getting impaled with Lucifer's pitchforks with the other unbelievers, sinners and spiritual riff raff!
Here's the real question to ask an unctuous believer who insists he or she is 'above it all' and merely looking out for the "advancement" of humanity (by which they really mean being "personally saved"):Do you have a "hard on" for afterlife exclusion, segregation? Dividing humanity's dead into the permanently "saved" and "unsaved"? The former sitting at the "right hand" and watching on as we ("unsaved") unbelievers, along with Buddhists, Hindus, Jews get cremated for eternity? Is this important for your own spiritual satisfaction? Or, can it be dispensed with?
If your God is truly one of Love, why on Earth does he need a “Hell”? (And please don’t hand me the malarkey that God “doesn’t send people to Hell but people choose to send themselves:”. This swill is definitely the last refuge of scoundrels and imbeciles)
My point is that no matter how devout a person insists he or she is, if s/he believes in "Heaven" and "Hell" the words are already hollow and show that - whatever the particular "hard-on" requires- it means more than five billion frying in a nuclear holocaust initiated in the Valley of Megiddo.
It means > 100 billion crisping in fires for eternity as some snotty little "elect" enjoys sitting at the "right hand" of their little lord and master watching the infidels writhe. And then these fart will have the nerve to say: "Oh, but we hate the sin and love the sinner" Yeah, right.
Whether many want to admit it, or realize it or not, many evangelical Christians' entire life is bound into and promotes, defines their ultimate “salvation”. I have no problem with that, until they also posit my exclusion, e.g. damnation, based on my unbelief. (Never mind the exclusion may be from an unreal existence from my Atheist POV, the point is not the existence per se but the person's absolute mental exclusion in the first place!)
In other words, fine if you want to believe you're saved, but don't pillory or condemn me as "unsaved". Don't grab your "heaven" ticket, by handing me my "hell" ticket. (E.g. you're attaining the heavenly clouds, means I must descend to the hellish pits). I also totally question the premise that anyone can "behave with decency" in this world, if they also believe in their heart of hearts that a good portion of humanity will be condemned at the end of time - for either never having heard of Jesus, or not believing in him.
That makes a mockery of any decent acts they might do, and makes them hollow at core, since their governing belief is whatever people they help (or cooperate with in helping others) will ultimately be destroyed in some eternal holocaust. How does that reconcile? It doesn't - unless one is a madman. Speaking of madness, there is enough evidence now to show that the vast bulk of religiosity and its expressions are centered in the temporal lobes as epiphenomena.
Experiments by J.M. Persinger at Laurentian University have exposed these, by stimulating the temporal lobes of numerous subjects with specially designed helmets. In each case, religious visions or "insights" emerged, as well as beliefs. Eventually, Persinger had to call it quits after receiving death threats (according to a 1989 OMNI piece, 'Transcending Science') One would think people wouldn't get so lathered up at this.
Beholding the sheer wonder of the brain as a 3 lb. mass of gray matter. Packed with over ten billion cells - able to deliver everything from the most advanced tensor equations, to building space rockets...to well, providing the most exquisite visions and beliefs on demand. (Read some of Telhard's writings, like The Divine Milieu, to see how his own temporal lobes excited his neocortex and conjured up his marvelous visions of the Alpha and Omega).
But people (believers) almost uniformly 'lose it', perhaps because - as Daniel Dennett once noted - they want to build their world and universe on "skyhooks" not cranes. Cranes, after all, have to hoist from the ground up. They're prosaic, dirty material flotsam and jetsam like cells, electric signals and chemicals. But oh those skyhooks! To toss them upwards and hook on to the ethereal, immaterial realm in the hyper yonder beyond the clouds and matter!
"BWAAAAAA....We don't want that! We wanna be GRANDIOSE beings! Made of sky and spirit not filthy matter! Or derived from it like those dirty atheists!"
They fail to comprehend that for humanity to be in harmony - no single subset can elevate itself as "more special" or “more worthy" or more "grandiose" than any other, irrespective of who or what they believe in. And while it might be nice or appealing to believe ALL humanity is skyhook-engendered, in practice it never works! Because once the skyhook meme is admitted, one segment seeks to claim its grandiosity and specialness for itself, and excludes the others!Much better to look at basic evolution by natural selection, and how we all came to have the same basic DNA in our cells. Sharing the same basic chemical arrangement. Indeed, this sharing can be extended to all living things on the planet- removing the specialness of humans as a species.
What is the prescription therefore to cure exaggerated religiosity? It is simply an adaptation of Persinger’s own methods: in this case using quantum dot electrodes inserted into the temporal lobes to control the “temporal lobe transients” that give rise to religious visions, beliefs, rituals, and the arrogant, exclusionary condemnations of others.
If every religiously-driven extremist could be identified, tagged and implanted the world would be a much better place, since the extremist manifestations of religion would be held in check. Then, people could still practice interior meditation and worship – but their yen to interject it into the outside world (and onto unwilling others) would be suppressed.
For an Atheist this is as close as it gets to “heaven”.
However, if you treat religion as taboo and "out of bounds" for commentary or prescriptive cure, you essentially give mental dysfunction (which often operates under religious cover) a free pass. You also leave religious memes unexamined. Including those that emerge as when attention is drawn to the heaven-hell myth, viz. via the "Hell House" horrors now being used by evangelicals to prepare children for what they will face if they become "unbelievers". In these odious performances, kids are forced to watch plays depicting infidels being tortured and burned by Demons. Many come away in partial or full psychoses.
These scenes - "real" (based on biblical bunkum) or imaginary ("Hell House")- also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?
These sanctimonious, insufferable Christianoids (especially) insist that they have earned their 'just rewards" and they mean to enjoy them. Even at the expense of cousin Tommie, Uncle Fred, Aunt Millie or Grandpa Ed - seen now perpetually frying and getting impaled with Lucifer's pitchforks with the other unbelievers, sinners and spiritual riff raff!
Here's the real question to ask an unctuous believer who insists he or she is 'above it all' and merely looking out for the "advancement" of humanity (by which they really mean being "personally saved"):Do you have a "hard on" for afterlife exclusion, segregation? Dividing humanity's dead into the permanently "saved" and "unsaved"? The former sitting at the "right hand" and watching on as we ("unsaved") unbelievers, along with Buddhists, Hindus, Jews get cremated for eternity? Is this important for your own spiritual satisfaction? Or, can it be dispensed with?
If your God is truly one of Love, why on Earth does he need a “Hell”? (And please don’t hand me the malarkey that God “doesn’t send people to Hell but people choose to send themselves:”. This swill is definitely the last refuge of scoundrels and imbeciles)
My point is that no matter how devout a person insists he or she is, if s/he believes in "Heaven" and "Hell" the words are already hollow and show that - whatever the particular "hard-on" requires- it means more than five billion frying in a nuclear holocaust initiated in the Valley of Megiddo.
It means > 100 billion crisping in fires for eternity as some snotty little "elect" enjoys sitting at the "right hand" of their little lord and master watching the infidels writhe. And then these fart will have the nerve to say: "Oh, but we hate the sin and love the sinner" Yeah, right.
Whether many want to admit it, or realize it or not, many evangelical Christians' entire life is bound into and promotes, defines their ultimate “salvation”. I have no problem with that, until they also posit my exclusion, e.g. damnation, based on my unbelief. (Never mind the exclusion may be from an unreal existence from my Atheist POV, the point is not the existence per se but the person's absolute mental exclusion in the first place!)
In other words, fine if you want to believe you're saved, but don't pillory or condemn me as "unsaved". Don't grab your "heaven" ticket, by handing me my "hell" ticket. (E.g. you're attaining the heavenly clouds, means I must descend to the hellish pits). I also totally question the premise that anyone can "behave with decency" in this world, if they also believe in their heart of hearts that a good portion of humanity will be condemned at the end of time - for either never having heard of Jesus, or not believing in him.
That makes a mockery of any decent acts they might do, and makes them hollow at core, since their governing belief is whatever people they help (or cooperate with in helping others) will ultimately be destroyed in some eternal holocaust. How does that reconcile? It doesn't - unless one is a madman. Speaking of madness, there is enough evidence now to show that the vast bulk of religiosity and its expressions are centered in the temporal lobes as epiphenomena.
Experiments by J.M. Persinger at Laurentian University have exposed these, by stimulating the temporal lobes of numerous subjects with specially designed helmets. In each case, religious visions or "insights" emerged, as well as beliefs. Eventually, Persinger had to call it quits after receiving death threats (according to a 1989 OMNI piece, 'Transcending Science') One would think people wouldn't get so lathered up at this.
Beholding the sheer wonder of the brain as a 3 lb. mass of gray matter. Packed with over ten billion cells - able to deliver everything from the most advanced tensor equations, to building space rockets...to well, providing the most exquisite visions and beliefs on demand. (Read some of Telhard's writings, like The Divine Milieu, to see how his own temporal lobes excited his neocortex and conjured up his marvelous visions of the Alpha and Omega).
But people (believers) almost uniformly 'lose it', perhaps because - as Daniel Dennett once noted - they want to build their world and universe on "skyhooks" not cranes. Cranes, after all, have to hoist from the ground up. They're prosaic, dirty material flotsam and jetsam like cells, electric signals and chemicals. But oh those skyhooks! To toss them upwards and hook on to the ethereal, immaterial realm in the hyper yonder beyond the clouds and matter!
"BWAAAAAA....We don't want that! We wanna be GRANDIOSE beings! Made of sky and spirit not filthy matter! Or derived from it like those dirty atheists!"
They fail to comprehend that for humanity to be in harmony - no single subset can elevate itself as "more special" or “more worthy" or more "grandiose" than any other, irrespective of who or what they believe in. And while it might be nice or appealing to believe ALL humanity is skyhook-engendered, in practice it never works! Because once the skyhook meme is admitted, one segment seeks to claim its grandiosity and specialness for itself, and excludes the others!Much better to look at basic evolution by natural selection, and how we all came to have the same basic DNA in our cells. Sharing the same basic chemical arrangement. Indeed, this sharing can be extended to all living things on the planet- removing the specialness of humans as a species.
What is the prescription therefore to cure exaggerated religiosity? It is simply an adaptation of Persinger’s own methods: in this case using quantum dot electrodes inserted into the temporal lobes to control the “temporal lobe transients” that give rise to religious visions, beliefs, rituals, and the arrogant, exclusionary condemnations of others.
If every religiously-driven extremist could be identified, tagged and implanted the world would be a much better place, since the extremist manifestations of religion would be held in check. Then, people could still practice interior meditation and worship – but their yen to interject it into the outside world (and onto unwilling others) would be suppressed.
For an Atheist this is as close as it gets to “heaven”.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The Whine of the Speculators
It was Kevin Phillips, in his superb book, Arrogant Capital, who first noted that whenever an empire or nation is in decline it is speculation that takes precedence over all else and dictates its economy. Such was the case with the 16th century Dutch, as with the British at the end of the 19th century. It is as true today in the U.S.A.
The problem is that speculative enclaves are mostly hidden away from public view, so they are able to conduct their shenanigans beyond the scrutiny of the public mind. G.P. Brockway (The End of Economic Man, Harpers, 1991) has noted that before about fifty years ago one had roughly equal 'productive' and 'speculative' economies based on Main St. and Wall Street, respectively. Real productivity kept growing because real investment was made in hands-on materials, plant, research and labor. Most everyone benefited, including workers - via real (defined benefits) pensions (not '401ks') as well as higher wages, and companies that produced REAL goods.
Sometime after Reagan was canonized, in the 1980s, the speculative economy - which up until then had been kept in the background- began to take control. Much of this became possible through de-regulation, especially of the banking system. The effect was to shift enormous volumes of capital from Main Street to Wall Street.
Now, as oil prices spike to unheard of highs, attention once more has turned to the commodity "traders" .....errr....speculators. By some independent estimates, up to 30% of the current per barrel price of oil is due exclusively to speculation by institutional traders in the oil commodities market. (Alas, these institutional outfits include pension funds, who put their members future welfare and livelihoods at grave risk especially if the oil prices should crash) If Oil is $140 a barrel, that would mean that minus speculative influence it would descend to about $98 a barrel. And the current $4.10 for a gallon of gas would likely recede to $3.50 or even $3.30.
Of course, the speculators and their apologists and protectors in the media don't wish to hear this, nor do they appreciate the daylight cast upon their activities. In the last week alone, I coiunted no less than eight counter-attacks (in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times) against those who sought to make speculators "scape goats". Much umbrage was taken and editorial bile spilled, but I saw little to convince me the speculators were the "angels" depicted: the "guardians" charged with controlling things in the futures markets for the public good. To which I say, 'Bah', 'Codswallop!' and 'Humbug!"
Commodities traders, like currency speculators (who drove to Thai baht down causing the Asian crisis in 1998) are a mixture of casino gambler and bipedal predatory cockroach. They don't give two squats about anything or anyone except their bottom line! Indeed, these freaks are piling into the commodities racket precisely because the stock market (their usual casino outlet) is tanking, and they can't make enough on their investments.
To the apologists for the precious little speculators and "traders", I ask you to examine this article ('Oil Above $140 on Libya Threat to Cut Output') which appeared in The Financial Times of June 27th (p. 22). The article led off:
"Oil prices rose above $140 a barrel for the first time yesterday as Libya threatened to cut its oil production and Opec's president warned that priuces could surge to $150-170 this summer"
Then two pragraphs lower (caps are my emphasis):
"TRADERS TOOK THE WARNINGS AS A GREEN LIGHT FOR BUYING AND PUSHED OIL TO A HIGH OF $140.05 a BARREL"
Note, the artricle said TRADERS (e.g. speculators) pushed oil to that high! Not oil companies, not space aliens ....not the supply and demand market, but SPECULATORS in the futures market.
This is an important point, since the speculator apologists always begin their counter rants (and insulting the intelligence of the commodities "commoners") by pointing ot that NO actual physical supplies are being diminished, moved or affected by the traders. But no one said they were!
Much like Enron's shell game in energy trading in 2000, wherein no real kilowatts were generated and moved. Rather kilowatts were shifted on paper and increased costs put on as the transactions crossed particular state lines (say from AZ to CA). In the same way, future costs of future oil are bid upon on PAPER by speculators, and these amount to something similar to an auction bid. The difference is that in the hidden commodity-energy auction, unlike an actual auction for a real barrel of oil at say, Sotheby's- every manjack pays the final bid!
So imagine this room, where dozens of speculators ("traders") are bidding on a future amount of oil. The bidding begins maybe at today's market price, say $139. Then some guy yells out: "I bid $140"! And another bozo in the back yells: "I bid $142!" And it finally ends when some clown in an Armani custom-made pinstripe suit bids "$144".
Does he purchase it? Well, only in a hyperbolic way. You see, rather than paying the full price as a real bidder must, say at Sotheby's, the oil trader has margin requirements in oil futures that are often as low as 5%. This means he need only put up 5% of the total cost of the amount bidded on! Would that all auction bidders everywhere had such a grand deal! Problem is when that oil trader leaves the "auction" room (often thousands of miles away in London at the ICE Futures Europe HQ) all of us non-participants get stuck paying his last bid price wherever we live on the planet!
At the very least, to correct this abomination, the "London loophole" needs to be closed and the same standards for margin requirements applied in NY as across the pond in London. This way, cowboy commodities traders cannot continue to wreak havoc on all of us. An excellent prescription is one now proposed by Rep. John Dingell (D, MI) forcing oil speculators to put up collateral of at least 50% of the value of the energy futures in which they trade. Heck, I'd even make it more: say 80%.
Doing this simple step, as Fadel Ghelt - managing director at Oppenheimer & Co. has noted - could bring prices down to $45 to $60 a barrel. ('Oil Speculation Draws Scrutiny' in The Wall Street Journal, June 24, p. A3) . This translates to $2.25 to $2.50 a gallon for gas.
It is high time that the high priests of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)crack down on the casino operator oil traders and their ilk. It is bad enough that a tanking dollar (because of pusillanimous Fed policies and fear of increasing interest rates in an election year)is causing fuel spikes, but at least we can tame the speculative excesses.
These whackos cannot be allowed to play fast and loose with our economic lives.
The problem is that speculative enclaves are mostly hidden away from public view, so they are able to conduct their shenanigans beyond the scrutiny of the public mind. G.P. Brockway (The End of Economic Man, Harpers, 1991) has noted that before about fifty years ago one had roughly equal 'productive' and 'speculative' economies based on Main St. and Wall Street, respectively. Real productivity kept growing because real investment was made in hands-on materials, plant, research and labor. Most everyone benefited, including workers - via real (defined benefits) pensions (not '401ks') as well as higher wages, and companies that produced REAL goods.
Sometime after Reagan was canonized, in the 1980s, the speculative economy - which up until then had been kept in the background- began to take control. Much of this became possible through de-regulation, especially of the banking system. The effect was to shift enormous volumes of capital from Main Street to Wall Street.
Now, as oil prices spike to unheard of highs, attention once more has turned to the commodity "traders" .....errr....speculators. By some independent estimates, up to 30% of the current per barrel price of oil is due exclusively to speculation by institutional traders in the oil commodities market. (Alas, these institutional outfits include pension funds, who put their members future welfare and livelihoods at grave risk especially if the oil prices should crash) If Oil is $140 a barrel, that would mean that minus speculative influence it would descend to about $98 a barrel. And the current $4.10 for a gallon of gas would likely recede to $3.50 or even $3.30.
Of course, the speculators and their apologists and protectors in the media don't wish to hear this, nor do they appreciate the daylight cast upon their activities. In the last week alone, I coiunted no less than eight counter-attacks (in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times) against those who sought to make speculators "scape goats". Much umbrage was taken and editorial bile spilled, but I saw little to convince me the speculators were the "angels" depicted: the "guardians" charged with controlling things in the futures markets for the public good. To which I say, 'Bah', 'Codswallop!' and 'Humbug!"
Commodities traders, like currency speculators (who drove to Thai baht down causing the Asian crisis in 1998) are a mixture of casino gambler and bipedal predatory cockroach. They don't give two squats about anything or anyone except their bottom line! Indeed, these freaks are piling into the commodities racket precisely because the stock market (their usual casino outlet) is tanking, and they can't make enough on their investments.
To the apologists for the precious little speculators and "traders", I ask you to examine this article ('Oil Above $140 on Libya Threat to Cut Output') which appeared in The Financial Times of June 27th (p. 22). The article led off:
"Oil prices rose above $140 a barrel for the first time yesterday as Libya threatened to cut its oil production and Opec's president warned that priuces could surge to $150-170 this summer"
Then two pragraphs lower (caps are my emphasis):
"TRADERS TOOK THE WARNINGS AS A GREEN LIGHT FOR BUYING AND PUSHED OIL TO A HIGH OF $140.05 a BARREL"
Note, the artricle said TRADERS (e.g. speculators) pushed oil to that high! Not oil companies, not space aliens ....not the supply and demand market, but SPECULATORS in the futures market.
This is an important point, since the speculator apologists always begin their counter rants (and insulting the intelligence of the commodities "commoners") by pointing ot that NO actual physical supplies are being diminished, moved or affected by the traders. But no one said they were!
Much like Enron's shell game in energy trading in 2000, wherein no real kilowatts were generated and moved. Rather kilowatts were shifted on paper and increased costs put on as the transactions crossed particular state lines (say from AZ to CA). In the same way, future costs of future oil are bid upon on PAPER by speculators, and these amount to something similar to an auction bid. The difference is that in the hidden commodity-energy auction, unlike an actual auction for a real barrel of oil at say, Sotheby's- every manjack pays the final bid!
So imagine this room, where dozens of speculators ("traders") are bidding on a future amount of oil. The bidding begins maybe at today's market price, say $139. Then some guy yells out: "I bid $140"! And another bozo in the back yells: "I bid $142!" And it finally ends when some clown in an Armani custom-made pinstripe suit bids "$144".
Does he purchase it? Well, only in a hyperbolic way. You see, rather than paying the full price as a real bidder must, say at Sotheby's, the oil trader has margin requirements in oil futures that are often as low as 5%. This means he need only put up 5% of the total cost of the amount bidded on! Would that all auction bidders everywhere had such a grand deal! Problem is when that oil trader leaves the "auction" room (often thousands of miles away in London at the ICE Futures Europe HQ) all of us non-participants get stuck paying his last bid price wherever we live on the planet!
At the very least, to correct this abomination, the "London loophole" needs to be closed and the same standards for margin requirements applied in NY as across the pond in London. This way, cowboy commodities traders cannot continue to wreak havoc on all of us. An excellent prescription is one now proposed by Rep. John Dingell (D, MI) forcing oil speculators to put up collateral of at least 50% of the value of the energy futures in which they trade. Heck, I'd even make it more: say 80%.
Doing this simple step, as Fadel Ghelt - managing director at Oppenheimer & Co. has noted - could bring prices down to $45 to $60 a barrel. ('Oil Speculation Draws Scrutiny' in The Wall Street Journal, June 24, p. A3) . This translates to $2.25 to $2.50 a gallon for gas.
It is high time that the high priests of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)crack down on the casino operator oil traders and their ilk. It is bad enough that a tanking dollar (because of pusillanimous Fed policies and fear of increasing interest rates in an election year)is causing fuel spikes, but at least we can tame the speculative excesses.
These whackos cannot be allowed to play fast and loose with our economic lives.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Was Albert Einstein a Believer?
The recently reported Einstein criticisms of the Bible revive an ongoing, decades old debate on whether the great man was a believer or not. Given his perceived high intellect, nearly every believer wants this to be true – but is it? Apart from his reported criticism of Bible obsession other aspects also emerge when one examines his writings, opinions.
The famous quote, “God does not play dice with the universe”, was really a metaphorical expression embodying Einstein’s contempt for the modern quantum theory. As a strict determinist, he couldn’t bring himself to accept that an electron’s position was impossible to fix and had to be described by “probability waves”.
The point here is that shouldn’t take his invocation of “God” too literally. Indeed, one of his biographers, Jeremy Bernstein (‘Einstein’, Fontana-Collins Books, UK, 1973) has noted (page 20) that Einstein often loosely referenced “God” as a convenient substitute for “the rational connections, the laws, governing the behavior of the universe”.
Einstein also (ibid) used the pet term “Old Man” interchangeably with the above.
Einstein’s most cogent rejection of the Christian version of a personal God probably appeared in his ‘Ideas and Opinions’ wherein he writes:
“The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events- provided, of course, that he takes the laws of causation really seriously.
He has no use for the religion of fear, and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity – internal and external – so that he cannot be responsible…any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes”.
This is diametrically opposed to any normative, conventional notion of “God” as typically understood. Hence, one may say that – to a first approximation – Einstein believed in NO God.
Later, as if to reinforce this, Einstein wrote:
“Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death. Let those feeble souls, whether from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts.”
So Einstein believes in no afterlife, and hence no “heaven and hell”. Thus, likely no resurrection, no “judgment” or no “second coming”
To all intents, it seems clear to me that at the very least Einstein was an atheist agnostic (readers can refer to this definition in George Smith’s excellent book, ‘The Case Against God’, page 9)
This is backed up by these words of Einstein (p. 120, ‘Einstein in his own Words’):
“The human mind is unable to conceive of four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?”
Clearly, the inherent message here is that the very concept of deity is unknowable to the human mind.
In the same text, four pages later, Einstein seems to resign himself that most humans will need a crutch to get by. He avers that (p. 124):
”Such a belief (in a personal God) seems preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook on life. I wonder whether anyone can ever successfully render to mankind a more sublime means to metaphysical needs”.
This is not advocating any specific religion per se, but we know the Monotheistic religions are all predicated on a personal deity. It would seem that the foremost job for Atheists is to find some form of “spiritual methadone” which we might offer the majority of our fellows to wean them off the god teat, at least the personal one. In so doing, we might very well help ourselves to become a less despised minority in this country.
Or at least one can hope!
The famous quote, “God does not play dice with the universe”, was really a metaphorical expression embodying Einstein’s contempt for the modern quantum theory. As a strict determinist, he couldn’t bring himself to accept that an electron’s position was impossible to fix and had to be described by “probability waves”.
The point here is that shouldn’t take his invocation of “God” too literally. Indeed, one of his biographers, Jeremy Bernstein (‘Einstein’, Fontana-Collins Books, UK, 1973) has noted (page 20) that Einstein often loosely referenced “God” as a convenient substitute for “the rational connections, the laws, governing the behavior of the universe”.
Einstein also (ibid) used the pet term “Old Man” interchangeably with the above.
Einstein’s most cogent rejection of the Christian version of a personal God probably appeared in his ‘Ideas and Opinions’ wherein he writes:
“The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events- provided, of course, that he takes the laws of causation really seriously.
He has no use for the religion of fear, and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity – internal and external – so that he cannot be responsible…any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes”.
This is diametrically opposed to any normative, conventional notion of “God” as typically understood. Hence, one may say that – to a first approximation – Einstein believed in NO God.
Later, as if to reinforce this, Einstein wrote:
“Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death. Let those feeble souls, whether from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts.”
So Einstein believes in no afterlife, and hence no “heaven and hell”. Thus, likely no resurrection, no “judgment” or no “second coming”
To all intents, it seems clear to me that at the very least Einstein was an atheist agnostic (readers can refer to this definition in George Smith’s excellent book, ‘The Case Against God’, page 9)
This is backed up by these words of Einstein (p. 120, ‘Einstein in his own Words’):
“The human mind is unable to conceive of four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?”
Clearly, the inherent message here is that the very concept of deity is unknowable to the human mind.
In the same text, four pages later, Einstein seems to resign himself that most humans will need a crutch to get by. He avers that (p. 124):
”Such a belief (in a personal God) seems preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook on life. I wonder whether anyone can ever successfully render to mankind a more sublime means to metaphysical needs”.
This is not advocating any specific religion per se, but we know the Monotheistic religions are all predicated on a personal deity. It would seem that the foremost job for Atheists is to find some form of “spiritual methadone” which we might offer the majority of our fellows to wean them off the god teat, at least the personal one. In so doing, we might very well help ourselves to become a less despised minority in this country.
Or at least one can hope!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Proving the deity - Or Bayesian Bollocks?
Gil Gaudia (‘God: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics’, The American Atheist, Sept. 2007) merits kudos for lacerating the specious premise of Stephen Unwin’s pompous book ‘The Probability of God: A Simple Calculation that Proves the Ultimate Truth’ .
The core issue, as Dr. Gaudia observes, is the: “assumed values- or assumptions – created by the person using the theorem to support a preconceived viewpoint.”
In many ways it would be analogous to my bright, seven year old niece offering that a “50% probability exists” for a pipe-smoking, invisible (except to her) elf to be sitting in her basement fireplace ten hours out of twenty-four.
In a more sophisticated sense, it would be analogous to Tulane physicist Frank Tipler asserting that a “50-50” chance exists for his “Omega Point” to really be the “First Person of the Trinity”. (E.g. see his balmy tome: ‘The Physics of Christianity’ in which he purports to “prove” the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection of Jesus. and a host of other unadulterated, supernatural codswallop via quantum physics and general relativity)
The trouble is that all of these lack a reasonably sound ab initio epistemology that would warrant a credible statistical assumption. It is precisely the epistemology (if such exists) that would allow us to take the assumption seriously.
For example, I might make the claim that a 50% probability exists for a monster solar flare capable of frying every electric transformer in the U.S. This sounds way out, but we must recall the monster flare of March, 1989 which fairly brought down the Ottawa power grid and indeed, “fried” coils and wires subject to enormous induction currents of 10^ 6 A and more. Hence, given what we know of the magneto-hydrodynamics of flares, and how magnetic substorms are generated on Earth – there is an epistemology for the assignment of probability.
Moreoever, it is one that can be subject to tests. For example at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks now there are ways of generating numerical models of magnetospheric substorms which can duplicate conditions arising from powerful flares.
Can Unwin do the same for his “God”? Can he even differentiate clearly its nature – say from the Hindu Brahmin, or the Islamic Allah, the Jews’ Yahweh or even Tipler’s “Omega Point”? In other words, WHICH God is it that he's “proving” with Bayesian stats, and HOW does he KNOW? What are the discriminating attributes that uniquely distinguish this entity from any other? If this can’t even be specified, it would be like me claiming a “50 % probability” of a monster flare occurrence exists, without even estimating the likely x-ray class, and optical class. I would be hooted out of any solar physics’ seminar!
One would have thought that proving an entity as momentous as “God” would constitute much more than Bayesian smoke and mirrors a posteriori tricks and statistics.
It's all very well to claim an a posteriori "proof" can be rendered for “God” (via Bayesian statistics) but this won't do in serious discussion until epistemological prerequisites are met. It is interesting that whenever assorted God provers like Unwin invoke their proofs, they never provide a discriminating epistemology – which begins with a basic definition of the entity.. They merely use the G-word as if we already know what the entity is they are “proving” (The lone claimed exception to this which I have seen is physicist Frank Tipler in his book, ‘The Physics of Christianity’ – but in order to arrive at it, Tipler must not only resort to a posteriori assumptions and stats, but also mangle all the normative concepts of quantum mechanics!)
So the question persists: WHICH God is it that is being proven?
Is the entity based on the deist (“create it and leave it be”) model? The pantheist Spinozan (“all is God”) model? The personal but "infinite" Christian model? The Christian Trinity? The Hindu impersonal Brahmin model? Until this is resolved in a uniform, operational sense – skeptics and scientists are justified in taking any uses of the G-word with the proverbial grain of salt.
As I have found on numerous forums, and in dozens of venues wherein I've debated these folks (e.g. Salon, AARP forums, Amazon book reviewes etc.) when you press them for an epistemological basis to their deity the best they can do is a generic “designer God”. In other words, as the Discovery Institute and others would warrant, it is the God of “intelligent design” which will answer to the Christian “God” name.
Once you have them offering an “epistemology” – in this case one that posits a “design” presumes a “God” – you have them by the cojones.
They will insist there must be “design” because the odds of overcoming remote probabilities are otherwise too low. But how does one separate naturally low probabilities from outcomes based on the intervention of a special agent? What criteria allow such separation?For example - we know that any one supposed single fusion of (proton) nuclei in the Sun is expected to occur on average once every 14 billion years.However, no designer is required to explain how the Sun shines (from fusion reactions) rather quantum mechanical tunneling. There exists a finite probability that any given proton will surmount the Coulomb repulsive barrier and fuse with another proton. Yes, this is a rare even, but there are trillions of protons in the Sun so it emerges as not so “rare” as one may first believe.
Another question to challenge the epistemology: Why doesn't the "designer" insinuate itself into the domains of other worlds in the solar system to create ("design") life? Why isn't Mercury inhabited, or Venus? Or Jupiter? IF the designer is also omnipotent it ought to be able to design outside of purely natural (or terrestrial) norms and limits. (Thus an organism on Venus, for example, that can live off sulphuric acid, CO2 in the atmosphere and an atmospheric pressure of 90 atm.)If the designer is not omnipotent, and indeed doesn't exist in the first place - it makes more sense that life will only occur on certain planets within habitable temperature zones and containing the elements (oxygen, nitrogen, water etc.) needed for life. In such cases, it isn't "design" at work but a long, gradual process of chemical evolution that eventually leads to life forms. Thus, the only real emergent reason for a designer in the first place would be that it possesses ubiquitous power to design ANYWHERE! If it can't do that, or is limited by conditions already in place - we simply don't need it, it's redundant.
The final challenge to toss at the God-claimant is predicting what the designer or design agent can do for another planet other than Earth. Provide him with ‘x’ attributes of the unknown planet (also give also the spectral class of the star) and let him specify the nature of the “designed” life that would emerge. If he knows his designer deity as well as he claims, he ought to be able to do this and display flexibility irrespective of the parameters thrown at him.
Failing that, force him to offer tests of falsification. Make him tell you what observation – if anything – will falsify his claim. Ideally, force him to relate this to chromosomal observations for various genomes on Earth.(Say using the cytochrome-c gene in one or more species, to determine their interrelatedness, say of the human to the chimp, or the human to a lowly yeast species).
Tipler, at least, has done that – and interestingly, one finds that most of his proffered “tests” have already been falsified. For example, his claim that there can be no “heat death” of the universe. However, the current acceleration of the cosmos via dark energy shows indeed that all the bodies of the cosmos will indeed one day cool to absolute zero temperature. No humanity, no life, no consciousness. It is but a matter of time.
Unwin, Ken Ham and others get away with their nonsense and specious “proofs” largely because skeptics and Atheists fail to call them on their baloney. Demanding that they provide a real epistemological basis for their lunatic claims, as opposed to Bayesian smoke and mirrors. Alas, we often have such a volume of baloney to rebut, that it is often difficult to prioritize!
The core issue, as Dr. Gaudia observes, is the: “assumed values- or assumptions – created by the person using the theorem to support a preconceived viewpoint.”
In many ways it would be analogous to my bright, seven year old niece offering that a “50% probability exists” for a pipe-smoking, invisible (except to her) elf to be sitting in her basement fireplace ten hours out of twenty-four.
In a more sophisticated sense, it would be analogous to Tulane physicist Frank Tipler asserting that a “50-50” chance exists for his “Omega Point” to really be the “First Person of the Trinity”. (E.g. see his balmy tome: ‘The Physics of Christianity’ in which he purports to “prove” the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection of Jesus. and a host of other unadulterated, supernatural codswallop via quantum physics and general relativity)
The trouble is that all of these lack a reasonably sound ab initio epistemology that would warrant a credible statistical assumption. It is precisely the epistemology (if such exists) that would allow us to take the assumption seriously.
For example, I might make the claim that a 50% probability exists for a monster solar flare capable of frying every electric transformer in the U.S. This sounds way out, but we must recall the monster flare of March, 1989 which fairly brought down the Ottawa power grid and indeed, “fried” coils and wires subject to enormous induction currents of 10^ 6 A and more. Hence, given what we know of the magneto-hydrodynamics of flares, and how magnetic substorms are generated on Earth – there is an epistemology for the assignment of probability.
Moreoever, it is one that can be subject to tests. For example at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks now there are ways of generating numerical models of magnetospheric substorms which can duplicate conditions arising from powerful flares.
Can Unwin do the same for his “God”? Can he even differentiate clearly its nature – say from the Hindu Brahmin, or the Islamic Allah, the Jews’ Yahweh or even Tipler’s “Omega Point”? In other words, WHICH God is it that he's “proving” with Bayesian stats, and HOW does he KNOW? What are the discriminating attributes that uniquely distinguish this entity from any other? If this can’t even be specified, it would be like me claiming a “50 % probability” of a monster flare occurrence exists, without even estimating the likely x-ray class, and optical class. I would be hooted out of any solar physics’ seminar!
One would have thought that proving an entity as momentous as “God” would constitute much more than Bayesian smoke and mirrors a posteriori tricks and statistics.
It's all very well to claim an a posteriori "proof" can be rendered for “God” (via Bayesian statistics) but this won't do in serious discussion until epistemological prerequisites are met. It is interesting that whenever assorted God provers like Unwin invoke their proofs, they never provide a discriminating epistemology – which begins with a basic definition of the entity.. They merely use the G-word as if we already know what the entity is they are “proving” (The lone claimed exception to this which I have seen is physicist Frank Tipler in his book, ‘The Physics of Christianity’ – but in order to arrive at it, Tipler must not only resort to a posteriori assumptions and stats, but also mangle all the normative concepts of quantum mechanics!)
So the question persists: WHICH God is it that is being proven?
Is the entity based on the deist (“create it and leave it be”) model? The pantheist Spinozan (“all is God”) model? The personal but "infinite" Christian model? The Christian Trinity? The Hindu impersonal Brahmin model? Until this is resolved in a uniform, operational sense – skeptics and scientists are justified in taking any uses of the G-word with the proverbial grain of salt.
As I have found on numerous forums, and in dozens of venues wherein I've debated these folks (e.g. Salon, AARP forums, Amazon book reviewes etc.) when you press them for an epistemological basis to their deity the best they can do is a generic “designer God”. In other words, as the Discovery Institute and others would warrant, it is the God of “intelligent design” which will answer to the Christian “God” name.
Once you have them offering an “epistemology” – in this case one that posits a “design” presumes a “God” – you have them by the cojones.
They will insist there must be “design” because the odds of overcoming remote probabilities are otherwise too low. But how does one separate naturally low probabilities from outcomes based on the intervention of a special agent? What criteria allow such separation?For example - we know that any one supposed single fusion of (proton) nuclei in the Sun is expected to occur on average once every 14 billion years.However, no designer is required to explain how the Sun shines (from fusion reactions) rather quantum mechanical tunneling. There exists a finite probability that any given proton will surmount the Coulomb repulsive barrier and fuse with another proton. Yes, this is a rare even, but there are trillions of protons in the Sun so it emerges as not so “rare” as one may first believe.
Another question to challenge the epistemology: Why doesn't the "designer" insinuate itself into the domains of other worlds in the solar system to create ("design") life? Why isn't Mercury inhabited, or Venus? Or Jupiter? IF the designer is also omnipotent it ought to be able to design outside of purely natural (or terrestrial) norms and limits. (Thus an organism on Venus, for example, that can live off sulphuric acid, CO2 in the atmosphere and an atmospheric pressure of 90 atm.)If the designer is not omnipotent, and indeed doesn't exist in the first place - it makes more sense that life will only occur on certain planets within habitable temperature zones and containing the elements (oxygen, nitrogen, water etc.) needed for life. In such cases, it isn't "design" at work but a long, gradual process of chemical evolution that eventually leads to life forms. Thus, the only real emergent reason for a designer in the first place would be that it possesses ubiquitous power to design ANYWHERE! If it can't do that, or is limited by conditions already in place - we simply don't need it, it's redundant.
The final challenge to toss at the God-claimant is predicting what the designer or design agent can do for another planet other than Earth. Provide him with ‘x’ attributes of the unknown planet (also give also the spectral class of the star) and let him specify the nature of the “designed” life that would emerge. If he knows his designer deity as well as he claims, he ought to be able to do this and display flexibility irrespective of the parameters thrown at him.
Failing that, force him to offer tests of falsification. Make him tell you what observation – if anything – will falsify his claim. Ideally, force him to relate this to chromosomal observations for various genomes on Earth.(Say using the cytochrome-c gene in one or more species, to determine their interrelatedness, say of the human to the chimp, or the human to a lowly yeast species).
Tipler, at least, has done that – and interestingly, one finds that most of his proffered “tests” have already been falsified. For example, his claim that there can be no “heat death” of the universe. However, the current acceleration of the cosmos via dark energy shows indeed that all the bodies of the cosmos will indeed one day cool to absolute zero temperature. No humanity, no life, no consciousness. It is but a matter of time.
Unwin, Ken Ham and others get away with their nonsense and specious “proofs” largely because skeptics and Atheists fail to call them on their baloney. Demanding that they provide a real epistemological basis for their lunatic claims, as opposed to Bayesian smoke and mirrors. Alas, we often have such a volume of baloney to rebut, that it is often difficult to prioritize!
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