Using special cameras, Getty photographs the president’s usually-invisible advisor

If you’ve been paying to the ongoing return of the Enlightenment, you know the name Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is a famous evolutionary biologist who, of late, has been spreading the message of atheism.

Dawkins’ primary book that has been the subject of a great many counter-opinions is “The God Delusion”. Lauren and I both noticed that RD was doing a book-signing at BookPeople downtown ( although I’m very thankful to live in a town where BookPeople exists ) and we resolved to attend…but then we found out there would be an ancillary lecture that evening at my alma mater. As such, we decided to drop the commercial endeavor and head to attend the lecture that night at The Hogg Auditorium.

Dawkins delivered his “standard message” wherewith it is understood that the reader can make himself familiar via youtube. It generally falls into the summation that:

“Religion is a bronze aged explanation of an exceedingly complex and beautiful world around us — we would appreciate the world more sans the notion of an interventionist diety. Oh yeah, and evolution isn’t random you twats. And don’t call children ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’ they’re obviously the children of Christian or Muslim parents, if we’re honest about it.”

Either side of the question that you stand on, you’d do well to see if you can refute Dawkins’ reasoning whilst remaining intellectually honest. I admit, I have a very hard time refuting his argument.

The four compelling questions Dawkins gives falls into this.

Reductio ad unum absurdumque

Dawkins (imaginary interlocutor): “List all the gods you think are false. “
Christian / Muslim / Jew / Zoroastrian: Done.
Dawkins: Now just one more.

More exactly spelled out at Friendly Atheist.

And this puts us into the very odd place of grade-school anthropology. That is, what was up with Santa coming? My Santa came and brought his presents on the day of the 25th and my familial presents had been opened the night of the night of the 24th. But, as school playground discussion will attest, some other infidels were brought both familial and non-visible third-party spectre’s presents on the morning of the 25th.

{{Aside One: For the record, I think my method is more sound in keeping the illusion alive }}

{{Aside Two: Isn’t it odd that my language for defending my way of having a personal relationship with Santa has already taken the language of holy war? }}

And what about kids born to Jewish, Muslim, or Persian parents? Does the hospital given them a sheet with the birth-certificate “NO, WE WOULD NOT LIKE SANTA TO COME”.¹

And what about the tooth fairy? Some kids got more loot under the pillow than others? Did I happen to lose my teeth with a great number of others and thus my tooth’s value on the fairy market was devalued such that it only merited a meagre dollar versus ten ( or, in foreshadow to the My Super-Sweet Sixteening of American Culture, $20 )? Or was the alternative explanation that my teeth were less desirable?

Even in my before 10th birthday I knew that something shifty was afoot.

And as Dawkins says, isn’t it a amazing that everyone who has one god is sure they’ve picked the right one.

Atheism destroys the magic of living, you cold, cold person

Well, first of all, this is simply baloney.

Is the magic of The Parthenon diminished because you understand the that it’s composed by Golden Sections? Dawkins makes the compelling case that the world of religious tales is less beautiful than that promised by religion. Consider the root of Abrahamic religion: God grants insert-patriarch-here some bloodthirsty right to slay some tribe, some right to stone some barbarian tribe to death, some right to farm some dusty tract of land in Mesopotamia.

If these men were in contact with the supreme force why were they quibbling over land usage and not discussing scientific or intellectual leaps forward like:

• The Cat’s Eye Nebula
  
  It should be noted that this was taken by the Hubble telescope; for showing the primitive grandfather to the Hubble, Galileo was almost burnt alive by Catholic nutjobs
• The function of the recursive mechanism of 4 simple codons in an acid as data storage mechanism that allows for all protein sequencing in the animal kingdom
• Economic behaviors that would enable buyout of the Egyptian oppressor without requiring bloodshed
• The Tampon

Dawkins argues that instead of the limited and quaint world offered to chieftains in dusty books by their interpersonal god, it is science that gives us a much more beautiful world to live in.

Burden of Proof

Many religiously minded people put forth the argument that “since one cannot prove X does not exist, it is just as reasonable to take the counter-position, X does exist”. Dawkins handily dismisses this claim using the “Russell’s Teapot” story. By this same reasoning, the aggrieved Kiwi in the article below has just as much right to be trusted as the police that locked him up:

SYDNEY — A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he was raped by a wombat and the experience had made him speak “Australian”.

Arthur Ross Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police on February 11 and told them he was being raped at his home by the wombat and he needed help, The Nelson Mail newspaper reported.

Source

Well, as we can’t prove the man wasn’t raped by a wombat, we’ll have to not hold him accountable for his actions subsequent thereto ( “speaking Australian” ).

{{Aside: Although, I can think of a certain world political leader whose horrible rhetorical talents might be helped by meeting the Henry Higgins wombat. }}

The defense is simply nonsense. If we were to accept this argument then “The Devil Made Me Do It” would have to be made a valid legal defense ( and surely in this Christian nation of ours, that would occur overnight, right? ).

I always find this a compelling question, most religious folk would naturally say they believe in jurisprudence and fair trial. But if they likewise assert they believe in a supernatural, persoally-involved diety, “Possession” would have to become a valid defense. The science of equity i.e. “law” or belief in non-visible, singularly personal motivations beyond rational control: you can’t have both.

And one might say, that’s well and good, but who’s it harming, this ill-considered religiosity? Allow me to retort, er, report.

Non-interventionism == Death

Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Source

If a parent were to say that non-present, invisible voices told them to rape their children repeatedly and keep them in a cage in the basement it’d be called monstrous or attributed to mental illness.

What do we make of a person praying for help instead of turning to science? Let me note that in the history of modern times there are 0 recorded miracles, but medical treatment of diabetic ketoacidosis has long history reliable treatment vectors. Parents, let me ask you, when the chips are down are you taking your sick darling to the hospital or the church? I should suggest if you choose the latter, it would be convenient whilst there to make funerary arrangements.

Note further that this is not an edge case:

• Heaven’s Gate Cult
• Jim Jones
• Massada

In any case, I found it a very interesting lecture and it’s certainly provided me questions over which to meditate. I hope that you do the same.

Enjoy heaven, babies!

I mean, really, how can anyone take any religion seriously after this? One morning, a guy wakes up, eats some breakfast, notes the weather is turning cold in Rome, and then decides to dispose of religious element before his morning intestinal evacuation.

I’m not an atheist but the do have good T-Shirts: “When you can explain why you dismiss all other gods, you’ll understand why I dismiss yours.”

This is why my interpretation of Christianity always goes back to the mystic, the gnostic. It doesn’t have any logical understructure, and by virtue of this, doesn’t require an immutable codex of laws and behaviours. It merely says “The mysteries can be revealed and in the mean time, stop being a selfish snot.” If you build a religion on an edifice of “Here’s it all laid out once, rationally perfectly” you’re just asking for time or science ( or both ) to bring the whole circus tent crashing down.

I guess I’m really soured on the Christian religious machine after watching the sad, but wonderufully produced documentary, The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I highly recommend it. Tammy seems a genuinely nice, decent, Christian woman who, for all her work, decency, dreaming, and devotion seems to have gotten steamrollered at every corner. People deserve peace.

Remarkable Things Happen While You Sleep

A few weeks ago ( 6, to be precise ) I informed you all about my plan to undertake a 40-day commitment to daily practice of yoga at Austin’s own YogaYoga. Along the way I updated you with blog posts using the Polish Notation syntax familiar to programmers of LISP.

Well, 40 days are up and I am glad to report that I completed this challenge on the 29th of July.

Furthermore, I have brought my beautiful girlfriend in on the practice and we are both enjoying the benefits of regular practice. Yoga is good, yoga with a buddy is better, and yoga with your girl is even better.

When I started this challenge, I definitely had some goals in mind:

• Loosen hamstrings
• Put both heels down in adho mukha savasana
• Put both heels flat towards ceiling in Supta Padangusthasana

Having completed the time goal, I wonder if it is even worth mentioning whether or not I succeded in these bulleted points. I don’t think so.

One of my teachers said something very profound the other day about the practice. She said that the desire to “do yoga” and “do a pose” was rather wrong-headed. It is not the goal of yoga to accomplish a particular asana or pose ( what then, the student might well ask! ), it’s to experience that moment of difficulty, to respect that moment of difficulty, and to let it pass without judgment. The goal is to learn to appreciate all moments, to live in the present. To submit your will to that of the most high, to yoke the two together.

It’s so often the case that we get tied up in ‘production’ - regardless the activity - even when the activity is to stop production.

I want some inner peace here! I’m gonna do me some yoga, master them krinkly poses and then I’ll be done, dammit.

or…

I’m gonna meditate myself some patience. C’mon….c’mon….

It’s this sort of thinking that, quite contrary to the function of yoga, actually winds up enforcing the presence of the ego. How can one commune with the will of the divine if one is asserting the mastery of his body? The gritting control that says ‘shut up you wussy muscles’ and disrespects the body certainly would fare quite poorly in hearing the little, quiet voice of The Lord inside.

This makes good segueway into the next obvious question which would be “What are the results from your practice?”. Again, to speak of results here is a bit misguided, but to inspire others ( I hope? ) I will note that I certainly have lost fat in my stomach ( so that I didn’t confuse action with result I forebade myself to step upon a scale ), my back is much more taut, and I feel much more healthy. It’s only 75 minutes a day and it provides such wonderful benefit.

A final benefit is that during this time, when Lauren and I have had discussions about subjects that are difficult for all relationships (money, goals, savings, will Steven please do the laundry), we stop, take time to go to class, and then our discussion always seems much more fruitful. Perhaps because yoga is such a focused killer of the ego, and ego is such a focused assassin of relationships, after yoga, our discussions seem to operate from what we agree on and what’s most important to both of us in the future. We seem to be better understanding of one another. These opportunities for genuine understanding would make the class fee worth twice its cost.

I find this a very interesting attitude for a mathmatician. Why is this?

Let us ask first, what is a mathematician? A mathematician is a person who practices the study of mathmatics.

Well, bully for us. Gold stars all around.

Let us then ask, philosophically: What is mathematics?

Mathematics is the notational system that provides for the representation of

• nouns (“Train leaving boston”, “Acceleration”)

and

• operations (“Addition [ or “+ ], subtraction [ or ”-“ ]

On this definition we can understand statements such as “F = M*A” as meaning: “the noun force results from the performance of the multiplication operation on the noun mass and the noun acceleration”. It may hard to see this with something as “simple” as multiplication of division, but with say, the quadratic formula it becomes a bit more clear. There are nouns, and a complex operation is performed on those nouns to produce product (or products).

But there is one more point that we are missing. Mathematics provides lastly a codex of legal operations that may be made. For example it is an “illegal operation” to attempt to divide 1 by zero”.

So now we know what mathematics is:

Mathematics is a tome that contains rules for valid “statements”, a vocabulary which describes nouns, and a vocabulary that describes operations applicable to nouns.

A mathematician could take one of two stances on the relationship of this notational / behavioral discipline:

1. Math, or the symbolic system that expresses phenomena and rules for manipulating said symbols, shares a common parent with the phenomena themselves. Thus by the same necessary existence of phenomena, so must come the ruleset for describing said phonemena.

   I shall call this view: Mathematics is strong or “Mathematics is necessarily real, and necessarily maps to phenomena”

2. The alternate view would be the one anecdotally introduced to me by my second astronomy teacher my Spring semester: “Do you think that (such and such science) is real? Or are its rules sufficiently permissive / so elastic such that they just happen to map to the phenomena we see around us? “

   I shall call this view: Mathematics is weak or “Mathematics has no inherent bond to phenomena and is essentially, a trivial game - no different than sudoku - that describes a set of symbols, a rule for valid ‘setups’ that has, for some strange reason, a large number of participants in said delusion

Euler seems to have taken the second view, which would be the view of Kant as well. There is a world which we experience, a world of phenomena, whose behavior, with research, would appear predictable and knowable. Euler would take that view and expand it to say, that those knowable and predictable phenomena could be described by the discipline of mathmatics; yet he complicates this phenomenological view by asserting that that’s not good enough. He then claims that while math may seem sufficiently accurate it, well, only seems accurate.

There could be a mysterious world, Euler’s quote would have us believe, a noumenal world in Kant’s parlance, where that mapping may not in fact be true. Thus in the noumenal world “2+3 =6” or “a square has 600 sides” is possible, but in our world, the world of phenomena, we would only ever experience the exceedingly compelling notion that “2+2=4”.

Why did Euler feel the need to posit this invisible realm? Was it the only way for this minister’s son to give his faith a loophole in which to escape as the body of human knowledge increased exponentially (math geek pun intended)? It’s baffling to me that one of the most brilliant mathematicians of all time invented this world, for no necessary purpose.

Kant theorized that God experienced the noumenal world. He could see the 600-sided square and the thing we experienced as a red chair in the phenomenal world was truly a zebra-patterened hammock in the noumenal world.

It was while I was thinking about this that I noticed another Wikiquote:

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” — Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

I always think of the noumenal world as a world behind a wax-paper wall (like japanese shoji but with translucent cellophane versus rice-paper). The good book would have us believe that the noumenal world, where He (as by virtue of being of the same substance as the Father) dwells, is inside of us.

Yet when we think, we think in the world of phenomena. How can we think without thinking? How do we know without reference to the phenomenal world of our experience? It’s a Zen koan again.

I suppose that’s appropriate, when we consider the work of the mathmetician and the work of the mystic against one another we wind up at insolubles.

The only solution is gnosis: radical imparting of the knowledge. A sacred teaching that, instead of writing to our phenomenally-oriented mind, imprint itself into our noumenal connection: our souls. Is it possible to “know” with the soul? To pass through reason and language unfiltered?

Euler seems to think that his work was but an enrichment of the silly symbological game - while he was hunting for that most elusive teaching. The teaching of Solomon, the wisdom beyond wisdom: the fountain of youth, the manna of God, the holy grail, the Great Teaching, the sorcerer’s stone. The gnosis knowledge that turns lead to gold and expugates sin itself.

Yeshua tells us it’s within. Others tell us it’s without. I think i’ll side with the mystic and gnostic Yeshua and the Gnostic Judas. There’s a gnosis for that teaching - why has Christianity foresaken that path?