"And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth."
—Revelations 12:4
According to Christian theology, of the angels created by God, one-third joined with Lucifer (or Satan, the Devil) while two-thirds remained loyal. Bad things happen on earth because some people listen to the devils; there would be nothing but good if we would all just listen to the good angels.
But what could they possibly have argued about, resulting in the split? The Bible does not say. God made them all, but apparently they were not identical. God presumably made Heaven, but apparently 1/3 of his creation thought it was defective in some way.
If earth is a reflection of heaven, if man is made in God's image, then the trouble probably started on a committee. An unimportant committee, like one set up to decorate for an annual event. "Do we have to do all gold again? I mean, everything is gold here. How about a little platinum? Platinum would really liven things up!"
The next thing you know all sort of reform and improvement movements would crop up among the angels. "I call this piece of gold a saxophone." But no, God and his gang of followers have decreed harps are the only musical instruments allowed. Soon angels are having secret, informal meet ups in platinum rooms to listen to saxophonists and watch performance art.
Or it could have started with some angel, not necessarily the eventual leader, Lucifer, being a smarty-pants. Authorities don't like smarty-pants, as I learned from my parents and Catholic School. Smarty-pants have trouble understanding that most angels like the way things are, and prefer stupidity to change. Smarty pants and heresy amount to pretty much the same thing.
"Hey, here's an idea, since this breathing life into clay figurines hasn't worked out very well. Let's start out with building something simple, I call it a protozoa. The protozoa will be able to adapt to the environment (a major reason for clay figurine failure) and have sex, and thereby produce improved protozoa each generation. They can evolve over time to have many cells, be bigger, and differentiate into species to form a mutually evolving ecosystem."
Then again it could have been cosmological questions that set angels against each other and against God. Perhaps that started as a philosophical argument about determinism (fate) and free will. The determinism angels favored the clockwork universe. The free will angels favored introducing chance, in the form of quantum probability waves for the small particles which they argued would make a better universe than just paving the streets with gold.
I suspect that God gave the smarty-pants angels earth because he could not get it to work to his liking. It was just a bunch of clay figurines dancing to his instructions on a globe of solid gold. The lazy two-thirds of the angels just went back to God and their harps.
But the entrepreneurial angels mixed things up. Earth ended up with an iron core and a stony crust with water that could support bacteria and then algae and protozoa and higher life forms.
So here we are. Unfortunately, apparently when God saw how well things were going he got jealous and tried to take earth back. Having perhaps learned a bit from the smarty-pants angels, he decided to invent a dozen or so major religions to compete with each other for the hearts and minds of homo sapiens. If you want a stupid religion to believe in, there are plenty of choices.
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Jesus, Dagon and Mitt Romney
Now is one of those rare times when people are interested in talking not just about religion, but about how religions arise in the first place. In particular people are talking about the Mormons, as represented by their largest denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Mormon men believe that they can become Gods, and so for Mitt Romney the White House is just a stepping stone to ruling, as a God, his own planet. At the same time Mitt and the Mormons want protective coloring, the acceptance that theirs is a legitimate religion within the broad Christian spectrum.
The Christians themselves went through that process within the Roman Empire. That empire was already in intellectual decline by the time Jesus is believed to have been born. The Greeks of three to four hundred years earlier, or at least their intellectual class, was cultivating science and philosophy, trying to distinguish those from religious mythology. Religion, however, is a useful tool for rulers. Julius Caesar, who died in 44 B.C., had been declared a living God, a sign of both his power and his need to prop up his power with superstition.
In Palestine in that (post-Caesar) era the Romans ruled over a fragmented, multi-ethnic, multi-religious culture. Although the Jews had been a leading tribe in the area for over a thousand years, even before the Romans came they still had large numbers of non-Jews residing in the area. Recall that the Romans took over Judea in 63 B.C., and that the Jewish state had rarely been independent, but had been previously part of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Macedonian/Seleucid empires.
Given that Egyptians, Canaanites of various sorts, Jews (who had their own various sects), Greeks, and various Arab tribes all mingled in the area of Palestine around the time of Jesus and the formation of the original Christian movement, it should not be surprising that, whatever Jesus himself believed or taught, the early Christians had many possible sources of influence. The crucial differences between early Christianity and the Jewish beliefs of that era was the promise of personal resurrection, or immortality, based on the belief that Jesus was not just the Messiah, but was a god, or the Son of God.
This actually just brought the Christian religion into conformity with the dominant pagan religions of that era, all of which worshipped resurrected gods: the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek gods Hercules and Dionysus, and several resurrection cults closer to home, with god-names varying by ethnic group. Anthropologists generally agree that resurrected gods are associated with agricultural societies that made a ritual of the harvest of grain and its resurrection from seeds each spring.
Possibly the main historical event of the early Christian Church, other than the life and death of its founder, was the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D./C.E. If the earliest Christians were divided as to whether Jesus had been a Jewish Messiah or a Canaanite resurrected god, that destruction of the Jewish state, which would not be resurrected for 1900 years, settled the question. Whatever Jesus was, he was not the Messiah who would make Judah an independent state again.
The New Testament is self-disproving: it has one clear prophecy made by Jesus (Matthew 24:34): "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." The generation did pass, and nothing was fulfilled. To survive Christianity needed a belief system and a structure that could perpetuate itself without divine intervention. The Christians never took over the old Jewish kingdom, but they did eventually take over the Roman Empire.
Which brings us to fish. There is no plant or animal more closely associated with Jesus Christ and the early Christians than fish. Fish are everywhere in the New Testament. Jesus's favorite recruits as Apostles are fishermen. One of his most important miracles is the multiplication of fishes. Early Christians used the fish symbol more than they used the cross. Jesus also displayed the powers of a sea god by calming the seas and walking on water.
That points to Dagon (which has many spelling variations), who the Jews believed was a fish god. He was also a resurrected god, probably originally a grain god who became associated with fishing later. The Jews claimed they destroyed him with the Ark of the Covenant, but more likely that is just a symbol of a period of successful ethnic cleansing (I do not mean to pick on the Jews here. Back then ethnic cleansing was an almost universal human practice).
This raises an important question: was Jesus really Jewish, and it so, how so?
How many of the Twelve Apostles were fishermen? It is hard to say because the list of Apostle names differs somewhat in each of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) [See Apostles for tables]. Only Simon Peter and his brother Andrew are specifically identified as fishermen from Bethsaida in Galilee, and Philip is also from Bethsaida. James and John abandon their nets to follow Jesus, so that would be at least five out of twelve. The prior occupations of most of the other apostles are not mentioned. The apostles were supposed to have been Jews, but were just as likely to have Greek names.
Jesus himself is "of Nazareth." Nazareth was nowhere. It was, at best, a town so small that the Jews did not include it in maps or lists of town names during Jesus's era. Nazareth was about halfway between the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean coast. A thousand years before Jesus it had been occupied by the Jewish tribe of Zebulun, but that was one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.
Even if Jesus was a Jew, some his neighbors probably were not. They were Palestinians of some ancient tribe, and Dagon was one of their gods. Jesus grew up north of the areas controlled by Samaritans, who thought the Jews of Jerusalem were innovators who brought back a false version of the old religion when they returned from the Babylonian Exile. In Jesus's time the Samaritans and Jews hated each other, the Jews having destroyed the Samaritans temple in 110 B.C.
The Jewish rebellion against Rome that started in 66 A.D. was not the wholesale rising of a united people against a foreign oppressor. Only a few Jewish cities, notably Jerusalem, actually fought the Romans. Many Jews were expelled by the Romans, though many remained. Most of the inhabitants of the area would later convert to Islam, including the ancient Jewish villagers. Christianity arose in this chaotic context and fragmented deeply. The Apostle Paul was self-appointed. His version of Christianity conflicted, by his own admission, with version of the Jewish Christian leaders in Jerusalem. It also conflicted with the many other self-appointed preachers who brought the idea of communal living and tithing to support ministers to whoever would pitch in. By 100 A.D. the original Christians were probably all or mostly dead and the fight for the intellectual property, the magic formula for converting pagans to cash cows, was full on.
It's all very fishy. I like the Dagon Hypothesis. If Jesus was a non-Jewish or semi-Jewish Palestinian who tried to convert the Jews to Dagon's ways, it all almost makes some sense.
The Christians themselves went through that process within the Roman Empire. That empire was already in intellectual decline by the time Jesus is believed to have been born. The Greeks of three to four hundred years earlier, or at least their intellectual class, was cultivating science and philosophy, trying to distinguish those from religious mythology. Religion, however, is a useful tool for rulers. Julius Caesar, who died in 44 B.C., had been declared a living God, a sign of both his power and his need to prop up his power with superstition.
In Palestine in that (post-Caesar) era the Romans ruled over a fragmented, multi-ethnic, multi-religious culture. Although the Jews had been a leading tribe in the area for over a thousand years, even before the Romans came they still had large numbers of non-Jews residing in the area. Recall that the Romans took over Judea in 63 B.C., and that the Jewish state had rarely been independent, but had been previously part of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Macedonian/Seleucid empires.
Given that Egyptians, Canaanites of various sorts, Jews (who had their own various sects), Greeks, and various Arab tribes all mingled in the area of Palestine around the time of Jesus and the formation of the original Christian movement, it should not be surprising that, whatever Jesus himself believed or taught, the early Christians had many possible sources of influence. The crucial differences between early Christianity and the Jewish beliefs of that era was the promise of personal resurrection, or immortality, based on the belief that Jesus was not just the Messiah, but was a god, or the Son of God.
This actually just brought the Christian religion into conformity with the dominant pagan religions of that era, all of which worshipped resurrected gods: the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek gods Hercules and Dionysus, and several resurrection cults closer to home, with god-names varying by ethnic group. Anthropologists generally agree that resurrected gods are associated with agricultural societies that made a ritual of the harvest of grain and its resurrection from seeds each spring.
Possibly the main historical event of the early Christian Church, other than the life and death of its founder, was the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D./C.E. If the earliest Christians were divided as to whether Jesus had been a Jewish Messiah or a Canaanite resurrected god, that destruction of the Jewish state, which would not be resurrected for 1900 years, settled the question. Whatever Jesus was, he was not the Messiah who would make Judah an independent state again.
The New Testament is self-disproving: it has one clear prophecy made by Jesus (Matthew 24:34): "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." The generation did pass, and nothing was fulfilled. To survive Christianity needed a belief system and a structure that could perpetuate itself without divine intervention. The Christians never took over the old Jewish kingdom, but they did eventually take over the Roman Empire.
Which brings us to fish. There is no plant or animal more closely associated with Jesus Christ and the early Christians than fish. Fish are everywhere in the New Testament. Jesus's favorite recruits as Apostles are fishermen. One of his most important miracles is the multiplication of fishes. Early Christians used the fish symbol more than they used the cross. Jesus also displayed the powers of a sea god by calming the seas and walking on water.
That points to Dagon (which has many spelling variations), who the Jews believed was a fish god. He was also a resurrected god, probably originally a grain god who became associated with fishing later. The Jews claimed they destroyed him with the Ark of the Covenant, but more likely that is just a symbol of a period of successful ethnic cleansing (I do not mean to pick on the Jews here. Back then ethnic cleansing was an almost universal human practice).
This raises an important question: was Jesus really Jewish, and it so, how so?
How many of the Twelve Apostles were fishermen? It is hard to say because the list of Apostle names differs somewhat in each of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) [See Apostles for tables]. Only Simon Peter and his brother Andrew are specifically identified as fishermen from Bethsaida in Galilee, and Philip is also from Bethsaida. James and John abandon their nets to follow Jesus, so that would be at least five out of twelve. The prior occupations of most of the other apostles are not mentioned. The apostles were supposed to have been Jews, but were just as likely to have Greek names.
Jesus himself is "of Nazareth." Nazareth was nowhere. It was, at best, a town so small that the Jews did not include it in maps or lists of town names during Jesus's era. Nazareth was about halfway between the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean coast. A thousand years before Jesus it had been occupied by the Jewish tribe of Zebulun, but that was one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.
Even if Jesus was a Jew, some his neighbors probably were not. They were Palestinians of some ancient tribe, and Dagon was one of their gods. Jesus grew up north of the areas controlled by Samaritans, who thought the Jews of Jerusalem were innovators who brought back a false version of the old religion when they returned from the Babylonian Exile. In Jesus's time the Samaritans and Jews hated each other, the Jews having destroyed the Samaritans temple in 110 B.C.
The Jewish rebellion against Rome that started in 66 A.D. was not the wholesale rising of a united people against a foreign oppressor. Only a few Jewish cities, notably Jerusalem, actually fought the Romans. Many Jews were expelled by the Romans, though many remained. Most of the inhabitants of the area would later convert to Islam, including the ancient Jewish villagers. Christianity arose in this chaotic context and fragmented deeply. The Apostle Paul was self-appointed. His version of Christianity conflicted, by his own admission, with version of the Jewish Christian leaders in Jerusalem. It also conflicted with the many other self-appointed preachers who brought the idea of communal living and tithing to support ministers to whoever would pitch in. By 100 A.D. the original Christians were probably all or mostly dead and the fight for the intellectual property, the magic formula for converting pagans to cash cows, was full on.
It's all very fishy. I like the Dagon Hypothesis. If Jesus was a non-Jewish or semi-Jewish Palestinian who tried to convert the Jews to Dagon's ways, it all almost makes some sense.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Four Pillars of Mormonism and Islam
The resemblance between the Latter Day Saints sects, or Mormonism, and Islam are not just a coincidence. Before examining the Islamic roots of Mormon in later articles, I want to illuminate the relationship by exhibiting four pillars that unite Islam and Mormonism and distinguish the these religions from orthodox Christianity.
I. The Prophets
Both Joseph Smith and Muhammad claimed the role of Prophet. Each saw themselves, and were seen by their followers, as being in the line of the great Jewish prophets like Noah, Moses, Ishmael, and Isaac. The Koran names Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet. The Mormon view of Jesus will be discussed below. It is notable that during his lifetime his followers referred to Joseph Smith, in writing, as The Prophet, which was how Muhammad has always been referred to by the Islamic faithful.
The Koran (or Quran) says at 4:163-165:
The Koran says limits polygamous marriage to four wives [4:3]:
The two largest modern Mormon denominations now both officially rejected polygamy in order to avoid further prosecution for a practice that was unlawful in the United States. However, fundamentalist Mormon sects still practice polygamy, reports of its being practiced in secret by mainstream Mormons have been abundant, and it is hard to reconcile monogamy with Joseph Smith's status as The Prophet. In fact in the Doctrine and Covenants any man aspiring to priesthood is encouraged to take multiple wives [D&C 132:61-62]:
III. Rejection of Jesus Christ as the One True God
Muhammad lived from 570 to 632 A.D. At this time the orthodox Christian church (only later splitting into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches) had dominated the people's around the Mediterranean for over two centuries. Yet many Jewish and non-orthodox Christian communities still had not been stamped out, and in Arabia itself various forms of pagan worship survived.
While given as a revealed truth from Allah, Muhammad's belief that Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet, not a resurrected god, was supported by historical evidence. Jews in the area, of course, rejected Jesus as both God and Messiah. More important were the Christian Jews whose religion was in line with the original teachings of Jesus. Their historic memory was that Jesus did not claim to be God and was not resurrected after crucifixion. Those ideas were formed decades after Jesus's death, as is reflected in the differences between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, in which Jesus does not claim divinity, and in John, where he makes it very clear he thinks he is one with God.
Muhammad, in the Koran, quotes Jesus against the Christians, avoiding the Gospel of John and instead interpreting Jesus as having said there is only one, undivided God, Allah, and that no man could be God. Which is the position of Islam.
Despite his demotion to Prophet, Jesus (Isa) and his mother, Mary (Maryam) play a major role in the Koran, even aside from preaching against Christianity.
As with Islam, which developed over the course of the life of Muhammad, the relationship of the Latter Day Saints to Jesus of Nazareth is complicated by the temporal development of the revelations of Joseph Smith. In the Book of Mormon Jesus is pretty much the Jesus of the Christians except, unbeknownst to them, after his Ascension Jesus is said to have visited the Americas.
Later, as the power of being himself treated as a Prophet and having a lot of young wives went to his head, Joseph Smith deviated increasingly from Christian doctrine in his Doctrine and Covenants. While not explicitly rejecting the Trinity, Joseph Smith described an elaborate cosmology which would allow him and his male followers to become godlike, and Jesus-like, themselves. Even God the Father, our planetary god, was reduced to an advanced and glorified man. Quoting those who left the church just before Smith's death [Nauvoo Expositor, June 7, 1844]:
While it may seem to be only of practical importance, the rejection of alcohol by Islam, and later by Joseph Smith and his followers, is of the deepest symbolic and theological importance.
Wine plays a role in two key sacraments of Christianity, marriage and communion. Jesus is believed by Christians to have turned water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana [Bible, John 2:1-11], his first miracle in John (but missing from the three earlier gospels).
By rejecting wine both Muhammad and Joseph Smith rejected the Christian rule of monogamy. They also both recognized divorce, which Jesus outlaws for Christians in Matthew 19:3-9.
According to his followers, Jesus is not a Prophet, or the Messiah, but a true, resurrected God. Wine represented, in his times, the transubstantiation from of an ordinary food, the grape, into an intoxicant. Earlier religions in which a man-god was killed or sacrificed and then rose from the dead, showing the glory of God, were closely tied to celebrating events with wine. Notably the Greek god Dionysus and the Egyptian god Osiris had large cult followings throughout the Roman Empire that had many doctrines that were adopted by non-Jewish Christians at some point in the history of the early Church.
By rejecting the drinking of alcoholic beverages, Joseph Smith brought his church more closely to conformity with orthodox Islam and differentiated it from orthodox Christianity.
I. The Prophets
Both Joseph Smith and Muhammad claimed the role of Prophet. Each saw themselves, and were seen by their followers, as being in the line of the great Jewish prophets like Noah, Moses, Ishmael, and Isaac. The Koran names Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet. The Mormon view of Jesus will be discussed below. It is notable that during his lifetime his followers referred to Joseph Smith, in writing, as The Prophet, which was how Muhammad has always been referred to by the Islamic faithful.
The Koran (or Quran) says at 4:163-165:
163 Lo! We inspire thee (Muhammad) as We inspired Noah and the prophets after him, as We inspired Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and Jesus and Job and Jonah and Aaron and Solomon, and as we imparted unto David the Psalms;II. Polygamy
164 And messengers We have mentioned unto thee before and messengers We have not mentioned unto thee; and Allah spake directly unto Moses;
165 Messengers of good cheer and of warning, in order that mankind might have no argument against Allah after the messengers. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise.
The Koran says limits polygamous marriage to four wives [4:3]:
... marry other women of your choice: two, three, or four. But if you fear that you will not be able to maintain justice between your wives, then marry only one.Joseph Smith endorsed unlimited polygamy. According to former church members writing in 1844 shortly before Smith died, he and other church elders recruited maidens from Europe, who arriving in the United States were deflowered and given no choice except to become one of many wives.
The two largest modern Mormon denominations now both officially rejected polygamy in order to avoid further prosecution for a practice that was unlawful in the United States. However, fundamentalist Mormon sects still practice polygamy, reports of its being practiced in secret by mainstream Mormons have been abundant, and it is hard to reconcile monogamy with Joseph Smith's status as The Prophet. In fact in the Doctrine and Covenants any man aspiring to priesthood is encouraged to take multiple wives [D&C 132:61-62]:
61. And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified.The emphasis on the virginity of multiple wives is why teenage women have been the main target of Mormon missionaries from the time of Joseph Smith until the present. Joseph Smith is reputed to have had over thirty wives at the time of his death in 1844.
III. Rejection of Jesus Christ as the One True God
Muhammad lived from 570 to 632 A.D. At this time the orthodox Christian church (only later splitting into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches) had dominated the people's around the Mediterranean for over two centuries. Yet many Jewish and non-orthodox Christian communities still had not been stamped out, and in Arabia itself various forms of pagan worship survived.
While given as a revealed truth from Allah, Muhammad's belief that Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet, not a resurrected god, was supported by historical evidence. Jews in the area, of course, rejected Jesus as both God and Messiah. More important were the Christian Jews whose religion was in line with the original teachings of Jesus. Their historic memory was that Jesus did not claim to be God and was not resurrected after crucifixion. Those ideas were formed decades after Jesus's death, as is reflected in the differences between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, in which Jesus does not claim divinity, and in John, where he makes it very clear he thinks he is one with God.
Muhammad, in the Koran, quotes Jesus against the Christians, avoiding the Gospel of John and instead interpreting Jesus as having said there is only one, undivided God, Allah, and that no man could be God. Which is the position of Islam.
Despite his demotion to Prophet, Jesus (Isa) and his mother, Mary (Maryam) play a major role in the Koran, even aside from preaching against Christianity.
As with Islam, which developed over the course of the life of Muhammad, the relationship of the Latter Day Saints to Jesus of Nazareth is complicated by the temporal development of the revelations of Joseph Smith. In the Book of Mormon Jesus is pretty much the Jesus of the Christians except, unbeknownst to them, after his Ascension Jesus is said to have visited the Americas.
Later, as the power of being himself treated as a Prophet and having a lot of young wives went to his head, Joseph Smith deviated increasingly from Christian doctrine in his Doctrine and Covenants. While not explicitly rejecting the Trinity, Joseph Smith described an elaborate cosmology which would allow him and his male followers to become godlike, and Jesus-like, themselves. Even God the Father, our planetary god, was reduced to an advanced and glorified man. Quoting those who left the church just before Smith's death [Nauvoo Expositor, June 7, 1844]:
"Among the many items of false doctrine that are taught the Church, is the doctrine of many Gods, one of the most direful in its effects that has characterized the world for many centuries ... It is contended that there are innumerable Gods as much above the God that presides over this universe, as he is above us; and if he varies from the law unto which he is subjected, he, with all his creatures, will be cast down as was Lucifer."IV. Rejection of alcohol
While it may seem to be only of practical importance, the rejection of alcohol by Islam, and later by Joseph Smith and his followers, is of the deepest symbolic and theological importance.
Wine plays a role in two key sacraments of Christianity, marriage and communion. Jesus is believed by Christians to have turned water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana [Bible, John 2:1-11], his first miracle in John (but missing from the three earlier gospels).
By rejecting wine both Muhammad and Joseph Smith rejected the Christian rule of monogamy. They also both recognized divorce, which Jesus outlaws for Christians in Matthew 19:3-9.
According to his followers, Jesus is not a Prophet, or the Messiah, but a true, resurrected God. Wine represented, in his times, the transubstantiation from of an ordinary food, the grape, into an intoxicant. Earlier religions in which a man-god was killed or sacrificed and then rose from the dead, showing the glory of God, were closely tied to celebrating events with wine. Notably the Greek god Dionysus and the Egyptian god Osiris had large cult followings throughout the Roman Empire that had many doctrines that were adopted by non-Jewish Christians at some point in the history of the early Church.
By rejecting the drinking of alcoholic beverages, Joseph Smith brought his church more closely to conformity with orthodox Islam and differentiated it from orthodox Christianity.
"That inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good." [Doctrine and Covenants. 89:5 by Joseph Smith the Prophet at Kirtland, Ohio, February 27, 1833]
"Satan desires to stir up enmity and hatred between you with intoxicants and gambling, to prevent you from the remembrance of Allah and prayers. Will you not abstain?" [Muhammad the Prophet, Koran, 5:91]
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Get Down Moses, With the U.S. Constitution
When the U.S. Constitution was forced on the American people in 1788 religion was not very different than it is today. There were no Mormons yet, but most of the major Christian sects had made an appearance. The educated ruling class studied the Greek and Roman classics, meaning they were exposed to both pagan beliefs and skepticism. Many Americans, possibly a majority were agnostics, atheists, materialists, or deists.
Politics was already a highly developed art and craft. So was its camp follower, corruption. I would argue that the first Congress under the new Constitution was the most corrupt in American history, but then there is a lot of competition, and records of corruption are incomplete, so I can't be sure. The U.S. Constitution was largely based on the British Constitution, but also borrowed from the Iroquois confederation, ancient Greek and Roman forms, and the various states, notably the State of Virginia.
Science, on the other hand, was just beginning its climb up Mount Sinai. Isaac Newton had invented calculus and outlined what is now called classical physics; he had died in 1727. But electricity was still something created by friction or lightning. Charles Darwin would not be born until 1809. Atoms would remain basically undifferentiated blobs until the 1890's.
For a document designed to centralize the power of the ruling elite, with just enough democracy included to keep the rabble from revolting too often, the U.S. Constitution is a pretty good basis for government. Its most obvious flaws, like the structure of the Senate, are a result of political compromise, not planning or wisdom. Amendments have, on the whole, improved it over the centuries. Most importantly, even the early ruling elite had their moments of working for the public good.
Largely because of Tea Party agitation, many Americans are taking a good look at their Constitution. Like any complex object, it can be looked at from many different angles. A citizen might like one part and dislike another. Throw in the often-mythologized stories about the (white) men who wrote the damned thing, and you have a lot of room for principled disagreements. Need more room, and you can just desert principles, which is a rather common (and often successful) political strategy.
Religious people, I mean the truly religious, project their religion into almost everything. It is almost a truism in certain circles that the U.S. Constitution was written by God. Now you and I know that is not true: God writes in Latin, not English. But the God-smitten won't have it any other way.
Which creates its own issues. Were Amendments to the Constitution written by God, or just the Original Constitution? Did God also write the Articles of Confederation? Why exactly did God give Congress the power to "promote the progress of science" [Article I, Section VIII, paragraph 8]?
You know why. He was preparing the way for his greatest prophets. Charles Darwin, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Francis Crick, among others.
Politics was already a highly developed art and craft. So was its camp follower, corruption. I would argue that the first Congress under the new Constitution was the most corrupt in American history, but then there is a lot of competition, and records of corruption are incomplete, so I can't be sure. The U.S. Constitution was largely based on the British Constitution, but also borrowed from the Iroquois confederation, ancient Greek and Roman forms, and the various states, notably the State of Virginia.
Science, on the other hand, was just beginning its climb up Mount Sinai. Isaac Newton had invented calculus and outlined what is now called classical physics; he had died in 1727. But electricity was still something created by friction or lightning. Charles Darwin would not be born until 1809. Atoms would remain basically undifferentiated blobs until the 1890's.
For a document designed to centralize the power of the ruling elite, with just enough democracy included to keep the rabble from revolting too often, the U.S. Constitution is a pretty good basis for government. Its most obvious flaws, like the structure of the Senate, are a result of political compromise, not planning or wisdom. Amendments have, on the whole, improved it over the centuries. Most importantly, even the early ruling elite had their moments of working for the public good.
Largely because of Tea Party agitation, many Americans are taking a good look at their Constitution. Like any complex object, it can be looked at from many different angles. A citizen might like one part and dislike another. Throw in the often-mythologized stories about the (white) men who wrote the damned thing, and you have a lot of room for principled disagreements. Need more room, and you can just desert principles, which is a rather common (and often successful) political strategy.
Religious people, I mean the truly religious, project their religion into almost everything. It is almost a truism in certain circles that the U.S. Constitution was written by God. Now you and I know that is not true: God writes in Latin, not English. But the God-smitten won't have it any other way.
Which creates its own issues. Were Amendments to the Constitution written by God, or just the Original Constitution? Did God also write the Articles of Confederation? Why exactly did God give Congress the power to "promote the progress of science" [Article I, Section VIII, paragraph 8]?
You know why. He was preparing the way for his greatest prophets. Charles Darwin, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Francis Crick, among others.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
God Punishes Bible Belt with Drought
I could not help but notice the remarkable coincidence between the December 9, 2010 Drought Map of the United States and the 2009 Bible Belief Geographic Index:
It became apparent to me that God must be sending the drought as a message to the Christians of the Bible Belt. But why? Surely no homosexuals, abortionists, or prostitutes live in the Bible belt anymore, not once they can afford a bus ticket out. While surely some people in the Belt don't pray as much as they should, that is even more true of areas of the United States that are not suffering from drought.
I talked to several preachers who claimed in the past earthquakes in California are God's punishment for allowing homosexuals and abortionists to live, but none of them thought the drought was anything other than a natural La Nina related weather pattern.
Then I took a big step. I decided to try to get an interview directly with God.
True, the bureaucracy was daunting. No one seemed to believe that I really wanted to know God's opinion. But I was persistent, and suddenly a void opened before me (I appeared to be in a multi-dimensional quantumized relativistic field space, but more on that some other time) and I heard the voice of God.
"Speak English!" I shouted back at him.
"There, is that better, insignificant germ on an insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy in a botched universe creation experiment that I had almost forgot existed?"
"So you are saying you did not visit the drought on the Bible Belt of the United States of America on the planet Earth?"
"Not exactly. Let me have one of my minions examine the database. Huh. That drought is a punishment, although it is also a natural La Nina related weather pattern."
"Fine. Then people on Earth would like to know what the punishment is for, so that they can do better and escape punishment?"
"The punishment is partly for being conscious beings who only do what's right to escape punishment. But more specifically, I don't like them attacking people who are Moslems. I'm not all that fond of Islam, but that camel trading artist Mohammed did hear one thing right. I am the one and only God, and I don't like my creation worshipping made-up Gods, including people whose followers claim they are God on earth."
"So no false gods. Anything else?"
"Did I ever say that because the earth is insignificant that humans have the right to destroy it? Start taking care of the environment or I'm cutting off your food supply. Breed less. Open up more Planned Parenthood centers. Use condoms. Use the brains I gave you to make intelligent decisions! Stop reading the Bible and the Koran so much. They are out of date! Didn't people get the messages I sent through Adam Smith, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein?"
"Well some did, and some did not. A lot of people seem to be hard of hearing in these matters. Especially in the Bible Belt."
"I've tolerated the Bible Belt long enough. I'm turning it into a desert for a few decades. After that, with some rain it might be a nice place again. It was a regular paradise before Christians arrived."
"But if people stop reading the Bible, would you stop the drought?"
"Ha! Maybe it will stop by itself. Maybe it is a natural cyclical phenomena! Next!"
At that point I was blown out of the interview space, back to my natural home in coastal northern California, where it is raining. Where it is okay to believe in Special Relativity and Natural Selection. Where people are friendly, and mostly see no need to go to Afghanistan to kill people.
But I was a little bit miffed that the interview ended so abruptly. I thought the tradition was that when God gives you an interview, and you get back to spread the Word, everybody is thankful and gives you ten percent of their income. Next time I get an interview, I'm starting with fee negotiations.
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It became apparent to me that God must be sending the drought as a message to the Christians of the Bible Belt. But why? Surely no homosexuals, abortionists, or prostitutes live in the Bible belt anymore, not once they can afford a bus ticket out. While surely some people in the Belt don't pray as much as they should, that is even more true of areas of the United States that are not suffering from drought.
I talked to several preachers who claimed in the past earthquakes in California are God's punishment for allowing homosexuals and abortionists to live, but none of them thought the drought was anything other than a natural La Nina related weather pattern.
Then I took a big step. I decided to try to get an interview directly with God.
True, the bureaucracy was daunting. No one seemed to believe that I really wanted to know God's opinion. But I was persistent, and suddenly a void opened before me (I appeared to be in a multi-dimensional quantumized relativistic field space, but more on that some other time) and I heard the voice of God.
"Speak English!" I shouted back at him.
"There, is that better, insignificant germ on an insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy in a botched universe creation experiment that I had almost forgot existed?"
"So you are saying you did not visit the drought on the Bible Belt of the United States of America on the planet Earth?"
"Not exactly. Let me have one of my minions examine the database. Huh. That drought is a punishment, although it is also a natural La Nina related weather pattern."
"Fine. Then people on Earth would like to know what the punishment is for, so that they can do better and escape punishment?"
"The punishment is partly for being conscious beings who only do what's right to escape punishment. But more specifically, I don't like them attacking people who are Moslems. I'm not all that fond of Islam, but that camel trading artist Mohammed did hear one thing right. I am the one and only God, and I don't like my creation worshipping made-up Gods, including people whose followers claim they are God on earth."
"So no false gods. Anything else?"
"Did I ever say that because the earth is insignificant that humans have the right to destroy it? Start taking care of the environment or I'm cutting off your food supply. Breed less. Open up more Planned Parenthood centers. Use condoms. Use the brains I gave you to make intelligent decisions! Stop reading the Bible and the Koran so much. They are out of date! Didn't people get the messages I sent through Adam Smith, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein?"
"Well some did, and some did not. A lot of people seem to be hard of hearing in these matters. Especially in the Bible Belt."
"I've tolerated the Bible Belt long enough. I'm turning it into a desert for a few decades. After that, with some rain it might be a nice place again. It was a regular paradise before Christians arrived."
"But if people stop reading the Bible, would you stop the drought?"
"Ha! Maybe it will stop by itself. Maybe it is a natural cyclical phenomena! Next!"
At that point I was blown out of the interview space, back to my natural home in coastal northern California, where it is raining. Where it is okay to believe in Special Relativity and Natural Selection. Where people are friendly, and mostly see no need to go to Afghanistan to kill people.
But I was a little bit miffed that the interview ended so abruptly. I thought the tradition was that when God gives you an interview, and you get back to spread the Word, everybody is thankful and gives you ten percent of their income. Next time I get an interview, I'm starting with fee negotiations.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Nazi Pope Blasts Islam, False Gods
The man called Benedict XVI, legal A.K.A. Joseph Alois Ratzinger, continues to prove he is the third in a line of fascist, and more specifically Nazi, Popes. According to accounts in the the Associated Press dated October 11, 2010, Pope Benedict recently "denounced terrorist ideologies that spur violence in God's name," adding that "these ideologies are based on false gods." [See Pope Denounces Terrorist Ideas]
Wow. Of course, Roman Catholics have been self-selecting and inbreeding for gullibility for 17 centuries now. The Catholic Church so cultivates ignorance of history and religion that it discourages its communicants from reading the Bible. Sadly, because of the nature of politics, even many Protestant Americans don't know we had to fight the Catholics in World War II because of the first two fascist popes, Pius XI and Pius XII. They used their servants Benito Mussolini, Philippe Petain, General Francisco Franco and, most useful servant of all, Adolf Hitler, to try to eliminate all rival religions from the earth. In the process they murdered roughly 20 million atheists, 6 million Jews, and about 1 million Protestant Christians between 1936 and their defeat in 1945.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger was just a child then, but he became a member of Hitler Youth. Later, trying to clean up his resume a bit, he claimed he was forced into Nazi Youth and actually opposed Hitler. But we know what happened to even middle class Catholic Germans who opposed Hitler, or failed to attend Hitler Youth meetings. They were put in concentration camps. So the opposing Hitler bit is just a bald lie.
The Catholic Church's idea that its God is the true god and all other Gods are false goes back to pre-Catholic Christianity. Christians essentially invented the idea of there being only one God, and that has brought the world untold grief. Recounting how many non-Catholics have been murdered over the centuries by Catholics in their God's name would take an encyclopedia. Even Google would pale at the thought of the cost of building a datacenter to hold all the data of the victims of the Catholic Church.
Islam is the original Protestant sect. There were lots of non-Catholic sects before Islam, but the Catholics wiped them out. Mohammed and his Moslem followers were the first to put forward a different theology and live to tell about it. In fact, they beat the Catholics at their own game of "conversion or death" for about a millenia. The Catholic Church looked ready for total defeat around 1500 A.D., but the discovery of America, and the working of Mexican and Peruvian natives to death in gold and silver mines, allowed the Catholics, led by Spain, to turn the tide. Catholic mercenary armies inspired not so much be faith as by payment in silver stopped and then turned back the advance of the Turkish, Islamic empire in Europe.
This weakness of the Catholic Church around 1500 also enabled the survival of what we now no as Protestant Christian churches. There were christian protestants before Martin Luther. Martin Luther was the just the first to call out the Popes on their bull and live to tell about. This allowed,over time, ever larger numbers of people to engage in rational thought, religous choice, and ethical behavior, a process that I hope will continue to grow.
The internal stuggles of the Catholic Church during the past 2 decades look like war preparations to me. Tolerant, pro-democracy persons within the Church have been systematically deprived of power. The Church's assaults on women's rights have become stident, including the recent announcement that it is heresy punishable by excommunication to even think about making women priests. The Church has become a right-wing dictatorship, just as it did before it engineered the rise of the fascist dictators to power during the 1930s.
Affirming its intent to restore fascist governments wherever possible, and ultimately make a bid for global domination again, is Benedict XVI's ongoing efforts to make saints of thousands of General Franco's supporters [See fascist saints]. General Franco was the Catholic dictator of Spain, highly praised and blessed by Pope Pius XII, who murdered millions of non-Catholics in Spain during his reign of terror, which lasted until his death in 1975.
False Gods indeed. The idea of One True God would seem to me to imply that the worst mistake a person could make is getting a poor signal from God. Like God is AT&T, and has never quite figured out how to make cell phones work right.
I denounce the use of violence to spread religion or philosophy of any kind. I admit to being anti-religion, preferring my Natural Liberation Philosophy. But the way to convert people is by example and argument, not force. Both Catholicism and Islam have also used, at time, economic policy to encourage conversions. Right now the Catholic Church is bankrupt. It's main weapon against Islam is the United States government, which it influences through Catholic voter blocks and lobbying. Americans should not allow the Pope to use our tax dollars to further his agenda of ignorance, superstition, and centralised dictorial governance.
Further reading:
Hitler's Pope: Pius XII
by John Cornwell
The Vatican in World Politics
by Avro Manhattan
Wow. Of course, Roman Catholics have been self-selecting and inbreeding for gullibility for 17 centuries now. The Catholic Church so cultivates ignorance of history and religion that it discourages its communicants from reading the Bible. Sadly, because of the nature of politics, even many Protestant Americans don't know we had to fight the Catholics in World War II because of the first two fascist popes, Pius XI and Pius XII. They used their servants Benito Mussolini, Philippe Petain, General Francisco Franco and, most useful servant of all, Adolf Hitler, to try to eliminate all rival religions from the earth. In the process they murdered roughly 20 million atheists, 6 million Jews, and about 1 million Protestant Christians between 1936 and their defeat in 1945.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger was just a child then, but he became a member of Hitler Youth. Later, trying to clean up his resume a bit, he claimed he was forced into Nazi Youth and actually opposed Hitler. But we know what happened to even middle class Catholic Germans who opposed Hitler, or failed to attend Hitler Youth meetings. They were put in concentration camps. So the opposing Hitler bit is just a bald lie.
The Catholic Church's idea that its God is the true god and all other Gods are false goes back to pre-Catholic Christianity. Christians essentially invented the idea of there being only one God, and that has brought the world untold grief. Recounting how many non-Catholics have been murdered over the centuries by Catholics in their God's name would take an encyclopedia. Even Google would pale at the thought of the cost of building a datacenter to hold all the data of the victims of the Catholic Church.
Islam is the original Protestant sect. There were lots of non-Catholic sects before Islam, but the Catholics wiped them out. Mohammed and his Moslem followers were the first to put forward a different theology and live to tell about it. In fact, they beat the Catholics at their own game of "conversion or death" for about a millenia. The Catholic Church looked ready for total defeat around 1500 A.D., but the discovery of America, and the working of Mexican and Peruvian natives to death in gold and silver mines, allowed the Catholics, led by Spain, to turn the tide. Catholic mercenary armies inspired not so much be faith as by payment in silver stopped and then turned back the advance of the Turkish, Islamic empire in Europe.
This weakness of the Catholic Church around 1500 also enabled the survival of what we now no as Protestant Christian churches. There were christian protestants before Martin Luther. Martin Luther was the just the first to call out the Popes on their bull and live to tell about. This allowed,over time, ever larger numbers of people to engage in rational thought, religous choice, and ethical behavior, a process that I hope will continue to grow.
The internal stuggles of the Catholic Church during the past 2 decades look like war preparations to me. Tolerant, pro-democracy persons within the Church have been systematically deprived of power. The Church's assaults on women's rights have become stident, including the recent announcement that it is heresy punishable by excommunication to even think about making women priests. The Church has become a right-wing dictatorship, just as it did before it engineered the rise of the fascist dictators to power during the 1930s.
Affirming its intent to restore fascist governments wherever possible, and ultimately make a bid for global domination again, is Benedict XVI's ongoing efforts to make saints of thousands of General Franco's supporters [See fascist saints]. General Franco was the Catholic dictator of Spain, highly praised and blessed by Pope Pius XII, who murdered millions of non-Catholics in Spain during his reign of terror, which lasted until his death in 1975.
False Gods indeed. The idea of One True God would seem to me to imply that the worst mistake a person could make is getting a poor signal from God. Like God is AT&T, and has never quite figured out how to make cell phones work right.
I denounce the use of violence to spread religion or philosophy of any kind. I admit to being anti-religion, preferring my Natural Liberation Philosophy. But the way to convert people is by example and argument, not force. Both Catholicism and Islam have also used, at time, economic policy to encourage conversions. Right now the Catholic Church is bankrupt. It's main weapon against Islam is the United States government, which it influences through Catholic voter blocks and lobbying. Americans should not allow the Pope to use our tax dollars to further his agenda of ignorance, superstition, and centralised dictorial governance.
Further reading:
Hitler's Pope: Pius XII
by John CornwellThe Vatican in World Politics
by Avro Manhattan
Sunday, August 15, 2010
On Nothing
Child: My parents say you are an atheist.
Meyers: I have a positive system of knowledge called Natural Liberation Philosophy. But yes, in your parents' culture that makes me a kind of atheist.
Child: I don't see how you can say there isn't a God. How did everything get here? God created everything.
Meyers: When we humans create something we make it from things that are already here. We use the phrase "create a cake" to mean "bake a cake from ingredients." Except for what people make, things don't need to be created. They just are. We don't create trees: they just grow. Scientists say everything is made of matter and energy, and matter and energy can't be created or destroyed.
Child: But God had to create something in the first place.
Meyers: People say things like: God created the Universe out of nothing. But pretend for a moment the Universe needs a Creator. The theory behind that would be that a Creator is necessary for the Universe to exist. But what created the Creator? The Creator would need to be self-creating. And once we allow for something to be self-creating .. do you think we should allow self-creation?
Child: Yes!
Meyers: Then we might as well allow that the Universe itself is, or at some time was, self-creating. Do you see how much of your problem comes from applying the word "create" in a context where it does not apply?
Child: [Silence]
Meyers: Let me help you here. Do you think there would be nothing, if God or the Universe had not been self-creating!
Child: Maybe God is the Universe, but there would be nothing if something had not been made!
Meyers: Some would argue that nothing can beget only nothing. But consider how we use the word "nothing." It makes sense in everyday use. What did you bring home from the store? Nothing. What are your plans for the day? Nothing. What did you accomplish on your hike? Nothing. Nothing is a lot like zero.
Child: So?
Meyers: Nothing is a sort of counter. It is the absence of things to count. But I can count billions of people, 10 or so planets in the solar system, millions of stars in the sky, million of galaxies in the Universe. Reality is something. The Universe is something. They are not nothing.
Child: But they were nothing before the world was created.
Meyers: You are applying a human word where it should not be applied. You are using it out of context. Nothing is a contrast to the existence of particular things. You are trying to make it contrast with Everything, or the Universe.It only makes sense within a system of things. You can try other language constructions. Here is one: outside our system of reality. Outside reality, in short. You can make what sounds like a sensible sentence: outside of reality is nothing.
Child: Exactly. Outside of reality there is nothing. And before reality there was nothing. So you still need God to create everything.
Meyers: For there to be before, there has to be time. Time would be something. Not nothing. The nothing of time would be No Time. That makes sense in everyday life: no time to do my homework! But no time at all, or a time before the Universe began, those are just misapplying the English language.
We might say, take away the entire universe, and there would be nothing. But the universe can't be taken away. Parts of it can be wrecked, but it can't be destroyed. The absence of the entire universe is an impossible construct. Nothingness, in the absolutely nothing sense, is a misconception.
Child: So what is the point of all this bull about God and philosophy?
Meyers: Exactly. You are in a very real world. Learn all you can about it. Do what you think is right within it. And beware that many humans have become very confused over the course of civilization by using the same word to mean two or more things, or by extending an analogy way beyond its reasonable context.
Child: Maybe. But what happens to people when they die, if there isn't a God?
Meyers: I think you can figure that out for yourself. Run along now. I need to check my text messages.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Lazy Nature, Lazy God
Is nature lazy? It certainly is slow. Look how long it took for life as we know it to evolve.
The ancient Greek philosopher-scientists knew that light was lazy. They showed that when light is reflected from a surface the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. Whatever the speed of light was, this reflection rule resulted in the shortest, and therefore the fastest, path between a source of light, an observer, and a reflective surface between them. Light takes the shortest path.
In the era historians refer to as the Enlightenment, this came to be called the principle of least action.
Nature has a number of definitions; when I write Nature, I mean the Universe or totality of things, including the principles that cause it to exist and determine the specifics of existence. Primitive people take the ancient idea of a god (tree, rock, ghost, or human) and try to amplify that up until they have a God that created and rules over, or at least within, Nature. Whether you believe in God or Nature, the physics experiments come out the same.
So the principle of least action implies that God is lazy too. God's laziness makes the universe predictable.
You can make a lot out of this simple principle, which applies to solid physical objects as well a light and energy fields. To understand this, unfortunately, the path of least effort leads through the quicksand of something called the calculus of variations. And of course, most people in the world need to start working or fighting or begging before they even get to regular calculus in school. On the other hand, if you do happen to study calculus and then the calculus of variations, you can get anything you want in the world. You will be able to see deeper and further than other humans, and make of it what you will.
With your math magic, you are now ready to do Lagrangian dynamics, among other things. You can see where Newton's Laws come from: a lazy, symmetrical universe (designed by a lazy God). And using only the principle of laziness, you can work out Schrodinger's equation (for the motion of a non-relativistic particle in a potential field) [Byron & Fuller, Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics, p. 71]. Thus you have the key to quantum physics. In retrospect it is surprising no one came up with it before Erwin Schrodinger.
Which brings up another important point: Chance. Or probability, if you like the more modern formalism. Many Romans worshipped Chance, or Fortuna (Tyche to the Greeks). In addition to the chance events of human lives, the practice of gambling was already well-developed. Dice pre-exist recorded history, as did other methods of casting lots or determining oracles. The minor Christian god Jesus Christ may have been an incarnation of chance, as it was written in the Bible (King James translation), Mark 15:24, "And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take." [Alternate versions found in Matthew 27:25, where this is attributed to fulfilling a Jewish prophecy; Luke 23:34; and John 23:24]
The role of probability in quantum physics, and in particular the Uncertainty Theorem, has led to a lot of guru-driven nonsense spouted in the popular arena of wishful thinking. There is probability in quantum physics, which is to say in Nature, but it is of a type. We say things like "the probability of finding an electron within this space-time region in our experiment is 40%." It sounds like "there is a 40% chance of rain today." But if an experiment where the equations create a 40% expectation is run a few hundred times and the electron is only found 37% of the time, what physicists do is alter their equations. Afterwards it looks like they got the 37% figure from theory, but in fact they got it from practice and molded their theory to their results. See Inward Bound by Abraham Pais for numerous historical examples.
Asking where an electron is in space-time relative to an atomic nucleus is actually simply asking a bad question, although strangely it is fine to ask where the same electron is traversing a vacuum tube. Chance in quantum land is probably best seen in radioactive decay, where it is clearly a result of a probabilistic decay mechanism, not of observational or prediction problems.
The principle of least action leads to quantum probability equations. So in some sense the rules of probability in quantum phyics are themselves predictable. Just as we cannot be sure what any throw of the dice may bring, but we can predict the outcome of large numbers of throws using the rules of probability.
In classical physics, laziness appears to be exact (assuming you know exactly everything about your system), or too pick an exact shortest path. In quantum physics the mask of exactness is removed, but the laziness of Nature is still the rule.
Book references:
The ancient Greek philosopher-scientists knew that light was lazy. They showed that when light is reflected from a surface the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. Whatever the speed of light was, this reflection rule resulted in the shortest, and therefore the fastest, path between a source of light, an observer, and a reflective surface between them. Light takes the shortest path.
In the era historians refer to as the Enlightenment, this came to be called the principle of least action.
Nature has a number of definitions; when I write Nature, I mean the Universe or totality of things, including the principles that cause it to exist and determine the specifics of existence. Primitive people take the ancient idea of a god (tree, rock, ghost, or human) and try to amplify that up until they have a God that created and rules over, or at least within, Nature. Whether you believe in God or Nature, the physics experiments come out the same.
So the principle of least action implies that God is lazy too. God's laziness makes the universe predictable.
You can make a lot out of this simple principle, which applies to solid physical objects as well a light and energy fields. To understand this, unfortunately, the path of least effort leads through the quicksand of something called the calculus of variations. And of course, most people in the world need to start working or fighting or begging before they even get to regular calculus in school. On the other hand, if you do happen to study calculus and then the calculus of variations, you can get anything you want in the world. You will be able to see deeper and further than other humans, and make of it what you will.
With your math magic, you are now ready to do Lagrangian dynamics, among other things. You can see where Newton's Laws come from: a lazy, symmetrical universe (designed by a lazy God). And using only the principle of laziness, you can work out Schrodinger's equation (for the motion of a non-relativistic particle in a potential field) [Byron & Fuller, Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics, p. 71]. Thus you have the key to quantum physics. In retrospect it is surprising no one came up with it before Erwin Schrodinger.
Which brings up another important point: Chance. Or probability, if you like the more modern formalism. Many Romans worshipped Chance, or Fortuna (Tyche to the Greeks). In addition to the chance events of human lives, the practice of gambling was already well-developed. Dice pre-exist recorded history, as did other methods of casting lots or determining oracles. The minor Christian god Jesus Christ may have been an incarnation of chance, as it was written in the Bible (King James translation), Mark 15:24, "And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take." [Alternate versions found in Matthew 27:25, where this is attributed to fulfilling a Jewish prophecy; Luke 23:34; and John 23:24]
The role of probability in quantum physics, and in particular the Uncertainty Theorem, has led to a lot of guru-driven nonsense spouted in the popular arena of wishful thinking. There is probability in quantum physics, which is to say in Nature, but it is of a type. We say things like "the probability of finding an electron within this space-time region in our experiment is 40%." It sounds like "there is a 40% chance of rain today." But if an experiment where the equations create a 40% expectation is run a few hundred times and the electron is only found 37% of the time, what physicists do is alter their equations. Afterwards it looks like they got the 37% figure from theory, but in fact they got it from practice and molded their theory to their results. See Inward Bound by Abraham Pais for numerous historical examples.
Asking where an electron is in space-time relative to an atomic nucleus is actually simply asking a bad question, although strangely it is fine to ask where the same electron is traversing a vacuum tube. Chance in quantum land is probably best seen in radioactive decay, where it is clearly a result of a probabilistic decay mechanism, not of observational or prediction problems.
The principle of least action leads to quantum probability equations. So in some sense the rules of probability in quantum phyics are themselves predictable. Just as we cannot be sure what any throw of the dice may bring, but we can predict the outcome of large numbers of throws using the rules of probability.
In classical physics, laziness appears to be exact (assuming you know exactly everything about your system), or too pick an exact shortest path. In quantum physics the mask of exactness is removed, but the laziness of Nature is still the rule.
Book references:
Sunday, October 19, 2008
You Are Getting Warmer
Have you begun to suspect that neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party is going to take steps significant enough to halt global warming?
You are getting warmer.
Have you begun to suspect that trading one war crimes organization, the Republican Party, for another, the Democratic Party, is not going to prevent war?
You are getting warmer.
Has the economic crisis got you wondering just how much stupidity and cupidity human beings are capable of?
You are getting warmer.
Do you live in one of the many areas of the United States that has suffered through a drought since the year 2000?
You are getting warmer.
Has the increased cost of food and gas, combined with your boss telling you not to expect a raise this year, made you suspect that the system is rigged against people like you?
You are getting warmer.
Have you heard that La Jolla California, one of the most beautiful places on earth, is having all of its vegetation eaten by a "stick insect" that originated in India? Have you noticed similar changes in your area on those rare occasions when you closely observed the local flora and fauna?
You are getting warmer.
Do you suspect that there is no humanoid God, just the Natural Universe?
You are getting warmer.
Are you beginning to suspect that in order to save yourself, your friends, and your family, drastic action, maybe even rebellion, has become a necessity?
You are getting warmer.
Maybe it is time to start thinking about Natural Liberation.
You are getting warmer.
Have you begun to suspect that trading one war crimes organization, the Republican Party, for another, the Democratic Party, is not going to prevent war?
You are getting warmer.
Has the economic crisis got you wondering just how much stupidity and cupidity human beings are capable of?
You are getting warmer.
Do you live in one of the many areas of the United States that has suffered through a drought since the year 2000?
You are getting warmer.
Has the increased cost of food and gas, combined with your boss telling you not to expect a raise this year, made you suspect that the system is rigged against people like you?
You are getting warmer.
Have you heard that La Jolla California, one of the most beautiful places on earth, is having all of its vegetation eaten by a "stick insect" that originated in India? Have you noticed similar changes in your area on those rare occasions when you closely observed the local flora and fauna?
You are getting warmer.
Do you suspect that there is no humanoid God, just the Natural Universe?
You are getting warmer.
Are you beginning to suspect that in order to save yourself, your friends, and your family, drastic action, maybe even rebellion, has become a necessity?
You are getting warmer.
Maybe it is time to start thinking about Natural Liberation.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Charles Darwin Was God's Prophet
Charles Darwin is hated by fundamentalist Christians. To accept Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selectiona as true, to them, means having to abandon their belief in the literal truth of the King James translation of the biblical books into what is now archaic English.
As a writer I have to appreciate the idea that one of God's principle activities was writing a book, and of course I am impressed by the fact that it is a best seller and the strongest backlist title in history. Also, it is encouraging, because my own writings have not sold well so far, and neither did God's early on. Bible sales did not really take off until the time of Martin Luther.
And if God is a writer, and had a successful book, don't you think he would want to do a bit more writing?
I think the concept of God is confusing [See God: A Confusing Concept]. Some people, however, have made an identity between God and Nature, and for educational purposes I'll go with that dual-natured god in this essay.
Let us suppose that God or Nature has prophets. These human beings get the truth about something or other from God and make it known to the rest of us. The Old Testament Jews had prophets, but so did the far-more-ancient Egyptians. Jesus is accepted as a prophet by many people who do not believe he is God. Mohammed declared that he was a prophet, and that worshipping him as the Christians worshipped Jesus Christ would be blasphemy.
But when you think about it, what these people revealed was good, but just a tiny bit of what God could reveal. I am a big fan of ethics, whether you want to take them from practical experience or from some higher authority. Predicting war or revolution or droughts or plagues is also all good and fine. Prophet is an honorary title I am willing to bestow when appropriate.
What Charles Darwin revealed was the fundamental order of nature, or at least of plant and animal life. True, he spent his life in careful study, observation, and experimentation. He thought a lot. He delayed publication of The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin himself was part of nature, part of creation. He claimed no supernatural powers. If you believe God creates everything, then God created Charles Darwin. If God inspires everything, then God inspired Charles Darwin.
Not remarkably, God's second book, the Origin of Species, (unless you count the New Testament as his second book) is much better written that his first book, the Bible. It documents the facts pointing to evolution by natural selection in a compelling manner. The contradictions in edicts we find in the Bible are largely eliminated. A big picture is painted out of small details. Troubling questions are asked and answered. Homely examples from the breeding of dogs and pigeons are given. Anyone with an open mind can understant it.
Having unveiled the true basis of life, and of the modern science of biology, God inspired mankind to get about the business of extending our knowledge of Nature. The science of genetics was worked out. The molecular basis of inheritance, DNA, was discovered. Now we have wonder medicines starting to be produced for ailments that were previously incurable. All because God revealed the Truth to the Prophet Darwin.
The Catholic Church, if it had any sense, would discover that Darwin was a saint. Many, many medical miracles have occured from people subscribing to the theory of evolution. We know the Church recast a number of pagan gods as saints; why not Charles Darwin?
The earth is not such a big place any more. It is crowded with people. It exists in the context of a Universe so large that even scientists cannot tell us exactly how large it is. Many of God's creations are being destroyed because of human overpopulation and its attendant polution and destruction of natural habitat. God has given warnings. Nature has made the consequences of continuing on our current path clear. Natural disasters and the toppling of evil and incompetent governments are upon us.
It is too bad Charles Darwin was not an American. I think the American fundamentalists would have a lot more trouble attacking God's True Prophet if it were unpatriotic to do so. The people of Great Britain should be proud to have produced such a man. But America has its Prophets of Nature too. John Muir, for instance. We should be proud of them.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Sun Worship Revisited
Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day in the southern hemisphere. Where I live, roughly 39 degrees north latitude, the sun will rise at 5:49 AM and set at 8:42 PM. Further north much or all of the day will be sunlit, but at the equator only careful attention reveals the solstice.
Some pagans are celebrating the solstice today; the typical news article I have seen, released by the Associated Press, mocks the celebrants as freaks. I have never noted mainstream press mockery of Christianity at Christmas or Easter. The consensus is that it makes sense to worship Jesus Christ and it is just plain silly to worship the Sun.
Christianity, after all, is seen as a modern religion. Sun worship is seen as a primitive, pre-Christian form of worship. People worshipped the Sun because it was big and bright and divided the day and night. According to Christians, God revealed himself the to Jews and then sent a son (just one, mind you, and would that Christians limited themselves to one child, following their God's example) to set everyone straight with a promise of immortality.
Physicists tell us that our sun is not immortal. True, it is billions of years old, but it was not formed during the earlier epochs of the universe. True, it will go on a few billion years, but it is expected to eventually consume its nuclear fuel and collapse into a cold cinder. If it isn't immortal then it can't be God, can it? But then the human race is newer than the sun and is unlikely to continue much longer (on cosmic time scales), so why believe a human form, Jesus, can represent immortality?
When Christianity was born Apollo was Helios, the Sun God of the Mediterranean world and had numerous followers. People, except perhaps the most ignorant, realized that the human attributes of Apollo were to be distinguished from the very real Sun in the sky. Other cultures are believed to have worshipped the sun as a god, but in some cases they may have simply been tracking the sun to keep their agricultural calendars straight, rather than truly believing the sun created the universe.
Yet this primitive sun worship was much closer to reality than Jesus worship. The Sun does predate the earth and mankind; in a very real sense, the sun created the earth and its energy imbued the earth with life. If the sun went out tomorrow we would all be dead in quick order, but Jesus died on the cross and nothing much happened. Let's face up to reality: Jesus is not a very good candidate for being God, even if you are egotistical enough to think that God must be human. Crazy as he was, the Emperor Caligula (who also claimed to be a god) at least was Roman emperor. Jesus was the founder of a small cult that apparently murdered Ananias and Sapphira for money (Bible, Acts of the Apostles, Ch. 5).
Let us skip some of this primitive thinking and go to a more sophisticated version of God (God 2.0?): the creator of all things, visible and invisible. Atheists would say that if you need a first creator, the Universe itself can serve that role as well as God. But lets split the difference and call our hypothetical deity the Creator, which should satisfy Catholics and open-minded atheists.
What would better represent the Creator in our sector of the Universe, a dead Jesus or a living Sun? The Sun is bigger and lives longer. The sun is singular, at least around here, whereas any number of men and women (not to mention elephants, snakes, and natural phenomena) could be claimed by their followers to be God. (My sentimental favorite is Gunputty.) Is the Sun more likely to be an incarnation of the Creator, or a raggedly little Palestinian?
Why then, is Christianity one of the dominant religions today, but Sun worship is just an occasional reason for pagan partying? Two big reasons. The Christian religion is a remarkable example of social engineering. The Apostle Paul took a tiny Jewish cult and made it into a money maker by combining it with non-Jewish resurrection myths, the promise of immortality, and a sort of primitive socialism in which standing Christians were fed from the seized property of new recruits. Then, as time passed, the Roman Emperors saw Christianity as the perfect way to keep their subjects in line. Once that happened, conversion at swordpoint became the rule, and a very successful one.
The other reason we fail to worship the Sun is that it is both too remote and too easily tested by reason. It does not appear to care about humans when it wilts crops under its heat. Humanized gods have always been popular because it is easy to imagine they understand human problems. Pregnant and unmarried? Talk to the Virgin Mary.
Those who see through the vanity of anthropomorphizing the Creator usually also see that Nature is complex. No one subset of Nature should be worshipped as God.
There are good reasons to celebrate the Solstice without trying to make our good sun into a God. The Solstice marks the annual rhythm of life. It reminds us that humans are just a part of nature. And it is cheery to have such long days when you don't live near the equator.
More data:
Solstice quick facts (at Encarta)
Sun facts (at NASA)
My Religion page at IIIPublishing.com
Sun Worship (Wikipedia)
Some pagans are celebrating the solstice today; the typical news article I have seen, released by the Associated Press, mocks the celebrants as freaks. I have never noted mainstream press mockery of Christianity at Christmas or Easter. The consensus is that it makes sense to worship Jesus Christ and it is just plain silly to worship the Sun.
Christianity, after all, is seen as a modern religion. Sun worship is seen as a primitive, pre-Christian form of worship. People worshipped the Sun because it was big and bright and divided the day and night. According to Christians, God revealed himself the to Jews and then sent a son (just one, mind you, and would that Christians limited themselves to one child, following their God's example) to set everyone straight with a promise of immortality.
Physicists tell us that our sun is not immortal. True, it is billions of years old, but it was not formed during the earlier epochs of the universe. True, it will go on a few billion years, but it is expected to eventually consume its nuclear fuel and collapse into a cold cinder. If it isn't immortal then it can't be God, can it? But then the human race is newer than the sun and is unlikely to continue much longer (on cosmic time scales), so why believe a human form, Jesus, can represent immortality?
When Christianity was born Apollo was Helios, the Sun God of the Mediterranean world and had numerous followers. People, except perhaps the most ignorant, realized that the human attributes of Apollo were to be distinguished from the very real Sun in the sky. Other cultures are believed to have worshipped the sun as a god, but in some cases they may have simply been tracking the sun to keep their agricultural calendars straight, rather than truly believing the sun created the universe.
Yet this primitive sun worship was much closer to reality than Jesus worship. The Sun does predate the earth and mankind; in a very real sense, the sun created the earth and its energy imbued the earth with life. If the sun went out tomorrow we would all be dead in quick order, but Jesus died on the cross and nothing much happened. Let's face up to reality: Jesus is not a very good candidate for being God, even if you are egotistical enough to think that God must be human. Crazy as he was, the Emperor Caligula (who also claimed to be a god) at least was Roman emperor. Jesus was the founder of a small cult that apparently murdered Ananias and Sapphira for money (Bible, Acts of the Apostles, Ch. 5).
Let us skip some of this primitive thinking and go to a more sophisticated version of God (God 2.0?): the creator of all things, visible and invisible. Atheists would say that if you need a first creator, the Universe itself can serve that role as well as God. But lets split the difference and call our hypothetical deity the Creator, which should satisfy Catholics and open-minded atheists.
What would better represent the Creator in our sector of the Universe, a dead Jesus or a living Sun? The Sun is bigger and lives longer. The sun is singular, at least around here, whereas any number of men and women (not to mention elephants, snakes, and natural phenomena) could be claimed by their followers to be God. (My sentimental favorite is Gunputty.) Is the Sun more likely to be an incarnation of the Creator, or a raggedly little Palestinian?
Why then, is Christianity one of the dominant religions today, but Sun worship is just an occasional reason for pagan partying? Two big reasons. The Christian religion is a remarkable example of social engineering. The Apostle Paul took a tiny Jewish cult and made it into a money maker by combining it with non-Jewish resurrection myths, the promise of immortality, and a sort of primitive socialism in which standing Christians were fed from the seized property of new recruits. Then, as time passed, the Roman Emperors saw Christianity as the perfect way to keep their subjects in line. Once that happened, conversion at swordpoint became the rule, and a very successful one.
The other reason we fail to worship the Sun is that it is both too remote and too easily tested by reason. It does not appear to care about humans when it wilts crops under its heat. Humanized gods have always been popular because it is easy to imagine they understand human problems. Pregnant and unmarried? Talk to the Virgin Mary.
Those who see through the vanity of anthropomorphizing the Creator usually also see that Nature is complex. No one subset of Nature should be worshipped as God.
There are good reasons to celebrate the Solstice without trying to make our good sun into a God. The Solstice marks the annual rhythm of life. It reminds us that humans are just a part of nature. And it is cheery to have such long days when you don't live near the equator.
More data:
Solstice quick facts (at Encarta)
Sun facts (at NASA)
My Religion page at IIIPublishing.com
Sun Worship (Wikipedia)
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