Great Debate: Is There An Afterlife?

Recently watched a terrific debate with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Rabbi David Wolpe, and Rabbi Bradley Artson. The debate subject was Is There An Afterlife. Here's the link if interested. http://bit.ly/dHrAja  I am not usually impressed by religious arguments but these rabbis were indeed impressive. If I had encountered such tolerance, open mindedness, and wisdom among religion believers I would probably have a much better view of religion. I don't find their arguments sufficiently persuasive but I like how they present them. If we could find a way to spread this tolerant, reason-based view there would never be anyone who wanted to kill or die because of what they believed and the world would be a much safer, better place.

Of course, Hitchens and Harris were in excellent form as well. In Hitchens' opening remarks he made a serious point and got laughs from the audience by noting that while we all might expect the tap on the shoulder and the word that the party is over, even worse is to be told that you have to leave but the party will go on without you. The fact that he has esophageal cancer and is presumably dying from it lends his words a certain weight that adds to his very considerable eloquence. I liked his comment on the "stuff" we are made of being stardust, or nuclear waste, depending on how you look at it. That is information I knew from various sources although I had never heard it referred to as nuclear waste. Accurate enough, though. He often skewers the religious concept of original sin by noting that it stipulates we "are born sick and commanded to be well". One of his best zingers was to note that we all know what Muslim men get in the afterlife (the 72 virgins) and said "You know what the women get? They get their husbands back"! Appreciative laughter followed.

Sam Harris gave the statistic that 9 million children die every year before they reach the age of five. Presumably to make one wonder just how the deaths of 9 million children every year fits into the divine plan of a benevolent god. He also mentioned and gave a variation of the simulation argument popularized in some circles by the philosopher Nick Bostrom that basically lays out a plausible scenario whereby we could all be simulated people living simulated lives running on hard drives of the future. Harris noted the simulation could be being run by Mormons or some other religious group and therefore we might actually see Jesus coming to end everything.

Rabbi Artson made the valid point that often the worst of religion is compared to the best of science. Incidentally, it is gratifying that both rabbis can speak of physics theories such as parallel universes and multiverses or note that quantum mechanics and relativity can not be made to work together but do perfectly fine on their own.

I thought Rabbi Wolpe went a little adrift when responding to Sam Harris' point that most religions made incompatible claims about the nature of reality and the afterlife. He agreed that religions made incompatible claims and then went on to relate the story of a recent attendence at a religious conference where many religions were represented and told of how they all agreed there was a great deal of shared core similarity. It seems a weak argument to acknowledge incompatible claims and then say there is a core similarity.

At any rate, a very interesting discussion and one any thoughtful person should greatly enjoy.

Demise Of The Dictators

This was title of a recent Newsweek cover story by Fouad Ajami, professor at Johns Hopkins University, celebrating the revolutionary fervor sweeping the Mideast. The article gives some brief (and interesting)historical perspective and ends with the hopeful, "now they are making and claiming their own history". I have read a fair amount concerning events of that region, mostly trying to understand a culture that produces the fanatical religious and cultural excesses that can produce people who fly planes into buildings or strap on suicide belts/vests with the express purpose of turning themselves and nearby bystanders into bloody bits of flesh and bone scattered over the landscape. Not sure it's possible to understand. Probably a volatile mix of fundamentalist religion, cultural elements, lots of young people (especially young men), with joblessness, poverty, and hopelessness clouding their future.

I wish them success. It seems that the connectedness of social media and information technology played some role in the popular uprisings. Perhaps that will help make them feel part of the global community and less susceptible to allowing autocrats or theocrats to enslave them again. In the short term we will all most likely suffer as the soaring oil prices roil the global economy. Perhaps we will slide back into recession. Perhaps we need to. Oil shocks first happened in the 70s. We've had them more than once. How many times and how much pain before we do something about our addiction to oil?

Notable Quotes

"Dictating to dictators doesn't work; they are congenitally delusional about their own indispensibility".
                                                                               - Joe Klein, Time Magazine

"Without the crucial check of a free press - or independent legislatures and courts - democracy exists in name only".
                                                                              - Hannah Beech, Time Magazine

"Certainity about the next life is incompatible with tolerance in this one".
                                                                               - Sam Harris


I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
I was sad because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet. So I said, "Got any shoes you're not using?
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
Curiousity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.
If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?
There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I almost had a psychic girlfriend, but she left me before we met.
Okay, so what's the speed of dark?
How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
If everything seems to be going well, you've obviously overlooked something.
When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
Everybody has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
                                                                                     - Steven Wright

Revolution In Egypt

Fareed Zakaria is a journalist and author with serious credentials on both foreign and domestic issues. He does incisive, in-depth analysis on many subjects that I greatly admire. A recent Time Magazine article he did about the revolution in Egypt was up to his usual high standards. However, one comment about "overreaction - common in Israel - that brands every move toward social conservatism as one toward jihad", brought me to a rare difference of opinion with him. He said, "asking women to wear veils is different from making men wear suicide belts". I think he is way off with that statement. To start with, at the very least, that's a very slippery slope. Let's be very generous and assume that at first they ask women to wear the veil. How long does anyone think it would take before that became a demand? Then why not order a complete head to toe covering to make them truly modest? With beatings and lashings and honor killings for those reluctant to live inside a cloth bag whenever venturing outside their house - only with a male relative, of course.

He also offers some troubling statistics while musing about whether Egypt will have a functioning democracy, theocracy, or whatever. He cites a 2010 Pew Research Center survey that asked questions about Egyptian attitudes. 84% support stoning as a punishment for adultery. 84% favor the death penalty for Muslims who leave the religion. How's that for enlightened views? In contrast, he cites a 2007 Pew survey that found 90% support freedom of religion, 88% an impartial judiciary, 80% free speech, and 75% are opposed to censorship. So what does it all mean? All too common cognitive dissonance often found in people. I will never forget quite a few years ago reading about a poll of Americans that found that a majority would repeal the Bill of Rights if it was put to a vote! I remember being appalled about that.

In spite of all that, I'm cautiously optimistic about events in Tunisia and Egypt. Often the dictatorial autocrats that rule in so many Muslim lands use tribalism, nationlism and religion to distract their supressed people from the dreariness of their lives. Stirring them up with claims about outsiders with evil intentions was a good strategy for keeping them from looking too hard at their own shortcomings. (Come to think of it... that's pretty much the right wing handbook in this country, isn't it?) Hopefully, a more open society will allow them to upgrade their attitudes to something more conducive to creating gainful employment and educational opportunities for their youthful populations instead of spewing slogans such as "Islam is the solution" or wanting to join the jihad in Afghanistan.

Just Words?

I used to not give much thought to the words "belief" or "believe" except to evaluate the subject to which they referred. Similarly, with the word "innocent", which has a much different connotation when used to describe, say, the finding of a jury in a criminal proceeding than when used to incite or inflame passions. For example, if you hear that, "3000 innocent Americans died in a terrorist attack." or, "A million innocent babies are aborted every year." you should know the word "innocent" is there to emphasize the outrage, the injustice of the act. It is intended to be prejudicial, to push your emotional buttons, to make you feel rather than think. When I hear the word "innocent" used in a manner calculated - consciously or unconsciously - to prejudice, I tend to wonder, like Sheriff Little Bill in the Clint Eastwood film Unforgiven: "Innocent of what"?  The 3000 or so people who died in the Twin Towers almost certainly included some number of thoroughly despicable people. I would suppose that statistically you could expect that some were guilty of heinous acts at some point in their lives. To acknowledge that takes nothing away from the fact that flying planes into buildings to kill a lot of people who didn't do anything to you is an act of destructive lunacy. An aborted fetus is innocent only because it has not had the opportunity to do anything good or evil. It could grow up to be Einstein or Hitler.

Recently in Newsweek I read a little piece about (I think) the 5 most common questions people asked on an online dating site. The one that caught my attention was: Do you believe in miracles? So people are evaluating prospective mates based on how deeply they are immersed in fantasy land rather than their grasp on reality? Has there ever been any objective, verifiable evidence that a professed miracle has ever occurred? Science has begun to examine beliefs where they occur: in the brain, by using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). This is fascinating, of course, but unlikely to cause any sudden outbreak of reason and rationality. I suspect that those most likely to believe in miracles are also those least likely to read scientific articles or ponder scientific conclusions. It is potentially instructive, as well as humorous, to recall Mark Twain's observation that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth (yet another over used and abused word in my opinion) is still putting on its shoes. We've always known that people believe things that aren't factual so why doesn't that make us question our own beliefs?

Of Microbes and Divine Physics

My March 2011 issue of Discover Magazine has a couple of standout articles. One is The Ecosystem Inside, a very informative article about the trillions of microbes that live in the human gut and "could be the key to fighting disease without antibiotics". I think they could be the key to much more than that and the article does explore some other fascinating findings. Most people may feel kind of icky at hearing that they are host to an "enormous population of microbes, including bacteria, fungi, and viruses", living on and in the human body, mostly in the gut. The article notes there are 20 times as many of these microbes as there are cells in the human body. It compares the population of microbes that live on and in us to a lush rain forest, a diverse ecosystem. That diversity seems crucial to good health. When we take antibiotics we disrupt that ecosystem, sometimes with unpleasant effects. A healthy population of microbes seems to suppress growth of pathogenic organisms. I've read in this and other publications how our gut microbes may interact with our immune systems and may determine whether we are obese or not. A case I'd heard about some time ago that most would find seriously icky reported on a woman with a "life-threatening  Clostridium difficile infection". She had chronic diarrhea, lost 60 pounds over eight months and had an "extremely poor prognosis". In desperation, her physician mixed a small sample of her husband's stool with saline and injected it into her colon. Within 24 hours her diarrhea had stopped. Her physician later found that the woman's microbial flora had been nearly completely replaced by her husband's microbes.

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Another article said "A group of scientists are embarking on a controversial search for God within the fractured logic of quantum physics". Controversial indeed! Apparently even scientists aren't immune to the lure of seeking God where gaps in our knowledge exist. We hear from a particle physicist, John Polkinghorne, who is also an Anglican priest. We hear about Abdus Salam, Nobel prize winner and a practicing Muslim, who also happened to unify two of the fundamental forces of nature - electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force.

As yet, physics experiments can not demonstrate that God exists - and does not need to since the burden of proof always rests with those making extraordinary claims - but Polkinghorne says, "the mysteries of quantum objects leave room for God in an explanation of the physical world."  Of course, scientists who happen to be religious perceive and express that religious belief far differently than, say, evangelicals. Or even moderates. They may take a leap of faith that takes them off the solid foundation of scientific principles and into the land of speculation but they don't usually wander too far down the path that leads to fantasy land.

I recently read an interesting article by Hugo de Garis, PhD. He is an artificial intelligence researcher and has some disturbing beliefs about the future of artificial intelligence (billions of deaths and possibly the elimination of the human race). He also believes godlike, massively intelligent machines he calls artilects which are many trillions of times more intelligent than man could be capable of creating a universe.

Well okay, but what I found also interesting was his comparison of deism with theism. He defines deism as, "the belief that there is a 'deity,' i.e., a creator of the universe, a grand designer, a cosmic architect, that conceived and built our universe." He defines theism as, "the belief in a deity that also cares about the welfare of individual humans." Deism I am open to, whereas I find theism ridiculous. The evidence against it is enormous." I think I agree. I would not be too shocked to learn that some sort of superintelligence made the universe. I would be very shocked if it was that jealous, angry, vindictive Abrahamic god with the unseemly, inordinate interest in what people do with each other while naked. And who decided 13.7 billion years ago while creating this incredible universe that I would be born on this 3rd rock from the sun and cursed with a questioning mind. And will deliver me to be tortured for eternity for that questioning mind and its lack of "faith".

"Palin Blasts Administration's Handling of Egypt"

This is a headline from today on MSNBC.com that I couldn't resist. This article quoted from her recent interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network. I usually try to avoid reading what Sarah Palin has to say. It's kind of depressing that anyone with so little of substance to say has an audience.

But okay, I'll take the bait. First, is the Obama administration "handling" Egypt? Looks a bit too chaotic there at this time for anyone to be handling anything. The article also quotes her as saying the U.S. must find out who is behind all the turmoil and that we should not stand for an Egyptian government led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Well sure, you wouldn't expect the Christian Broadcasting Network to do a hard-hitting, in-depth interview with Palin. Not exactly their forte. But how could anyone miss the deep irony of Palin announcing on an American religious network that we should not stand for an Egyptian religious group running their government. I certainly agree that would be a tragedy. But I would suppose that the Christian Broadcasting Network would love it if some of their own could gain some control of our government. And that would be equally tragic.

Old Tech Never Dies

NPR science reporter Robert Krulwich got my attention a couple of days ago with a story that asked anyone to name any tool, machine, or human invention from any place, any time, any culture that is no longer being made today. I would have thought that most such things were as extinct as the dinosaurs. Apparently that is not the case. Things like parts for a steam engine car, Paleothic stone hammers, arrowheads, and every item checked on from an 1895 Montgomery Ward catalogue are still being made. Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine and Cool Tools blogger, said he couldn't fing any tool, technology, or invention that disappeared completely from Earth. Astounding, huh?