Recently in Apocryphas Category

That was Calvin's answer when Hobbes asks if he believes in God. A more serious inquiry trying to explain the phenomenon is being launched:

LONDON - University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind's makeup.

"There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?" said Roger Trigg, acting director of the center.

He said anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.

"One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation," he said.

I have two reactions. I'm going to badly summarize William James by saying that he argued that any set of religious beliefs can be said to be true if they work for the believer. That is, if I draw a measure of comfort and structure and morality from worshipping Ba'al or Jehovah or Jesus or Gilligan of Gilligan's Island fame, then that belief is for all intents and purposes true because of its pragmatic applications. But this does not mean that the competing claims of Ba'al worship, Judaism, Christianity and Gilliganism can be reconciled. If any religion were objectively true (in the same way, say, that gravity is true), there simply wouldn't be any other religions. That doesn't diminish the Jamesian power of religion, but it does suggest that atheists have found a way to get along fine without all that rubbish.

More importantly, I'm not sure that religious belief can be put in opposition to atheism in any meaningful way. The Yanamamo believe in gods who punish the wicked, but they also believe their gods are gullible, easily tricked by humans, and that you can be quite wicked on earth and fool them into letting you into the Yanamamo heaven. Yezidis worship an inverted Satan, while Buddhists either worship hundreds of gods or none at all, since this reality is an illusion and their goal is to slip the bonds of this mortal consciousness, this material coil, for Nirvana. I would go on, but I hope the point is clear.

I've been reading The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone. I vaguely remember studying the subject in high school physics--the thing I remember most is that while I had all kinds of problems with classical physics (I think some of the math threw me), I really enjoyed the few weeks (was it even two?) we spent discussing quantum mechanics.

I find this passage particularly moving:

Left alone, the neutron lives, on average, a whole fifteen minutes before it vanishes in a puff of three other particles. Fortunately again for us humans, the neutron is stabilized within atomic nuclei, so certain combinations of up to 209 protons and neutrons can bundle together and live forever. This means our world is made of scores of different elements, and not just the single element hydrogen. And it's all because mass is energy and energy is mass.

We are in the realm of Lucretius.

For some time, I have been troubled by the notion of entropy: why is it we live in a highly sophisticated, structured world when the rules of classical physics suggest that we should trend toward a simpler state. (Julian Barbour raises this problem in The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics. Perhaps I'm just too dense to understand his argument, but it did not seem to me that he resolved the problem.) Quantum mechanics suggests that at the subatomic level, there are pathways to both simplicity and complexity, as well as discoverable reasons for the tendency towards the latter.

A while back, I ordered The Collected Poems: 1956-1998, by Zbigniew Herbert; because I asked Amazon to ship it with a backordered item (I don't think I actually asked Amazon to do this, since I have Amazon Prime--I suspect that occasionally the Amazons frown on particular works and perniciously delay their shipping), it didn't arrive unti today. In any case, I'm glad it's here. I am not a particularly avid fan of poetry (although I suppose I read more of it than the average person): much contemporary poetry strikes me as purposelessly vague or forced. In the second book of De Rerum Natura, Lucretius uses snake handed ones instead of elephants, in the first book, he substitutes bearers of scales for fish. Much modern poetry strikes me as suffering from the same defect: hiding simple ideas in needlessly complex language.

Herbert is the opposite -- crisp, clean, economical with words, a minimum amount of embellishment. There is something bracing about reading him.

The discovery this volume brought is Herbert's prose poems (I've read his essays -- Still Life with a Bridle is among the most important books I've ever read), but had never encountered these shorter gems. It is better to reproduce one than to try to characterize them:

ANYTHING RATHER THAN AN ANGEL

If after our death they want to transform us into a tiny withered flame that walks along the paths of winds -- we have to rebel. What good is an eternal leisure on the bosom of air, in the shade of a yellow halo, amid the murmur of two-dimensional choirs?

One should enter rock, wood, water, the cracks of a gate. Better to be the creaking of a floor than shrilly transparent perfection.

Of course, our material selves -- our atoms, the Latin poet quickly points out -- will enter rock, wood, water, the cracks of a gate, in time. For some reason, theologians are not satisfied with this species of immortality.

The synoptic Gospels all relate the tale -- no more than a sentence in each -- of Jesus entering the temple and casting out the money changers. William Tyndale, in his brilliant translation, renders the passage from Luke this way:

And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought, saying unto them, it is written: my house is the house of prayer, but ye have made it into a den of thieves.

The money changers exchanged foreign currencies -- Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Nabatean, and so on, for shekels that could be offered to the temple. They provided a service for a fee--like modern currency exchanges, they made a small percentage on each transaction. They had to know the value of shekels relative to drachmas, piasters and dinars, compete with one another on rates, and still make a profit. The premise--that buying and selling, that mutually determining value through open exchange--is the equivalent of a den of thieves suggests, first, that Jesus wasn't much of an economist, and second, that the act of accurately assessing worldly value -- material value -- represented a threat to the ethereal kingdom of heaven Jesus hoped to inaugurate. Knowing the price of things did mean one knew their value; Jesus, who intended to impose his own arbitrary values on things, naturally viewed them as a threat.

Let me offer a clearer example of divines clashing with accountants, to better illustrate that the values prophets promote are inevitably poorer than those on which money changers insist. In an appendix to Mormonism Unveiled--the rather self-serving account of the John D. Lee, the only man convicted of murder for the Mountain Meadows Massacre--Lee's attorney, William W. Bishop, relates the following tale:

Soon after the return from Missouri, Joe Smith, Brigham Young, and Sidney Rigdon organized a bank at Kirtland, which they called the "Safety Society Bank," and began to issue notes in unlimited quantities, "for the relief of the Saints." The names of Joseph Smith as cashier and Sidney Rigdon as president, were signed to the beautifully engraved bank notes, and those who saw the notes with these names attached supposed the bank to be simply a savings institution in which the "saints" could deposit their earnings, which would be invested to pay interest, and that the notes represented actual money in the bank. The result was that the confidence of the people was gained, and the paper of the Safety Society Bank became a favorite medium of circulation with both saint and sinner.

Finally, however, other banks began to lose confidence in these notes, and the bankers of Pittsburgh deputed one of their number to visit Kirtland and learn the real condition of the Safety Society Bank. This agent was a Mr. Jones, and his account of his interview with President Rigdon was decidedly racy. He first inquired about the success of "the Lord's cause," and evinced considerable interest in the Latter-Day religion. This he claimed was a matter of courtesy, but it was unfortunate, for upon opening his satchel and producing a huge number of Safety Society Bank paper, which he desired to have redeemed, the whole proceeding was denounced by brother Rigdon as the "march of a wolf in sheep's clothing." He flew into a passion and asserted that the paper of the bank had been put out as a "circulating medium for the accommodation of the people, that it would be an injury to them for the notes to come home and be redeemed, as they would then have no circulating medium! His bank would redeem nothing!" Mr. Jones pleaded for a deviation from the rule in his case, and pledged himself never again to return with any more of the notes for redemption if he could only get his money this time. But Rigdon was faithful to the programme of the bank, and coolly informed Mr. Jones that they had never asked him or anyone else to take their paper, and referred him to that important epoch in Biblical history where the profession to which Mr. Jones belonged were scourged out of the temple at Jerusalem.

Jones reported back to the Pittsburgh bank; the Safety Society Bank's notes rapidly lost their value, and Joe Smith, Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon shut down the bank and fled. The money changer--the man concerned with actual value as opposed to the counterfeit spiritual sort--drove the thieves from the temple.

Via the Corner comes this interesting Web site, asking scholars to offer

explicatory suppositions and deductions regarding the mores of Mahdism and its benefits, through their analytical articles.

The conference welcomes scientific research, which analyzes the culture of Mahdism in correspondence with the era of social and human sciences, other religions, and civilizations.

The Mahdi is the redeemer of Islam, the figure who, alongside Jesus Christ, returns to earth to usher in a new paradise. The Mahdi is not, I believe, mentioned by name (or rather, by the word Mahdi) in the Qur'an; Shi'ites identify the Mahdi with the 12th "occultated" imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Ali, who disappeared shortly after the death of his father in the ninth century.

I think I should like to address this topic:

B- Theoretical issues:

1. Mahdism utopia (basics, features, capacities, comparative assessment and ….)

...or maybe this one, also from theoretical issues:

5. Mahdism and humans rights (humans’ dignity, the right of destiny defining, rights of minorities, rights of women and …)

I am certainly not a Shi'ite (I am not much of anything, when it comes to that), so I do not share a belief in the imminence or even possibility of the re-appearance or second coming of a boy who died (or disappeared) more than 1,000 years ago. But let us assume that a figure appeared who was recognized as such by the faithful: The Mahdi would certainly disappoint them. Religious figures who regard themselves as fulfilling prophecies tend to deviate so much from the expectations of their followers that the result is schism, or the birth of new religions altogether. Before he was he Buddha, Siddhartha was a Hindu holy man; Jesus said he came to fulfill the law and the prophets, though not many of his co-religionists shared his opinion; Muhammad was persuaded (and tried to persuade) the Jews of Medina that his prophecies were their religion.

Perhaps, at the 12th Imam's return, he would say, "Democracy, whiskey, sexy," admonish the faithful to go have a few beers and sleep in the next day, and then we'll all have a long talk about how we're going to measure the justness of our society by how emancipated our women are, how well we treat our Jewish and other minorities, by how many gay marriages we celebrate and how enthusiastically we embrace modernity, and how aggressive we are in undoing the centuries of superstitious nonsense.

I'd love to order the aforementioned Stumbling on Happiness, but I have acquired (even by my normal standards) a ridiculous surplus of books. Off of Amazon, I ordered a ton of used copies from the series Case Studies in Anthropology. (Okay, four.) On the advice of the always engaging Alexandra, I ordered Awakening the Buddha Within -- which arrived today. I'm really looking forward to reading it--I flipped through it and five of the six paragraphs I read at random made me want to read the next one. There's the Robespierre book to read (see here), a 1909 short story collection on the Golem, but, most enjoyable of all, the raucously joyful atheism of Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great: How Religion Ruins Everything.

Those familiar with ideofact will, I hope, be aware that I am generally respectful of religions. I do not insult gratuitously. At the same time, I find that the adherents of various and sundry faiths call for tolerance and respect--but I wonder how often they reciprocate. Hitchens is a gleeful atheist (see here, for example:

Like Muhammad, Smith could produce divine revelations at short notice and often simply to suit himself (especially, and like Muhammad, when he wanted a new girl and wished to take her as another wife). As a result, he overreached himself and came to a violent end, having meanwhile excommunicated almost all the poor men who had been his first disciples and who had been browbeaten into taking his dictation. Still, this story raises some very absorbing questions, concerning what happens when a plain racket turns into a serious religion before our eyes.

His passion and zeal strikes me as matching that of the faithful; if there is to be tolerance of the religious, then there must be tolerance by the religious for men like Hitchens.)

I'm looking forward to reading his book. I tend to think, as with happiness, that religion has an evolutionary function--setting useful moral rules that allow us to live in larger groups and more complex societies than following our "happiness meter" would allow. As I think I've said before, it is not necessary that a religion be true to be moral. In other words, the Book of Mormon can be demonstrably phony (it is demonstrably phony--the archaeological record and DNA evidence proves it), but the cultural norms and expectations of the creed can offer its adherents adaptive advantages over -- why not say it -- worldly wisemen like me. I will be curious to see if Hitchens addresses this question.

But I look forward to reading more passages like this one.

For the first time in ages I've been writing a short story. Part of it (the nonfictional parts) will appear on this blog.

Perhaps the beginnings are here: Reading the introduction to the Dhammapada, I kept coming across the notion that acting out of selfishness is somehow wrong. The Buddha, apparently, was a poor economist. Consider Adam Smith:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

Self interest has a social good. Speaking of butchers, the Buddha says,

Do not earn your livelihood at the expense of life or connive at or support those who do harm to other creatures, such as butchers, soldiers and makers of poisons and weapons.

But if we were to cease to patronize butchers (and I think some time soon I will), what would happen to all the animals that are raised for meat? Once they lose their economic value, don't they also lose the interest and care that humans provide them? Wouldn't we see a massacre of remaining stock and an extinction of food on the hoof? And should we shift to raising plants rather than relying on animals for sustenance, won't we further encroach upon the habitats of wild animals?

Oddly, one thing all religious leaders seem to share is a poor grasp of economics and economic consequences. Whether we are talking about Muhammad or Marx, Jesus or Joseph Smith, they are not practical men.

I've been reading the Dhammapada, or more properly, the introduction written by the translater of the version I've linked, Eknath Easwaran, but there is something I don't quite understand. I recognize no doubt that, were I to raise this question with the Buddha, he would look at me perhaps with a certain amused indulgence, perhaps expressing instead an imperturbable patience that has been too often tried by lesser men such as me.

Perhaps it is Easwaran's fault; he invokes quantum physics to elucidate the Buddha's view of consciousness. But I would ask, what about the period before there was consciousness, or life of any kind? What about the millions of years before there were men? Did dinosaurs contribute to Karma? Did the first single cell organisms? Did complex proteins floating around in a primordial stew?

A sentence from Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods:

Aurangzeb's great grandfather, Akbar, tried to fuse Islam, Hinduism and other religions into a new religion, which he called Din Ilahi, but without much success.

More on it here:

Like Islam, it was rationalistic and was based on one overriding doctrine, the doctrine of tawhid : God is one thing and is singular and unified. Akbar also elevated the notion of wahdat-al wujud , or "unity of the real," to a central religious idea in his new religion. The world, as a creation of God, is a single and unified place that reflects the singularity and unity of its creator. Finally, Akbar fully subscribed to the Islamic idea of the Perfect Man represented by the life of the Prophet or by the Shi'ite Imamate. There is little question that Akbar accepted Abu'l Fazl's notion that he was the Divine Light and was a Perfect Man. He assumed the title, "Revealer of the Internal and Depictor of the Real," which defined his role as a disseminator of secret knowledge of God and his function of fashioning the world in the light of this knowledge.

In addition to Islam, however, the Din-i Ilahi also contained aspects of Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and Hinduism. The Din-i Ilahi borrowed from Jainism a respect and care for all living things, and it derived from Zoroastrianism sun-worship and, especially, the idea of divine kingship. This latter innovation deeply disturbed the ulama ; they regarded it as outright heresy. The notion of divine kingship, however, would last throughout the history of the Mughal Empire.

More real to me than religion are the apparitions flickering on the screen...