A nice keyboard

Ever so often I stumble across another annoying feature Microsoft is putting into their products. It never ceases to amaze me how creative the folks at Microsoft are at mis-designing products. Their products are always sleek, elegant, easy to use, and contain some hidden monstrosity under the folds.

At work, we have Microsoft Keyboards – just the most unbelievably hideous trap ever to be inflicted upon the unsuspecting world. The keyboard look nice enough, and is OK to use. Look at the picture. Notice those three little flat keys just between the ENTER and the numpad? Above the upper-arrow and below the “delete” key lurks a monster. Yes, it is a SHUTDOWN KEY! In the middle of the keyboard!

Need I tell you the details? You type a document, send out your little finger to press “up” or “del”, and all of a sudden the computer is shutting itself off.

And today I encountered another trap, at home. Here I am working at my computer (sometimes I still use MS windows, you see). And out of the blue pops a message. “Do you want to save?”. Well, why would I, in the middle of a messy revision? I press ESC, and the computer shuts down. Got me: It had an automatic update that was so much more important than my work…

So, shut down your automatic updates on Windows, double check MS products before you buy them, etc. All these advice work, but in my experience, they don’t work very well. remember: MS will always  have the upper hand. There’s always another snark hidden beneath the table, ready to jump at you when you least expect it.

Use Linux.

The most terrifying aspect of the C programming language is closely related to it’s core strength. Programming in C is all about using pointers – which are memory locations. Thus, in C, when you need a variable to work with to store numbers and manipulate them, you don’t have to deal with the variable directly – you use it’s address, instead. This is, of course, a really stupid thing to do when you just have to use a single variable to store a single number. But it is an enormously useful strategy when sending that variable off to a distant procedure, or when dealing with large arrays.

The great strength of the C programming language is in this use of pointers. You can add them, multiply them, crunch them, and control them. They are at your hands. But with great power comes great responsibility. The trouble with the C programming language is that it is all too easy to misuse the power endowed upon you by the compiler. A stray pointer might point to a wrong place. Sometimes it points at a very critical place in your computer, and carelessly manipulating the data where it points might lead to computer crashes, data corruption, and worse. There is also the danger of memory leaks. This happens when the programmer asks the system to hand him a block of computer memory, reserved for his uses, untouchable by other processes. The system returns the pointer to the beginning of the memory block, and reserves the block. The is done using the C command “malloc”. The programmer needs to return that pointer back to the system, so that the memory block can be returned to the general memory pool. This is done vie the appropriately named “free” procedure. Often enough, the programmer forgets to call “free”. Or, if he does, he is using the wrong address.

These problems are so scary for programmers and system administrators, that most modern-day programming languages no longer allow you to roam freely in the world of memory addresses. These days, writing C# or JAVA, the pointers are hidden by the compiler, so that the programmer does not use them directly. this seems to save the programmer some amount of head-ache. But I personally feel, each time I use either of these modern languages, like a person confined to a wheelchair. Sure, I can go places. But it is cumbersome and inconvenient.

So, assuming that you wish, like I do, to write good old C code without all the needless bickering, but you also wish to avoid memory leaks, here are some simple rules which will help you save face:

Rule 1: Always write “free” just after “malloc”

This one should be trivial.

Suppose you want to manipulate an array of integers. You need to allocate them. So you write “malloc”. Don’t wait. Jump to the next line and free the memory.

int *p = (int*) malloc ( sizeof(int) * n );

free (p);

Now go in between and write your code:

int *p = (int*) malloc ( sizeof(int) * n );

//... do your stuff

free (p);

That way you never forget to free memory.

Rule 2: Never, ever, work with the allocated pointer. Use a copy!

Do not use the allocated pointer for doing stuff. Do not even use it to access memory. Always copy it first, and use only the copy in your code.

int *p_allocated = (int*) malloc ( sizeof(int) * n );

int *p_copy = p_allocated;

// do your stuff with p_copy, not with p_allocated!

// e.g.:

while (n--) { *p_copy++ = n; }

...

free (p_allocated);

Thus you are safe from [accidentally] changing the pointer and returning the wrong address over to free. You can freely play with the p_copy pointer, like in the example above.

Trust me, this small tip will save you endless trouble.

Rule 3: Don’t be parsimonious. Use more memory.

Always start by allocating more memory than you need.  After you finish debugging, go back and cut on memory use. If you need an array 1000 integers long, allocate 2000, and only after you make sure everything else is OK – only then go back and cut it down to 1000.

Rule 4: Always carry array length along with you

Wherever your array goes, there should go with it it’s length. A nice trick is to allocate an array sized n+1, and save n into it’s 0 place:

int *p_allocated = (int*) malloc ( sizeof(int) * (n+1) );
int *p_copy = p_allocated+1;
p_copy[-1] = n;
// do your stuff with p_copy, not with p_allocated!
free (p_allocated);

This way the array length is kept before the first place-holder of the array. This is somewhat dangerous, but it can make things easier.

Rule 5: Be consistent. And save comments

The most important thing is to be consistent and to write down what you do. I am always amazed at how many programmers seem to think that comments are a waste of time. They are imperative. Without comments, you probably won’t remember what you did. Imagine returning to your code a year after you wrote it, and spending  countless hour trying to recall what that index does. Better to spend a couple of seconds writing it down.

Also, if you are consistent, you will not fail often. Always use the same mechanism for passing arrays and pointers. Don’t change the way you do things lightly. If you decide to use my previous trick, use it everywhere, or you might find yourself referring back to a nonexistent place because you forgot what type of reference you chose.

This is not because I abhor of readership, but because I feel that in order to say an intelligent thing about a subject, I need time to contemplate. This time I did the contemplation before it happened. So I am about to do my thing while the wikileaks scandal is still raging. Here are my 2 cents. And I will start with the sound-byte:

19 year-old boys are not adults. Give these boys weapons (the ultimate in big-boom-generating toys), train them to kill, and send them on to a conflict-ridden zone. Now, guess: what they will do there?

If you even imagine that they will do anything other than killing, then you’re a damn fool.

The army is not the problem. It is simply not the solution. You can’t expect a bunch of kids with big guns to build a nation state. Nor should you send them on to do serious police work. It is not their job, it is not their expertise. You train them to fight a war, send them out to face an enemy, and they find themselves in the middle of civilian population. Anyone seriously suggesting that no atrocities will ensue is either a god-damn lier, or pathologically stupid.

Let me repeat myself, at the risk of being crude:

An army is not a peace-keeping force. It is a fighting force.

The principle is the same everywhere. The Pentagon buffoons claiming that the problem is with wikileaks itself are no different than similar official baffoons worldwide. (By the way, you have to see this video. That clown actually asks that documents, published already on the web, be returned to the US government before anyone sees them! It is like a commander in the army who sent me a fax, and then called me and asked if I could re-fax it to him, because I was not supposed to see it!). It reminds me of Israeli authorities (as well as Israeli philosopher Asa Kasher), claiming that crimes done by IDF soldiers in the Palestinian Territories are “isolated incidents”. No, people, no! When you put kids with bombs within a city, and tell them there’s an enemy, they bomb. “Unwarranted deaths” are not isolated incidents, they are exactly what is to be expected.

Now, the wrong moral is simple: the US (or britain, or Israel, or whoever sent the army) is criminal. But that is wrong. The army was sent in to fight because a war had to be fought. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was a good thing. As was the Americans and Brits taking down Saddam Hussein. It needed to be done, and sending out the Army was the way to do it. But keeping the 19 year-olds with their big guns stick there for decades – this was a disastrous, criminal blander. The trouble isn’t with the Army. It is with government nitwits, thinking that if the army can fight a war, then it could bring the peace. It cannot. If your war goes on for a decade, then you’re an idiot. After you won the war, you need to pull off the army, and send in the peace-keeping force. That force should be a whole lot different.

• The army needs to be young and tough. 19 year old are good.
• The peace-keeping force needs to be aged, and thorough. 39 year olds are good.

• The army is there to go for the kill, to use it’s weapons.
• The peace-keeping force must refrain from using weapons.

• The army should be hierarchical, well, army.
• The peace-keeping force should be civilian and bureaucratic.

Etc. Look at Thomas Barnett down on TED. He’s an expert. He puts it far better than I can. What I can add is this fable:

The example of the abundant car-crash

I was once a poor student in Jerusalem. I woke up early in the morning, ate breakfast, and went to the university. Below my apartment I saw a car crash. A driver missed the stop-sign, went into a busy road, and killed three people. Terrible. The driver, certainly, is guilty of criminal negligence. Certainly. But what if I told you that every day, as I walked to the university, I would see an accident at the very same spot? This little bit of information should give you some pause. It should send you off to inspect the junction. True, not every driver crashes on that spot. Only one driver per day. That is not much, but it is enough to indite the civil engineer who designed the junction. It should be enough to send an angry mod down to the city council. It is not their duty to make sure that no accidents ever happen. It is certainly their duty to design junctions in such a way as to minimize risk.

Sending an army of Big Boys with Big Guns to fight a war is good (BBBG’s is a great acronym. It is no incidence that Big Guns on google is half Porn. I don’t link it. Google it yourself) . Leaving them on the scene for a decade is criminal negligence. Atrocities ensue, and if indeed, as is the case of the IDF in Palestine, it is the case that atrocities are not abundant, it is to be seen as no short than miraculous. Miracles are rare. Building your politics on miracles is a fool-proof way to fail.

Nancy Goldstein, down at the Washington Post, has a piece about the race for senate in Delaware, where she claims for the underdog. There are two candidates in Delaware. One seems like an experienced, rational, thoughtful, man. The other is a disgruntled, confused, and quite wacky, woman (But, no, this is not a gender issue!). Whom would you choose? Nancy Goldstein chooses the wacky girl, which is the one easier to identify with. The rational man is too arrogant. Too know-it-all. Most of all, he is not in need of your sympathy, so he doesn’t get it. Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party candidate in Delaware, was more human – erring, confused, stressed. It stands in her favor in the debate, though the magic is less likely to actually help her win the race.

This is not new stuff. Those who know ancient Greek history should be reminded of Aristides and Themistocles. The others would do well to recall the surprising success of extreme politics throughout the 20th century. It should also remind you of what happens on shows like American Idol, where professionals have meager chance of winning. It is always the not-so-perfect girl-next-door who wins, seemingly “against all odds” – but very likely because she is not so annoyingly perfect. Or have a look at this fact: poll after poll shows that the Israeli public is mostly moderate, but abhors of moderate politicians. A majority wants good policy, but they want it delivered by flawed politicians.

So, if the public is much better at choosing policies than it is in choosing policy-makers, then perhaps, if we let the public choose the policies instead of the policy makers, we will enjoy better policies.

I also wish to thank my dear friend Dr. Uri Maoz, who was the first to confront me with the following facts.

Here we go.

You just chose to go on and read this post. You made the choice explicit by clicking your mouse button. Why did you? Because you wanted to read the brilliant things I have to say. Right? Let’s elaborate the trivial and well known process which took place here.

1. You saw an invitation to read my post
2. You thought about it
3. You made a conscious deliberation with yourself
4. You decided you want to read it
5. You clicked the mouse

So, you, the reader, made a conscious decision, activating your free will, which resulted in your brain sending a neural message down your spinal cord to your finger, which clicked the button. Now, suppose your finger didn’t click the mouse, or that your hand slipped to the right and clicked on the wrong button. Then you would know that your body violated your mind’s decision, and would probably look for an outside reason for that strange occurrence. Actually, if you were an epileptic patient going through Electrocorticography, it would be very natural for such a thing to happen.

Don’t be alarmed. I’ll hereby elaborate:

The Setup

Some epileptic patients, suffering from severe seizures, and having no hope of pharmaceutical cure, undergo brain surgery. Epilepsy is sometimes caused by a bunch of wayward neurons going out of control within the brain. If the surgeon can pinpoint them, he may cure your epilepsy by removing those wicked few. That would be a harmless procedure. Hopefully, it would be the only thing required – if not to cure the epilepsy, at least to make it more bearable. But in order to pinpoint those evil neurons, the surgeons need you to get along with an open skull and an array of electrodes on your brain, and that for some considerable duration. During that time you cannot do very much, so you participate in experiments. On one such you might occasion to meet a student of Benjamin Libet, who will persuade you to come to a room where you may view some interesting slides.

In the room you find two buttons. One of them moves the slideshow forwards, the other backwards. I hope that it will not come as a surprise to you that the brain researchers are able to decipher the neural pathways in your brain leading to either your right thumb pushing the FWD button, or your lent thumb pushing on the BWD button. Actually, they can do more. They can view the deliberation process, though they understand very little of it. But they can easily find the exact location in the brain where an interesting phenomena happens. Electric potential is being  accumulated there, and a single neuron fires either through synapse 1, resulting in your thumb hitting FWD, or synapse 2, resulting in BWD. They can observe the accumulation of ions, and, thus, correctly tell, in advance, which it will be.

An Unchosen Volition

But that is not ground breaking news. Not yet. Nor should you be very surprised to know that the scientists running the experiment have a trick up their sleeve by which they can influence the choice you make. Indeed, often the subjects know that their hand moved in contrast to their volition. They acknowledge the fact that it was the researcher who caused their right hand to more, when they actually wanted to move the left. This happens, of course, when the researcher triggered the neural pathway leading right, some short time before the accumulation of ions on the left synapse could trigger. It should also not come as a shock to learn that the researcher, if acting cunningly enough, is able to control the volition itself – if he acts at the right time. He may cause the patient to press whatever button he – the researcher – wants to, and the patient would always think that he himself wanted that button pressed, and would always find post-hoc excuses for his unchosen volition.

Lesson 1:

Volition can be influenced by electronic stimulus to the brain.

The Crux

But the options we have covered so far include a very narrow windows of opportunity, which we have, as yet, left untouched. There is a short time gap, just before some critical neuron fires, when the decision can clearly be seen to have been arrived at. It would still take some milliseconds for the electric potential to arrive to it’s full, for the neuron to fire, for the brain to calculate specific instructions for the hand. But the researcher can already identify (correctly) what hand it is going to be. He can wire the system so that a switch is triggered, and the correct slide automatically shows on the screen.

If the timing is incorrect, and the slide changes just before the patient can press the physical button, the patient will usually be very amused. He would understand, correctly, that he can now control the system using his mind, without the need to actually move his hands. Researchers claim this procedure generates very happy patients. But if the timing is just right, a very interesting thing happens – the patient will show signs of anxiety. He will eventually become frightened. He would leave the room, never again to take part in any such experiment. When asked, these patients will claim that the system is “bewitched”, that it can tell their future thoughts.

Four Other Lessons

1. Human volition is determined unconsciously by brain computation
2. Consciousness is informed post-hoc of the content of the volition
3. Hence, consciousness has no immediate connection with volition
4. The idea that consciousness takes part in volition is so trivial to us, that experience countering that idea is frightening and very hard to accept

I find the last bit the most revealing. We are so used to viewing ourselves as a “conscious soul” trapped inside a material body, controlling it through volition, that it is excruciatingly tough for us to come to terms with the truth.

My View: you are not your consciousness

You are not your consciousness. You are conscious of some things, and unconscious of other things. The content of your volitions is computed in your brain, and that computation is what you call “thinking”. It is something that you do. You are aware of bits and pieces of it, not of all of it, and even that only in retrospect.

The theistic mistake is natural. After all, our introspective experience is our consciousness. It shows us that we consciously think, then wish, and then, as a result of that wish, our fingers move and things happen in the world outside our consciousness. But that is a fragmented view of the self. Only if you see yourself, mistakingly, as a fragment of yourself, a conscious bit of soul inside the brain, a little homunculus trapped inside a material machine, only then do you succumb to the dilemma posed by Brendano:

Forfeit the facts, or acknowledge your irrelevance.

If the little homunculus (you) is just informed, and even that only post hoc, of the wishes of the brain and of the actions of the body, then he has no free will, and no moral responsibility. But that is an absurd view. For whose exactly is this brain? Whose body is this? There is no homunculus inside your body, which is you. There is only you, having a body, and a brain. And you are only aware of a small and selected set of processes which happen in your brain. This does not mean that consciousness is not important. We don’t really know what it is, or why it has developed. It does not mean that conscious processes are unimportant (It just might. We have no idea). But All these are irrelevant to Brendano’s questions. No matter what consciousness is, it is only a small part of what you are. And the things you are conscious of are but a tiny fraction of the things you actually do. And that includes thinking, feeling, and wishing, which are all complicated things, comprising of a myriad of unconscious subprocesses.

This has legal and moral implications. I will get to some of them in my next post.

Brendano’s questions are, in order:

1. Why is the human mechanism better or more deserving of respect than any other mechanism … a lawnmower or a cat?
2. Whence do concepts such as human dignity, human rights, personal morality, right and wrong, good and evil arise, and what is their justification?
3. Why should anyone be held responsible for their actions, given that these are caused by chemical reactions in the brain, and chemicals have no sense of right and wrong?
4. Why do you have the concept of a quasi-separate ‘I’, as in ‘my body’, if you are just your body?
5. How can volition be anything other than an illusion?
6. Why should feelings, emotions, etc. have any importance if they are mere artefacts of chemical reactions?

I will answer in a different order, and I also intend to tamper with Brendano’s phrasing. Iam also afraid that this will take more than one post.

But first of all let me point out one huge and terrible blander, of which I hereby blame Brendano. He seems to think that these questions pose a difficulty for atheists alone. That is utter baloney. These are, and always have been, the greatest philosophical questions of all time, wrestled with by many religious thinkers. And if you think that any of these problems are even  remotely addressed by any conceivable religious dogma in existence, you are dead wrong. They certainly are not solved. Not through Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any far-east religion in existence.

I short, then:

I do not know, but neither do you.

True, some of these religions have dogmas which seem, to the layman’s eye, as a move in the right direction. The simplest of these is of course the first question. The usual answer is that there is a divine soul in the physical body, and this soul is a spiritual perpetual being, magically attached to the physical body. The Wikipedia article on soul is a good introduction. Modern Jewish teaching, for example, holds that inanimate objects are devoid of soul, that plants have a “lower level” bit of soul, that animals (e.g. cats) have a more divine piece of an “animistic” soul, that humans possess an even greater soul, and that the most perfectly divine souls on the face of the earth reside within the bodies of religious orthodox Jews.

Some religions like the idea that everything has a soul. Including inanimate objects. There is widespread discord on these matters within Christianity itself. And this is even before we begin to question the strange and illogical attachment of spiritual and material things. How can a spirit, being immaterial, affect matter in the first place?

But all this has very little with atheism per-se. One can believe in an immaterial soul and still be suspicious towards the fable about the old-man-in-the-sky. What Brendano is thinking about in this regard is not Atheism (disbelief in God) but materialism (disbelief in non-material objects). These are different (though somewhat related) positions.

So let me start off with my version of materialism. Or, rather, methodological naturalism.

And even before I start, let me make it very loud and clear: I do not know the answer. I do know, almost for certain, that no one knows how to answer that question. But the question, as Bernard puts it, is ill-posed. He misrepresents the “atheistic” view as if entailing that the mind does not exist. That, indeed, would be a dumb position. We certainly have a mind (at, least, I know from introspection that I have one, and I assume other people have their own). And the mind is surely not in the hands, or feet, or lungs. Is it in the brain? Well, we know that the mind is a feature of the brain. We do know that for sure. And this is an important (and known) fact, so let me repeat it:

The Mind is a Feature of the Physical Brain

There is a mountain of evidence that physical injury of the brain alters the mind. The case of Phineas Gage was the first to be throughly studied. In short, the man’s personality completely and totally altered after he had a brain injury. Take a look at “Divided Minds, Specious Souls” from SEEDMAGAZINE. Modern research clearly shows how the physics of the brain alters the mind. After all, what are recreational drugs if not a physical object inducing changes in the mind (some of them, regrettably, being nasty long term damage). I am a parent, and I can clearly see how my little boy’s mood and behavior changes in subtle ways when he is hungry. One of the most insightful thing I’ve ever seen was Jill Taylor’s Stroke of Insight. I shall embed it here:

Jill was a neurologist who had a stroke, and was able to learn much from it. Watch it.

with instructions!

Now, do we understand all that? Hell, no. Does it mean that out view of ourselves is completely mistaken? No. But some of it clearly is. But what does the notion soul avail us? When my nephew was 2 years old, he saw a crane. He asked his mother: “What is that?”. His mother got stressed. How do I start explaining to a 2-year-old how building are constructed and how cars and cranes work, she asked herself? “Well”, she started off, “this is a crane”. “Oh”, said the toddler. “Now I see”.

Religious people like Brendano remind me of my nephew. Naming the mysterious, unknown, well, thing, which is the human mind, by the term soul solves nothing. Nor does it serve to say that it is the outcrop of God. How is God affecting physical reality? How is it a soul formed? What are the origins and characteristics of it? Give me details, please. I want a working theory, or at least some ineligible form of inquiry, before I concede that religion has a way of answering that question.

Note for the moment the following points:

1. All this has very little do to with the existence of God.
2. All of our passions, volitions, thoughts, et cetera, are all facts. We know them true from introspection. No one denies them. The mountain of material evidence only shows that these are consequences of physical states. Not that they are null, or unimportant. The sun is a physical object, and I doubt that anyone in his right mind would call it inconsequential or even dull. The argument is not on the question of their existence, but on the question of their nature and origin. And these questions are not answered by any religion in any meaningful way.
3. From what I’ve seen, not only are there numerous, conflicting, and inconsistent religious views on the matter. They are all patently false. And that is not due to some magical deformity of religion as is, but simply because they are all outdated. We have learned much in the last few centuries, and none of it has found it’s way into religious dogma. As Yet.

There is a lot more to answer for, but I will leave it to later posts, if there will be any such demand (and perhaps even in the absence of).

Should Atheists admire Monotheism, the same way Socialists love Capitalism?

When I first read Karl Marks’ The Communist Manifesto, I was very much surprised. I expected a demeaning rebuke of Capitalism, a scourge of fire scathing evil wealthy industrialists. But I found nothing of the sort. The Manifesto struck me as a paean for capitalism. It is full to the rim with the praise of capitalism. Marks and Angels are charmed with capitalism. There are a couple of (very big) issues which make capitalism the greatest peak of civilization (so far) in their eyes.

• The first point is that capitalism has brought an age of limitless capability. From their perspective in the middle of the 19th century, it is more than understandable. As they rightly exclaim, humans can now cross vast oceans in mere weeks. Fertilized crop yield vast amounts of food. For the first time ever, the medical establishment is doing more good than harm. Medicine actually works(!). And on and on. The list is endless. Capitalism has unleashed an enormous power. This power can do much good, and it does.
  

• Traditional societies are tiered into a myriad of social classes. The Indian Caste system might be extreme, but it is not unique. All traditional societies have similar structures, where one is born into an (almost) inescapable social position. A slave is a slave, even if he is one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity.  When 19th century silk workers in Lyon had their salaries cut so low as to reduce them to starvation, their strike was broken by gunfire, and they had no alternative but to go back home and starve there in quiet.  It was always rare for a person to escape the bonds of his social strata. This has severe legal implications. There are different sets of laws regulating the interactions of slaves, serfs, wealthy merchants, land-owning nobility, and priesthood. This creates a complex legal labyrinth, which is not easy to navigate. During the European middle ages, the legal system of the free cities was a civic nightmare in which professional guilds constantly fought each other for hegemony. All this is gone. Capitalism has butchered the old social structures. It has crushed the legal system into a simple 2-tier system. It has imposed legal equality. No more do shoe-makers and map-makers stand on distinct legal strata. They now share the same level as other proletarians. There are only two distinct surviving legal systems – one for the rich industrialists, and the other for proletariat. All other ancient tiers are merged into these two. Life is much more simple.
  

  Silk strike massacre in Lyon

The main thesis of the manifesto is that capitalism, having done with the old legal mess, has almost brought us to a situation in which everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. It has taken us almost to the end of the road. It has crushed a system built on dozens of legal strata into just two. For achieving full legal equality, for finishing what capitalism has done, we have a very small task at hand. Surely, going from a double-tier system into a single tier system is just a simple matter. The trivial conclusion of the Herculean feat already achieved by capitalism, to merge the remaining casts of industrialists and proletariat into a single, harmonic, body of men – that should be trifle (sorry, girls, this is 19th century stuff written by 19th century men). And when this last bit of social stratification is done with, surely, so goes the narrative, surely then the forces unleashed by homo industrious will be unimaginable.

Now, one of the funniest things about Marks’ socialism is that it’s goals have been achieved by the national democratic state. In nationalism, humanity has found a force strong enough not only to glue both industrialists and proletariat to common goals, but to merge society. Indeed, in the post-WWII world of democratic nationalism, the different social-economic strata have really been merged into a single legal strata. No more are children of farmers banned from the universities. No longer are workers banned from 1000000$ salaries. No more does the boy of a grocer needs to run away in order to marry the daughter of a fisherman. No more can a high-class citizen safely harm a low-class member of society and expect to get away with it. True, the legal system is never perfect, and judges are often influenced by class. They are part of an imperfect society, and always will be. But the old days are gone for good. The high-class criminal may expect to find the judge lenient in his favor, but he might just as well find himself becoming the object of a moral play, bearing maximum penalty exactly because he is a high-class. I doubt that a layperson will ever get convicted in court for a mere kiss, as was recently a member of the Israeli cabinet.

Back to the issue at hand.

Marks’ socialism entails him to admire capitalism, for capitalism has already done most of the work. Our primary goal as socialists is to achieve equality before the law. And capitalism has taken society from the old labyrinth of multiple legal strata into just a couple of. What work we, 19th century socialists, have left to do, is the (seemingly) simple matter of crunching the remaining two-tier system into a single-tier system. Almost no job at all.

And this is exactly the same reason for which atheists should love monotheistic religion. You see, we atheists want to do away with gods altogether. We want to do with them all. Thor and Jove and Buddha. There were thousands of them in the old days. How do you kill so many gods? This seems like an impossible task, doesn’t it?

But, here came monotheism to the rescue. Monotheistic religions have done with almost all of them. It has murdered all but one (or three) of them. So much easier now, isn’t it? All we have to do is do in with this single god left, and we’re free from the scourges of religion for ever and ever. And everlasting praise for monotheism which did most of the work for us.

So, should we?

Let us go back to antiquity. To the Greeks, and to the Roman empire. There, amid the myriad of godletts, there came into being the first true atheists. Anaxagoras and Epicurus, men of ancient Greece, were the forerunners of atheism. So was, to some extent, Buddha, some time earlier. Their views, while certainly not popular (Anaxagoras was exiled. Socrates executed) were hardly as dangerous in antiquity as they were in monotheistic societies. We know well what became of heretics in Christian lands.

There was more than a single Sufi who got similar treatment under Islam for lesser crimes than heresy. Monotheism was certainly harsher on atheists than the multi-god cultures of old. And it’s resilience seems stronger as well. It is much harder to convert a monotheist than it ever was with a polytheist.

Monotheism has a totalitarian aura. It is not political totalitarianism to which I am referring here. It is the totality of the presence of the One True God in the life of the believer which is the crux of the matter. The monotheistic God is a tough nut. It does not yield as easily as Baal did.

Nor does Capitalism, for that matter.

It is much easier to contemplate the importance of equality when there are 100 social strata, than in is when there are only two of them. Sometimes, history is as hilarious as it can possibly be. At the same age in which Democratic Nationalism did the job, killing the vertical legal stratification of society, it also entrenched and enshrined the demarcation of humanity into distinct horizontal (national) units, poised against each other as were the social tiers of old.

On the plus side, capitalism might – just might – be able do away with that remaining segmentation of humanity via Consumerism and Global economy. At the end, if anything seems remotely close to bringing about Marks’ vision to completion, it still seems as if Capitalism might have within itself the seeds of new social revolutions. In that respect it is far more interesting a phenomena than Monotheism ever was.

On Pharyngula, Atheist PZ Myers slums at accommodationists, almost as hard as he slams the religious.

On Evolving Thoughts, Agnostic John Wilkins claims for disbelief.

And on and on. Take a look at Rosenbaum’s latest Agnostic pamphlet. It is a nice read. For the lazy, there is Elliot Sobel’s video on FORA.tv. He makes it simple, which is the job of a good philosopher.

In short:

• a deist believes in god (whatever that is).
• an atheist believes that the is no god.
• an agnostic doesn’t believe either.

The bulk of the philosophical criticism against the “New Atheism” (by Sobel, Wilkins, Rosenbaum, Cristopher Schoen, and others – againts Myers, Dawkins, et al.) is that no scientific evidence can possibly refute the philosophical theory about the existence of God. There can be evidence that certain beliefs are wrong (is the earth really 6000 years old? No way!). One can refute some religious views. But one just cannot refute the idea that god exists. Not scientifically, at least.

And if God cannot be refuted, his existence or inexistence are the stuff that philosophy is made of,  not in the realm of scientific inquiry. Very simple, so far. However, there is one little piece of problematic sociological evidence (cheered to no end by Richard Dawkins): the higher one’s education, the more likely is one to be an atheist. Now how do you explain that? Here philosopher Sobel does a terrible blunder. T’is ‘psychology’, he utters. Mere psychology, and nothing more. There is no ground for disbelief in god. Only an emotional tendency, which is  materia  for psychological research,  not serious philosophy.

Why was that was  a blunder? Because it is exactly his job as a philosopher to explain that tendency, even if it is not a perfectly logical syllogism. And it has a very simple explanation. Simply put, it is the idea that

Ideas and notions do mental work.

The job of a good notion is to demarcate – to form boundaries around an idea. This is it, and This is not it.
Notions are supposed to help us dissect reality into parts. Distinct parts. Ideas, likewise, tell us what is, as distinct from what is not. The reason scientific theories must be refutable is because there is, indeed, something very fishy about theories which can “get along” with any conceivable reality. But, no less, it is because such theories are, in a deep sense,  meaningless. For an idea to have a meaning, it must differentiate the possible worlds into ones that get along with the theory, and those that do not. It is the former kind that the theory entails.

Let’s put it differently. Karl Popper’s idea about the refutability of scientific theories has it’s roots in Frege’s philosophy of language. Frege noticed that to say “if p then q” actually means “p and not-q do not hold together”. So, any conditional claim (“If you eat your spinach, you’ll be healthy”) is actually a claim about this particular world versus all possible worlds (“the world in which you eat your spinach and still get the flue – is not the world we live in”). A claim which does not put restrictions on reality is no claim at all. It is mere tautology.

Likewise, a notion is a demarcation: it draws limits. To be humane means not doing harm to others. To be racist is to hate people on in accordance to an ethnic key. Thus, I am not racist if I hate all mathematicians. I am not a racist even if I hate all French mathematicians, as long as the fact that the mathematicians I hate are French is inessential. I am racist only if it is exactly their being French which makes me hate them. Recently, a renown Israeli poet claimed that a certain type of music is crap. That music is often played by a specific, ethnic, lower-class strata of Israeli society. Not surprisingly, the poet was automatically demoted as racist. That allegation is as  ridiculous as it is dangerous. If mere questions of taste in music can make a man racist, then the boundary between racism and non racism blurs to no end. And then, everyone can be racist, regardless of their position. And if everyone’s a racist, then one has no basis on which to discredit real, dangerous racism. It is not very surprising that misogynists often start by claiming that everyone is a misogynist. If everyone’s exactly like them, then there is no reason to disagree with their fringe politics, right?

What does all this have to do with God? Well, simple. If the Deistic theory (“God exists”) is compatible with any conceivable evidence, then it means naught. It becomes empty. Now deists often make the claim that God is left as a moral compass, an idea directing one’s life. But does the notion of God really remain consequential in such a setting? What does it mean, to believe in God? What claim does one make when one says “God exists”? If the theory about the existence of god is irrefutable, than claiming that god exists says absolutely nothing about the world.

There is a similar problem with Spinoza’s notion of an immanent God. If Deus sive natura (god is nature) then god is nothing. If god is everywhere and everything, what exactly does the notion of god do? What is it good for? Why is one to use it at all? The Deists which banned Spinoza knew what they were doing. Spinoza’s claim that god is everything really amounts to the secular claim that god is nothing at all. The notion of God becomes empty.

What happens to all those scientists is simple: by driving god out of the natural world, we have driven her out of existence. The theory about god’s existence plays no role in science, and thus god herself plays no role in life. And when god plays no role in life, when he remains a useless expression, devoid of meaning, she is at risk of losing our faith. When one discovers that God plays no role in one’s life, one just lets go. And God dissolves. And she is gone.

But not all expressions are factual expressions

Now here cometh a very big but. Which is a but taken very seriously by some philosophers. There are many functions to language, goes the but. One important use of language is to make factual assertions. But there are others. “Hold my hand”, “Help”, “What a beauty”, and even “I love you” are best understood not as claims about the world being such and such, but as, say, expressions of emotion, requests, et cetera. But (here comes my double but) they can be turned into assertions. True, when one says “I love you”, one rarely means to express a fact about the world. One is trying to express an emotion, in order to put in motion a corresponding cascade of emotions in the listener’s mind. But, still, this can be turned into an assertion – and the proof of that is that we understand what it means to lie when saying such a thing.

Back to God. When a deist claims that the existence of God is not a factual matter, but an emotional one, she should be asked “then, what would it be like without there being a god”? Even if it is not factual, but rather an emotional response of awe in the face of beauty (as was Einstein’s use of the word “God”), still there should be a way to turn the expression “there is a god” into a factual one. As long as there is a way to say it dishonestly, it should have a factual meaning.

When a Buddhist looks at a flower and says “this is god”, he is expressing his joy at seeing beauty. But he is also saying “all is one”. He is connecting the world into one single being. This has moral implications (the need to head and respect all living things). I agree that this is a noble sentiment. I disagree at it being a great philosophy. It is too much like Heidegger’s philosophy – everything becomes one big tangle, impossible to grasp, impossible to speak of. One is left to feel in silence. This is not philosophy, but the direct opposite of philosophy. But that is the stuff for a whole new post.

To be continued…

Take a point on the complex plane. Take one which is on the unit circle:

Now replace with . We get:

Which by the simple laws of arithmetic gives us:

So every point on the unit circle is 1!

As a simple consequence we get 1=-1. Add 1 on both sides and get 2=0.

QED.

Can you spot the error?

These week we, Jews, celebrate the exodus – the miraculous escape of more than half a million Jews from slavery in Egypt. Their 40-years journey through the desert. Mount Sinai. The giving of the Torah. And the epitome of leadership: Moses.

Out of sheer sloth, I will assume that my readers are verse in the stories. For those who are not, take a look at wikipedia. What interests me is the great leadership shown by Moses (and his God). Through the first chapters of their tour of the Sinai desert, it becomes apparent that the people are not fit to be led by the great leader. They tire him by relentlessly asking to be fed, defended, and led. They show more interest in golden statues than in abstract deities. What Moses does in the story, reminds me of Berthold Brecht’s remark regarding the true followers of Moses – The governing party of the late German Democratic Republic:

The people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could win it back only by redoubled efforts.Wouldn’t it be easier to dissolve the people and elect another in their place?

Which is exactly what Moses does. The great leader takes his people on a 40 year travel, so as to rid himself of the bickering mob, and remould their children into a rough warrior-like tribe, capable of mass murder. The People is not fit – so he replaces it. A towering moral example if there ever was one.

Should I have dubbed this post  ”a lesson in soviet-type leadership”?