Summary of Opening Remarks and Parables Given During My Recent Fellowship Presidency
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April 13, 1997
Short Quotation or Two
From the Encyclopaedia of Philosophy comes the following definition of "nothing". Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of a mystical or existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with anxiety, nausea, or panic.
And to this I add a comment by Tennessee Williams: "A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with." Then quotations that have been around a lot longer:
"Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion." ---Thomas Hobbes (1651)
"As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish, He'd go away." --- John Donne, English poet and priest, also around 1600.
Now applying the word "nothing" to meanings, Rudolph Carnap, one of the six greatest philosophers of this century writes: "Can it be that so many men, of various times and nations, outstanding minds among them, have devoted so much effort, and indeed fervor, to metaphysics, when this consists of nothing more than words strung together without sense?"
This quotation brings to mind the fact that the Unity Valley Community Church and the church of Religious Science are primarily meta-physically based; and I point out that they have lots and lots of members --- but that has nothing to do with us.
Now here is a short summary of New Age beliefs, taken from a book by Theodore Schick, Jr., and Lewis Vaughn entitled How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age. (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1995).
"There's no such thing as objective truth. We make our own truth. There's no such thing as objective reality. We make our own reality. There are spiritual, mystical, or inner ways of knowing that are superior to our ordinary ways of knowing. If an experience seems real, it is real. If an idea feels right to you, it is right. We are incapable of acquiring knowledge of the true nature of reality. Science itself is irrational or mystical. It's just another faith or belief system or myth, with no more justification than any other. It doesn't matter whether beliefs are true or not, as long as they're meaningful to you." Which leads me to say: "tripe---what garbage".
April 20, 1997
Short Quotation or Two
Following is one of my favorite quotations. This is taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson's address to the Harvard Divinity School. "Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject, --- be he who he may, I can accept nothing." Then somewhere else Emerson wrote: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
Which brings me to a short quotation taken from a book review by Lee Dembart when he was the reviewer of science books for the LA Times, and is still an occasional reviewer: "Religious faith is the ability to believe what you know isn't true."
Parable or something
"Science itself is irrational or mystical. It's just another faith or belief system or myth, with no more justification than any other". --- A New Age belief.
But, I say that science is not like any other belief system. A scientific theory has to agree with everything that had been previously observed, without exception. Further the theory has to state how it can be disproved; what experiment or observation can be done and what results would negate the theory. To elaborate somewhat, also in answer to New Age garbage, the following definition of science has been proposed by the Council of the American Physical Society.
"Science is the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories. The success and credibility of science is anchored in the willingness of scientists to:
1) Expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by other scientists. This requires the complete and open exchange of data, procedures and materials.
2) Abandon or modify accepted conclusions when confronted with more complete or reliable experimental evidence.
Adherence to these principles provides a mechanism for self-correction that is the foundation of the credibility of science."
The following is taken from one of Daniel J. Boorstin's many books; this one entitled CLEOPATRA'S NOSE; or Essays on the Unexpected; Random House, NY (1994). Boorstin was the Librarian of Congress for many years and also was the director of the National Museum of History and Technology and was senior historian of the Smithsonian Institute. Earlier at the University of Chicago he was the Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of American History. "We are inclined to forget or underestimate the difficulty of negative discovery. For it is far easier to encounter some new island or even an unexpected new continent than to prove that some long-admired fixture of the imagination does not exist. To put a new land, a new passageway on the map one needed only to go there, and happily surprise the world with a new presence. But to prove a negative, even if the logicians had not insisted that it was theoretically impossible, is an exhausting enterprise. It demands the exploring and discarding of all imaginable possibilities. Negative discovery is also much less welcome than an act of simple affirmative discovery. People don't like to have their imaginations unfurnished. The legendary Great South Land, which Cook erased from the map, had been a promising field of empire, with natural wealth of incalculable value. It remained so, as long as it was never found. To prove that the Great South Land did not exist was not only an unwelcome disillusion, it required one of the most terrifying sea voyages in history. Leaving England in July 1772, Captain Cook did not return till July 1775. He came down around the Cape of Good Hope, traversed the whole southernmost rim of the Pacific in the Antarctic regions, then into the Atlantic toward the Cape of Good Hope and back to England. This passion and courage and the sophisticated purpose of Cook and his crew, his expert naturalists and skilled astronomers were brilliantly summarized in the homely wisdom of Josh Billings (1818-1885): 'It ain't what a man don't know as makes him a fool, but what he does know as ain't so.' The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. I will now suggest why I see Captain Cook as the prototypical modern discovery hero. The negative discoverer is the historic dissolver of illusions. Perhaps we could call ours an age of negative discovery. This feature of the realms of discovery in our age is conspicuous in the results of recent efforts to describe the universe. Marc Davis, Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, has provided us with a convenient summary. Here are the six main products of the progress of cosmology over the last four hundred years:
The Earth is not the center of the Universe.
The Sun is not the center of the Universe.
Our galaxy is not the center of the Universe.
Our type of matter is not the dominant constituent of the Universe (dark matter dominates).
Our Universe (seen and unseen) is not the only Universe.
Our physics is not the only physics. There might exist separate universes with different laws of nature.
Perhaps our modern discoverer is not a discoverer at all but rather a quester, in an age of negative discovery, where achievements are measured not in the finality of answers, but in the fertility of questions. So let us enjoy the quest together."
April 27, 1997
Short Quotation or Two
"Time is God's way of keeping things from happening all at once." --- anonymous Texan Graffiti.
"Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born." --- Robert Merton.
Parable or something
One might say that the New Agers believe that anything is possible, because it seems that science can make anything possible, so why can't it be possible without science. Their problem is that they are too lazy to study science, so they never really know what it is or what its limitations are and how it differs from imagining that certain things can happen.
The following is taken from Freeman Dyson, INFINITE IN ALL DIRECTIONS, Harper and Row, Publishers, 1988. For many years he was at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N. J. I became acquainted with him when he was a consultant to General Atomics; my impression was that he was a dreamer; too much conjecture without solid information to back up his opinions.
"Our technology is giving us progressively greater power to keep alive our ancestors' ghosts. First the invention of writing allowed us to preserve their words. Painting and photography allowed us to preserve their faces. The phonograph preserves their voices and the videotape recorder preserves their movement and gestures. But this is only the beginning. Soon we shall acquire the technology to preserve a permanent record of the sequence of bases in the DNA of their cells. This means that we shall be able, if we wish, to carry the magic a stage further, to reconstruct from the DNA sequence a genetic copy or clone of the ancestor. After that, perhaps, will come the technology to read the memory traces that record the experiences of a lifetime in the ancestor's brain. And then, perhaps, the technology to play back the ancestor's memories and feelings into the consciousness of the living. At that point the distinction between living and dead, present and past, will become blurred. It will be hard to tell who is the ancestor and who is the descendant, who is the one blowing on the embers and who is the one lying wrapped in spotted garments in the grave."
May 4, 1997
Short Quotation or Two
"Inquiry into final causes is sterile, and, like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing." Francis Bacon (not Roger, whom we usually associate with the rise of empirical science.)
"The learned have their superstitions, prominent among them a belief that superstition is evaporating." --- Gary Wills, from his book, Under God.
"Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves." --- John Locke.
May 11, 1997
Good Morning. Following up on the question: "What are New Age religions?". Gordon Hansen pointed out to me that there was a pertinent article by Wendy Kaminer in the October 14, 1996 issue of the New Republic which article was later included in the publication Secular Nation. She wrote:
"Adherence to mainstream religions is supplemented by experimentation with an eclectic collection of New Age beliefs and practices. Roughly half of all Catholics and Protestants surveyed by Gallup in 1991 believed in ESP; nearly as many believed in psychic healing. Fifty-three percent of Catholics and 40 percent of Protestants professed belief in UFOs, and about one-quarter put their faith in astrology. Nearly one-third of all American teenagers believe in reincarnation. Once I heard Shirley MacLaine explain the principles of reincarnation on the Donahue show: 'Can you come back as a bird?' one woman asked. 'No,', MacLaine replied, secure in her convictions. 'You only come back as a higher life form.' No one asked her how she knew."
Parable or something
Last week, based on a article in Time Magazine, Marvin Nottingham made the comment that it now appears that even emotions can be explained by changes in brain chemistry, by the amounts of neurotransmitters that may be present. I'd like to take a few moments to add to that. Most neurophysiologists now believe that they will be able to explain how emotions are triggered, how behavior is related to brain chemistry and functioning, and, in fact, will be able to explain how we arrive at all the "weird" feelings that were mentioned last week. This research is being undertaken at universities that have the equipment for PET scanning and advanced MRI imaging. These instruments allow visualization as to how the brain operates while the person undergoing examination is completely conscious. For example, a beautiful girl can walk past a male volunteer and the examiner can see what areas of the brain "fire" and what levels of neurotransmitters are present. All this is explained in great detail in an excellent book by Antonio R. Damasio entitled DESCARTES ERROR: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain: published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, N.Y. (1994). Damasio is the M. W. Van Allen Professor of Neurology and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City. He is also adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla., CA.
In his book, through neurophysiological studies, Damasio tends to show that the body, brain, mind, and emotions, and reasoning capability, or consciousness are all so closely interwoven that they should not be considered separately; in particular, he shows how emotions and feeling are inherent in reasoning. To give you a flavor, I'll read one paragraph from the book: "I suspect that the body states are not algorithmically predictable by the brain, but rather that the brain waits for the body to report what actually has transpired. The idea that endorphins are the brain's own morphine and can easily change how we feel about ourselves, about pain, and about the world is now well accepted. So is the idea that the neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, as well as peptide neuro-modulators, can have similar effects. It is important to realize, however, that knowing that a given chemical causes a given feeling to occur is not the same as knowing the mechanism for how this result is achieved. Knowing that a substance is working on certain systems, in certain circuits and receptors, and in certain neurons, does not explain why you feel happy or sad."
May 18, 1997
Good Morning. My opening comment this morning comes about because of a front-page article that appeared in the LA Times this past Thursday; the title of which was "Probing the Chemistry of Creation". To elaborate on this article, I quote from a book entitled LIFE BEYOND EARTH, or The Intelligent Earthling's Guide to Life in the Universe by Gerald Feinberg, a Professor of physics at Columbia and Robert Shapiro, a Professor of chemistry at NYU. They wrote: "Humans and the inhabitants of any of the other isolated biospheres that make up a Universe of life cannot be faulted for concluding that their own environment is uniquely suited for life. The reciprocal influence between life and an environment gradually leads to a high degree of mutual fitness between them. It is not easy to see beyond this mutuality to other equally fit solutions of the equations of life. Yet, were we gifted with a vision of the whole Universe of life, we would not see it as a desert, sparsely populated with identical plants which can survive only in rare specialized niches. Instead, we would envision something closer to a botanical garden with countless species, each thriving in its own setting."
May 25, 1997
Good Morning. Since our visit to the Creation Research Institute, I noted in various publications that the religious right is apparently trying to draw away from the biblical account of genesis, and rather is giving emphasis to "grand design", that everything fits so nicely together that it could not have been created without prior design by a "Creator". By de-emphasizing the bible, they hope to convince school boards (and perhaps even our Supreme Court) that creationism is scientifically and not religiously based. This might sound reasonable to the uninformed but it goes counter to theories of evolution. Darwin, in his writings, emphasizes over and over again the structural and functional imperfections of the living world. He always points out the oddities, the strange solutions that a reasonable God would never have used. In contrast to the engineer, evolution does not produce innovations from scratch. It works on what already exists, either transforming a system to give it a new function or combining several systems to produce a more complex one. The process resembles not engineering but tinkering, bricolage as the French say. In the study of evolution, there is not even a hint of a "grand designer". Memorial Day being upon us brings to mind that one of the best arguments against perfection comes from extinct species. While the number of species presently living in the animal kingdom can be estimated to be a few million, the number of extinct ones has been estimated to be about 500 million. This means that some 99 percent of all species that once lived on earth have disappeared at some time or another. In light of these statistics, it is not unreasonable to suspect that our species will also disappear someday.
J.B.S. Haldane, the famous early 20th century geneticist and popularizer of science, was once asked what the study of biology could tell one about the Almighty. "I'm really not sure," he said, "except that He must be inordinately fond of beetles." Presumably, he said this because there are estimated to be about 300,000 species of beetles; in contrast, only about 10,000 species of birds.
Parable or something
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that Antonio Damasio, Professor of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, in his book, DESCARTES ERROR: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, tends to show that the body, brain, mind, and emotions, and reasoning capability, or consciousness are all so closely interwoven that they should not be considered separately; in particular, he shows how emotions and feeling are inherent in reasoning. This together with the chess tournament that was recently completed between Garry Kasparov, the current human world-champion, and Deep Blue, the IBM parallel-circuit computer, (the new overall world-champion) reminded me of my experience relative to the close connection between thought, emotion, and character or personality.
To begin at the beginning, when I was growing up I dreamed of becoming chess champion of the world, much like other boys dream about playing in the big leagues. I started to play chess before I started school, and, eventually, when I was a drill-sergeant in the Army and stationed in Fort Belvoir, VA outside of Washington, DC., there was a time when I played chess at least 10 hours per day, and on weekends I often played at the Washington Chess Divan which was the Washington chess club. There I was sort of out-of-place; a sergeant playing with military brass and ambassadors. But they tolerated me. In their annual tournament held at that time, I came out 11th best, and this caused me to give up chess-playing in a serious manner. If after playing chess during most of my waking hours, I could come out only 11th in a local chess club, continuing to play seriously just made no sense. But I continued to play for enjoyment whenever I could find someone who really knew how to play; this included my father, who brought me up playing the game. Somewhere during my early working years, I came to realize that I could tell an opponent's personality by playing him a game of chess, provided, of course, that he was an excellent player, not one who couldn't help making mistakes. I believed that I could determine a person's personality much better and faster this way than I could just talking to him. This was a surprising conclusion to reach because chess is a purely mental activity; it is one of the few games where luck is not the least bit involved. Accordingly, I seriously considered screening job applicants, by having them play me a few games of chess. I never carried out this thought since few applicants were such good chess players. To illustrate further how emotions are involved, whenever I played my father in later years, after a few moves he had to get his nitroglycerine because he couldn't stand his chest pains. Eventually, we mutually decided to quit this activity. I missed playing chess with my father, and I'm certain that the feeling was mutual. Incidentally, I could never get any of our kids interested in playing chess, not even in playing bridge
Oct. 5, 1997
Good Morning. There were two news items of interest to me over the past few weeks. First was the $1 billion dollar donation to the UN by Ted Turner. In all the papers and magazines that I get, I did not note in any of these that Ted Turner had been selected to be Humanist of the Year for 1996 by the American Humanist Association. The other item was on the demonstrations against the use of Pu-238 in the Saturn spacecraft. I ask: "Why do so many whom I call 'do-gooders' so often go off the deep-end before they gather any pertinent factual data." Is it because they are lazy, or because they have a deep need to feel important?
Oct. 12, 1997
Good Morning. Has anyone found out why we should be celebrating or not celebrating October 22, 1997? So far I've gotten two responses but neither was the answer that I was looking for. But now I'll confuse the issue. I mentioned last week that I do a lot of reading. Maybe I do too much, because now in another publication I find that the date may be October 23rd rather than the 22nd. In fact this latest publication says that what we should or should not be celebrating happened at 9 o'clock in the morning on October 23rd. Any more guesses? I'll give the answer next week.
Now another quotation, sort of in the same line as the two I used last week to start my talk. This one was also taken from Haught's book. "Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion have always proved themselves intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?" This was written by General Robert E. Lee on December 27, 1856 in a letter to his wife. ---
Parable or something
I'd like to comment further on the remark that Judith Fulton made last week saying that strides towards non-descrimination were made in private schools before integration was forced in the public schools. I agreed with her, but I didn't elaborate to indicate what I thought was the reason for this. I suspect it happened this way because at that time private schools were primarily for the rich and the rich saw little or no threat from blacks or any group that was "different". We first came upon this threat component when we were living in Monroeville, Pennsylvania in the 1960's. At one time during our stay there, a black family was getting interested in buying one of the houses in the neighborhood. This eventuality seeemed to be taken in stride except for one particular family. And this was a surprise because, to us at least, this was one of the nicest families in the neighborhood. In trying to analyze this situation, I concluded that this family was more threatened by the possible decline in property values than were the rest of us. He was a draftsman without a college degree while most of the rest of us were professionals, who did not "feel" the threat to the same degree. This is just another illustration that "fear" is the most divisive and debilitating human emotion. Perhaps, at some time, I'll give a talk on this.
Oct. 19, 1997
Good Morning. Are there any more guesses as to what happened sometime in the past on October 22nd or 23rd? In the early 1600s, (I couldn't find the exact date of his pronouncement), archbishop Ussher proclaimed that God created the universe either in the evening of October 22nd or the morning of October 23rd in the year 4004 BCE; some of the difficulty in pinning down the exact date may be due to the fact that he used the Julian calendar. At any rate, there seems to be universal agreement that either on October 22nd or 23rd of 1997, we should be celebrating the hexamillenial of that auspicious event. Ussher's calculation is generally treated as a joke, especially by cosmologists, yet according to many surveys a substantial fraction, about 40%, of Americans believe that the Earth and Universe are quite young, on the order of 10,000 years. I I also would like to mention a more eventful anniversary; one that is worth celebrating. Specifically, 100 years ago, in the October 1897 issue of the Philosophical Magazine, J.J. Thomson reported on his discovery of the electron.
Parable or something
Now I'd like to read a news story that was reported in a little publication entitled Physics & Society, which is a publication of the American Physical Society. The heading is Eliminate Dihydrogen Monoxide! and it goes on to state the following: "A freshman at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair, April 26. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to the alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical 'dihydrogen monoxide'. And for plenty of good reasons, since it 1) can cause excessive sweating and vomiting, 2) is a major component of acid rain, 3) can cause severe burns in its gaseous state, 4) can be lethal if accidentally inhaled, 5) contributes to erosion, 6) decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes, 7) has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients. He asked 50 people if they supported the ban of the chemical, which is water. The title of his prize winning project was, 'How Gullible Are We?' He feels that the conclusion is obvious."
Oct. 26, 1997
Good Morning. To kick things off this morning, I'd like to again ask a question: Who has been watching the PBS series on Monday nights entitled Stephen Hawking's Universe? I seem to be on sort of a science kick with my opening remarks. I don't intend to keep doing this, but it seems that much of the news lately has to do with science or death; and I certainly don't want to add to all that's been said about Diana! To get to the reason for my question, let me read a paragraph out of Carl Sagan's last book entitled "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark". He wrote: "We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces." This is not a new thought; actually, Sagan didn't have many of those. To show this I'll elaborate with a quote from a book published in 1971 entitled: "Chance and Necessity" written by the microbiologist and Nobel laureate Jacques Monod.
"Modern societies, woven together by science, living from its products, have become as dependent upon it as an addict on his drug. They owe their material wherewithal to this fundamental ethic upon which knowledge is based, and their moral weakness to those value-systems, devastated by knowledge itself, to which they still try to refer. The contradiction is deadly. It is what is digging the pit we see opening under our feet. The ethic of knowledge that created the modern world is the only ethic compatible with it, the only one capable, once understood and accepted, of guiding its evolution....
"Modern societies accepted the treasures and the power that science laid in their laps. But they have not accepted---they have scarcely even heard---its profounder message: the defining of a new and unique source of truth, and the demand for a thorough revision of ethical premises, for a total break with the animist tradition... Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the riches they owe to science, our societies are still trying to live by and to teach systems of values already blasted at the root by science itself.
"No society before ours was ever rent by contradictions so agonizing. For their moral bases the 'liberal' societies of the West still teach---or pay lip-service to---a disgusting farrago of Judeo-Christian religiosity, scientistic progressism, belief in the 'natural' rights of man, and utilitarian pragmatism. ... All these systems rooted in animism exist at odds with objective knowledge, face away from truth, and are strangers and fundamentally HOSTILE to science, which they are pleased to make use of but for which they do not otherwise care. The divorce is so great, the lie so flagrant, that it afflicts and rends the conscience of anyone provided with some element of culture, a little intelligence, and spurred by that moral questioning which is the source of all creativity. It is an affliction, that is to say, for all those among mankind who bear or will come to bear the responsibility for the way in which society and culture shall evolve."
Now I''ll give you some time to digest all this, then I'll come back to this subject and elaborate some more.
Parable or something
Before getting to my subject, I'd like to say something about a very interesting Forum that we had last Wednesday. The topic was "Emotional Intelligence" which had been suggested by Medy Fink, who wasn't there because of her cold. So we sort of discussed "emotional intelligence" without really knowing what we were talking about, and then we went on to other topics. I gather that Medy chose the topic because of a book that she and Ludmilla Skinner had read. Even when the topic was first suggested, I considered the title to be an oxymoron. My feelings about emotional intelligence, whatever that might be, were concisely summed up by Robert M. Hutchins in the satiric short film entitled "Zuckerkandel". Therein someone says: "When the penis goes up, reason goes out the window."
Now to get back to the subject I introduced earlier, I'd like to read from an article in the LA Times by Neal Lane who is director of the National Science Foundation. This editiorial was written shortly after the death of Carl Sagan and is titled: The Challenge of Filling Sagan's Shoes, and the introductory comment reads: "The loss of our most effective 'popularizer' leaves a gaping void; others must step into the role of 'civic scientist'."
Lane writes: "At the National Science Foundation, all of our surveys show that more than two-thirds of the public believes that science is important. Nonetheless, of those surveyed only one in nine believes he or she is well informed about science and technology and only one in four demonstrates any level of science literacy. These survey results speak volumes and probably tell us more about the scientific community than about the American public. This disconnect between people being interested in science yet feeling that their knowledge is seriously lacking should give all scientists and engineers something to ponder...." All of which leads to his introductory comment, which is an exhortation to all scientists that they should somehow become more "connected" to the public.
All in all, this was a nicely written editorial, but what does it mean? It seems to me that it is based on the entirely false premise that scientists and science popularizers have failed to keep the public informed. Frankly, I don't believe that the public wants to be informed; this supposition is supported by your answers to my original question. Generally, the public doesn't want to be educated; most of us want to be amused and diverted. In our culture, amusement and diversion are given a higher priority than learning! With this public attitude, why should scientists bother to popularize their findings? They have enough difficulty keeping up with advances made in their field, so why waste time writing popularized books or articles that only a few people will read?
Nevertheless, scientists do write popularized books. To support my position that enough of this is being done, I have here a list of some authors, titles of their books, and some short synopses of their contents. I'll leave this information on the table for anyone who might be interested in finding a new book to read on cosmology, physics, biology, psychiatry, or philosophy.
My real question for today is: How long can a society exist when it gives higher priority to amusement and diversion rather than learning? If your answer is: "not for long", then how do we go about solving this problem?
Nov. 2, 1997
Nov. 9, 1997
Parable or something
Last week there was a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans. Members of this society will be providing more and more newsworthy items in the future because researchers can now watch the brain in action through what is called PET scanning and augmented MRI. These technical "eyes into the brain" provide such detailed information that researchers are beginning to tie brain physiology to human behavior or psychology. This field is still in its infancy and I want to warn you to take news releases with a grain of salt. The neurophysiologists, generally, are excellent scientists and will report their work accurately, even though the news reporters might screw things up in order to make their articles more sensational. Also when psychologists get into the act, they tend to interpret experimental results the wrong way and to over-generalize. To illustrate what I am talking about, let me go into some detail about an article that appeared in the LA Times with the heading "Brain Could Affect Religious Response, Researchers Report".
It seems that researchers at UC San Diego's brain and perception laboratory who were studying the brain functioning of people who had a specific type of epilepsy found that "the experiments suggest a physical basis for a religious state of mind". "People suffering from this type of seizure have long intense mystical and religious experiences as part of their attacks and are unusually preoccupied with mystical thoughts between seizures." One researcher was quoted as saying: "We like to suggest there may be neural circuits in the temporal lobe that may be part of the machinery of the brain that is involved in mystical experiences and God. Both during the seizures and in between the seizures, there is a heightened activity of these circuits." My comment is this: We really don't know what all this means because the hyperactivity could be a genetic phenomenon, one might say an "evolved survival mechanism"; or it could simply be that these particular neuro-circuits have become hyperactive from inordinate over-use. I've read quite a bit about other brain-functioning experiments carried out at UC San Diego, at the University of Iowa, and elsewhere, and I always end up with the same question. Is the particular brain functioning an innate or an acquired characteristic? I think that it will take years to sort this out, so watch out for seemingly "weird" interpretations, especially by theologians and psychologists.
Nov. 16, 1997
Good Morning. With all this activity I haven't had time to do much preparation for my opening remarks, but I did go through some of my old files and came across a reading that, I think, was taken from one of the UU hymnbooks. The title of this reading is "Cherish Your Doubts" by Robert T. Weston, formerly the Minister at the UU Church in Omaha, Nebraska.
"Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing:
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
Those who would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on a rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth."
Parable or something
To carry the theme expressed in my reading somewhat further, I'll now present one of my favorite quotations taken from the writings of a French parish priest, John Meslier, who lived in the late 16 and early 17 hundreds. In his Testament, later published by Voltaire, he wrote:
"I will not sacrifice my reason, because this reason alone enables me to distinguish between good and evil, the true and the false ... I will not give up experience, because it is a much better guide than imagination, or than the authority of the guides whom they wish to give me ... I will not distrust my senses. I do not ignore the fact that they can sometimes lead me into error; but on the other hand I know that they do not deceive me always; ... my senses suffice to rectify the hasty judgments which they induce me to form .. To discern the true principles of morality men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods; they need but common sense. They have only to look within themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consult their obvious interests, to consider the object of society and of each of its members; and they will easily understand that virtue is an advantage, and that vice is an injury to beings of their species ... Men are unhappy only because they are ignorant; they are ignorant only because everything conspires to prevent them from being enlightened; and they are wicked only because their reason is not sufficiently developed ... It is only by showing men the truth that they can know their best interests and the real motives that will lead them to happiness. Long enough have the instructors of the people fixed their eyes upon the heaven; let them at last bring them back to earth. Tired of an incomprehensible theology, of ridiculous fables, of impenetrable mysteries, of puerile ceremonies, let the human mind occupy itself with natural things, intelligible objects, sensible truths, and useful knowledge."
Nov. 23, 1997
Short Quotation or Two.
Everything is what it is because it got that way. --- Written by the Scotch biologist, D'Arcy Thompson.
Parable or something
I read the quotation I gave earlier because on Monday I again watched the PBS program, Stephen Hawking's universe. This last segment, like the other five, was also mediocre in my estimation. Included was a small cameo wherein Lee Smolin, an astronomy professor at Penn State tried to present his hypothesis about multiple universes. Frankly he did a lousy job; perhaps, because he wasn't given enough time to present a reasonable explanation, or because the meat of his presentation was edited out. I was surprised because I have Smolin's original paper at home; it is short, concise, and easy to comprehend. And I like his conjecture, which incidentally cannot be disproven or proven so it can't be considered to be a theory.
Smolin believes that "universes" similar to ours keep popping up in different dimensions so that we cannot be aware of them but that these have somewhat different physical constants and different laws of physics. Then as time goes on, and their development is dictated by these inherent conditions, they either die out rather rapidly or some, like our own universe, may continue to exist for billions of years so that stars, all the elements, and eventually life can come into being. In essence, he is proposing that Darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest, is also proceeding on a super-cosmic scale. Frankly, I like his idea. I always had a feeling that the universe always existed; one might say that I liked the theory of a steady-state universe. The Big-Bang theory and the subsequent expansion of our universe, explains so much that I was sort of annoyed that there was an apparent "beginning". Now Smolin says that it only seems like there was a beginning to us because we can see only our own universe from which we can't get the big picture of many universes being almost continually created and destroyed; his universes, then, are much like the species of life on earth. Which all shows the depth of D'Arcy Thompson's quotatation: "Everything is what it is because it got that way" and this then gets me to Stephen Hawking's final program comment that if there is no beginning and no end, there is no need for "God".
Nov. 30, 1997
Good Morning. It looks like most of us have survived Thanksgiving. Now to get through the advent and Christmas. Since we want to eat and get out of here shortly after 12, my opening remarks today will be short. This week I received my copy of the American Physical Society's monthly newspaper. It contained a number of quotes collected from the science exams of elementary school children. I do not know why the editor chose these particular answers to exam questions; but to me the answers illustrate the ingenuity of children. Let me share some with you.
To most people solutions mean finding answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up.
Definition of vacuum: A large, empty space where the pope lives.
When you breathe, you inspire. When you do not breathe, you expire.
A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.
Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.
I'm not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.
Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.
Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire.
The pistil of a flower is its only protection against insects.
Water is composed of two gins, Oxygin and Hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.
Dec. 7, 1997
Good Morning. Today is December 7th; Pearl Harbor Day. I remember it well because when the news came over the radio, it was the first and only time that I saw my father weep; which made me realize that war must be hell.
Besides reminiscing, today I can talk about three subjects that were brought to my attention by the media. I will elaborate on one later, and only briefly mention the other two.
The first subject has to do with pornography on the Internet. To forestall government involvement, a number of Internet providers are proposing a lock-out system to help families shield children from adult material. I have no particular interest in this subject, and really have no strong opinions one way or the other. But this news item led me to ask myself the question: "Would I have developed any differently if I had been exposed to sexually explicit material at an early age?" My answer, which I admit could be wrong, was "probably not". But if I am right, why all the fuss? Is exposing a child to sexually-explicit material really bad or is this just one of the beliefs that have pervaded our society simply because we were told that it is so? Is this just one of the many beliefs that we have taken on faith and have never seriously questioned? In comparison, look at the mores of the early Tahitians and Trobriand islanders. I suggest that this might be an interesting topic for one of our Forum sessions. Also, it leads me to a quotation, written by Gary Wills in his book entitled UNDER GOD: "The learned have their superstitions, prominent among them a belief that superstition is evaporating."
The second item that interested me was the Tuesday evening program on Channel 24, the Inland Empire's PBS station. This was an hour-long program entitled: "On the Road to Clean Cities for the 21st Century"; in essence, it was a panel discussion of government and industry experts sponsored by UC Riverside. Frankly, I didn't hear anything that sounded like an "expert" opinion, which is what I expected from the group of people that were touted as being experts. The program was rather dull and didn't present any information that had not recently appeared in the newspapers. A company named The Planning Center helped UC Riverside organize the event; in my estimation, they and the University people involved did a lousy job.
The third item, which I will elaborate on later, appeared last Sunday evening on the CBS program, 60 Minutes. In one of their segments they gave an account of one person's supposedly "multiple personality disorder"; and thereby they pointed up the shenanigans that go on in the psychiatry profession. Of particular interest to me was that no psychiatrists spoke up to condemn some of their colleagues for advocating this nonsense and destroying their patients lives and their families. The best that one reasonable and responsible psychiatrist said was that this psychiatric practice of trying to recover repressed memories was a craze and that it will fade away. I particularly noted that this program was about psychiatry and practicing psychiatrists not about the generally less-sophisticated, and thereby more dangerous, clinical psychologists.
Parable or something
To elaborate on the subject of repressed memories, let me start out by reading two paragraphs from a book written in 1994 by Richard Ofshe, a social psychologist at UC Berkeley in conjunction with Ethan Watters, a freelance magazine writer. The title of the book is MAKING MONSTERS. They wrote: "For nearly a decade a segment of the psychotherapy community has offered recovered memory therapy to women and a few men suffering from disorders ranging from depression and headaches to schizophrenia and arthritis. In general, patients who come to believe they have recovered memories of child abuse fall into three categories. The most common example involves the individual coming to believe that she was sexually abused, usually by a parent or another adult family member. The second general category consists of those who believe that they were abused at the hands of an organized satanic cult. The third category consists of those who believe that they harbor multiple personalities. It is also very common for recovered memory patients to end up representing all three categories. University of Michigan professor Elliot Valenstein writes in (his book) Great and Desperate Cures that fad treatments continue to be the "very bone and marrow" of the profession."
"Serious mental illnesses have become viewed increasingly as medical problems, and psychotherapists have been increasingly shut out of their treatment. Currently, in American society, psychotherapy deals primarily with simple human unhappiness --- the failure of life to be what we want it to be and the gap between our idealized image of ourselves and the realities of who we are. Often the way psychotherapists offer to restore our self-confidence is by helping us to create new narratives intended to tell us why we are the way we are. While recovered memory therapists believe that the more hours they spend with a patient focusing on memories, the more truth about the client's past they will uncover, the exact opposite is often true. While during the initial therapy sessions patients may indeed think about memories and experiences that they have not thought about in a good long while, the amount of real memory available is finite, and the amount of detail that can be confabulated or imagined or wished is open-ended. The longer the memory-retrieval process goes, therefore, the more of the latter elements will be incorporated into the memory belief."
Now here is another excerpt that I extracted because it applies to religion as much as it does to psychiatry. "For one of the best ways to allay self-doubts is to try to convert others to one's point of view, thereby gaining confirmation of its correctness from them."
All these suppositions, in a somewhat different vein, were presented earlier by Thomas Szasz in his 1974 book entitled THE MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS. When writing this Szasz was Professor of Psychiatry at the State University of New York in Syracuse. Also, somewhat later, he was named "Humanist of the Year" by the American Humanist Association. Let me read a few paragraphs from this book.
"In psychiatric circles it is almost indelicate to ask: What is mental illness? In nonpsychiatric circles mental illness is too often considered to be whatever psychiatrists say it is. The answer to the question, Who is mentally ill? thus becomes: Those who are confined to mental hospitals or who consult psychiatrists in their private offices. Perhaps these answers sound silly. If they do, it is because they are silly. However, it is not easy to give better answers. I should like to make clear that although I consider the concept of mental illness to be unserviceable, I believe that psychiatry could be a science. I also believe that psychotherapy is an effective method of helping people --- not to recover from an "illness," but rather to learn about themselves, others, and life."
"There is a serious discrepancy between what psychotherapists and psychoanalysts do and what they say they do. What they do, quite simply, is to communicate with other persons (often called "patients") by means of language, nonverbal signs, and rules; they analyze --- that is, discuss, explain, and speculate about --- the communicative interactions which they observe and in which they themselves engage; and they often recommend engaging in some types of conduct and avoiding others. They do only this but they talk as if they were physicians, physiologists, biologists, or even physicists. All the surrounding lingo is fakery and pretense whose purpose is to "medicalize" certain aspects of the study and control of human behavior. --- Whereas in modern medicine new diseases are discovered, in modern psychiatry they are invented."
"As soon as people have more money than they need for whatever they consider the necessities of life, they expect to be happy. And since most people still will not be happy, some will use some of their money to seek happiness through psychotherapy. From this point of view, the social function of psychotherapy is similar not only to that of religion, but also to that of alcohol, tobacco, cosmetics, and various recreational activities."
"In studying human behavior, we face the disconcerting fact that psychiatric theories are nearly as numerous and varied a psychiatric symptoms. Actually, contemporary psychiatry is characterized by a multitude of diverse, competing, and often mutually exclusive beliefs and practices. In this respect --- and indeed not only in this respect --- psychiatry resembles religion rather than science, politics rather than medicine."
I interject that this probably explains the success of L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology which is more-or-less of a marriage between religion and psychiatry.
In a later book, published in 1976 and entitled HERESIES, Szasz wrote: "Psychiatrists are trained in medicine which they don't practice and practice psychotherapy in which they are not trained. --- Psychotherapy is a myth. Psychotherapeutic interventions are metaphorical treatments that stand in the same sort of relation to medical treatments as criticizing and editing television programs stand to repairing television receivers."
Enough said? For those of you who are especially interested in this subject, I can recommend three more books:
THE ORIGINS OF MENTAL ILLNESS by Gordon Claridge.
REASONING ABOUT MADNESS by J.K. Wing
THE MYTH OF REPRESSED MEMORY by Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketchem
Dec. 21, 1997
Good Morning. Glad to see so many of you here after our Christmas party at Marion Prior's last night. Let's give Marion the round of applause that she deserves.
Last Thursday we had the Forum and somewhat discussed the UU Resolutions that are voted on at the annual General Assembly meetings. Without getting into detail, I think that there was general consensus that the resolutions are for "motherhood and apple pie", which is OK, but they would be much more meaningful if they also proposed methods to get from here to there. I think that there should be more discussions on this topic; perhaps, by those of us who are especially interested.
Parable or something
Relative to the Getty Museum, I have the same question that has entered my mind every time I visit an impressive facility such as The Callaway Gardens in Georgia, the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena, the Scripps Aquarium in San Diego, numerous Carnegie libraries, various museums of art, etc. Also, whenever I read of the good works that are from time-to-time supported by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the McArthur Foundation, and many others. My question is this: Would our world now be better off if these industrial magnates had paid all their workers a nominal amount more in wages; an amount so that the magnates could still have lived extravagantly, but so that they could not have amassed the great fortunes which made possible their heavy endowments to posterity and the assurance of a kind of immortality, remembrance by others, probably the only true kind of immortality that can be achieved? This is an annoying question for a professed liberal with a social conscience.. You have my permission to ponder this question when you have nothing better to do on Christmas day. Merry Christmas!
Dec. 28, 1997
Good Morning. Last Sunday, Marion Prior called to alert me that a Creationism vs Evolution debate was being aired on the PBS program Fireline. Frankly, it was a rather muddy debate. I don't think that anyone not well-versed in the subject, got much out of the debate. The leader on the creationism side was William F. Buckley; this was a great choice for us since he showed his ignorance of the subject. The leader on our side was Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Lynn was somewhat more knowledgeable, and politically more astute; so I guess that our side sort of won; but I can't be sure since I'm prejudiced. Also on our side was Eugenie Scott, Director of the National Center for Science Education located in Berkeley...; she's a great dynamo of a gal. Some of us humanists met her on the Queen Mary a few years ago, and I've had some more recent dealings with her relative to Interfaith Community Alliance activities.
Parable or something
Relative to Creationism vs Evolution, the positions really can be very simply stated with no basis for argument. A scientific theory, must, within it, describe what observations or measurements can be made whose results can disprove the theory. The theory of evolution can therefore be readily disproved if one finds fossil evidence of distinct species whose characteristics don't fit the pattern and if this is supported by supplementary DNA evidence. Scientists have been making these observations for over 100 years with the hope that they will find the evidence needed to disprove the theory, and such evidence has not been found. As one consequence, even the Pope has come out with the statement that verification of the theory of evolution is so overwhelming that it cannot be dismissed. The "theory of creationism" essentially says that within nature there is a grand design and that therefore there must exist or have existed a "grand designer", a god. I don't know how one can disprove this supposition. If god should make an appearance, it would be proved. If we knew how to make god appear, and he or she didn't, then the theory would be disproved, but the theory does not say how we might do this; therefore it is not a theory, only a supposition. I point out that some evolutionists also believe in a god; they say that god was smart enough to invent the theory of evolution and left evolution to work things out. Again, only the evolutionary part of their beliefs constitutes a theory; their belief about god is also supposition, which may or may not be correct. But whether there is or is not a god cannot be called part of a scientific theory since no one can say how the supposition can be disproved. If you believe in god, tell me how I can make him or her appear; if you can tell me this, then you have a theory; if not, you have only supposition or faith.
Parable or something
The latest issue of Scientific American has included a special report entitled "Revolution in Cosmology"; therefore, in the "From the Editors" column, an Editor wrote:
"If there is a story to be seen in cosmic history, it is the march from the utter simplicity of the big bang to ever increasing complexity and diversity. The near-perfect uniformity of the primordial fireball, and of the laws that governed it, has steadily given way to a messy but fertile heterogeneity: photons, subatomic particles, simple atoms, stars, complex atoms, and molecules, galaxies, living things, artificial things."
This statement could have come out of a creationism handbook since it seems to contradict one of the basic laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, which says that in a closed system, which our universe seems to be, entropy, defined as randomness or uniformity, keeps increasing. In fact, the law says that measurement of entropy is equivalent to measuring time. Therefore, according to this law, it seems that the universe should be becoming less complex rather than more so. Is a creator, or a God pushing it the other way?
Let me give a simple illustration of the second law of thermodynamics. Consider a simple culinary double boiler. Let's say that we fill both pots with water and put the bottom pot alone onto the range and bring the water contained therein to a high temperature. Then let's put the upper pot into the lower pot and immediately after doing this surround both pots with hefty insulation so that the pots cannot be influenced by anything going on outside of the insulation. If we wait for a long time before removing the insulation, and then measure the temperature of both pots of water, we will find that the temperatures are the same, somewhere between the two initial temperatures. If we get more sophisticated and repeat the experiment many times by initially bringing each pot of water to exact temperatures and then placing a thermometer in the top pot before we put on a transparent insulation so that we can see the thermometer readings, and then note the temperature readings of the thermometer with time, we will further note that these temperature readings with time are always exactly the same, within experimental error. In other words, we can indeed use the temperature readings to indicate the time from wrapping the insulation: the temperature reading, which by definition in this experiment is a measure of entropy, is equivalent to the measurement of time. This is all that the second law of thermodynamics states, and based on this simple experiment, almost anyone would say that this is obvious. If the second law of thermodynamics can be made to be so obvious and is universally true as physicists tell us, how can we accept the statement made by the Scientific American staff editor, which apparently contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, yet upon reading the statement, most of us would also say that it is obviously true? How can our universe's obvious trend toward complexity be consistent with the second law's statement that the arrow of time leads to uniformity? Must we postulate a supernatural force to bring everything into agreement? I won't carry this any further today, but does this give some indication as to why creationism might seem to be so reasonable, even to some who have more than a smattering knowledge of physics?
Jan. 4, 1998
Good Morning. In the Tuesday edition of the LA times on the Editorial page, Column Left, there was an editorial by Robert Scheer, who is a Times contributing editor. If you get the Times and have not gotten in the habit of reading Scheer's editorials, I suggest you look for them; they are usually very good. His latest editorial was entitled "God Wants Me to Make a First Down", with the introductory sentence reading: "How sincere are these athletes who pray for the strength to plow down their opponents?" Then in a highlight, Scheer writes: "Doesn't a careful reading of Scripture, beginning with that bit about the meek inheriting the Earth, suggest that God might prefer a good loser?" Then Scheer goes on "Heresy, I know, but how else to explain Mike Ditka's winning record when he was the profane coach of the Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears as opposed to the dismal performance of his new team, the New Orleans Saints, after Ditka's much-publicised religious conversion? Last May, Ditka told a Christian men's meeting: 'God puts people in places for a reason. Gang, I had no intention to coach again. I'm here because it's his will.' The gospel according to Ditka: 'Strong spiritual beliefs are essential to get through life, but that don't mean we're not going to try to kick the other guy's ass.' So much for turning the other cheek. Then Scheer ends up with the paragraph: "Isn't it demeaning to sell religion like sneakers, claiming that it provides the winning edge? Surely, if there is a God, he or she is about something more profound than fixing football odds." I'll put the entire article here on the table; it contains other interesting comments that I didn't quote.
Parable or something
During our last Forum session, I was rather surprised by a remark that Phil Simon made. If I understood Phil right, he believes that science is the driving force behind sociological developments not the other way around, which is usually the way the subject is presented in social studies classes, if it is presented at all. Also, most so-called post-modern philosophers believe that sociological conditions determine the paths that science takes rather than the other way around.
For those of you who are interested in how science might impact society over the next 10 years or so, I can recommend Michio Kaku's new book entitled "Visions". Relative to the release of this book, Kaku was recently interviewed by Pat Morrison on KCET's Life and Times program. Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has degrees from Harvard, his PhD from Berkeley, and he taught at Princeton. He seems to be striving to take on Carl Sagan's mantle as the popularizer of science. But to my chagrin he seems to be doing it the same way as Sagan; giving good advice on things which fall well within his area of expertise but also giving advice on things he knows little about. Be that as it may, this book is worth reading. Prior to this popularized book, I was greatly impressed by his 1995 book, written in conjunction with the science writer, Jennifer Thompson. This book, entitled: BEYOND EINSTEIN: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe is somewhat technical and is the best book on current particle theory/cosmology that I have come across.
Also, relative to the future impact of science, there was a long article in last Sunday's LA Times, by another contributing editor, Steve Proffitt who wrote up an interview with Dr. W. Daniel Hillis. Hillis started out at the MIT Media Lab, then founded Thinking Machines Corp., which went belly up, and then last year he joined Walt Disney Co. as a Disney fellow, the first of a group of influential technologists the company has hired to help the company "use technology to create magic". I'll just read the highlighted blurbs: "Imagining a future where biology and technology merge. We're now creating computer programs using the principles of natural selection and random mutation --- the basics of Darwinian evolution. We may grow telephones, but manufacture cabbage. The line between what's built and what's grown will be blurred. Until now electronic things were designed, and living things evolved. Now we're applying evolution to electronics, and design to biology." Then Hillis says: "I think what excites me most right now is the interaction between biological thinking and computational thinking. Right now it's two different sets of people. Biologists and computer hackers usually stop talking to each other sometime in high school. But because the two fields are merging, it's going to be very interesting to see these two groups mix."
I should point out that the rather broad field of artificial intelligence was started at MIT and Carnegie Mellon; and that it was a technological flop. As a consequence researchers began to create artificial life in their computers rather than artificial intelligence, and with this they are having great success. A relatively new think-tank, the Santa Fe Institute is one of the leaders in this intriguing area of research.
As a footnote to all this, I remember my father saying that he hoped he'd be around after such-and-such gadgets got commercialized. I'm not sure that I have any of the same sentiments. I think that I'd just as soon not be around after some of this technology is developed.
Jan. 11, 1998
Good Morning. Last Sunday I mentioned that Phil Simon was concerned because science was not given sufficient stress in social study classes. As if in answer to Phil's concern, PBS, starting tonight and ending on Thursday, is running a 10-hour series on KCET entitled A Science Odyssey which is being hosted by Charles Osgood. Judging by the reviews that I've read, it sounds as if the series is less on science and more on its sociological implications. Perhaps, just what Phil ordered. Such power!
Another item in the news which bears on this subject is an announcement by Richard Seed, a Chicago physicist with a PhD from Harvard, stating that he plans to clone human beings with the first cloned child being brought into existence within 18 months. This seems to be going counter to the popular comments on the subject of cloning which have appeared since the sheep, Dolly, was born. Personally, I think that all the fuss about ethics and morality has been over-played. The basic technology is so simple that there will be no way to prevent human cloning; to keep use of this practice within bounds, we should stress the beauty of diversity over bland identicalness. If couples are truly in love, wouldn't most of them prefer to mix their genes rather than making carbon copies of themselves?
Parable or something
For a long time I've been wondering why we haven't heard much about the influence of communal child-rearing on child-development; afterall, there must be a wealth of data available from the experiences in Israel, the USSR, and Sweden. It seems to me that such data would be especially pertinent in the US today because we now have so many working mothers and they seem to want to get back to their jobs soon after childbirth. Now this week in an article on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, a Phoenix attorney mentions some of these studies. The editor, chose to highlight the following summary statement: "Social science confirms that children raised in day-care centers and similar institutions are often emotionally maladjusted and mentally impaired.." What hogwash! With just as much truth the statement could have read: "Social science confirms that children raised in conventional families are often emotionally maladjusted and mentally impaired." I just can't understand why sociologists and psychologists can't learn the rudiments of experiment design and statistics; and why they are permitted to publish their garbage-findings in supposedly learned journals, and then have their phony results spread as gospel by the media.
Now there's hope that this situation will be remedied by neurophysiological studies using functional MRI and PET scanning to measure very localized oxygen usage within the brain while the person being observed is engaged in certain activities. For example functional MRI has recently been used to study how brain connections develop in a 15-month old girl when exposed to her mother's voice. Because of limited equipment and money, at present these brain scans are used only to define local brain activity so that tumors or portions of the brain can be removed without causing irreparable harm. But soon they will be used to supplement behavioral studies that currently are in the province of psychology or sociology; then we'll really find out why we behave as we do both as individuals and as societies. I'll take one or two questions.
Jan. 18, 1998
Good Morning. Last Sunday I mentioned that the 10-hour series entitled A Science Odyssey was going to be on KCET. I watched all of it. While it was a waste of my time since I didn't learn anything, during the last day, which concentrated on The Beginnings, I began to wonder about something. What I wondered about was the possible reaction of children who might be watching; specifically, children who were being brought up by Fundamentalist parents. How can they reconcile apparently factual information: from astronomy that the universe is about 15 billion years old; from geology that the earth is about 4 billion years old; from paleontology and biology that life started on earth more than 3 billion years ago; and that beings, close to humans, have been around for about 2 million years; how can they reconcile this to what they have been taught by their parents and Sunday school teachers? If they think at all, they must conclude that someone is lying. And if so, who? Then, with childish curiosity, they must ask why should someone lie to them? All of which leads me to the broader question: if they feel so immersed in a lying society, having concluded either way that it is parental or that it is everyone else who doesn't share the Biblical interpretation of beginnings, how does their feeling of immersion in a lying society color their vision and thereby their future interpersonal or sociological assessments, and actions? Frankly, I don't know the answer to this question.
Parable or something
Friday night, Jean and I had a most enjoyable time watching TV, which doesn't happen very often. First we watched Bill Cosby in his version of Art Linkletter's early show entitled "Kids Say the Darndest Things". During the end of this program Cosby showed film clips of young children trying to bowl. We both laughed heartily, not only because the kids were generally funny to watch, but also because it reminded us of when our four young ones tried to get the ball down the alley.
Then after this, we watched programs that I had taped sometime earlier. First there was Mark Russell reviewing excerpts from all his1997 programs. Then there was a program that originated at Harvard University entitled The College of Comedy with the facilitator being Alan King. This show was simply great. After it was over, I couldn't help but think of the common expression: "I laughed so hard, I thought my pants would never dry". How many of you saw this show? Since I have it on tape, perhaps it can be shown on some Game Night or, since there was something about censorship, perhaps, at the Forum.
Jan. 25, 1998
Feb. 1, 1998
Since we have a full agenda today with our annual meeting and the friendly circle, I'll keep my opening remarks short. But I would like to read a piece that was in the last issue of the APS NEWS, wherein their 1997 Darwin Award Winner was announced.
"The Darwin Award is presented every year to an individual (or the remains thereof), who has done the most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool. The 1995 winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it. In 1996 the winner was an air force sergeant who attached a JATO (rocket) unit to his car and crashed into a cliff several hundred feet above the roadbed.
"The 1997 winner is Larry Waters of Los Angeles --- one of the few Darwin winners to survive his award-winning accomplishment. Larry's boyhood dream was to fly. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. When he was finally discharged, he had to satisfy himself with watching jets fly over his backyard.
"One day, Larry decided to fly. He went to the local Army-Navy surplus store and purchased 45 weather balloons and several tanks of helium. The weather balloons, when fully inflated, would measure more than four feet across. Back home, Larry securely strapped the balloons to his sturdy lawn chair. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep and inflated the balloons with the helium. He climbed on for a test while it was still only a few feet above the ground. Satidfied it would work, Larry packed several sandwiches and a six-pack of beer, loaded this pellet gun --- figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to descend --- and went back to the floating lawn chair.
"He tied himself in along with his pellet gun and provisions. Larry's plan was to lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his back yard after severing the anchor and in a few hours come back down.
"Things didn't quite work out that way. When he cut the cord anchoring the lawn chair to his jeep, he didn't float lazily up to 30 or so feet. Instead he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon. He didn't level off at 30 feet; he leveled off at 11,000 feet. At that height he couldn't risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load. So he stayed there, drifting, cold and frightened, for more than 14 hours.
"Eventually Larry found himself drifting into the primary approach corridor of Los Angeles International Airport. A United pilot first spotted him. He radioed the tower and described how he'd passed a guy in a lawn chair with a gun. Radar confirmed the existence of an object floating 11,000 feet above the airport. LAX emergency procedures swung into full alert and a helicopter was dispatched to investigate. LAX is right on the ocean. Night was falling and the offshore breeze began to flow. It carried Larry out to sea with the helicopter in hot pursuit. Several miles out, the helicopter caught up with him. Once the crew determined that he was not dangerous, they attempted to close in for a rescue but the draft from the blades would push Larry away whenever they neared.
"Finally, the helicopter ascended to a position several hundred feet above Larry and lowered a rescue line. Larry snagged the lined and was hauled back to shore. The difficult maneuver was flawlessly executed by the helicopter crew. As soon as Larry was hauled to earth, he was arrested by waiting members of the LAPD for violating LAX airspace. As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter dispatched to cover the daring rescue asked why he had done it. Larry stopped, turned and replied nonchalantly, 'A man can't just sit around.'"
Feb. 8, 1998
Feb. 15, 1998
Parable or something
As I mentioned last week, I have a new computer and I am now on the Internet. I think that this makes at least 3 of us that are in this pregnant condition. Joe Bernard, Kathy Schmitt and me. Are there any others? After playing around awhile I came across information supplied by the UUA in Boston. I printed out two topics and brought them along today. One is entitled "Why Should UUs Get On-Line?" The second is entitled " Computer and Internet Information for UUs". Both of these are quite informative. All this leads me to wonder whether our Fellowship should have a home page? Whether it should also have a separate e-mail address, different from mine? Whether we can develop a joint effort with the Humanists? And whether we should somehow use this modern communication vehicle for attracting more members? If anyone is interested in topics of this sort, or interested in getting a new comuter and getting on-line, please see me after the service or give me a call sometime so that we can, perhaps, set up a meeting to discuss all this.
Feb. 22, 1998
Parable or something
While watching the Olympics and getting annoyed by the many commercials and unnecessary interludes, I had a thought relative to the breakup of the USSR. I wondered why, after 70 years, the individual states or republics were so eager to pull away from the union, and why there seems to be so much animosity. Why did they not feel more as one, more united, more integrated? In the USSR, they certainly had an excellent public school system which gave the country one of the highest literacy rates in the world; they certainly were led to downplay religion and, thereby, religious differences; there certainly was quite a lot of intermingling with technical experts and industrial managers being sent to remote regions of the Union to avoid concentration of industrialization for security reasons, and to develop their far-flung natural resources; and there must have been a great coming together during WWII through their forced selective service, mutual interest in survival against Naziism, and mutual suffering through war, hunger and pestilence. Why does the human animal find it so difficult to integrate? How many generations must it take to find universal acceptance of superficial differences?
Mar. 1, 1998
Good Morning. On a broader front, I was intrigued by two editorials in the Wall Street Journal. Let me now read a paragraph from each of them and later on I'll present my comments.
My first reading is the first paragraph of the lead editorial that appeared on Tuesday. I quote: "There's no particular reason for the world to worry about a smallish cult that believes invisible 75 million-year-old thetans are floating around our skulls. The search for the meaning of life in the vastness of the universe preoccupies most people at some time or another, though they usually find their way into houses of worship, therapeutic counseling or the local liquor store." I'll repeat this last sentence since, as much as anything else, it illustrates why I still subscribe to the Wall Street Journal even though business news is becoming of less and less interest to me. "The search for the meaning of life in the vastness of the universe preoccupies most people at some time or another, though they usually find their way into houses of worship, therapeutic counseling or the local liquor store."
My second reading comes from a guest editorial that appeared the next day. It was about the "damning data" (their words) released by the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. I'll read the last paragraph of this editorial. "The public school system as we know it has proved that it cannot fix itself. It is an ossified government monopoly that functions largely for the benefit of its employees and interest groups rather than that of children and taxpayers. American education needs a radical overhaul. For starters, control over education must be shifted into the hands of parents and true reformers --- people who will insist on something altogether different rather then murmuring excuses for the catastrophe that surrounds us."
Parable or something
Now to get back to the two paragraphs that I read earlier. What is the cult, that the Editor of the Wall Street Journal is referring to? It is the Scientology movement. The editorial is a scathing attack of Scientology and its attempts to influence government actions through the "chief ornaments of the Scientology movement", John Travolta and Tom Cruise. It is a rather lengthy editorial; so I'll extract some more information from this and defer my comments on education until next week.
Again I quote: "The Germans make the case that Scientology exploits the weaknesses of its members for profit that at the very least should be taxed. This creates the worst kind of pain for Scientology, which reaps million from 'auditing,' cleaning a 'preclear' of repressed memories. With millions of years of memories; getting cleared and achieving ever higher levels of purity can be a lengthy and costly experience. It also yields intensely private information that is carefully stored in files." To this I add: It is no small wonder that Scientology has spent millions of dollars in trying to get its competitor, PROZAC, off the market.
Then from the last two paragraphs, I quote: "But if that is all weird, it is nothing compared with the mysteries surrounding the decision of the IRS to suddenly grant Scientology a tax-exempt status after years of litigation .--- In return, the IRS got $12.5 million and a promise that the cult would drop its numerous lawsuits against the IRS and its agents. --- Meanwhile, Scientology is litigating with everyone else in sight; why not, after having intimidated the biggest gun on the block? --- Is there anyone at the IRS who seriously thinks that the unbelievable sums of money Scientology spends on lawsuits meets the agency's requirement that a charity spend its funds only on charitable purposes?
Mar. 8, 1998
Good Morning. Today, let me go deeper into the guest editorial on education which appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week. The article was entitled "Why America Has the World's Dimmest Bright Kids", and it was written by Chester E. Finn, Jr. who is a fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former assistant secretary of education. I note that the Hudson Institute is an ultra right-wing think tank. As I mentioned last week, the article was about the "damning data" (his words) released by the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. I'll again read the last paragraph of this editorial. "The public school system as we know it has proved that it cannot fix itself. It is an ossified government monopoly that functions largely for the benefit of its employees and interest groups rather than that of children and taxpayers. American education needs a radical overhaul. For starters, control over education must be shifted into the hands of parents and true reformers --- people who will insist on something altogether different rather then murmuring excuses for the catastrophe that surrounds us." Frankly, I believe that both conservatives and liberals can find much to agree with in this paragraph. Possibly, it would be a good forum topic. I'll let you think about this; I'll express some of my opinions later on.
Parable or something
Now to get back to the WSJ editorial on education. My problem with the editorial is the statement that "control over education must be shifted into the hands of parents and true reformers". Frankly, this statement can mean many different things; in the extreme it may mean doing away with the public school system entirely. Such an end result would be catastrophic since our public school system is the melting-pot where ethnic, cultural and racial differences are easily recognized as being superficial. We need the public school system for the same reason that Marvin Nottingham believes that we need mandatory National Service. Vouchers, for example, to a degree, can be good, if they provide diversity and some competition. Our private and parochial schools, in the main, have done an admirable service but this has come about because they did not dominate the entire educational system. But, again in the extreme, vouchers can be very bad if we end up having catholic schools, protestant schools, white schools, black schools, Arabian schools, etc. with only the disadvantaged or handicapped left in public schools. Also neglected by the entire editorial is the pre-school influence of parents and others who may be looked up to and who thereby have influence over very young children. Can we expect children to remain inquisitive, as is needed for understanding and appreciating science when the repeated answer to very interesting questions may be "because God made it so". Can we expect children to struggle through science and math, which subjects can become quite difficult, when they have been indoctrinated early in life that nothing is worth doing unless it is fun. And I'll end with a question that has been bothering me for a long time: Why is it that so many educators, especially the ones associated with our Public Broadcasting System believe that children will be turned off by anything scientific unless it is somehow illustrated or demonstrated with cartoons?
Mar. 15, 1998
Good Morning. The Wall Street Journal finally decided to print Letters to the Editor relative to the lead editorial I cited a couple of Sundays ago. The heading over the 3 letters was "Poison Pen Attack on Scientology". The first letter by David Miscavige, Chairman of the Religious Technology Center which is the controlling organ of the Church of Scientology starts out as follows: "Your Feb. 24 editorial The 'Secrets of the Universe' would be most notable for its ignorance were that not outdone by its strident bigotry. Really, vitriolic ad hominem attacks are unbecoming of the journal." Then in another letter, this one by Monique E. Yingling, there is a very interesting paragraph that is worth reading. She writes: "What I find most offensive in your editorial, however, is the manner in which you ridicule Scientology's religious beliefs. Reputable scholars of comparative religion are unanimous in concluding that Scientology is as genuine a religion as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism or any other of the world's great religions. Is Scientology's theology ultimately any more implausible or unbelievable than that of traditional religious beliefs? Are Scientology's beliefs fundamentally any less rational than the belief that God spoke to Moses through a burning bush or my personal belief in the Immaculate Conception of Christ? How can any religion's view of the salvation of man be any more ambitious than Mormonism's belief that every man can himself become a deity in the afterlife? That Scientology is held up for ridicule and judged more harshly than traditional religious faiths, is, ultimately, the result of the ignorance of those who do not know better and the bigotry of those who do."
Parable or something
Now I'd like to get back to the asteroid. Rather interesting to me was the fact that just prior to hearing about the asteroid on the TV evening news, I had been playing around trying to find, and then getting, some in-depth information off the Internet. After much trying, I found an article that had appeared recently in the Reviews of Modern Physics which is a journal published quarterly by the American Physical Society. It seems that the Physical Society is, for a time, providing free access to their journals in order to show their members how easy Internet retrieval can be, so that at some near-future date they can discontinue the issuing of paper copies delivered by snail mail. As another example, Dow Jones is already offering subscriptions to the complete Wall Street Journal for delivery via the Internet at a much reduced price over delivery via the paperboy. One cannot help but wonder when conventional transmission of printed matter will become obsolete. Based on my experience with "down-loading" this physics article, I don't believe that this technological evolution is just around the corner. Let me give you some of the details. The article is entitled: "A dying universe: the long-term fate and evolution of astrophysical objects." The article together with some diagrams and formulas is 36 pages long. It took 45 minutes of connect-time for the complete transmission. I sure am glad that I get through to my Internet provider on a local Hemet phone line! After receiving it, I printed it out. Here it is, I'll leave it on the table if anyone wants to take a look. An interesting exercise, but I'm not yet ready for this new world; and neither is the current technology --- but it's coming very fast.
Mar. 22, 1998
Mar. 29, 1998
Parable or something
Where does one draw the line between keeping some cultural differences and integrating into the melting pot. Integrate, economically, politically, and socially, said Marvin Nottingham, but not culturally.
April 5, 1998
Parable or something
This morning, I'd like to pose a general question: Where should we draw the line? I'll elaborate, so that you find out where I'm coming from.. Because of a number of happenings this week, I got to thinking about this question.
The first event was our Friendly Circle of last Sunday when we discussed the "The Pros and Cons of Compulsory National Service for Our Youth". I think that I can summarize this discussion by saying that we all felt that such service, if properly handled, probably would be of benefit to both our youth and our country, but many of us were not willing to grant the government the right to intrude upon the freedom of our youth without there being a more substantial national emergency. The question then boils down to: Where should we draw the line between freedom abrogation and potential societal benefit?
A second occurrence was a book review that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The reviewed book was by Jacob Sullum entitled "For Your Own Good", and it was reviewed by Richard Klein, a professor at Cornell who is also an author, having written two books entitled "Cigarettes are Sublime" and another "Eat Fat". In his book, Sullum writes: "Public health used to mean keeping statistics, imposing quarantines, requiring vaccination of children, providing purified water, building sewer systems, inspecting restaurants, regulating emissions from factories, and reviewing drugs for safety. Nowadays it means, among other things, banning cigarette ads, raising alcohol taxes, restricting gun ownership, forcing people to buckle their seat belts, and making illegal drug users choose between prison and 'treatment'" And Klein, in his review adds: "Whereas once the enemies of public health were outside us, like germs in the environment, now it's the aim of public health to protect us from enemies within, from ourselves and our failures to make the right choices." And I might add that another aim is to make the insurance companies rich: When have you ever seen insurance premiums drop significantly after the government has enacted legislation touted to improve our health, or to make us live safer and longer? Also in his book, Sullum further writes "Criminalizing unhealthy behavior is a first step on the path to totalitarian control of our lives." "Like all crusades, the one against smoking is conducted with religious, sometimes fanatical zeal by 'activists, scientists, and bureaucrats' (he might have added lawyers), whose different interests are all tinged with the moralizing arrogance of secular ayatollahs whipping us into shape for our own good." Then Sullum cites C. Everett Koop, our former surgeon general, who once opined: "I think that the government has a perfect right to influence personal behavior to the best of its ability if it is for the welfare of the individual and the community as a whole." How much of this statement is simple arrogance; that Koop, personally, thinks he knows what is best for the welfare of the individual? And how much of the statement can be taken seriously, so that we can again legitimately ask the question: Where should we draw the line between freedom abrogation and potential societal benefit?
Another related event occurred last week during our forum discussion when Marvin Nottingham brought up the Human Relations Council and what can we do to overcome stereotyping and prejudice.. It is easy to say, as Marvin did, that we should strive for economic, political, and social integration, but not cultural integration. On a personal level, where should a newly-arrived immigrant draw the line between keeping some cultural differences and rapidly integrating into the melting pot. Because of necessary government involvement to some degree, this again leads to the broader question: Where should we draw the line between freedom abrogation and potential societal benefit?
Today, this question as to where to draw the line between governmental interference and individual responsibility is probably being most intensely debated on issues that relate to our public school system. I won't go into these issues since I suspect that they will come up at our next Forum where the topic will be "What's wrong with and what can be done about the education of our youth?" Perhaps, my words today will inspire some thinking before we get to our Forum on April 27.
In summary, my overall impression is that UU's usually tend to agree about many issues when these are generally explored; but when we get into greater detail so that we can ask the question: Where should we draw the line?; then there is a wide range of opinion.
April 12, 1998
Good Morning. Happy Easter Sunday; I guess that Spring has finally sprung. here in the valley.
One thing that I've never been accused of is theological erudition. But nature's rebirth brings to mind some theology and some science.
Relative to theology, it has been postulated that the ancient people on earth noticed the year-in and year-out changing of the seasons and thereby concluded that nature was in sort of a monotonous routine of unchanging cycle after cycle and that this had always been going on and that it would continue to go on forever. They then extrapolated this conclusion to the human condition by further postulating that humanity, and especially each individual, was in a similar rut; hence, that one could do little to change his or her fate. I gather that this postulate became more and more suspect after the Jews fled from Egypt; Passover showed that the human condition could be changed through individual action. This new way of looking at the human condition was later elaborated upon by Christianity, which preached that sins, no matter how dreadful can be forgiven, and thereby that each individual has the capacity to build a new life upon the ashes of his or her previous mistakes. In short, no matter how much of a mess you have made of your life; there is always hope that you can change things for the better. No matter how untenable the human condition, it can be changed for the better; there can be social and societal evolution. This, then, is the essence of both Judaism and Christianity. Having made this statement, I must admit that I do not understand why the fundamentalist Christians are so against biological, or Darwinian, evolution; to me, this is only a small elaboration of the most fundamental aspect of Christian theology.
Parable or something
This morning, I'd like to continue with the general question that I posed last week; namely: Where should we draw the line? Last week I elaborated somewhat and then came up with the narrower question; namely: Where should we draw the line between freedom abrogation and potential societal benefit? Today, my comments will be directed at a slightly different question; namely: Where should we draw the line between immediate or short-term and long-range considerations?
What brought me to this question was the purchase of the stately British Rolls Royce company by the German auto manufacturer, Bayrische Motor Werke, BMW for $527 million. This again illustrates what I had always thought to be true.; namely, that if one looks at the world about 50 or more years after a war, one comes to the realization that whether the war was fought or not would have made very little difference in the overall sociopolitical condition of the civilized world. Would our relationship with England, using another example, really be much different from what it now is if we hadn't fought the war for independence? If you want to argue this point, look at Canada's relationship with England. Hence, historically looking at the long-range consequences, one can readily come to the logical conclusion that wars should never happen; that we should be against all wars; which is the position taken by the Society of Friends, the Quakers. But, if we look only at the existing conditions and ask whether or not these are so intolerable that fighting a war may be worthwhile, we might come to another logical conclusion; namely, that a war might be the only vehicle out of a current intolerable situation. Personally, I'm more of a pragmatist rather than a long-range planner; probably, because I am somewhat selfish and don't have overwhelming concern for the long-range future when I won't be around; hence, I tend towards looking at the immediate condition and trying to ameliorate a seemingly intolerable situation by any means possible, even if it takes a war. I suppose that is why I am not a Quaker. I suppose that is why I enlisted in WWII. However, in generalities, I can sympathize with either conclusion. But when we get down to a particular situation, I again come up with the question: Where should we draw the line? Where should we draw the line between immediate or short-term and long-term considerations?
April 19, 1998
Good Morning. This morning I'm going to read something that Marvin Nottingham brought to my attention last week. Something his daughter took off the Internet. It seems that Dr. Schambaugh of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical Engineering is noted for giving single-question final exams. His one and only final exam question in May 1997 for his Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer II class was: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof." Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's law, which describes the characteristics of gases. One student, however, wrote the following:
"First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. Two options exist: 1. If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose. 2. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept the quote given to me by Theresa Manyan during Freshman year, "that it will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you" and take into account the fact that I still have NOT succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then Option 2 cannot be true... Thus the temperature in hell must be increasing; hell is exothermic.: The student, Tim Graham, got the only A.
Parable or something
Two weeks ago I started asking the question: "Where should we draw the line?" and then narrowed it to: "Where should we draw the line between freedom abrogation and potential societal benefit?" Then last week, I expanded the discourse by posing the question: "Where should we draw the line between immediate or short-term and long-range considerations?" and then applied this to analyze whether war is ever justified. When I started all this, I had no idea that I, like the energizer, could keep going on-and-on with this topic. Today, I'll modify the questions somewhat because I don't like the implications of the word "should". "Should" implies that there is a correct answer to the questions; therefore I prefer replacing the words "where should we" with "where does one". The questions then become non-judgmental, become more introspective; simply trying to get one to think about where he or she would draw the line under particular circumstances. The question that I would like to consider further today then reads: Where does one draw the line between immediate or short-term and long-term considerations? and I'd like to consider this question relative to housing development.
Most of us deplore building houses on excellent farmland because we see an ever-increasing world population and therefore at some point in time, we will not be able to provide food for everyone. This is the long-range consideration. But let's consider the fact that it may be very much cheaper to develop farmland than it is to develop, what I will simply call "badlands", and further that the farmland may be much nearer to an existing population center where there are available jobs. Consequently, by building on farmland, comparable houses should sell for less, and for those that buy, the daily commute will be shorter. If I were in the lower middle class, where building on farmland would make home ownership immediately affordable; I would certainly support farmland development. While I might give some thought to the possible long-range consequences, the immediate considerations would far outweigh long-range conjecture.. Further, the developer, who perhaps is also in the lower middle class, may have a choice between building on either type of land; if you were such a developer with a family to feed, which option would you choose?
Now consider yourself in your current situation. If your grandchildren were in the lower middle class as I just described, either in the condition of a potential home buyer, or a potential builder, would this alter your opinion as to where you would draw the line? All that I wanted to bring out with this example is that when we consider where to draw the line in a particular instance, and finally do so, we should not become dogmatic about our conclusion.
On a personal level, spend now or save for the future. On the business level: invest in basic reesearch or product development. Many many things where we have to draw the line between immediate or near-term and long-term considerations. The poor have more immediate needs; the middle class can look after the long-term implications. Also, the rich can go overboard. On a more personal level: Where should one draw the line between believing the experts (e.g., scientific, medical, or technological) and maintaining a contradictory opinion? My personal feeling is that I can believe whatever I want to, but I have absolutely no right to publicly advocate the contradiction of a consensus opinion of experts unless I am willing to expend the time necessary to become sufficiently expert so as to be able to argue intelligently with them in whatever arena they may choose. Taking a current situation, it is not sufficient or even logical to be vociferously against food irradiation just because this particular method for food sterilization contains the word "irradiation" in its descriptive title. Would we have microwave ovens in almost every household if advertisements had announced that irradiation is used therein to heat food?
: Where should one draw the line between pleasure or enjoyment and risk-taking? I think it is obvious to all of us, that teenagers tend to draw the line closer to enjoyment with little consideration for the risks involved. But as one gets older the line shifts towards greater evaluation of the risks that may be involved, sometimes even towards evaluation of risks that may not be involved. This element of risk can also be considered on the societal level. For example, in order to solve a nagging social problem should one strive to modify a previously tried-and-true procedure or should one be willing to go down a road not previously traveled. In this case, in our English language, we have defined the alternatives quite clearly; it gives us the difference between conservatives and liberals. In this example, most UUs lean in the same direction; towards being liberal.
But more often, as I stated last week, my overall impression is that UU's usually tend to agree about many issues when these are generally explored; but when we get into greater detail so that we can ask the question: Where should we draw the line?; then there is a wide and rich range of opinion. Isn't this the ingredient that makes our Forums and Friendly Circles so interesting?
April 26, 1998
Good Morning. This was rather an eventful week. All the letters to the editor in the Hemet News. Joe Bernard really started something with his letter about the theology of our founding fathers. For those of you who do not get the Hemet news, Wally Stein put all the letters on the table up here.
Then yesterday Marion Prior, Jean and I went to the First church in LA for a Pacific Southwest District meeting. It was most interesting to see a stately old church with a great history, going to pot because of its location; but wherein the variety of its activities are very vital and dynamic; Even though one could not help but see the physical decay, one had to admire the spirit of the now rather small congregation, 67 members. Relative to the meeting, quite frankly, I came away with little pertinent information that would be helpful to us. But I did learn something. I found out that Pope John Paul had been meeting with God at 4 PM every Thursday. At the last meeting, The Pope asked God if there ever would be any ordained female priests. God replied, not in your lifetime. Then the Pope asked if there would ever be another Polish Pope. God replied, not in my lifetime.
Parable or something
Three weeks ago I started asking the question: "Where should we draw the line?" and then narrowed it to: "Where should we draw the line between freedom abrogation and potential societal benefit?" The following week, I expanded the discourse by posing the question: "Where should we draw the line between immediate or short-term and long-range considerations?" and then applied this to analyze whether war is ever justified. Last week, I continued with this question and applied it to housing developments on farmland. Also, so as not to be judgemental and to be more introspective I modified the question to read: Where does one draw the line between immediate or short-term and long-term considerations?
Today, let's consider this question on a more personal level; should we spend now or save for the future? Obviously the answer to this question depends strongly on one's age. However, it also depends strongly on one's personal economic condition. The poor have immediate needs, and don't even have time to think about the seemingly far-distant future. The lower middle class, perhaps, is so busy raising kids that they also do not have time to ponder the question. For both these classes, another factor may also creep into the picture; namely: Why save? "If I'm caught in dire straights, the government will bail me out."
This attitiude was brought to mind by a personal experience that occurred years ago. Back in the 1960s, I first became involved in union negotiations; besides being somewhat interesting, this was also frustrating. To put this in perspective, I should say that I was then working for a small company established by three liberal Jews who had PhDs in chemistry and metallurgy. We had finally become sufficiently profitable for management to grant a medical benefits package, including major medical coverage, to its professional staff; and when it came time for union negotiations we generously offered the same coverage to union members. During the negotiations, we went around and around this issue for days without getting anywhere. Finally, after another frustrating session, I decided to join the union negotiators in the local bar. What came out of the resulting informal discussions was that the union wanted first dollar coverage. Everytime any member of the family needed to see a doctor, they wanted to be reimbursed for the visit, which at the time usually amounted to $6. Such visits could be anticipated , hence, to them reimbursement was much more important than being covered for a potential catastrophe that had only a low probability of occurrence. (Again, short term and long term considerations) And for this eventuality there was really no great concern since the government could be expected to provide bailout. This type of mentality was completely foreign to us professionals; hence the lack of comprehension during the formal negotiations. After I found out their concerns, we readily offered them what they wanted, especially since this insurance coverage could be obtained for less than major medical coverage.
This is another example that illustrates the point that there is no universally acceptable place to draw a line. When we consider where to draw the line in a particular instance, and finally do so, we should not become dogmatic about our conclusion; our adversaries might not be wrong, they might just be living under slightly different socio-economic conditions.
May 3, 1998
Good Morning. Last week I gave rather short shrift to the PSWD meeting in LA that Marion, Jean and I attended. Actually, the meeting discussions centered around a very interesting topic; one that falls naturally within the purview of my ubiquitous question: "Where does one draw the line?" More specifically, the topic was related to my initial question: Where does one draw the line between freedom abrogation and societal benefit? At this meeting, the question was applied to the relationship between organizations with an organizational hierarchy rather than between people and their government. To get specific, it was pointed out that the Unitarian Universalist Association charter states that each UU member congregation is independent and can do pretty much as it sees fit. The Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston is simply an administrative body that provides for some coordination among congregations, but there is no mechanism for dictating congregational policies or universal beliefs. Except for non-financial support, there is also no mechanism for throwing a congregation out of the UUA. It is quite obvious, that because of this freedom, a member congregation may make the newspapers by strongly advocating a particular position; one that may, in fact, run counter to the sentiments of most UUs. Hence, the actions of one congregation can significantly reflect upon the entire UU membership. Because of our strong democratic principles, we are most hesitant to have the UUA infringe upon the freedom of individual congregations; hence, to avoid chaos, the individual congregations must control themselves so that they behave in a responsible manner. I guess that the main outcome of the meeting was a conclusion that such responsibility would be more easily forthcoming if there were a closer association among congregations and that this could be done by having a greater number of joint activities among geographically neighboring congregations; clusters was the name given to such locally interrelated congregations. Through such interaction, we will at least become familiar with what our neighboring congregations are thinking about and, thereby, albeit mainly through osmosis, have some input into each others decision-making processes.
Parable or something
My introduction this morning about freedom and responsibility leads me to comment on similar situations that arise on both a personal and an organizational level. I ask: What responsibility do renowned experts in a particular field have when they step outside of their narrow field of expertise and comment on something else which they know will be interpreted by the public as coming from the mouth of an expert even though their knowledge in this particular area is rather superficial? As an example, in a few instances I was particularly irked by Carl Sagan; generally, I agree with about 95% of his writings, but, like some other scientists I know, he often ventured into areas somewhat related to his field of expertise and spouted forth without doing the homework necessary to develop a sound position. Now, more generally, what responsibility does a PhD in any field have when she comments on something outside of her narrow field of expertise; when she knows full-well that her comments will be given greater weight than they deserve simply because they came out of the mouth of a well-educated person? As an example, The Institute for Creation Research is particularly adept at finding PhDs who are willing to comment on evolution even though this is well outside their field of expertise. Now, in a slightly different vein, what responsibility do advocate organizations have to keep technically up-to-date and also to inform their readers as to what has been technically verified and what is seat-of-the-pants conjecture. I really hate to say this, but I note that some advocate organizations come out with pronouncements aimed at making the newspapers, which mention helps to raise money; and that this is done without having a solid basis for the pronouncement. The Natural Resources Defense Council makes flagrant use of this money-raising scheme; and, recently, I find that this technique is also occasionally employed by Ralph Nader's organization.
All this brings me to last Monday's Forum discussion where we pondered: "What is wrong with and what can be done about the education of our youth?" As usual, we reached no earthshaking conclusions; but one thing that impressed me was something that Phil Simon said; "that education must provide a student with the capability to have a suitable career, and it must also give the student the tools necessary to participate meaningfully in our democratic form of government. This brings me back to my ubiquitous question; this time I'll rephrase it somewhat: Where does one draw the line between accepting and questioning expert opinion? Since no one can have expert knowledge in everything, again, as in other situations that I brought up during the past few Sundays, there is no absolutely correct answer to this question. However, the more we search, the more we continue to doubt, the more we remain non-dogmatic, the more likely will be our ability to draw a line in a reasonable place. Personally, when I know little about a subject, I am strongly inclined to believe the experts; if I suspect their opinions and the subject is important to me, I do an awful lot of research before coming to any conclusion.
My own personal opinion is that I can believe whatever I like, but I have no right to attempt to convince other people of my convictions unless I have seriously studied the situation so that I can participate in a meaningful debate with the experts; in short, when I would be considered to have credentials similar to an expert. How can a layman have a meaningful position relative to food irradiation, when he or she doesn't have the vaguest idea what irradiation means in this case.? This is another example that illustrates the point that there is no universally acceptable place to draw a line. When we consider where to draw the line in a particular instance, and finally do so, we should not become dogmatic about our conclusion; our adversaries might not be wrong, they might just be living under slightly different socioeconomic conditions.
May 10, 1998
Good Morning. As an introduction this morning, I'd like to read something I received in the mail from Project Freedom of Religion. The title on this transmittal is: A deconfusion guide to current religious liberty legislation or How not to drown in the alphabet soup. RFPA/AB 1617 and RFA/HJR 78 The full House is now expected to vote on the constitutional amendment, the Istook amendment, on May 18. Please write or phone Mary Bono.
Parable or something
Last week, I didn't mean to admonish those who advocate some points of view; I realize that there will always be some people who are overly egotistic or greedy, and we have no choice but to accept this situation. Rather I meant to alert you to this fact and therefore that each one of us must be careful where he or she is willing to draw the line between accepting the opinions of those touted as experts, whether they be individuals or organizations. Taking a previously mentioned example, I ask myself: "How can a layman have a meaningful position relative to food irradiation, when he or she doesn't have the vaguest idea what irradiation means in this case.?" Another question: "Is the proposed irradiation of food that has been accepted as being safe by the FDA any different from the irradiation of food in microwave ovens?" Even though very few people can answer this last question with factual supporting data, the sentiment against food irradiation is so great that the food industry is reluctant to use this procedure to sterilize their products even though such use could practically eliminate e coli outbreaks. This leads to the much broader question, which I feel can only be answered in the negative: "Can a democratic society continue to exist when the knowledge of the general public becomes largely divergent or inconsistent with the ever more rapidly increasing technological realities?" Or I can state this somewhat differently: "Can a democratic society continue to exist when the general public believes in myths that are inconsistent with the ever more rapidly increasing technological realities?"
May 17, 1998
Good Morning. On Tuesday some of us went to the Getty museum. Among other things, this brought to mind three situations that fall within my question "Where does one draw the line?" After getting off the bus, we got on the tram to take us from the garage to the hill-top museum. After going up a short distance, the tram gave a jolt and came to a halt. We were told to keep calm, that there was some technical difficulty due to the rain, and not to try to get off the tram. After awhile the tram started moving backwards down the hill. After it got completely down, the doors opened but we stayed on and eventually the doors closed and the tram got going again in the right direction, and we got to the museum. This incident reminded me of my early working days when I worked for what was called an "architect-engineering organization ". At the time, I gathered that at the top echelon of the company many of the engineers didn't think much of the architects on the staff; and vice-versa. Also, right from the start I wondered why "architects" came before "engineers" in the descriptive title of these organizations. I still wonder about this, but I now suspect that the reason is that "a" comes before "e" in the alphabet. All this brings me to a more meaningul question: Where does one draw the line between aesthetics and functionality? This question can be asked and answered on a personal level as well as on an organizational or company level. It is quite obvious that the Getty project overly emphasized aesthetics at the expense of functionality --- the result, a tram that behaves erratically in the rain; no rest rooms above the ground floor; and I suspect quite a number of other unadvertised functional deficiencies. In spite of this, one has to admire the aesthetics; an overall job well done.
Also, during this visit, I could not help but be impressed by the many man-hours that were expended by artists and artisans prior to the 19th century to provide their works with exquisite detail. Modern artists, like everyone else in our society, seem to be obsessed with getting every job done in the quickest possible manner. Which leads me to a more general sociological question: Are a series of one-night-stands really more satisfying than lasting relationships? Where does one draw the line between instant gratification and more evenly distributed enjoyment or future happiness? It seems that today I have nothing but questions? No answers. Our visit to the Getty, brought up still another question, but I'll defer that one until after the announcements.
Parable or something
Now to get back to another question brought to mind by our visit to the Getty museum. In great generality, I ask: Would the world be better off if companies paid all their employees a bit more in wages, or priced their products at a somewhat lower level, so that society, as a whole could derive immediate benefit; or if, on the contrary, they used profits to pay their owner or owners or a few top executives much more money than these individuals would ever need so that some of these individuals could afford to, and might, later set up foundations or trusts, like the Getty, the Carnegie, the Ford, the Rockefeller, the Calloway, etc. etc., whose expenditures could give society great benefit or enjoyment sometime in the future? Or taking this question back in time: Would the world now be better off if royalty and the catholic church had passed more of their monies to the peasantry and proletariat rather than keeping the wherewithall needed to build the sumptious, grandeous palaces and majestic churches including their associated works of art? All this again leads me to the still broader question that I posed a few Sundays ago: Where does one draw the line between immediate or near-term and future considerations?
May 24, 1998
Good Morning. This morning I'd like to read excerpts from an article that appeared in the May/June issue of Mother Jones. It was written by Robert Dreyfuss and entitled Paycheck Protection Racket. This article directly addresses the issues surrounding Proposition 226 which is on our ballot. The subtitle is: The GOP is using a plan developed by the Christian right to cripple labor. "The so-called 'Paycheck Protection Movement' was started by a group of three guys in California. The three guys, Jim Righeimer, Frank Ury, and Mark Bucher, are founders of an Orange County pro-school-voucher group called the Education Alliance, which focuses on electing conservative Christians to local school board positions. The alliance has received the majority of its funding from Howard Ahmanson, a wealthy business-man who reportedly funnels millions to radical-right groups and is linked to the fundamentalist Colorado-based Focus on the Family. Across the country, voucher advocates (who seek to use taxpayer money to enable parents to send their children to private schools) have been fighting a long-running battle against teachers' unions, including the National Education Asociation (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers." ... "Whether the Paycheck Protection measures win or lose, the GOP figures the AFL-CIO will be so preoccupied with the issue, and so drained of resources fighting it, that it won't be able to have much of an impact on the Congressional elections in November." ... "What they're trying to do is to take working families out of the political equation," ssys Steve Rosenthal, the AFL-CIO's political director. "I've been in the labor movement for 18 years, and this is the worst assault I've seen."
Parable or something
On the last few Sundays, I dwelled on the question: Where does one draw the line between immediate or near-term and long-term considerations. While most of us have probably given consideration to this question on a personal level, it also has application in the business arena. There the question faced by management might be: "Where does one draw the line between product development and pure research. In product development, there is little risk while in pure research the risk is great; the end result cannot be clearly defined, failures are likely, but the rewards may be stupendous. Whenever I think about this question relative to the business arena , I start wondering about the impact of the breakup of our phone company monopoly, AT&T. When A&T was a highly-regulated monopoly, the regulators regarded the expenditures at Bell Labs as being a necessary business expense and this expense was not deducted from profits. Accordingly, the research managers did not have to justify their expenditures in competition with other possible business ventures where investments are not made until the potential return on each investment is well analyzed, usually by calculating the Return on Capital Employed. With the basic research budget at Bell Labs not tied to profitability, the inventions that came out of these labratories were phenomenal. From 1930 to 1980, just about every major invention in electronics and communication, came out of the Bell Laboratories. Now with the breakup of AT&T and the deregulation of the communications industry, I cannot help but wonder about the impact on the residual Bell Laboratories, and the impact on basic research, in general. I know from experience, that whenever profits begin to dwindle in an unregulated company, one of the first places where management looks for cuts in expenditures is in the basic research budget since the end-result can never be clearly defined. I'll never find out the impact of phone company deregulation since advances made by basic research rarely have near-term sociological or economic consequences. I can just keep wondering without getting any answers.
May 31, 1998
Good Morning. With the elections on Tuesday, and I hope that everyone will vote, I'd like to comment about the separation of church and state and the conditions for a religious organization to maintain its non-profitability status. A religious organization, cannot support a candidate directly even though it can take a stand on issues. Since some radical religious right organizations issue voter guides, they are being closely monitored by the IRS. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State encourages non-radicals to attend church services where one suspects violation of the rules and to pick up whatever literature is available and then make the IRS and Americans United aware of what went on relative to candidate endorsement.
Hitting close to home, The Press Enterprise this week ran an article wherein it was reported that Dr. David Wiebe, a candidate for Superintendent of Riverside County Schools, had written a letter to all churches wherein he stated that he was a good Christian. The article noted that some religious leaders questioned why he thought that this was noteworthy information. Then on Friday, Chuck and Debra Rathbone, a member of the Hemet school board and his wife, endorsed Wiebe in a letter to the editor. Interesting information, which I note without comment.
Parable or something
Today I feel that I have to not ask the question: Where does one draw the line? Rather, I'd like to comment on what is going on in the world relative to nuclear weaponry. I think that it was quite obvious to everyone that once China had the bomb, India, with its not-too-friendly relations with China , was more-or-less forced to develop a comparable beast. Then Pakistan, with its not-too-friendly relations with India, was more-or-less forced to develop a comparable beast. Such is the nature of nationalism. We see by the news that the people of both India and Pakistan are overjoyed with their nation's newly found nuclear prowess. Now having said all this, I can again ask my question, although in a slightly different vein: Where does one draw the line? In this question , I ask another question: Who is the one that the one in the previous question is referring to? Perhaps it is the United Nations, perhaps it is NATO, perhaps it is the US, the only remaining super power? If we can decide the answer to this question, then I'm led to a series of questions; namely: How do we draw the line? How can we draw the line? What do we mean when we say, we are going to draw the line? Ponder these questions to see if you can come up with any meaningful and workable answers. Then consider this: Suppose that a nuclear war starts among two of these nations and that a number of bombs are exploded with, most likely, more in the offing; but with the number already exploded being sufficiently large to produce substantial world-wide radioactive fall-out; perhaps sufficient for some learned assessments to indicate that nearly one billion of the world's population will already be destined to die prematurely from cancer. What does the world community do now? Sit on its hands and hope that one side or the other will surrender before more harm is done? Make a pre-emptive strike with its own nuclear weapons in order to destroy the stockpiles held by the two combatants, thereby limiting the number of potential future explosions? I ask the broader question. Where are we going? Are we heading towards the inevitable? What can we do soon so that this scenario, or a comparable one, does not become inevitable? Isn't it time to strive for the development of a strong global organization, perhaps modeled after NATO; an organization that can guarantee the maintenance of national borders; that has the power to force arbitration of international disputes, and the power to enforce the results of such arbitration? Can such power evolve in a global organization without each country willing to give up some individual powers to act? Or perhaps, this can be done only if there is one super power and that this power plays the role of being a benevolent dictator. Then, if this is the case, how does this country gain such leadership? To be somewhat specific, since we are the only remaining superpower, how do we get all nations of the earth to give up nuclear weaponry and their development, and allow us, in effect, to rule the world? My final comment: Dream on McDuff.
Oct. 4, 1998
Good Morning. I note by the papers, that various forums are in the works so that we can meet candidates that are running in the Novermber election. Please watch for these and attend those that interest you. Also, Marilyn Forst, a candidate for the Hemet school board, will be the guest speaker at the Democrats for Action meeting to be held this coming Tuesday at Valley-Wide. Also, relative to the elections, I'll repeat something that I said last Spring; namely, that the The Press Enterprise then ran an article wherein it was reported that Dr. David Wiebe, a candidate for Superintendent of Riverside County Schools, had written a letter to all churches wherein he stated that he was a good Christian. The article noted that some religious leaders questioned why he thought that this was noteworthy information. Then a few days later, Chuck and Debra Rathbone, endorsed Wiebe in a letter to the editor. Interesting information, which I note without comment except to say that Rathbone is again running for the Hemet School Board and Wiebe's opponent for the County position is David Long.
.Short Quotation or Two.
The Marquis de Condorcet, who lived during the Enlightenment, believed in the natural rights of men and wrote: "The time will come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master than their reason." I now ask: "When will this time come?"
Parable or something
Today, I have a question: Who, following the civil war became the era's most acclaimed American scientist? It was Simon Newcomb, the most celebrated American astronomer of the late 19th century. Why has no one heard of him? In a book written by Albert E. Moyer entitled; A Scientist's Voice in American Culture: Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Scientific Method. University of California Press, 1992, the author wrote: "Newcomb tried to claim a province for science in American culture without, he hoped, alienating the Christians who generally dominated the culture. Therefore, in public debate he was careful to avoid direct references to his personal religious beliefs. In private, however, he held that Christianity was an untenable, dying religion. In anonymous articles written during the time, he expressed his low esteem for Christianity and argued for the adoption of a new, humanist religion founded on personal virtue and duty to others. 'Such a faith', he suggested, fears no false teaching, sets no limit on the freedom of human thought, and views with perfect calm the subversion of any and every form of doctrinal belief, confident that the ultimate result will tend to the elevation of the human soul and the unceasing progress of spiritual development.'"
Oct. 11, 1998
Oct. 18, 1998
Good Morning. Edward O. Wilson's book on Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge, which I reviewed in a full-blown talk a couple of weeks ago, was given a big boost this week.. Five individuals were awarded the Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry. What is interesting is that all five were physicists; even the prize for chemistry was awarded to two physicists because their work greatly increased our understanding of molecular structure and our ability to computer-model and predict chemical behavior. Further, in the newspaper articles that I read, it was indicated that their work was already having significant impact in the area of drug research, a field far removed from what the average layman considers to be physics. I am looking forward to the near future when a physicist or two will also be awarded the Nobel prize for medicine because of their elucidation of basic brain functioning mechanisms as they relate to human behavior.
Oct. 25, 1998
Good Morning. Rosemary Chilson, in her introductory remarks last week used the quotation "what goes around comes around" as another way of saying "that there is nothing new under the sun". This reminded me of something which illustrates that this is not quite true; what goes around usually comes around but it does not come around to exactly the same place, it proceeds in a path more like a spiral, to the same place in two dimensions but not in the third dimension. Let me illustrate this. During the Enlightenment, there was no such subject as "physics"; nor was there "chemistry', or 'biology", or any other fragmentary scientific discipline. There was only the broad category of the "Natural Sciences" or "Natural Philosophy", or in German "Die Naturwissenshaften". Now to quote from Edward O. Wilson's book, Consilience. "In 1797, when Jefferson took the president's chair at the American Philosophical society, all American scientists of professional caliber and their colleagues in the humanities could be seated comfortably in the lecture room of Philosophical Hall. Most could discourse reasonably well on the entire world of learning, which was still small enough to be seen whole. Their successors today, including 450,000 holders of the doctorate in science and engineering alone, would overcrowd Philadelphia. Professional scholars in general have little choice but to dice up research expertise and research agendas among themselves. To be a successful scholar means spending a career on membrane biophysics, the Romantic poets, early American history, or some other such constricted area of formal study. The same professional atomization afflicts the social sciences and humanities." Following this note about fragmentation, Wilson writes about and advocates "consilience", i.e., unifying all knowledge, building everything up from the basic principles of physics. In his eyes, we should be working towards again having everything unified or united under the banner of "natural philosphy". This sounds like "what goes around comes around", but is it really? Obviously, it is not. There is a tremendous difference between being able to throw a bunch of items under one banner because there are only a few items to be characterized, and being able to do this because so much is known that we can see and understand the relationships among a multitude of items. Consilience is possible because of ignorance; i.e., because of very limited knowledge, and it is also possible because of deep understanding. Humanity, with its intelligence, has always strived towards the latter, but to go from the first situation to the last requires intermediate fragmentation of knowledge so that many different aspects can be learned in depth. Some physicists now think that we are getting close to the ultimate, close to having "the theory of everything". I have serious doubts since there is simply still too much out there that we don't quite understand.
Short Quotation or Two.
All this reminds me of something written by Alan Mackay: "Like the ski resort full of young girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem."
Parable or something
Rosemary's discussion last week about the uniting of Europe vs the popular desire for fragmentation again led to the question I introduced last spring: "Where does one draw the line? In this case, where does one draw the line between freedom and bondage? On the one hand, one desires only local control so that choices can be made with only local considerations, yet on the other hand, one may be willing to sacrifice some of this local, or even individual, freedom in order to gain security, in this case, economic security, by joining a larger, more powerful, entity. Erich Fromm in his book, Psychoanalysis and Religion extemded this theme to religion and elaborated as follows: "The essential element in authoritarian religion and in the authoritarian religious experience is the surrender to a power transcending man. The main virtue of this type of religion is obedience, its cardinal sin is disobedience. The ambiguity of thinking and blind believing is the expression of a basic dichotomy in man, the coextensive need for bondage and freedom. The unfolding and full emergence of reason is dependent on the attainment of full freedom and independence. Until this is accomplished man will tend to accept for truth that which the majority of his group want to be true; his judgment is determined by need for contact with the herd and by fear of being isolated from it. ... The religious organization and the men who represent it take over to some extent the place of family, tribe, and state. They keep man in bondage instead of leaving him free. It is no longer God who is worshipped but the group that claims to speak in his name. This has happened in all religions." After reading this exerpt, I leave each of you to decide, whether by Fromm's definition, Unitarian Universalism is a religion or not.
Nov 1, 1998
Good Morning. I note by this mornings newspapers that we have another sex scandal on our hands. Via DNA analysis it has now been determined that Thomas Jefferson sired a son by his long time slave, Sally Hemings. What is this world coming to when we can't even leave our founding fathers on pedestals? Another question: When did historians come to the conclusion that pretty female slaves were only visually admired? And knowing this about Jefferson, what could we have expected from William Jefferson Clinton? How silly can we get?
I got an interesting catalog in the mail this week.. Whenever I get a different catalog I begin to wonder whose list I got on. This catalog was from The Teaching Company and lists what they call The Great courses on Tape. and on the cover they feature courses on: How to Listen to and Understand Great Music; The Great Ideas of Philosophy; The History of the United States; and, Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy. To give you some inkling of what these tapes contain; there is a section entitled Ancient Philosophy and Faith: From Athens to Jerusalem, which contains 12 lectures of about 45 minutes each, and the cost of audio tapes is $89.95; another section entitled Modernism and the Age of Analysis contains 11 lectures for the same price. I cannot help but wonder whether I would get more out of audio or video tapes than from simply reading the material. I suppose I'll never really get an answer to this question. I'll leave the catalog here on the table.
Parable or something
I note by the papers that 166 nations will be meeting, starting tomorrow, in Buenos Aires, to develop details agreed to last year in Kyoto. In the Kyoto Protocol, as the agreement is called, each nation promised to take actions necessary to reduce the world's emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, to below 1990 levels by the year 2008., and eventually for the U.S., since we are the worst polluter, to 30% below our 1990 emission levels. This is a most interesting an important conference, which, I predict will accomplish nothing. The outcome, if one were to analyze the resulting agreements closely, would remind the reader of Don Tucker's talk last Sunday; Hidden Meanings or Why Don't We Say What We Mean? How can we expect agreement when all of the developing nations want to get just like us economically, which means getting just like us with regards to atmospheric pollution? How can we expect to get together on this matter when both Canada and Russia are probably praying for global warming so that they can then become the great agricultural countries; just imagine what a moderate-temperature Siberia would mean? Perhaps, global warming would keep our food supply increasisng at a pace consistent with our population explosion. Does anyone , except Cuban refugees and Northeast retirees, really care if Florida goes underwater? Would any government of ours, whether Republican or Democratic, really have the guts to propose and dollar a gallon gasolene tax, and an equivalent tax on coal, fuel oil and natural gas; which is what it would take to bring our atmospheric polluting in line with the Kyota Protocol? The results of this conference should be interesting, even though quite meaningless. A sorry state of affairs.
Nov 8, 1998
Short Quotation or Two.
I do not define time, space, place and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And hence arise certain prejudices. --- Isaac Newton.
Parable or something
Since I won't be here next sunday to hear a fellow physicist talk, I thought that I would give you something to consider when listening to Lev Berger. A few Sunday s ago I mentioned that some physicists now think that we are getting close to the ultimate, close to having "the theory of everything". Then I said that I have serious doubts since there is simply still too much out there that we don't understand.. I'd like to elaborate somewhat on these statements. First, even though I have doubts about the near-term possibility, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this "theory of everything" were found and agreed to by the vast majority of the physics community within the next 20 years. However, postulating such a theory, and finding that no experimental result or happening here on earth or everywhere else in our universe contradicts the theory, would have little effect upon our lives. We would still have myriads of details to work out. For example, even if it were generally agreed that human behavior could be predicted by knowing all the connections within the brain, the local chemistry involved and the electical interactions, it would take a great amount of research to come up with the exact connections and relationships that have evolved in the brain. In short, it would still take a great amount research to provide consilience.
I gave the quotation by Isaac Newton previously so that I could present the following in order to give you some inkling as to where physicists are relative to having a "theory of everything". The trouble with attempting to do this is that when physicists talk about a theory, they mean a mathematical theory; and when they try to describe this in English or in any other language to the general public, or even to themselves, they must use everyday familiar concepts and these might give the wrong impressions. This is what Isaac Newton was referring to. Most physicists today believe that the theory of everything will show that what is behind all of reality is something that can be described as being like a cauldron containing something like a boiling liquid., and that when the liquid vaporizes and forms bubbles, the bubbles of vapor escape from the surface of the liquid into an original nothingness, but this nothingness, once it contains the vapor, becomes a multidimentional space, perhaps instead of having our three dimensions plus time, it initially might have 10 or more dimensions plus time. Eventually, with time, some of the dimensions will collapse so that they cannot be seen. For our universe, all the extra dimensions have collapsed so that we are left with the three spacial dimensions and time.
The physicists have come upon this theory because, in what we call a vacuum or a region that contains nothing, with their sophiscated instruments they find that small particles like electrons and positrons, or even protons and anti-protons; that is, matter and anti-matter, are continually and rapidly being formed out of "nothing", and when comparable matter and anti-matter particles find each other, they get anihilated to again form "nothing". This small particle formation, the physicists see as being the result of tiny, tiny gas bubbles coming out of the cauldron. When a real large gas bubble comes out of the cauldron, like we often see in a rapidly boiling pot of water, something equivalent to "the big bang" can result. This also happens quite frequently, in fact many gas bubbles of different sizes are formed, but these almost continual events occur in some of the dimensions that we can't see. Creation of universes is seen not as a rare occurrence; but something that happens almost on a continuous basis. However, just like individual particles combine to again form "nothingness" on a small scale; most universes also do not survive for very long periods of time. The problem is that universes are born with somewhat different physical sizes or quantities of matter, and different physical constants, and the collapse of the extra spacial dimensions does not always lead to three like our own; hence, events come into play which lead to their demise. Physicists look at this as "survival of the fittest" on a cosmic scale. There need be no "designer"; many conceivable types of universes are born, they evolve, but only the fittest survive; and our universe with its particular conditions has survived. This probably sounds very confusing to all of you, but the theoretical physicists are sorting all this out, so that they can mathematically explain everything from the "big bang" to the way our universe exists today, including all the life that is on it.
Looking at the birth and demise of universes in this evolutionary way leads most physicists to the conclusion that Darwin's theory of evolution is much more basic aand powerful than Newton's theory of motion.
Nov 15, 1998
Nov 22, 1998
Parable or something
Last Wednesday the LA Times, in their new Southern California Living Section had an article entitled "A Holier Alliance" with a sub-line stating that "Humanists Are No longer Just Secular; They're Adopting a More Spiritual Approach With Biblical Roots". The article then mentions not only humanists but quite a few Unitarian Universalist ministers and their congregations. This reminded me of previous articles that sort of implied that scientists were finding god. Frankly, I'm fed up with articles such as these because they don't define words such as: humanists, spiritual, religious, god, or scientists. The articles can convey nothing, can only confuse, without strict definitions.
Nov 29, 1998
Parable or something
I am getting worried about the big-company mergers going on throughout the world; this month's frenetic pace of the U.S stockmarket, especially the recent explosion in the values of Internet-related stocks; and the consequences of deregulation of the electric power industry. Is extreme bigness really better? Is it reasonable to allow the formation of large corporate combines, that by any economic measure of size, are greater than all individual countries except the 5 largest industrial powers? Can Internet-related companies really improve so much so that their value legitimately increases at 20 or more percent day after day? When the old regulated electric companies sell their generating plants to new entrepeneurial companies for about one and a half times the values which are on their books, can these new companies, as promised by the deregulators, really supply electricity to the consumer at lower cost while making a reasonable return on their apparently inflated investments? I don't have the answers to these questions, but I worry about the irrationality of events and the possible consequences. Maybe I should stop reading so many newspapers. Although I noticed one item of particular interest. Today, the Swiss are voting whether or not to make the selling, possession, and use of marijuana, heroin and cocaine legal. I hope that at least one of my newspapers will carry the outcome, and that there is some continuing follow-up.
December 6, 1998
Parable or something
Based on what's been happening around me for the past few months, I have to let off some steam even though I'll risk upsetting some of you. If you get upset, I apologize, but I just feel that I have to get this off my chest in front of friends so that I won't do it at my sister's Memorial Service.. Primarily, I've gotten fed up with religious, especially Christian, hypocrisy. Anyone who realistically assesses events, either on a global scale like the devastation in Hondoras and Nicaragua, or more personally, like what is going on with Bill Mayer and my sister's illnesses, must wonder how the Christians ever came to characterizing their all-powerful, all-knowing God as being kind, merciful and loving. If there is a designer, like the Christian God, in the universe, I would say that he is a sadistic son-of-a-bitch.. Further, I have little respect for those who say that the suffering is the "will of God" and must be borne until death comes without human intervention. What about the prior medical intervention that allowed a particular person to live as long as he or she did? Was that the "will of God", perhaps, because it then made it possible for a person to suffer greater physical pain and humiliation prior to death? Would a kind, merciful and loving God really want us to deny termination of suffering for our loved ones? Or is it that only our pets have a kind, merciful and loving God that looks favorably upon euthanasia while we must look up to a sadistic son-of-a bitch? Is it any wonder that I am a humanist who believes in no God, who believes that nature is neutral but that humanity, with its evolved mental capabilites, has the power to make this a better world for everyone; and who hopes that mankind, even with this mental power, doesn't forever keep lousing things up.
December 13 1998
Short Quotation or Two.
None are so blind as those who have eyes yet will not see.
December 20 1998
Parable or something
In talking over the phone with Cindy Mayer about having a Memorial Service for Bill, she indicated that if it was not necessary to have one she'd just as soon simply have me say a few words this morning. I can't quite do this with a few words, but here goes. To set the tone, let me start off in the manner of a typical Memorial Service. "May the sorrow that we feel at this time be tempered with memory; may we smile through our tears as we celebrate a life well-lived; and through the sorrow, tears and smiles, may our own lives be strengthened and reaffirmed."
Some of you may not know Bill and Cindy, since they have not been coming regularly of late. When I did my first stint as President of the Fellowship about 12 years ago, our Sunday services were handled somewhat differently than now. Three of us, Bill Mayer, Phil Simon, and I would each give a talk almost every month, with the fourth Sunday being reserved for an outside speaker. As a consequence, Bill became well-known and was elected President after my two years were up. He continued giving Sunday talks on occasion, and this he continued to do even after his two-year Presidential term was over. Bill's talks were always provocative; sort of what one expected from an award-winning journalist. While watching CNN, on and off, yesterday, I couldn't help but think that Bill would have had a field day reporting on the Donnybrook going on in Washington.
During all these years, I always felt that Bill and I were in close agreement as to what a typical Unitarian Universalist considers to be important. I know that Bill tried the Society of Friends, and perhaps other religious organizations he never mentioned to me, but throughout most of his life, he considered himself to be a typical Unitarian Universalist; socially-concerned, free-thinking and tolerant. Perhaps the word "tolerant" needs clarification since it may mean different things to different people. But let's narrow things down by just considering religious tolerance. I think that Bill would have agreed with what I am about to say. There are Budhists who believe in reincarnation and Nirvana. There are followers of various Eastern religions, some having down-to-earth, and others having mystical belief systems. There is Islam. There are a broad variety of Christians ranging from Roman Catholic, to various Protestant denominations, to Mormons, to Fundamentalists; all of whom believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, kind, merciful, and loving God. Contrary to this, there are realists who may look upon Bill's death, and the suffering and undignified deaths of other friends, as well as natural disasters and the violent goings on in the world, and thereby conclude that an all-knowing, all-powerful God, if there is such, must be a sadistic s.o.b. Then there are agnostics who reserve belief in any deity or in the hereafter until someone gives them what to them would be definitive proof one way or the other. And finally, there are the humanists and atheists who see and accept the world as it is, without the need for further theorizing and elaboration. Most UUs are tolerant of all these beliefs., and Bill exhibited such tolerence. Relative to religion, everyone should be able to believe whatever makes them feel comfortable without outside interference, provided such belief also does not have undue impact on others. This last phrase, "undue impact on others" is important. UUs are basically tolerant but they do not condone the actions of individuals who are so insecure that they must strive to get others to believe as they do; especially, when "believers" attempt to get an old and almost senile individual, or someone on their death bed, to accept Jesus Christ as their savior. Also, UUs do not condone those who look upon all women as being "second class" citizens. Further, UUs have little respect for those who say that near-death suffering, with physical pain and humiliation, is the "will of God" and must be borne until death comes without human intervention. Also, UUs do not condone those who educate children to lead narrow unthinking lives, or who wish that creationism be taught in public school science classes, thereby confusing what amounts to day-dreaming with the scientific method and hence, in effect, making it extremely difficult for these students from ever becoming serious or even mediocre scientists. Bill Mayer was a good Unitarian Universalist and believed essentially what I have just said..
However, the things that I just mentioned have to do with commonality. Relative to these things, Bill believed much as we all do. But it should be recognized that while we have something in common with all of our friends and relatives, it is their individuality, their differences, that attract us, keep our attention, and, in many instances, produce mutual respect and love. A particular person, a he or a she (and I'll simplify by just saying "he"), may stand out in the crowd for any number of reasons or for one special reason, and for whatever the reason, he will be remembered --- be made immortal, if you will, in the minds of those who loved him and those that were loved by him; certainly in the minds of his friends and relatives, and perhaps even in the minds of his enemies. Yes, we will remember Bill because of those little things that made him unique. Some time ago I read a book review in the LA Times. In it the reviewer, Lee Dembart wrote: "Religious faith is the ability to believe what you know isn't true." Bill Mayer could have said this. Being an award-winning journalist, having worked for the Sacramento Bee, the Press Enterprise and other newspapers back East, I suspect that he said it many a time, in many different ways. Yes, let us remember Bill not only for what we had in common, but especially for the little differences, the differences that made him unique.
To make the transition from what amounts to a Memorial Service to a Christmas celebration with the Kit Kats, let me describe a personal experience which illustrates this commonality and diversity. When observing flowers, or birds, or dogs, one cannot help but see how much individuals within each of these groupings have in common. Yet it is the differences among individuals, the diversity, that holds our attention, interests us, and gives us pleasure. Since ever we sold our house up in Idyllwild I missed the scrub jays that were always present eating peanuts from my hand. Well, this spring two skittish jays showed up in our backyard in Hemet and every morning I would place a few raw peanuts on our picnic table and I would then enjoy watching them from a distance as they individually flew onto the table, picked over the peanuts, and then finally flew away with one in the mouth. After simply observing this, I decided that I might be able to train them to take a peanut out of my hand, or perhaps even out from between my lips. After much effort, I finally succeeded in getting one of the jays to do this. I call him "my friend". It's been rather enjoyable, even exciting, but somewhat scary when I have a peanut between my lips and my friend comes straight at me to grab it. However, the second jay seems to be much shyer than the first, I call him "Chicken". Whenever I first move about the house in the morning, Chicken flies to a perch outside of the back door and Yaaks to get me to come out with some peanuts. After I open the door, he flies some distance away because he really is chicken. Then when I place a peanut in the palm of my hand and hold it out, my friend comes from afar and takes the peanut. This "show and take" goes on for awhile until I feel sorry for Chicken and place the remaining peanuts on the table and go some distance away. Then they both come, but never together, and finish off the remaining nuts. In a way, I've come to love both of these birds because of their individuality. Before I came to recognize their individual personalities, they were just birds; now they are Friend and Chicken. .
December 27, 1998
Parable or something
The latest issue of Scientific American has included a special report entitled "Revolution in Cosmology"; therefore, in the "From the Editors" column, an Editor wrote:
"If there is a story to be seen in cosmic history, it is the march from the utter simplicity of the big bang to ever increasing complexity and diversity. The near-perfect uniformity of the primordial fireball, and of the laws that governed it, has steadily given way to a messy but fertile heterogeneity: photons, substomic particles, simple atoms, stars, complex atoms, and molecules, galaxies, living things, artificial things."
This statement could have come out of a creationism handbook. since it seems to contradict one of the basic laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, which says that in a closed system, which our universe seems to be, entropy, defined as randomness or uniformity, keeps increasing. In fact, the law says that measurement of entropy is equivalent to measuring time. Therefore, according to this law, it seems that the universe should be becoming less complex rather than more so. Is a creator, or a God pushing it the other way?
Let me give a simple illustration of the second law of thermodynamics. Consider a simple culinary double boiler. Let's say that we fill both pots with water and put the bottom pot alone onto the range and bring the water contained therein to a high temperature. Then let's put the upper pot into the lower pot and immediately after doing this surround both pots with hefty insulation so that the pots cannot be influenced by anything going on outside of the insulation. If we wait for a long time before removing the insulation, and then measure the temperature of both pots of water, we will find that the temperatures are the same, somewhere between the two initial temperatures. If we get more sophisticated and repeat the experiment many times by initially bringing each pot of water to exact temperatures and then placing a thermometer in the top pot before we put on a transparent insulation so that we can see the thermometer readings, and then note the temperature readings of the thermometer with time, we will further note that these temperature readings with time are always exactly the same, within experimental error. In other words, we can indeed use the temperature readings to indicate the time from wrapping the insulation: the temperature reading, which by definition in this experiment is a measure of entropy, is equivalent to the measurement of time. This is all that the second law of thermodynamics states, and based on this simple experiment, almost anyone would say that this is obvious. If the second law of thermodynamics can be made to be so obvious and is universally true as physicists tell us, how can we accept the statement made by the Scientific American staff editor, which apparently contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, yet upon reading the statement, most of us would also say that it is obviously true? How can our universe's obvious trend toward complexity be consistent with the second law's statement that the arrow of time leads to uniformity? Must we postulate a supernatural force to bring everything into agreement? I won't carry this any further today, but does this give some indication as to why creationism might seem to be so reasonable, even to some who have more than a smattering knowledge of physics?
January 3 1999
Parable or something
Last week I spoke about why some "thinking" not just "Bible toting" creationists believe in some sort of supernatural force rather then in simple natural evolution. Specifically, I mentioned that some people who have a smattering knowledge of physics see the developing complexity of the universe from the big bang on as contradicting the second law of thermodynamics which, in very general, and somewhat misleading, terms, states that everything should run down with time, i.e., according to this law of physics, the universe should be proceeding from complexity to uniformity rather than the other way around. The only way that they can resolve this contradiction is by postulating a supernatural force or a God which has the power to supercede the laws of physics, as they understand and interpret them.
Still other "thinking" creationists come at the problem from a different angle. They believe in what is now called the "strong anthropic principle". They cannot believe that life could have sprung so naturally on earth without there having been a "designer"; a God who set the fundamental constants of nature at just the right values to make life , as we know it, possible. Basically, they say that if the universe had appeared with slightly different values for some of its fundamental constants, the universe could not have lasted long enough to produce the carbon and oxygen and the other conditions necessary for life to emerge. They are completely blind to the fact that life , as we know it, came about because of the particular values of the fundamental constants, and that other forms of life could have evolved if these constants had somewhat different values.
A relatively recent theory proposed by a physicist/cosmologist is that universes with slightly different fundamental constants are almost continually being produced in space or time dimensions that we cannot interact with. Some of these have physical constants that lead to early deaths of these universes, i.e., gravity might pull them back to their big bang condition or pull all matter into a black hole.; and some have physical constants that are just right to keep them in existence for a sufficiently long time for life to emerge. This theory, in effect, postulates that the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest is applicable for universes as well as for life form. An interesting conjecture, but it really is not needed to explain natural evolution here on earth.
January 10 1999
Short Quotation or Two.
A quote from the Palomar UU Fellowship: "The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it. " W. B. Yeats
Parable or something
For the past two weeks I've spoken about why some "thinking" not just "Bible toting" creationists do not believe in blind evolution; rather they believe that there must be some sort of supernatural force, or God, to either continually guide the process, or at least to have designed it initially so that it works just right. Today, I'll end this particular discussion by touching upon the reasons why some physicists do not believe in the "big bang" theory. However, I point out that I know of no physicist who does not believe in unguided evolution. Since I don't know all physicists, there probably are a few who doubt the validity of evolution, but then if I got to know them, I probably wouldn't characterize them as being practicing physicists even though they may have had the formal education.
Most theoretical physicists believe that nature, when it is fully understood, will be found to be extremely simple. I suspect that many of you have heard the statement that some physicists soon hope to find "the theory of everything"; a theory so simple that the mathematical formula for it can be written on a t-shirt. In the ultimate, therefore, when physicists conjecture about the overall universe, conjecture about things they cannot observe, at least cannot observe with their present instruments, they start with the simplest assumptions and usually cannot be readily shaken from these assumptions unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Let me start out by defining what I mean when I use the term "the overall universe". To me, "the overall universe" is the one in which we live, plus all others that may exist in other space and time dimensions that we cannot interact with. Well, the simplest assumptions relative to the overall universe are that, if it could be broken down into its basic components and the components added up, one would find that in total it is composed of nothing and that this "nothingness" has always been in existence. In essence, in total, there is nothing here nor there and it has always been that way; there was no beginning and there will be no end. Physicists love these assumptions because they don't have to theorize any further. One doesn't need supernatural forces or Gods to explain how something got to be that way when nothing is there, and why there was a beginning, when there really wasn't any. Besides being rather neat, these assumptions save physicists a lot of time; they don't have to theorize further or argue over things about which they cannot have any real knowledge.
Fifty years ago, when I was in graduate school, physicists considered cosmology, the study of the origin and development of the universe, to be in the realm of meta-physics, not amenable to scientific investigation. Therefore they were quite comfortable believing, without any strong evidence, that our universe was always here, was always being replenished somehow, and therefore that there was no reason to be concerned about a beginning or an end. I should point out that meta-physics and religion are characterized much the same by the physics community. At any point in time, physicists will say that both religious and meta-physical beliefs are not amenable to scientific investigation. However, as time passes, it is generally found that scientific evidence, which may show the absurdity of some of these beliefs, does, indeed, develop. Consider, for example, the old religious beliefs that the earth was flat and that it was located at the center of the universe. In the area of cosmology, after I got out of school , it was found that our universe is expanding, growing bigger, and it was further found that the evolution or detailed development from a very small volume could be explained by our increased knowledge of particle physics and quantum electrodynamics.; hence, the "big bang" theory came on the scene and was widely accepted. Consequently, without really looking for such a development, cosmology became a sub-science of physics; amenable to scientific investigation and interpretation. If one believed the science of cosmology as it had developed from 1950 on through 1990, it appeared that there was a beginning, the big bang, that had to be explained; but it still appeared that the universe was really made of "nothing". The latter premise seems to hold up because of Einstein's postulate, which was later experimentally verified, that matter and energy are equivalent; that matter can be turned into energy, for example into light or heat, and that energy can be turned into matter. Specifically, as best as they can determine, when astronomers add up all the matter in our universe, using units of energy, and counter this by the energy stored in the gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear fields, they conclude that the total energy probably is equal to zero; that on balance there is nothing there, only local non-uniformities. Some physicists never accepted the big bang theory because it implied a beginning; others felt quite comfortable; if they assumed that there was sufficient matter in the universe so that gravity could eventually prevail and pull everything back into something like the start of the big bang; if true, then we would have an oscillating universe, from one big bang to another over intervals of 40 billion years or more; again with no beginning and no end..
It now turns out, that astronomers can't find enough matter for gravity to eventually dominate.. It looks as if our universe will expand forever, perhaps even at an ever-increasing rate, unless there is a substantial amount of matter that has not yet been located. This is the "dark" matter that you may have heard or read about. It's hard to believe that over 90% of the matter in the universe is of such a nature that all our scientific instruments have not been able to find or to characterize it. If the right amount of dark matter does not exist, then physicists again seem to be stuck with a universe that apparently had a beginning., and, perhaps, no ending; not a very satisfying situation.
But physicists hate to be stuck with anything that is not simple. The saving information in this case again comes from our increased knowledge of quantum electrodynamics and particle physics. We now know that a void, or a perfect vacuum, is really a very dynamic place. Particles, matter and anti-matter, are continually surfacing and then usually are rapidly recombined to again produce nothingness. Further, super string theory, which is directed at the development of the "theory of everything" that I mentioned before, seems to say that there are at least 10 and perhaps more spacial dimensions rather than just the 3 that are accessible to us. Now physicists can again be happy; even though they may be wrong. They simply assume that every so often, in fact quite frequently, in time or spacial dimensions that we cannot interact with, a big chuck of matter and anti-matter is produced in the nothingness, a situation that we can call a big bang, Most likely, not all big bangs are equal; some may start out with more, some with less, matter than our own. Consequently, in these universes, the fundamental constants of nature, and, perhaps, even the laws of nature, may be slightly different than our own.. Consequently, many universes may die out, soon after birth or after only a few billion years, because their initial conditions were not quite right; Others, like our own, may have had initial conditions that could lead to universes having longer existence and thereby capable of supporting some sort of life, if conditions were right, perhaps even life as we know it. With these assumptions, physicists are again happy because they can see simplicity. Universes, both different and similar to our own, have always been created and will always be created; there never was such a thing as a beginning and there will be no end. And all this activity takes place in a realm of "nothingness." Further, they see something like Darwin's principle of survival of the fittest acting universally, making everything seem more connected and thereby simple. Physicists have again ventured into an area that seems to be unknowable; but again, who is willing to predict that we will never be able to communicate with universes that exist in other dimensions? In the meantime, physicists have a neat theory; they don't have to speculate further; they can go on and spend their time on more fruitful endeavors rather than worrying about the current unknowable.
January 17 1999
Parable or something
A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal had a front page article with the heading and subheadings: "Naked-Ambition: Tantra May Be Old, But It Has Generated A Hot Modern Market: Ancient Hindu Sex Practice Gets New Age Makeover, Yet Competition is Fierce: A Swami who Used to Be Joe". This article was interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, the by-line was from Santa Cruz, CA; Santa Cruz where our youngest daughter went to college at UC Santa Cruz; which for a time at least had the reputation for being ultra-liberal, almost kooky; although the article does not mention any connection to the university. Secondly, because the whole thing reminded me of "sensitivity training" a fad that was going strong around 1970. Jean and I participated in such a course back in Pittsburgh with the course being run by a UU minister. This was sort of interesting, but I came away with serious doubts about its merits. I gather that now one of the remaining proponents of sensitivity training, although I don't think they call it that, is the Esselin Institute up by Big Sur. To show what this LA Times article is all about. Let me read the first few paragraphs:
"Clean-cut venture capitalist Greg Lindae and his girl-friend, Allison Stern, a jewelry designer, gaze into each other's eyes here at the ball-room of the Best Western Seacliff Inn, candles flickering around them. Ms. Stern is his 'goddess,' here to be 'worshiped.' A teacher, in the presence of scores of other students, will soon explain how. Before that, though, Ms. Stern must learn to open her heart by slipping between the arms of another man. 'Look past to the next guy,' her teacher instructs. 'Sometimes it's easier with a stranger. You don't have issues with them.' She takes three steps to her left, presses the palms of her hands together, fingers upward against her chest, in the Hindu ritual of greeting. Ms. Stern stares into the stranger's eyes, as the teacher intones: 'Be the little girl. Now men, be cute. Be the little boy. Show her your Doberman eyes.' They draw closer."
"It's kindergarten Tantra," says the man in the front of the ballroom, Charles Muir, 50 years old and a Bronx, N.Y., native.
It's hardly child's play, though, Mr. Lindae and Ms. Stern, both 34 and both from San Francisco, have plunked down $695 for a weekend workshop sponsored by Mr. Muir's Maui-based company, Hawaiian Goddess Inc. It's among the scores of upstart concerns cashing in big on the hottest new wrinkle in America's "feel good" industry---the teachings of Tantra, an ancient and sexually inclined subset of Hinduism and Buddhism.
In the hands of America's New Age marketers, sex, or "sexual healing," is very much the point and profit is more often than not the motive. Trading on testimonials from Hollywood celebrities like Woodly Harrelson and using a vocabulary borrowed from Hinduism and pop psychology, modern Tantra advocates are spinning Tantra into an eccentric market racking up perhaps tens of millions of dollars in annual sales.
Tantra's new wave of entrepreneurs see the mix of sex and New Age cachet as an irresistible selling point to Americans shedding their inhibitions and willing to treat their sex lives like their tennis games---as something to be worked on, preferable with the help of a pro.
Knowing something about the past history of Unitarian Universalsim, I'm surprised that I first heard about this first through the Wall Street Journal and not through some UU publication. In one way, I admire UU tolerance and our willingness to try new things or new approaches, but on the other hand I don't have much patience with UUs who equate reasonable assessment with discrimination or intolerance. I rermember well that during the 60s, there was a UU church in the San Francisco area which openly advocated free love. Personally, I have nothing against the concept of free love but I don't think that it is for everyone; in the case of this particular UU church, it seemed to me that anyone who did not engage in free love, felt him or herself to be uncomfortable as a member. I now have the same feeling about some of our congregations that dwell on so-called New Age spiritualism or paganism. My motto is to let individual UUs believe whatever makes them comfortable or happy, but as a group, let's never go down one path to such an extreme so as to make those of us with other personal feelings or beliefs uncomfortable.
January 24 1999
Short Quotation or Two.
"The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture...." ---Thorstein Veblen, from his book, "The Theory of the Leisure Class".
Parable or Something.
Last week I spoke about Tantra, sort of a new age fad based upon Eastern religions. Since I look at things like this primarily as people with too much money trying to spend their way out of boredom, I was reminded of an earlier article, one that appeared in Business Week last August. This article carried the headline: "The Summer of Wretched Excess". The article starts out with Veblen's quote that I gave before; then it goes on: "Do you have a personal jeweler? Does the nanny bubble deeply trouble you? Are you braving a tear-down (demolishing that 20,000-square-foot perfectly nice house to put up a 40,000-square-foot edifice that is more truly 'you')? And do you have both a Land Rover with a black steel ramming grill in front plus a Porsche Boxter in your garage (O.K., maybe a cute new Beetle, too, for your daughter who attends the Dalton School)?" "You probably do if you're among the glittering classes that summer in the Hamptons, that cozy east end of Long Island that is so awash in money this season that it makes the Reagan years look downright bourgeois. There, people are being driven to a beastly frenzy of conspicuous consumption not seen since --uh-oh--the crazy days of the late '20s, just before the crash. Which is probably the reason for all that religious fervor. Not the formal kind, although having your own spiritual adviser is a kind of personal statement among the billionaire set these days. It's the mantra of money in this summer of glut. On the opposite coast, Silicon Valley is also going through its own money madness--with starter houses going for a million bucks. It seems that there are nearly as many money managers in the valley as there are software writers."
Later the article goes on: "The real symbol of this summer's zeitgeist is the servants. Not that they are called that. Little Johnny and Jennifer each has a personal trainer. So do Mommy and Daddy. 'My massage therapist,' 'my nutritionist', 'my chiro (chiropractor),' Your hear it in restaurants, at the movies, on the streets. 'My,' 'my,' 'my.' It's the service society gone mad. Yet, all is not perfect in this monied paradise. Beneath the gloss, there is an edginess. 'When will it end?' No one actually says it out loud, but the question is always there: If the market goes, how in the world will I pay for that enormous house? The cars? The lessons? The clubs? Truth is, no one really believes the party can continue much beyond the hot summer days." But until then, "the people bravely party on. It's splendid. It's exciting. It's like that other Long Island party that Gatsby threw in the '20s, waiting to end badly."
I often ask myself: Do I lean towards pessimism relative to our society's economic condition simply because I lived through the depression? If so, such pessimism may really not be valid. But even if the "good times" continue to roll, I wonder how long it will take for the masses to become overly jealous of the large gap between the have and the have-nots.
January 31 1999
Parable or Something.
Thursday I received my copy of Free Mind, the bimonthly newsletter of the American Humanist Association. It had some interesting information I'd like to share with you. First, it was anounced that the AHA's Humanist of the Year Award for 1999 would be given to Edward O. Wilson. You may remember, that a few weeks ago I reviewed his latest book, Consilience, which tries to relate all branches of knowledge.
Then later on in the issue there was an article with the headline Fright Wing Slams Kurt Vonnegut and the AHA, with the introductory sentence: "Illustrating the idea that you're better known by your enemies than by your friends, Bob Jones University's slick and colorful magazine, World, recently took aim at AHA Honorary President Kurt Vonnegut in a November 7, 1998, review of Vonnegut's book, Timequate. As an aside, I wonder if the UUA copywrited the magazine name the World; if so it seems to me that we have a strong case. I'll e-mail the UUA to find out. Back to the Free Mind article, it then quotes from this World article as follows: "The AHA is a politburo for the entire spectrum of left-wing political causes and philosophies based on secular humanism, including abortion, evolution, euthanasia, socialism, environmentalism, and world government." This is quite a list. If I read it right, the AHA includes just about everybody except extremely narrow-minded Christian fundamentalists. If this is correct why isn't the membership of the AHA and the UUA in the millions rather than the thousands? Then later the article goes on with "The leftist-dominated literary establishment must publish and promote a high-profile humanist like Kurt Vonnegut, in order to advance its anti-Christian agenda through the book industry." So much for baloney from the Bob Jones University World.
Still later in the this issue of Free Mind, there is an article which notes that a survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences reported last July in the highly-respected scientific journal, Nature, indicated that only 7 percent of these outstanding scientists believed in a personal god, and that among biologists, the number dropped to 5.5 percent. Based upon my friendship with many other physicists, these numbers appear more believable to me than the 30 some odd percent reported in the newspapers a few months ago, numbers based upon a more general survey of "scientists", with the word "scientists" left undefined. After providing this introduction, the Free Mind article goes on with the following paragraph: "In response to these survey results, Representative James Traficant (Democrat---Ohio) verbally abused scientists and nonbelievers from the floor of Congress. In the congressional record, Traficant stated: 'Most of these absent-minded professors cannot find the toilet...I have one question for these wise guys to constipate over: How can SOME-thing come from Nothing?...Put these supercerebral master debaters in some foxhole with bombs bursting all around them and I guarantee they will not be praying to Frankenstein. Beam me up here. All the education in the world is worthless without God and a little bit of common sense.'" I ask, do all fundamentalists, like Traficant, really believe that all our technology came right out of the Bible without any insight, creativity and hard-work from the educated scientific/engineering community? What did True Believers ever invent? With their beliefs, how can they have the guts to use any of the technology that is place before them by these non-believers? Hypocracy in the extreme.
February 7, 1999
Parable or Something.
Last Sunday, a big point in Phil Simon's presentation was that any government document like our Constitution, for example, is no guarantee that the country will turn out as anticipated. In the final analysis, this really depends upon the education and actions or inaction of its citizenry. Then, that evening, on the TV program 60-Minutes, there was a segment on the Harlem Girl's chorus, or more generally on the public school in New York City that concentrates on music education; in effect, a charter school for music. Besides playing up the attributes and accomplishments of the girl's chorus, it was also mentioned that 98% of the students of that school went on to college; quite an achievement for a high school located in the middle of Harlem. This reminded me of the Bronx High School of Science; another New York City charter school, one which concentrates on science. The best man at our wedding was a graduate of this high school so I know something about it. But what has always been most intriguing to me was that for quite some time many of the Nobel prize winners in physics had graduated from this high school. I don't know if this still holds true since I'm not acquainted with any of the youngsters and the newspapers usually do not play up a prize-winner's high school education; but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Now, I'm sure that the children chosen to attend these charter schools had been well-screened by the New York State Regents exam, and that the teacher's were also chosen based upon their knowledge and teaching abilities, but can these criteria really explain a bevy of Nobel prize winners from the same high school, and almost all graduates from a Harlem school being accepted for a college education? I think not, since this level of accomplishment has not been achieved in other charter schools that have existed for quite some time in many other cities, the Boston Latin school, to give one example. While some of you educators may not agree with me, I contend that the primary reason for this exceptional performance of New York City charter schools is the NY subway system. I don't know about the rest of the world, but where else in the United States is it feasible for students screened from a population of over ten million people to come together daily with less than a half-hour-commute? Imagine the consequences of having so many students with similar exceptional talents interacting and competing on a daily basis? I think that we are beginning to see some of this synergistic interaction taking place on the Internet, but, currently, this is primarily on a one-on-one basis rather than within a community. Hopefully, as the Internet matures, students will naturally gather in common-interest "workshops" or "chat-rooms" as they are called today.
As an aside to all of this, and I'm not sure whether it supports or contradicts my hypothesis, I should mention the famous individuals who graduated early in this century from the same high school in Budapest, Hungary; namely, Leo Szilard, who was awarded one of the basic patents covering nuclear reactors and who, with Einstein, alerted Roosevelt to the potential for nuclear weaponry; John Von Neumann, whom many consider to be the father of modern-day computers and computing; Edward Teller, the almost legendary and controversial "hawk" and father of the H-bomb; and Eugene Wigner, whom I considered a friend, and who was awarded a Nobel prize for his contributions to nuclear theory. Frankly, I don't even know whether Budapest has a subway system; or whether these four lived in the same block.. Further, it's not only interesting but also lucky for us that they all emigrated to the USA.
February 14, 1999
Parable or Something.
Recently, I decided once again to join the Library of Science book club. This I did because of an offer I couldn't refuse; namely to receive two books and audio tapes of six lectures by Dick Feynman, the deceased Nobel Prize winner and Cal Tech professor of physics. Now I'll read a few paragraphs from the book entitled THE MEANING OF IT ALL: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist. This is a copy of 3 lectures (the John Danz Lectures) given at the University of Washington in April 1963, before he became real famous. The title page comment states: "in this series, Dr. Feynman explores problems in the borderline between science and philosophy, religion, and society. Here is the first quote:
"Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that there were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true. So I have developed in a previous talk, and I want to maintain here, that it is in the admission of ignorance and the admission uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man."
Then somewhat later in the book, he describes how a devout Christian student might react in a science class. Feynman said: "There are two sources of difficulty that the young man we are imagining would have, I think, when he studies science. The first is that he learns to doubt, that it is necessary to doubt, that it is valuable to doubt. So, he begins to question everything. The question that might have been before, "Is there a God or isn't there a God" changes to the question "How sure am I that there is a God?"..... Of course it is true that the man does not usually start by doubting directly the existence of God. He usually starts by doubting some other details of the belief, such as the belief in an afterlife, or some of the details of Christ's life, or something like this."
Still later on, Feynman comments on our government, which I present because it sort of augments Phil's presentation about our constitution. Again, I quote: "The government of the United States was developed under the idea that nobody knew how to make a government, or how to govern. The result is to invent a system to govern when you don't know how. And the way to arrange it is to permit a system, like we have, wherein new ideas can be developed and tried out and thrown away. The writers of the Constitution knew of the value of doubt. In the age that they lived, for instance, science had already developed far enough to show the possibilities and potentialities that are the result of having uncertainty, the value of having the openness of possibility. The fact that you are not sure means that it is possible that there is another way some day. That openness of possibility is an opportunity. Doubt and discussion are essential to progress. The United States government, in that respect, is new, it's modern, and it is scientific. It is all messed up, too. Senators sell their votes for a dam in their state and discussions get all excited and lobbying replaces the minority's chance to represent itself, and so forth. The government of the United States is not very good, but with the possible exception of England, is the greatest government on the earth today, is the most satisfactory, the most modern, but not very good."
February 21, 1999
Short Quotation or Two.
For those of you not familiar with Unitarian Universalism, I offer the following reading prepared by a UU minister, Robert T. Weston. It has the title: CHERISH YOUR DOUBTS.
Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no man fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldlly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing:
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
He that would silence doubt is filled with fear; the house of his spirit is built on shifting sands.
But he that fears not doubt, and knows its use, is founded on a rock.
He shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of his hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the handmaiden of truth.
Parable or Something. Now, to introduce the highlight of our program this morning, Jean will read a letter that we received from someone who couldn't join us.
Thank you, Jean. Now Joe Bernard, please come up here and do the honors.
Now Jean will read some more letters written by a few of Phil's former students. Now would anyone else like to come up here and make some comments?
Well, I'd like to say something. Jean and I moved into this valley about 13 years ago, and before long started attending Fellowship meetings. Through this, Phil, almost immediately, became one of our treasured friends. Through these many years, adjectives that describe Phil are consistent and persistent. Phil has always been ready to offer help when needed, and has always followed through without any further prodding. Further, he seems to think about things a lot and therefore is able to make suggestions that lead to improvements. Knowing Phil has been a distinct pleasure; we hope that our relationship can go on for many years to come.
Now, since it is about 11 o'clock, I'd like to introduce our guest speaker, Mark Witte.who will tell us about SunWest. I guess it's high time since we've been meeting here every Sunday for over a year. However, I do this with more than a touch of sadness since I've been informed that Mark will be leaving SunWest at the end of the month to take a position with the Episcopal Homes Foundation in Layfayette, California. Mark, we wish you well in your new endeavor.
Feb 28, 1999
Good Morning. In the Press-Enterprise, I noticed that a pastor at the Dwelling Place Church sponsored a meeting on Friday night relative to the Y2K problem, and that panelists included the Hemet Police Chief, the Hemet Fire Chief, the President of Valley Merchants Bank, and an ear, nose and throat specialist, as well as someone from Southern Cal Edison and someone from GTE. I guess that the panelists were chosen to assure people that there would be no problems; however, if I were looking for panelists that knew something about the real potential problem, computer software, I couldn't have chosen a more unknowledgeable group of people. Since Bob Beggs, about a month ago, suggested that I say something about Y2K, I'll take this opportunity to say a few words, but to really give you an education would require a full morning program.
Therefore , in summary; I don't think that there will be major problems but this is something that one can never be sure of. My feeling is that if a particular problem develops, some knowledgable person will usually be immediately available to supply a remedy that bypasses the computer results. What fears I have stem from small operations, companies or governmental units, who still have no in-house software knowledge; who bought computer programs years ago from an outfit that no longer exists, and who bought very good programs that worked well all these years without anyone having to be called upon to clear up some problem. These entities might just get surprised because of their ignorance; but the impact, probably, would be local.
Essentially all computer programs written within the past 20 years have been written in advanced languages. Within these programs, one can say "Search for a particular number", and if during the search you find that number, let me know where that number is, or you can then use an "If statement" saying that if the number has a certain value, change it to this other value; for example; if you find the number 1900, change it to 2000. So, as I see it, programs can be readily modified if somebody knowledgeable is given the job of making the modifications.
Parable or Something.
A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article which makes a good prelude to our annual meeting. The heading was: The Age of Divine Disunity: Faith Now Springs From a Hodgepodge of Beliefs. The first thing that struck me about this article was it seemed to run counter to our more general belief that religious fundamentalism, as espoused by tele-evangelists, has been on the upswing and is a serious threat to our religious freedom. It might be true that fundamentalism is to some extent on the upswing, but there also seems to be a counter-revolution towards disunity.
Let me first read some people's views that are cited in the article: "I'm an Episcopalian, and I think of myself as a practicing non-Jew," says Katherine Powell Cohen, a 36-year-old English teacher in San Francisco. "I call myself a Christian Buddhist, but sort of tongue-in-cheek," says Maitreya Badami, 30, who works in the Contra Costa, California public defender's office. "I'm a Memmonite hyphen Unitarian Universalist who practices Zen meditation," says Ralph Imhoff, 57, a retired educator from Chandler, Arizona. He further says that he joined the Unitarian Universalist Church because he was "comfortable not having a label for a higher being." But he still considers himself a Mennonite, the religion of his birth. The article then goes on to state: "The new religions are an offshoot of the globalization of practically everything, as formerly exotic cultures and religions are suddenly accessible in every way. ...For the traditional denominations, this cross-pollination presents an excruciating dilemma. If the denomination headquarters bends the rules to accommodate the hybrids, they risk watering down their identities. But if they stick to the straight and narrow, they may define themselves out of existence---and extinction is a growing possibility. Membership in mainline Protestant denominations peaked around 1965. Over the same period, the number of Conservative Jewish synagogues in the U.S. has shrunk to about 770 from 850. ... Meanwhile, membership is growing in organized religions that take a broad view of God---for example, where pastors use Eastern and Western scriptures in their Sunday sermons and will marry people of all religious backgrounds. Unitarian Universalists have increased their numbers by 25% over the past 15 years. Two religious movements rooted in 19th-century transcendentalism, Unity and Science of Mind, have exploded. Fifteen years ago, there were 400 Unity churches in the U.S.; now there are 1000.
The article then describes many examples, the one that concerns us says: The Unitarian Universalists officially made paganism part of their world view in 1995, thus giving Judy Ellis, a minister's daughter and nursury-school teacher in Wellfleet, Mass, the opportunity to observe Imbolc, a pagan festival, in her church last week. 'I celebrate a little bit of this, a little bit of that,' Ms. Ellis says, 'I like a more spontaneous, joyful experience of the sacred.'"
I sort of touched upon this subject before. As long as we consider a person's theology to be a private matter that is not overwhelmingly important in every-day life; and as long as we don't tend to overdo services in a particular direction, so that some individuals get to feel uncomfortable, we can even get to be rather proud of "spiritual hash". I'm afraid this is not what has happened in the UU Church in Riverside. I gather that they had a knock-down, drag-out meeting on the 20th to discuss their polarization. I haven't heard how this turned out. Perhaps we'll hear from Syd and Kathy Mason when they again show up.
March 7, 1999
March 14, 1999
Parable or Something.
Since we, sort of, discussed this before, I'd like to read some excerpts from an article in Church & State entitled "Apocalypse Now?: How Religious Right Fear-Mongers Are Exploiting the Y2K Computer Problem For Cash And Political Gain". I think you all know my sentiments, that the computer snafoos will cause mainly local, rather minor upsets. But here is the opposite picture, and I quote:
"Right-wing Christian fundamentalist activist Gary North believes he has seen the future --- and it doesn't look rosy. On Jan.1, 2000, he asserts, the so-called 'Y2K computer bug' will spark widespread power failures, shut down banks and stores and paralyze communications and travel networks, spawning societal chaos. 'If the computer failures are sufficiently widespread, urban society will collapse,' North writes in an article on his site on the World Wide Web. 'Without banks, water, sewers, communications and electrical power, cities will become nightmares. Under such conditions, the Federal government would have to declare martial law...In a Y2K crisis, the public will call for emergency actions. Congress will not object.'"
"For North, the Y2K problem is all part of God's plan. Y2K, he has written, 'will call into question science, technology, the free market and the welfare state. It will call into question all of modern humanism. Christians will be in a position to win this battle. I'll put it bluntly: Y2K is about handing out blame. The corporate judgment of God always is.'"
"North is not the only Religious Right figure worked up over Y2K these days. Better known leaders, include the Rev. Jerry Falwell, TV preacher Pat Robertson and psychologist James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; all are equally concerned about the so-called 'millennium computer bug.'"
"As the nation inches toward the year 2000, Y2K hysteria has gripped many segments of the Religious Right. Prompted by TV preachers and other fundamentalist leaders, some church members are stockpiling food and water, hoarding gold and silver, and preparing to raid bank accounts before the end of the year."
"Critics and computer experts note that the Religious Right kingpins spreading Y2K hysteria have a vested interest in the matter: many are benefitting financially from it by selling Y2K books, videos and other materials or using the issue to increase their public profiles and win more followers. Falwell is a good example. The Lynchburg evangelist is selling a $28 videotape, 'A Christian's Guide to the Millennium Bug.' On the tape, Falwell urges born-again Christians to store food and water in the basement and get their hands on a few guns to protect their stash. 'If I'm blessed with a little food and my family is inside the house with me, I've got to be sure that I can persuade others not to mess with us,' Falwell says."
"Falwell also has a cozy relationship with Essentials, a Colorado-based company that is selling 'emergency food supplies' and Y2K doomsday tapes. Falwell has endorsed the company's line of SafeTrek canned goods, and in an ad in February's National Liberty Journal, Falwell's, tabloid newspaper, he writes, "SafeTrek foods offers you an affordable and convenient solution should Y2K prevent food supplies from being conveyed to your hometown. I have SafeTrek foods in my home as a simple precaution. I urge you to call SafeTrek foods today and learn how they can help you be prepared ---just in case.' Safetrek foods, which come sealed in cans direct from 'a brand new canning factory in Bozeman, Montana, in the heart of grain country,' aren't cheap. A one-year 'emergency food supply' for four people costs $4,895 plus shipping costs that range from $452 to $640."
Near the end of the article, there is another interesting paragraph: "On July 6 'The 700 Club' returned to the topic. Although Robertson was absent, guest host Harold Calvin Ray took an unusual perspective of the Y2K problem. The millennium bug, Ray asserted, is an orchestrated effort by unnamed nefarious forces to create one-world government."
I guess that all of this shows that lots of money can be made by playing to people's fears. People can be led to fear almost anything. Fear probably was an advantageous survival mechanism throughout all of evolution, but it certainly isn't clear that this advantage still holds.
On a more personal note all this reminds me of things nuclear. Back in the 1950's, when Eisenhower was pushing civil defense against a nuclear attack, the small company that I worked for decided to market fallout shelters. I helped design our model, but my heart wasn't in the effort since I thought that these were useless items unless they came supplied with a machine gun. I could just picture what might happen after a nuclear attack when only one family in a neighborhood owned such a shelter. Somewhat like being the only family that had food, after the Y2K catastrophe, as visualized by Jerry Falwell.
On a different aspect, I always thought that antagonism towards nuclear waste disposal often bordered on the ridiculous. For example, whenever the Atomic Energy Commission or now the Department of Energy would propose burying nuclear waste in geological formations that had been stable for the past 100 million years or so, vociferous activists would be against such burial "because people could become irradiated if the geologic conditions ever changed and the waste was regurgitated": and, of course, no one could ever guarantee against such an eventuality. My question always was: "wouldn't there still be any instruments, like the equivalent of Geiger counters, around at that time to warn people to get out of the area?" Somewhat similar to the Y2K problem: If computers start spitting out meaningless or confusing data, won't there be people around to make intelligent decisions and to take appropriate action?
March 21, 1999
Parable or Something.
Two things happened this past week which again brings me to the topic "where does one draw the line"? The most recent nudge came from a front-page article in the LA Times having the headline: "It's Exam Time for Germany's Universities" with the introductory sentences reading "The nation's students pay no fees, get no grades, have few job prospects---and take forever to graduate. A money crunch is putting the costly traditions at risk.." More generally, I've often wondered how Germany can pay for its societal costs which include universal free medical care, unemployment payments for three years, rather lengthy paid maternal leave, 4 to 6 week vacations for almost all workers, and hefty retirement pensions. Without really studying the situation, the only thing that I can conclude is that taxes are somewhat higher than here in the US and that military expenditures are substantially lower; I suspect that the latter is the dominant factor. Then I ask myself, what would the US be like if military expenditures were not a significant portion of Federal expenditures? (Incidentally, I point out that our military expenditures are not just the budgetted amount for the Department of Defense. We must also include the expenditures of the CIA, the NSA, and considerable amounts in the research budgets of other agencies, for example in the Department of Energy. At that point in my thinking, I get confusing signals. What would we do with all the unemployed people now supported by these government programs? Lay them off and give them unemployment compensation? That certainly would not let them live in the life-style that they have gotten accustomed to. Perhaps, we could make a gradual transition from excessive defense expenditures to greater societal expenditures. Perhaps, there is a better place to draw the line than either of the extremes characterized by the US and Germany. All this again leads me to the question: Where does one draw the line? Something to think about; something without a clear-cut correct answer.
The second thing that happened which brought me to the question, "where does one draw the line" was our Wednesday Forum discussion where we touched upon bringing people with varying viewpoints under the same umbrella by either concentrating on a narrow topic that we could agree on while neglecting other, perhaps major philosophical differences,: or by broadening the umbrella so that people with a wide-variety of viewpoints could come together without feeling uncomfortable. I guess that there is always merit in trying to bring people together, to provide vehicles for interaction so that commonalities are highlighted rather than differences. But some differences are so great that they cannot be ignored. Can we really, in good conscience, extend a hand of friendship to fundamentalist religions that rate all non-believers as second-class citizens, that would infringe upon the freedom of others to worship or non-worship as they pleased, or that advocated female circumcision, etc. etc.? Or can we really , in good conscience, water down our belief system so that individuals with beliefs similar to these do not feel uncomfortable being members of our Fellowship. More generally, with regard to Unitarian Universalism, where does one draw the line between diversity and homogeneity. If we overly strive for tolerance, to attract people with different beliefs and opinions, we will spend much to much time in what amounts to proselytizing and, if successful, in trying to reach a consensus on issues that will come up from time to time. If we strive too much towards uniformity of belief, we will be too small to ever have the power necessary to make a substantial impact. Where does one draw the line? Personally, I have always thought that UU's, generally, have tended to draw the line at a reasonable point. This has not been true with atheist or even humanist organizations; these have a narrower umbrella and therefore have remained too small and have, generally, been considered too far out of the mainstream to have major impact. What are your opinions: "where should one draw the line"? I guess, to some extent the first ever UUA Statement of Conscience discussed at our Forum is an attempt to draw the line somewhere.
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