Something, it seems to me, that everybody takes for granted is the assumption that we have free will. I take it for granted myself, unless I start seriously thinking about it, like now. I can choose to do many different things right now. I can stop writing this article and go and have a cup of coffee. I can go for a walk, or read a book, or even take a nap. Of course, taking a nap implies that I am tired in the first place, otherwise the chances of my deciding to take a nap are minimal. Okay, in a bid to convince myself that I have free will in the matter, I could decide to take a nap even though I am not tired. But that doesn't prove much, does it?
The problem is that all these areas are of no great importance in life. They are not the big issues. They are not the life changing issues which might make a meaningful difference. Look at it this way. I didn't choose most of the major things in my life, where I was born, colour of my skin, parents, siblings, sexual orientation. I didn't even make the choice to be born! I happened to be born in Dublin to catholic parents, hence I am white, Irish, heterosexual and originally catholic. Now there's a thing. I was born catholic and eventually changed to something else, at present agnostic. So here is a good example of free will. Or is it? I'll discuss this further below.
What about a life changing experience such as choosing a partner? Is that a free choice? Many will say yes, definitely, but think about it. What about all those girls or guys you fancied but who didn't fancy you? No choice there! The girl you choose had to like you as well. You can't make her like you. So you fancy somebody and ask them out. They have the choice to say yes or no. If no, that's it. You didn't have much of a choice there. If they say yes, you go out together, but don't get on. Not much choice there either. So you continue making choices and eventually find somebody who does like you and does want to marry you (or these days simply become your partner) and maybe have children etc. Then your marriage goes west! So, really not a lot of free choice here at all.
Now let's get on to religion. Initially you have no choice in the matter. You are what your parents decide they want you to be, usually what they themselves are. So you start life being a Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist or even Atheist. Some of us begin to think for ourselves, maybe in our teenage years, maybe later and decide to switch our religion. Usually it's from a religious faith to none or even agnostic. Sometimes it's the other way round. But again, I ask what choice is there in that? What about those who don't change. Did they choose not to change or did they even think about it? And what about those who do change? Do they exercise a really free choice or was it just their way of thinking which made them sit up and change? Our education system is so bad, that most people aren't thought to think for themselves. They are just thought things by rote and are told that's the way it is, learn up or else. They probably never get to question. And those of us who do question things, what's there within us that makes us do that? We didn't decide one day by free will, I'd better start to ask questions. So I don't really see much choice there either.
Consider your likes and dislikes. Do you have a say in this? For example, if you like sport, did you decide to like it or did you always like it? And take something you are not interested in, say history. Did you decide not to like it? Go into a library and take down a book on history and try to make yourself like it. You probably won't succeed, and if you do, well maybe you did like history in the first place but didn't know it. You'll notice that your likes change over time. For example, if somebody told me twenty years ago that I'd read books on church history, I'd have laughed at them. What a boring subject. Yet today I devour them and I can confirm there was never a time when I decided I was going to enjoy such books. Gradually I got interested in the subject, but there was never a "decision". So again, I ask, where's the free will?
In fact a lot of things change about you over time. Not only do certain cells in your body get replaced, a lot of the body you have today is no longer the one you were born with. However, more importantly for our purposes, your ideas and outlook change over time. A lot of these mental changes depend on the environment you live in, the friends and acquaintences you keep, the books and newspapers you read, the films and television you watch. Each of these has an influence on you whether you like it or not and you may find that your ideas begin to change almost imperceptibly over time, sometimes influenced by the above. But seldom do your ideas change overnight. It happens subtly over time. So exactly where or when can you say you made a free decision to change one of your ideas? For example, you might believe passionately in a particular idea or you might follow a particular football team. If you think about it you'll most likely find that something you were passionate about years ago, you are no longer so. When did the change occur? I'll bet you that you can't really say. But more importantly you can't say that you ever sat down and made a decision to change in this area.
So where exactly does free will or choice come in? Take something as simple as deciding to have a cup of coffee or tea. If you consider the situation carefully, you'll find that you don't really make a choice. You either feel like a cup of coffee now or a cup of tea. Then again, you can sit down and say you're going to give this free will stuff a whirl. I'll make a firm decision. Even though I feel like having a cup of coffee at this point, I'll exercise my free will and have a cup of tea instead. Very good, but you're actually taking an idea and deciding to defy it. Or are you? Are you really deciding to decide to defy it? Or are you just in the mood to do an experiment.
Some scientific experiments appear to show that we do not have free will. For example a famous experiment some years back has shown that approximately 10 seconds before a person made a conscious decision to do something, the brain had already taken the decision. Of course, these experiments were only dealing with very simple decisions, for example whether to press a button on the right or on the left. A lot too depends on how the MRI imaging which was used is interpreted so the issue is far from closed.
Of course, if we don't actually have free will, this leads to the troubling question as to what, if any, responsibility must we take for our actions? For example if a serial killer has no conscience, no remorse and simply enjoys killing, is he responsible for his actions as he has absolutely no choice in the matter? I'm not defending him and believe he should be locked up for life (in fact he deserves the death penalty, I'm not a namby-pamby do-gooder). But if he had no other choice, what can we do? Well, I suppose lock him up and tough! He can't be allowed to be free if he threatens others in this way.
So if we don't have free will, do we give up? Throw our hats at it? No free will, what's the point? Another interesting experiment was carried out a year or so ago which tried to find out a little more about the effects on society if free will does not in fact exist. A number of participants were given passages from a book to read. Half of the participants got a section of the book to read which stated that there was no such thing as free will, our choices have already been predetermined and we can't change them. The other participants got a section which concentrated on the importance of studying consciousness and didn't mention free will at all. After reading the passages all the volunteers in the study were asked to complete a survey on their belief in free will. Then they were asked to complete 20 arithmetic problems which would appear on a computer screen. But they were also told that when the question appeared they needed to press the space bar otherwise a glitch in the computer software would make the answer appear on the screen. They were told that nobody would know whether they pressed the space bar or not, but they were asked not to cheat. The results showed that those who read the text which stated that there was no such thing as free will cheated more often. The researchers also found that the amount somebody cheated correlated with the extend to which they had rejected free will in their survey. Doesn't bode well for us if we don't have free will!
Which leads me to believe there must be some choice somewhere, but I've no idea where.
Now, what made me write this blog?...I guess I just couldn't help myself!
Help, I'm a rock!
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
It'll Never Last
I don't know when I first took an interest in music, but my first memories are of my parents listening to the radio. This was in the 1950s and the radio and the gramophone were the only sources of music in our house. My folks were lovers of the classical genre of music, the heavier the better. Music like Wagner (have you heard the screeching sirens bellowing their way through arias in his operas?), Beethoven (much nicer), Tchaikovsky (even nicer) and Bach to name a few. I neither liked or disliked this music, but certain items in my father's record collection were more interesting. After wading through the heavy stuff, I came across gems such as Sparky's Magic Piano, Eamonn Andrews telling the story of the Giant's Causeway, Danny Kaye telling the musical tale of Tubby the Tuba, and a particular favourite of mine, Life Get's Tedious. I don't know who sang/recited this little ditty, but it had some wonderful lyrics which I can recall to this day: "Old hound dog, he's so forlorn; Laziest dog that ever was born; He's howlin' 'cos he's sittin' on a thorn; he's just too tired to move over". My father, however, forbade me to listen to Don't Mention Wives to the Sultan which of course I did, but couldn't understand then why I shouldn't listen to it.
We used to go every year for our holidays to a little fishing village called Ardglass in Co Down, to a house my grandfather owned. I loved this place which was a child's paradise, beach beside the house, the sea just over the backwall (on a stormy day, the waves would crash into the backyard) and of course no school. One time my cousin Tim and myself were in Charlie's shop which had a jukebox. Tim put some money in and we choose Elvis Presley singing Jailhouse Rock. Don't know why we choose that particular number, but the effect was electrifying. I had not realised there was such pounding, uplifting, exciting and mad music. "Play it again, Tim," I cried when it ended. He did and we must have listened to it till most of his money was gone. Naturally I got the blame for spending all Tim's holiday money when I got home, but I didn't care. I had discovered Elvis Presley. Roll over Beethoven, my musical education was beginning.
My father wasn't exactly over the moon when I told him about what I had found although to be fair my mother didn't seem to mind so much. "It'll never last," he said emphatically and that was that. I didn't know what he meant by that remark. Not till years later when I realised he was right, although not about Elvis. He has lasted and why?...because he is one of the greatest rock singers of the last century. So called cultured musicians like to sneer and say Presley was rubbish and I should listen to the original Hound Dog recording by Willie May Thornton. I have and I have to say, it's crap. I can genuinely say there is no better version that the Elvis Presley recording.
But other than the jukebox down the road, where else could I hear this music? Apparently nowhere. I was 9 when I heard Jailhouse Rock and didn't know of any other radio stations other than the BBC and Radio Eireann and they sure as hell didn't play this sort of music. So I was stuck for a year or so until one day I found Radio Luxembourg. Here I found a program with a guy called Jimmy Savile who played nothing but Elvis. So I was introduced to a whole wealth of this singer's music. Now the next step was to get my hands on an album by Presley and managed to convince my mother to get Rock 'n' Roll No 2 as a Christmas present. Magic to this day!
The next great step was finding Radio Caroline. By this time I was 16. As we didn't have a television set, I was forced to go to friend's houses to see BBC which had a program called Top of the Pops. Around the same time the Beatles exploded on the scene. I didn't like them at all, but they were quickly followed by the Rolling Stones who were so much better. In later years the Stones went downhill while the Beatles improved immensely. However, it wasn't long till a new phenomenon began to emerge. I first became aware of this when I noticed an intriguing album cover a colleague had tucked under his arm and I asked him who it was. Cream he said, a blues band with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. I'd never heard of the blues let alone a band who played them. I don't know what prompted me (maybe it was the album cover and I've bought other albums based on their covers alone, some with great results and others disastrous) but I went out and purchased the album. It was like hearing Jailhouse Rock all over again with new ears. Tracks like N.S.U. and I'm So Glad simply burst from the record player. Sublime, ethereal and grounded. Shortly after I found John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers. While both these bands were blues based they were the beginning of the progressive music scene. Artists like Pink Floyd, Santana, It's A Beautiful Day, The Doors began to appear. Others who weren't bagged in the progressive genre were Bob Dylan and the Greenwich Village folk scene with artists like Peter, Paul & Mary, Tom Paxton and Joan Baez. I'd like to mention Joni Mitchell also, but I don't think she was part of the Greenwich Village scene.
Then one day I picked up the New Musical Express, or was it Melody Maker (a doubt crosses my mind), the premier weekly music papers from the UK. They had a review of the first album, Freak out, released by The Mothers of Invention which was Frank Zappa's band. I wish I could remember the name of the guy who did the review but it was the worst review I had ever read. He basically said the music was worse than awful and named some of the song titles: Who are the Brain Police?, Hungry Freaks Daddy, Help, I'm a Rock, Return of the Son of Monster Magnet. Well, of course, I was so intrigued I had to hear this album. In those days, the only place to get your hands on records was the record shops (even Richard Branson's Virgin mail order wasn't around). So I traipsed through all the record stores in Dublin. Nobody had heard of this obscure American group. Even the International Record Store (at least I think that's what it was called) in Tara Street had never heard of it. So I had to give up or maybe take a plane to London and try there (very expensive then, Michael O'Leary was still in short pants). However, about a year later I happened to be in the record shop in Tara Street, and there was Zappa's second album, Absolutely Free. Naturally I snapped it up and once again this music of sheer genius (at least to me) exploded into existence: Plastic People, Call Any Vegetable, and Uncle Bernie's Farm. One track, Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin had a blistering guitar solo backed up by flute which clocked in at 7 minutes and raised the music above anything else I had ever heard. There is simply nothing produced by our modern musicians which can equal it. Really, I'm not joking.
In 1970 came the album which probably defined a generation, Fill your Head with Rock, with the eponymous cover of the demonic looking violin player from the band Flock. This was a sampler of various New World artists, introducing us to the likes of Leonard Cohen, Johnny Winter, Chicago, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. So with such a wealth of music to choose from, I, being young and foolish, began to feel the vibes from my friends who had also adopted this music and soon Rolling Stone magazine was telling us who it was cool or uncool to follow. Poor old Zappa didn't get a word in and Presley was decidedly uncool. I don't know how long afterwards that I read somewhere about Bob Dylan paying a visit to Sun Studios in Memphis (the home of Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison to name a few). He reportedly knelt down and kissed the floor with the words "This is where it all started". Now whether that story is true or not, I suddenly realised he was right and it wasn't up to the hip types to tell me or anybody else who I could and couldn't like. I followed my own preferences and found that Presley and Zappa sat very well together, thank you. I liked them both and you could argue as to who was the better, and even if Zappa was the better musician and Presley the better singer/showman, it didn't matter. They both spoke to me and their music moved me in different ways.
So, who will last and who won't? In this piece I'm ignoring the modern classical world as I know nothing about it. Obviously the old classical music has lasted and I expect it will last for many more generations to come. I also haven't mentioned the world of jazz, much of which will last and much of which won't. Other than ethnic music I concentrate on what we can loosely call pop music (which includes rock, country, metal, progressive (a snotty term really) and all their offshoots). Any of the boy bands will not last. Nothing they have done can stand against the sheer might of the far superior music of the sixties and seventies. Even the great U2 (except for their classic album The Joshua Tree) won't last much longer. In fact I can't think of any new artist who has come along in the last 30 years who will last much beyond the next 30 years. But the really great will last: Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan. Elvis had a magic voice, charisma, charm and he could really sing, a showman who could hold his audience in the palm of his hand. The Beatles in the persons of John Lennon and Paul McCartney were songwriters of the highest calibre. Frank Zappa was pure genius even though he had a ridiculous and childish side (his dirty lyrics were funny but ultimately boring). Bob Dylan whose lyrics were unrivalled and had a unique way of singing them (at least on record, some of his concerts have been disasters, no showman he!). Others mentioned above, like the Rolling Stones and Leonard Cohen will last a bit longer but not much more than the already mentioned 30 years. Some greats have even now gone. Where is Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears, two powerhouse bands?
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned Jimi Hendrix. This is because, in my opinion, even though he was great in his day, he was not as good a guitarist as many seem to think. Clapton for one was better. I think he still lasts today through some diehards. Fair enough, I guess.
The one thing however that sort of bothers me about writing this article is the fear that I'm totally forgetting about somebody who deserves to be listed among the greats and he or she hasn't sprung to mind. Ah well!
So what is the future for some potential megastars who might be around today or tomorrow? I greatly fear that they won't get much of a chance as long as the music industry is being run by the businessmen who wouldn't know an A minor chord from a G string! Seriously, does anybody think that Simon Cowell would have put Bob Dylan through to the next round? Not on your nelly! As Zappa said many years ago, "no commercial potential". I think the rot started in the seventies when disco came pounding through our headphones. Punk was a non-music, most couldn't even play their instruments properly. Rave, rap and such are plain awful. The only people playing today who don't mime on stage are metal. So the future does not look bright. But I just hope there is some promoter still around who won't be afraid to take a chance on some new real talent. They are there, just hiding!
We used to go every year for our holidays to a little fishing village called Ardglass in Co Down, to a house my grandfather owned. I loved this place which was a child's paradise, beach beside the house, the sea just over the backwall (on a stormy day, the waves would crash into the backyard) and of course no school. One time my cousin Tim and myself were in Charlie's shop which had a jukebox. Tim put some money in and we choose Elvis Presley singing Jailhouse Rock. Don't know why we choose that particular number, but the effect was electrifying. I had not realised there was such pounding, uplifting, exciting and mad music. "Play it again, Tim," I cried when it ended. He did and we must have listened to it till most of his money was gone. Naturally I got the blame for spending all Tim's holiday money when I got home, but I didn't care. I had discovered Elvis Presley. Roll over Beethoven, my musical education was beginning.
My father wasn't exactly over the moon when I told him about what I had found although to be fair my mother didn't seem to mind so much. "It'll never last," he said emphatically and that was that. I didn't know what he meant by that remark. Not till years later when I realised he was right, although not about Elvis. He has lasted and why?...because he is one of the greatest rock singers of the last century. So called cultured musicians like to sneer and say Presley was rubbish and I should listen to the original Hound Dog recording by Willie May Thornton. I have and I have to say, it's crap. I can genuinely say there is no better version that the Elvis Presley recording.
But other than the jukebox down the road, where else could I hear this music? Apparently nowhere. I was 9 when I heard Jailhouse Rock and didn't know of any other radio stations other than the BBC and Radio Eireann and they sure as hell didn't play this sort of music. So I was stuck for a year or so until one day I found Radio Luxembourg. Here I found a program with a guy called Jimmy Savile who played nothing but Elvis. So I was introduced to a whole wealth of this singer's music. Now the next step was to get my hands on an album by Presley and managed to convince my mother to get Rock 'n' Roll No 2 as a Christmas present. Magic to this day!
The next great step was finding Radio Caroline. By this time I was 16. As we didn't have a television set, I was forced to go to friend's houses to see BBC which had a program called Top of the Pops. Around the same time the Beatles exploded on the scene. I didn't like them at all, but they were quickly followed by the Rolling Stones who were so much better. In later years the Stones went downhill while the Beatles improved immensely. However, it wasn't long till a new phenomenon began to emerge. I first became aware of this when I noticed an intriguing album cover a colleague had tucked under his arm and I asked him who it was. Cream he said, a blues band with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. I'd never heard of the blues let alone a band who played them. I don't know what prompted me (maybe it was the album cover and I've bought other albums based on their covers alone, some with great results and others disastrous) but I went out and purchased the album. It was like hearing Jailhouse Rock all over again with new ears. Tracks like N.S.U. and I'm So Glad simply burst from the record player. Sublime, ethereal and grounded. Shortly after I found John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers. While both these bands were blues based they were the beginning of the progressive music scene. Artists like Pink Floyd, Santana, It's A Beautiful Day, The Doors began to appear. Others who weren't bagged in the progressive genre were Bob Dylan and the Greenwich Village folk scene with artists like Peter, Paul & Mary, Tom Paxton and Joan Baez. I'd like to mention Joni Mitchell also, but I don't think she was part of the Greenwich Village scene.
Then one day I picked up the New Musical Express, or was it Melody Maker (a doubt crosses my mind), the premier weekly music papers from the UK. They had a review of the first album, Freak out, released by The Mothers of Invention which was Frank Zappa's band. I wish I could remember the name of the guy who did the review but it was the worst review I had ever read. He basically said the music was worse than awful and named some of the song titles: Who are the Brain Police?, Hungry Freaks Daddy, Help, I'm a Rock, Return of the Son of Monster Magnet. Well, of course, I was so intrigued I had to hear this album. In those days, the only place to get your hands on records was the record shops (even Richard Branson's Virgin mail order wasn't around). So I traipsed through all the record stores in Dublin. Nobody had heard of this obscure American group. Even the International Record Store (at least I think that's what it was called) in Tara Street had never heard of it. So I had to give up or maybe take a plane to London and try there (very expensive then, Michael O'Leary was still in short pants). However, about a year later I happened to be in the record shop in Tara Street, and there was Zappa's second album, Absolutely Free. Naturally I snapped it up and once again this music of sheer genius (at least to me) exploded into existence: Plastic People, Call Any Vegetable, and Uncle Bernie's Farm. One track, Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin had a blistering guitar solo backed up by flute which clocked in at 7 minutes and raised the music above anything else I had ever heard. There is simply nothing produced by our modern musicians which can equal it. Really, I'm not joking.
In 1970 came the album which probably defined a generation, Fill your Head with Rock, with the eponymous cover of the demonic looking violin player from the band Flock. This was a sampler of various New World artists, introducing us to the likes of Leonard Cohen, Johnny Winter, Chicago, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. So with such a wealth of music to choose from, I, being young and foolish, began to feel the vibes from my friends who had also adopted this music and soon Rolling Stone magazine was telling us who it was cool or uncool to follow. Poor old Zappa didn't get a word in and Presley was decidedly uncool. I don't know how long afterwards that I read somewhere about Bob Dylan paying a visit to Sun Studios in Memphis (the home of Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison to name a few). He reportedly knelt down and kissed the floor with the words "This is where it all started". Now whether that story is true or not, I suddenly realised he was right and it wasn't up to the hip types to tell me or anybody else who I could and couldn't like. I followed my own preferences and found that Presley and Zappa sat very well together, thank you. I liked them both and you could argue as to who was the better, and even if Zappa was the better musician and Presley the better singer/showman, it didn't matter. They both spoke to me and their music moved me in different ways.
So, who will last and who won't? In this piece I'm ignoring the modern classical world as I know nothing about it. Obviously the old classical music has lasted and I expect it will last for many more generations to come. I also haven't mentioned the world of jazz, much of which will last and much of which won't. Other than ethnic music I concentrate on what we can loosely call pop music (which includes rock, country, metal, progressive (a snotty term really) and all their offshoots). Any of the boy bands will not last. Nothing they have done can stand against the sheer might of the far superior music of the sixties and seventies. Even the great U2 (except for their classic album The Joshua Tree) won't last much longer. In fact I can't think of any new artist who has come along in the last 30 years who will last much beyond the next 30 years. But the really great will last: Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan. Elvis had a magic voice, charisma, charm and he could really sing, a showman who could hold his audience in the palm of his hand. The Beatles in the persons of John Lennon and Paul McCartney were songwriters of the highest calibre. Frank Zappa was pure genius even though he had a ridiculous and childish side (his dirty lyrics were funny but ultimately boring). Bob Dylan whose lyrics were unrivalled and had a unique way of singing them (at least on record, some of his concerts have been disasters, no showman he!). Others mentioned above, like the Rolling Stones and Leonard Cohen will last a bit longer but not much more than the already mentioned 30 years. Some greats have even now gone. Where is Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears, two powerhouse bands?
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned Jimi Hendrix. This is because, in my opinion, even though he was great in his day, he was not as good a guitarist as many seem to think. Clapton for one was better. I think he still lasts today through some diehards. Fair enough, I guess.
The one thing however that sort of bothers me about writing this article is the fear that I'm totally forgetting about somebody who deserves to be listed among the greats and he or she hasn't sprung to mind. Ah well!
So what is the future for some potential megastars who might be around today or tomorrow? I greatly fear that they won't get much of a chance as long as the music industry is being run by the businessmen who wouldn't know an A minor chord from a G string! Seriously, does anybody think that Simon Cowell would have put Bob Dylan through to the next round? Not on your nelly! As Zappa said many years ago, "no commercial potential". I think the rot started in the seventies when disco came pounding through our headphones. Punk was a non-music, most couldn't even play their instruments properly. Rave, rap and such are plain awful. The only people playing today who don't mime on stage are metal. So the future does not look bright. But I just hope there is some promoter still around who won't be afraid to take a chance on some new real talent. They are there, just hiding!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Should We Avoid Talking to the Aliens?
Recently the well known astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has warned that, while aliens almost certainly exist, we should make every attempt to avoid them. Why?
Basically he says that if aliens visit us, it might be to raid Earth for resources and then move on. If aliens visit us, the outcome could be compared to when Columbus arrived in America and the decimation the white man left after him on the Native Americans.
He continued that we only have to take a look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might change into something we wouldn’t want to meet and therefore we should do everything possible to avoid contact with extraterrestrials.
Naturally I don’t agree with him and set out some of my reasons below.
Astronomers are pretty much agreed having analysed the types of stars and star systems, it’s unlikely that there would be intelligent aliens anywhere within 90 light years of us. There probably is life but it could be microbial, or at a different stage of evolution than us. An astronomer called Frank Drake came up with an equation in the 1960s called the Drake equation. He was the guy who started Project Ozma which listened for signs of intelligent radio signals coming from a number of different star systems. Nothing was found. However, the answer to the Drake equation was the number of civilisations in our galaxy with whom communication might be possible. This took into account the average rate of star formation, the fraction of those stars which have planets, the fraction of those planets which actually produce life, the fraction of those life forms which develop intelligence and the faction of those which actually develop radio communication and finally the length of time such civilisations continue to exist. Multiplying these fractions together gives the number of civilisations. Depending on the value given to these unknown fractions has resulted in answers ranging from 1 civilisation per galaxy to millions.
It obviously can’t be millions as that leads to the famous question as to where are they. Some people believe that they are in fact already here and some go further and say they are in fact, dangerous. Alien abduction, mutilation of cattle are frequently cited. Sure there are lots of reports of UFOs in the skies but mostly from people who are untrained in looking at the sky. Most of the sightings are of Venus when low in the evening sky (a beautiful sight), weather balloons, even the common airplane. And surely a lot of the Nevada sightings are of the stealth aircraft being put through their paces before they were even announced to the American public. And frankly, I think anybody who believes they have been abducted are deluded. Think about it. An advanced civilisation crosses space and perhaps time to reach Earth and what do they do? Buzz aircraft, abduct people and mutilate cattle? Besides if there are so many aliens around, how come there is not one single incident where a piece of alien technology has been found? Roswell, among others, may be cited but no evidence has been forthcoming. Besides, the pieces of debris found at Roswell were from a weather balloon.
It is possible that we are actually unique and are the only form of intelligent life in the universe or even in our own galaxy. I believe this is highly unlikely and as the heroine in the film Contact said, if this is true it seems like an awful waste of space out there. And looking at the Drake equation again, we have already discovered in excess of 300 planets orbiting stars other than our own which implies a fairly decent rate of planet formation which is one factor increasing the odds in favour of life elsewhere. Also on our own planet we have found life existing in the most inhospitable places where we never expected to find it. For example, microbes living miles underground, some frozen in ice which revive when heated up, life existing without light or heat in the very deepest places in the oceans.
Now that it’s beginning to look like ET surely exists somewhere, let’s consider the question of whether they could reach us if they wanted to?
In order for a civilisation to cross the vastness of space they would have to be incredibly advanced technologically. And not only that, I believe that such advancement in technology also comes with advancement in their understanding of themselves and other creatures, so much so that they would surely have long ago realised the senselessness of violence and killing. At our present level of technology our fastest spacecraft could probably cover the distance to the nearest star in about 80,000 years. So an incredible leap in technological sophistication is required to overcome that daunting timeframe. If Einstein is right about the speed of light being a limiting factor, then we may never meet another alien race face to face. However, I’m convinced that there must be ways around this problem but these advances are not going to come anytime soon. However things turn out, only an incredibly advanced race will be capable of making such journeys. Aggression or violence would be a thing of the past with such a race. Certainly if they haven’t learned to control such behaviour then it is unlikely that they would have survived for so long. Besides, what could we have that they would possibly need?
So now that we know ET is not here yet and unlikely to be for some considerable time to come, our best option to talk with them is by radio or optical communication, or maybe by some other method we haven’t discovered yet. On Earth we have been communicating by radio for the last 90 odd years and as radio waves travel at the speed of light, this means that our signals have already traversed space out to 90 light years. So if there are intelligent aliens with radio capabilities within that range, they know we’re here already.
Now going into the digital age and away from normal radio communication analogue technology, some say that digital signals would look like noise to aliens. I don’t understand this. It’s nonsense! A signal is a signal and it just needs deciphering. Maybe they mean that digital signals from earth are weaker and more earth directed and so eventually when our technology has advanced sufficiently our signals won’t leak into space at all. Advanced aliens will probably use similar technology which is another reason we don’t spot them in our radio searches. The chances of finding a civilisation at the exact same point of evolution as ourselves is about the same changes of winning the lotto. Fairly low. So most civilisations out there are probably far superior to us and there’s no chance of our finding them (unless they want to be found) or far inferior to us in which case there won’t be much in the line of signal to find them.
I mentioned above that during Project Ozma nothing was found. Well, during a later SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) search in the mid seventies, one signal was found and they called it the Wow! signal. This bore all the hallmarks of artificial origin (any hint of it being manmade was ruled out), unfortunately it was never seen again. To this day some still insist it was of extraterrestrial and intelligent origin.
Frank Drake sent a message from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico (the largest in the world) in 1974. Because this telescope can only point in one direction as the Earth rotates, the message was sent towards a dense group of stars called Messier 13. Messier 13 is the name given to a particular globular cluster which lies along with many other similar clusters on the outskirts of our galaxy. Unfortunately it will take about 25000 years to reach it’s destination, so we won’t be getting a reply anytime soon. But, what the hell, it was a first shot and maybe an alien spacecraft will pick it up first.
So why bother listening or trying to make contact? In my opinion, the importance of communicating with them is that we would have so much to learn from them. But maybe they don’t want to share? If that’s the case, it’s a pity, but I would think they would want to share. The more a civilisation advances intelligence wise, the more understanding they would have of the universe and all that’s in it. The more they might want to reach out and help struggling civilisations to come to grips with everything. Even looking at ourselves, many people want desperately to reach out and help others. Otherwise there wouldn’t be the outpouring of humanity when disaster strikes as seen recently in Haiti, for example.
So rather than trying to hide away, let’s announce our presence to the rest of the universe. And let’s keep listening to try and find a signal from them. One way or the other it would surely be the most significant discovery we have ever made to find out that we are not alone in the universe. Or equally that we are alone.
Basically he says that if aliens visit us, it might be to raid Earth for resources and then move on. If aliens visit us, the outcome could be compared to when Columbus arrived in America and the decimation the white man left after him on the Native Americans.
He continued that we only have to take a look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might change into something we wouldn’t want to meet and therefore we should do everything possible to avoid contact with extraterrestrials.
Naturally I don’t agree with him and set out some of my reasons below.
Astronomers are pretty much agreed having analysed the types of stars and star systems, it’s unlikely that there would be intelligent aliens anywhere within 90 light years of us. There probably is life but it could be microbial, or at a different stage of evolution than us. An astronomer called Frank Drake came up with an equation in the 1960s called the Drake equation. He was the guy who started Project Ozma which listened for signs of intelligent radio signals coming from a number of different star systems. Nothing was found. However, the answer to the Drake equation was the number of civilisations in our galaxy with whom communication might be possible. This took into account the average rate of star formation, the fraction of those stars which have planets, the fraction of those planets which actually produce life, the fraction of those life forms which develop intelligence and the faction of those which actually develop radio communication and finally the length of time such civilisations continue to exist. Multiplying these fractions together gives the number of civilisations. Depending on the value given to these unknown fractions has resulted in answers ranging from 1 civilisation per galaxy to millions.
It obviously can’t be millions as that leads to the famous question as to where are they. Some people believe that they are in fact already here and some go further and say they are in fact, dangerous. Alien abduction, mutilation of cattle are frequently cited. Sure there are lots of reports of UFOs in the skies but mostly from people who are untrained in looking at the sky. Most of the sightings are of Venus when low in the evening sky (a beautiful sight), weather balloons, even the common airplane. And surely a lot of the Nevada sightings are of the stealth aircraft being put through their paces before they were even announced to the American public. And frankly, I think anybody who believes they have been abducted are deluded. Think about it. An advanced civilisation crosses space and perhaps time to reach Earth and what do they do? Buzz aircraft, abduct people and mutilate cattle? Besides if there are so many aliens around, how come there is not one single incident where a piece of alien technology has been found? Roswell, among others, may be cited but no evidence has been forthcoming. Besides, the pieces of debris found at Roswell were from a weather balloon.
It is possible that we are actually unique and are the only form of intelligent life in the universe or even in our own galaxy. I believe this is highly unlikely and as the heroine in the film Contact said, if this is true it seems like an awful waste of space out there. And looking at the Drake equation again, we have already discovered in excess of 300 planets orbiting stars other than our own which implies a fairly decent rate of planet formation which is one factor increasing the odds in favour of life elsewhere. Also on our own planet we have found life existing in the most inhospitable places where we never expected to find it. For example, microbes living miles underground, some frozen in ice which revive when heated up, life existing without light or heat in the very deepest places in the oceans.
Now that it’s beginning to look like ET surely exists somewhere, let’s consider the question of whether they could reach us if they wanted to?
In order for a civilisation to cross the vastness of space they would have to be incredibly advanced technologically. And not only that, I believe that such advancement in technology also comes with advancement in their understanding of themselves and other creatures, so much so that they would surely have long ago realised the senselessness of violence and killing. At our present level of technology our fastest spacecraft could probably cover the distance to the nearest star in about 80,000 years. So an incredible leap in technological sophistication is required to overcome that daunting timeframe. If Einstein is right about the speed of light being a limiting factor, then we may never meet another alien race face to face. However, I’m convinced that there must be ways around this problem but these advances are not going to come anytime soon. However things turn out, only an incredibly advanced race will be capable of making such journeys. Aggression or violence would be a thing of the past with such a race. Certainly if they haven’t learned to control such behaviour then it is unlikely that they would have survived for so long. Besides, what could we have that they would possibly need?
So now that we know ET is not here yet and unlikely to be for some considerable time to come, our best option to talk with them is by radio or optical communication, or maybe by some other method we haven’t discovered yet. On Earth we have been communicating by radio for the last 90 odd years and as radio waves travel at the speed of light, this means that our signals have already traversed space out to 90 light years. So if there are intelligent aliens with radio capabilities within that range, they know we’re here already.
Now going into the digital age and away from normal radio communication analogue technology, some say that digital signals would look like noise to aliens. I don’t understand this. It’s nonsense! A signal is a signal and it just needs deciphering. Maybe they mean that digital signals from earth are weaker and more earth directed and so eventually when our technology has advanced sufficiently our signals won’t leak into space at all. Advanced aliens will probably use similar technology which is another reason we don’t spot them in our radio searches. The chances of finding a civilisation at the exact same point of evolution as ourselves is about the same changes of winning the lotto. Fairly low. So most civilisations out there are probably far superior to us and there’s no chance of our finding them (unless they want to be found) or far inferior to us in which case there won’t be much in the line of signal to find them.
I mentioned above that during Project Ozma nothing was found. Well, during a later SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) search in the mid seventies, one signal was found and they called it the Wow! signal. This bore all the hallmarks of artificial origin (any hint of it being manmade was ruled out), unfortunately it was never seen again. To this day some still insist it was of extraterrestrial and intelligent origin.
Frank Drake sent a message from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico (the largest in the world) in 1974. Because this telescope can only point in one direction as the Earth rotates, the message was sent towards a dense group of stars called Messier 13. Messier 13 is the name given to a particular globular cluster which lies along with many other similar clusters on the outskirts of our galaxy. Unfortunately it will take about 25000 years to reach it’s destination, so we won’t be getting a reply anytime soon. But, what the hell, it was a first shot and maybe an alien spacecraft will pick it up first.
So why bother listening or trying to make contact? In my opinion, the importance of communicating with them is that we would have so much to learn from them. But maybe they don’t want to share? If that’s the case, it’s a pity, but I would think they would want to share. The more a civilisation advances intelligence wise, the more understanding they would have of the universe and all that’s in it. The more they might want to reach out and help struggling civilisations to come to grips with everything. Even looking at ourselves, many people want desperately to reach out and help others. Otherwise there wouldn’t be the outpouring of humanity when disaster strikes as seen recently in Haiti, for example.
So rather than trying to hide away, let’s announce our presence to the rest of the universe. And let’s keep listening to try and find a signal from them. One way or the other it would surely be the most significant discovery we have ever made to find out that we are not alone in the universe. Or equally that we are alone.
Monday, April 26, 2010
The Shroud of Turin
The Shroud of Turin is supposedly the burial cloth of the man Jesus Christ who was crucified by the Romans outside the walls of Jerusalem in approximately 30 AD. There are many reasons why this might be the actual cloth which I'll go into below, however, all speculation was stopped dead (except by a hardcore of believers) in 1988 when radio carbon dating showed that the cloth came from the medieval period sometime between 1260 and 1390.
The shroud depicts the faint outline (front and back) of a man who had been wrapped in it. In fact, it was only when a photograph was taken that the negative showed much more clearly the detail. And indeed the detail turns out to be fascinating. Examined by many experts over the years (medical and others), it can be positively stated that the portrayal is of a man who had been crucified, bore the marks of a heavy item across his back, spots of blood around the head indicating a crown of sharp spiked objects (such as a crown of thorns), the marks on the body of a severe lashing with a very nasty whip and last but not least, the clear mark of a wound created by a lance like object. Reading the gospel accounts this could only be the shroud of the man called Jesus or a forgery to try and fool others to believe this was the shroud of this man. And of course forgeries were a booming business in medieval times.
So, if it is a forgery, who could have done it and would he have the technical ability and knowledge during the middle ages to pull it off?
First of all, we haven’t a clue who might have forged it. Some say Leonardo da Vinci, but as he was born in 1452 and we know there are definite historical records of the shroud during the 14th century, he couldn’t have been involved.
Second, the knowledge is unlikely to have been available in the middle ages to portray the figure as it is. The shroud shows the nails were through the wrists and not the palms as depicted in many paintings through the centuries. While we know little or nothing about the Roman method of crucifixion, other than that it was a horrendous and cruel death (from reports by 1st century writers such as Philo and Josephus) twentieth century experiments show that a body could not have been supported if the nails had been placed on the palms. There are two blood flow directions from the wrists which indicate that the crucified man had to keep pushing himself upward to relieve the incredible pain of his arms and wrists only to allow himself to fall back down due to the pain in his feet. This and other incredibly precise detail would hardly have been known to a medieval forger.
Furthermore, how did the medieval forger actually carry out his work? There is no trace of pigment on the cloth itself, so it couldn’t have been painted. Some have suggested a very early form of photography was employed, but these techniques were quite unknown in the middle ages. Further, the forger would have to have known something about negatives as much of the detail only comes out in this format, so he would have been trying to create an effect which could only be seen hundreds of years after he forged it. An unlikely scenario I would imagine.
Before moving on to the radio carbon dating results, I should mention something which was discovered on the shroud some years before. During the 1970’s some sticky tape was applied to the surface of the shroud and taken away for analysis. To much surprise one of the many items discovered on these tapes was pollen. But more interestingly, some of this pollen originated from the Middle East. This particular band of pollen does not grow anywhere in Europe.
This radio carbon dating test was finally allowed to take place in 1988. One of the reasons it took so long for permission was because in order to carry it out, a section of cloth would have to be cut from the shroud and destroyed during the analysis. The section chosen was from the top left corner and a three inch by half inch piece was cut off. This was subsequently divided and a section was given to each of the three laboratories which were to carry out the testing, one in Arizona, one in Zurich and the last in Oxford. When at last the disappointing results came back, the cloth was dated between 1260 and 1390 as noted above.
So, the Shroud of Turin was a medieval forgery. Everybody could go home. End of story, or was it?
Of course, there are always those who refuse to accept the evidence and maybe that’s a good thing. While most people turned to other things, some refused to accept that this was the end for the Shroud of Turin.
One theory is that the cloth used for the radio carbon dating was taken from a section which was invisibly sowed onto it in order to tidy up burn marks from fire. We know that in 1532 a major fire broke out in the Sainte Chapelle in Chambery, France where the shroud was badly damaged. Molten silver from the casket where the shroud was housed seared through one corner of the folded cloth. Fortunately the main image on the shroud was hardly touched. In order to repair this damage, two years later Poor Clare nuns carried out some repairs stitching a strong backing cloth onto it and sewing patches over the worst of the burn marks. However, this scenario has been refuted fairly forcibly by textile experts who say that the section of shroud taken for analysis was of the same composition as the rest of it. This was backed up by Dr Flury-Lemberg who performed a major conservation job on the shroud in 2002 and who is one of the people who have the most hands-on experience of the shroud alive today.
However, there is now a lot of controversy over the radio carbon dating analysis itself. For example could the shroud have become contaminated sufficiently to make a 1st century item appear to be from the 14th century. Some scientists say that it would take something like 60% contamination for this to occur. Over the centuries the shroud was exhibited on numerous occasions and often with a lot of incense burning as it was reverently shown to the public. Besides this, there was a fire as mentioned above where smoke particles surely got mixed into the material of the cloth. And on top of all this, the shroud was handled by many bishops and clerics who typically showed it by holding it in their hands by the edges, particularly the corner from where the sample for radio carbon analysis was taken.
Another problem for the radio carbon testing was that the three laboratories chosen all used the same technique. It would have been better (as advised at the time) to have at least one other laboratory which used a different technique. The laboratories have also been accused of inadequate preparation of the samples (in order to minimise the effect of contamination).
Assuming new radio carbon dating shows the cloth to date from the first century, there are still a lot of questions to answer. For example, our first known records of the shroud being shown to the public come from 1355. Where was the shroud kept before that? Surely such a sacred relic could hardly have remained hidden for over a century? One intriguing answer to this is provided by the writer Ian Wilson who puts forward a somewhat convoluted argument that it is the same object as the Image of Edessa, a cloth with the likeness of Christ on it whose records do date from the 1st century but was lost around 1204.
Of course, I have to mention that for every positive theory mentioned above there are other scientists and experts who say entirely the opposite. For example, some say the anatomical aspects of the body are wrong, the nose is too long and the head is too big for the body. Also some say there is paint pigment on the cloth. Also John’s gospel points out that the shroud was not one piece, but included a part which was separately wrapped around the head (John 20:7). So what chance does the layman have when the so called experts refute each other. Whoever may be right I’m sure the truth will out one day. But is the truth not already staring us in the face after the radio carbon test? Well, that’s one big question which has raised it’s head once again.
And now with the Shroud available to view this month and next (April and May 2010) in Turin, maybe the time is ripe for another shot at radio carbon dating but this time with much more control in place than previously.
Even if the test does show that the shroud comes from the 1st century, it does not show that Jesus was the son of God or actually arose from the dead. It probably shows that it was the shroud of a man called Jesus Christ who was scourged, nailed to the cross, a crown of thorns rammed into his head and a lance thrust into his side. After that anything else has to be based on faith.
The shroud depicts the faint outline (front and back) of a man who had been wrapped in it. In fact, it was only when a photograph was taken that the negative showed much more clearly the detail. And indeed the detail turns out to be fascinating. Examined by many experts over the years (medical and others), it can be positively stated that the portrayal is of a man who had been crucified, bore the marks of a heavy item across his back, spots of blood around the head indicating a crown of sharp spiked objects (such as a crown of thorns), the marks on the body of a severe lashing with a very nasty whip and last but not least, the clear mark of a wound created by a lance like object. Reading the gospel accounts this could only be the shroud of the man called Jesus or a forgery to try and fool others to believe this was the shroud of this man. And of course forgeries were a booming business in medieval times.
So, if it is a forgery, who could have done it and would he have the technical ability and knowledge during the middle ages to pull it off?
First of all, we haven’t a clue who might have forged it. Some say Leonardo da Vinci, but as he was born in 1452 and we know there are definite historical records of the shroud during the 14th century, he couldn’t have been involved.
Second, the knowledge is unlikely to have been available in the middle ages to portray the figure as it is. The shroud shows the nails were through the wrists and not the palms as depicted in many paintings through the centuries. While we know little or nothing about the Roman method of crucifixion, other than that it was a horrendous and cruel death (from reports by 1st century writers such as Philo and Josephus) twentieth century experiments show that a body could not have been supported if the nails had been placed on the palms. There are two blood flow directions from the wrists which indicate that the crucified man had to keep pushing himself upward to relieve the incredible pain of his arms and wrists only to allow himself to fall back down due to the pain in his feet. This and other incredibly precise detail would hardly have been known to a medieval forger.
Furthermore, how did the medieval forger actually carry out his work? There is no trace of pigment on the cloth itself, so it couldn’t have been painted. Some have suggested a very early form of photography was employed, but these techniques were quite unknown in the middle ages. Further, the forger would have to have known something about negatives as much of the detail only comes out in this format, so he would have been trying to create an effect which could only be seen hundreds of years after he forged it. An unlikely scenario I would imagine.
Before moving on to the radio carbon dating results, I should mention something which was discovered on the shroud some years before. During the 1970’s some sticky tape was applied to the surface of the shroud and taken away for analysis. To much surprise one of the many items discovered on these tapes was pollen. But more interestingly, some of this pollen originated from the Middle East. This particular band of pollen does not grow anywhere in Europe.
This radio carbon dating test was finally allowed to take place in 1988. One of the reasons it took so long for permission was because in order to carry it out, a section of cloth would have to be cut from the shroud and destroyed during the analysis. The section chosen was from the top left corner and a three inch by half inch piece was cut off. This was subsequently divided and a section was given to each of the three laboratories which were to carry out the testing, one in Arizona, one in Zurich and the last in Oxford. When at last the disappointing results came back, the cloth was dated between 1260 and 1390 as noted above.
So, the Shroud of Turin was a medieval forgery. Everybody could go home. End of story, or was it?
Of course, there are always those who refuse to accept the evidence and maybe that’s a good thing. While most people turned to other things, some refused to accept that this was the end for the Shroud of Turin.
One theory is that the cloth used for the radio carbon dating was taken from a section which was invisibly sowed onto it in order to tidy up burn marks from fire. We know that in 1532 a major fire broke out in the Sainte Chapelle in Chambery, France where the shroud was badly damaged. Molten silver from the casket where the shroud was housed seared through one corner of the folded cloth. Fortunately the main image on the shroud was hardly touched. In order to repair this damage, two years later Poor Clare nuns carried out some repairs stitching a strong backing cloth onto it and sewing patches over the worst of the burn marks. However, this scenario has been refuted fairly forcibly by textile experts who say that the section of shroud taken for analysis was of the same composition as the rest of it. This was backed up by Dr Flury-Lemberg who performed a major conservation job on the shroud in 2002 and who is one of the people who have the most hands-on experience of the shroud alive today.
However, there is now a lot of controversy over the radio carbon dating analysis itself. For example could the shroud have become contaminated sufficiently to make a 1st century item appear to be from the 14th century. Some scientists say that it would take something like 60% contamination for this to occur. Over the centuries the shroud was exhibited on numerous occasions and often with a lot of incense burning as it was reverently shown to the public. Besides this, there was a fire as mentioned above where smoke particles surely got mixed into the material of the cloth. And on top of all this, the shroud was handled by many bishops and clerics who typically showed it by holding it in their hands by the edges, particularly the corner from where the sample for radio carbon analysis was taken.
Another problem for the radio carbon testing was that the three laboratories chosen all used the same technique. It would have been better (as advised at the time) to have at least one other laboratory which used a different technique. The laboratories have also been accused of inadequate preparation of the samples (in order to minimise the effect of contamination).
Assuming new radio carbon dating shows the cloth to date from the first century, there are still a lot of questions to answer. For example, our first known records of the shroud being shown to the public come from 1355. Where was the shroud kept before that? Surely such a sacred relic could hardly have remained hidden for over a century? One intriguing answer to this is provided by the writer Ian Wilson who puts forward a somewhat convoluted argument that it is the same object as the Image of Edessa, a cloth with the likeness of Christ on it whose records do date from the 1st century but was lost around 1204.
Of course, I have to mention that for every positive theory mentioned above there are other scientists and experts who say entirely the opposite. For example, some say the anatomical aspects of the body are wrong, the nose is too long and the head is too big for the body. Also some say there is paint pigment on the cloth. Also John’s gospel points out that the shroud was not one piece, but included a part which was separately wrapped around the head (John 20:7). So what chance does the layman have when the so called experts refute each other. Whoever may be right I’m sure the truth will out one day. But is the truth not already staring us in the face after the radio carbon test? Well, that’s one big question which has raised it’s head once again.
And now with the Shroud available to view this month and next (April and May 2010) in Turin, maybe the time is ripe for another shot at radio carbon dating but this time with much more control in place than previously.
Even if the test does show that the shroud comes from the 1st century, it does not show that Jesus was the son of God or actually arose from the dead. It probably shows that it was the shroud of a man called Jesus Christ who was scourged, nailed to the cross, a crown of thorns rammed into his head and a lance thrust into his side. After that anything else has to be based on faith.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Max Ernst and The Virgin Chastising the Infant Jesus
In Ireland especially we are well used to seeing pictures of the Holy Family, Jesus, his mother etc. Usually these pictures are scenes from the birth of Christ depicted in a stable with mother, child, stepfather, shepherds, a cow and an ox, and maybe an angel or two in the background. If you wait till the feast of the Epiphany (6th January) which celebrates the revelation of God in human form in the person of Jesus Christ then you'll probably have the three wise men thrown in as well.
There are lots of great pictures of the Holy Family painted by many gifted artists through the centuries. Some of these portray the Holy Family itself, some with Christ's birth, some dealing with the flight to Egypt, and some dealing with later times. One of these is the picture by the surrealist artist Max Ernst, The Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Painter. A bit of a mouthful, but it is shown above.
I only came across this picture recently and was taken aback by it. It is not often you see the mother of God spanking her son. He must have been pretty bold as you can see his halo is on the ground. And the more I looked at this portrait, the more intrigued I became as it shows the deep humanity of not only Christ, but his mother also and certainly raises a number of difficult questions on the whole idea of God-become-Man and I suppose the issue of corporal punishment. Frankly on that subject a kick in the arse from my father never did me any harm and today there are a lot of spoilt brats running riot who badly need the hand of their parent. Anyway, I'm not going to get into that now.
I write as an agnostic who rather hopes the whole thing (or at least certain aspects of it) are true, but I think for the purposes of this article, we should agree to suspend disbelief for a moment and accept that God came down as a man in the form of Jesus some two thousand years ago.
Of course Jesus wasn't exactly accepted as fully God and fully Man initially and controversies raged in the early church for the first four centuries as to exactly what the nature of Jesus was. It was clear that he was the son of God, but what did this mean? Was he actually God or just the son of God? Was he created by God or did he always co-exist with God? Some even said that he was a divine being who took on human appearance but not flesh. It took a couple of church councils to clear the matter up, not without a lot of bitterness on opposing sides. In fact some of this bitterness led to downright murder. Certain bishops in those early days weren't averse to bumping off their opponents in the name of their beliefs. The most widely accepted definitions on the nature of Christ were made by the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus and Chalcedon, this last in the year 451 AD.
Based on these council decisions, Jesus was now fully God and fully Man. However, even though he was a man subject to all the usual temptations, fears and needs of a man, because he was also God he could not commit sin. Which means that Max Ernst's portrait couldn't be true. Jesus couldn't have been bold as a child and there would have been no need for his mother to smack him.
From the new testament we know practically nothing about the early life of Christ as a boy, except for his getting lost in the temple (which was somewhat careless of his parents, he was missing for three days and they didn't even realise he was gone for about a day!). In fact we only meet him again at around the age of 30 when he appeared at the river Jordan and was baptised by his cousin, John the Baptist.
The new testament has four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John which are very familiar to most people. However, these were only the gospels which made it into the bible. There are lots more which were considered by the early church to be non-canonical, i.e. they were suspect and were not considered to have been inspired by God. In fact the early church did their best to suppress these gospels and nearly succeeded. Many of them we knew only because the early church fathers mentioned them in their writings in order to condemn them, others were discovered at various times and places since then. In fact one of the great finds was in a place called Nag Hammadi in Egypt around 1945 where a number of lost manuscripts were found in an earthenware jar by some local farmers.
One of these gospels is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas made popular by the film, Stigmata, some years ago) and wasn't one of those discovered at Nag Hammadi. In this gospel we find the boy Jesus up to all sorts of shenanigans. In one episode he makes clay birds and then brings them to life. Another time he was playing with some other boys on the roof of a house. One of the children was pushed off by another and he fell to the ground and was killed. All the children ran away except for Jesus and when the dead boy's parents heard of it and arrived on the scene, they thought that Jesus was responsible and accused him of their child's murder. At this, Jesus leapt down from the roof and said to the dead child to arise and tell who had thrown him from the roof. Accordingly the dead child arose and told his parents the truth.
However, in a more sinister vein, on another day Jesus struck a child dead because he threw a stone at him. It is not recorded whether he brought this kid back to life or not.
Maybe that is why his mother spanked him.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Help, I'm an Agnostic
"Help, I'm a Rock" sang Frank Zappa in the mid sixties. Exactly my time, I was a teenager then going through the Irish Catholic horrors of coming to terms with myself and my sexuality. Everything was forbidden. If you looked sideways at a woman you were hopping off to confession. Really, I'm not joking.
So what has this "song" got to do with anything? Well it sort of encapsulates my feelings today for then and now.
I'm an agnostic. Ah horror of horrors! Why doesn't he get off the fence and make up his mind? Well, I'll tell you why. I can't be a believer and I can't be an atheist. I have been both and here's what happened.
I was a full blown believer in God and Catholicism till I was about 18 or 19 years of age. I'll always remember the day when full of fear I pretended to go to mass, but instead headed off to the seafront and sat on the rocks (there's that rock theme again) looking out at the hill of Howth. What a restful place and as I sat there deciding to become fully atheist, the fear gradually lifted. Suddenly (I'm reminded of St Paul being clobbered by a bolt of lightning, although this was nothing like that, but there were similarities) I felt okay. The fear had gone. I wasn't going to hell. I wasn't going to be blasted out of it by a vengeful God sitting in his heavens with nothing else to do but watch me. "God," says God, "There's Fergal doubting Me! I'll soon put a stop to that!"
I went home and have not been to mass since (except for weddings, funerals and now Easter and Christmas as my partner drags me along - mind you, I don't protest too much).
So now I was a full-blown atheist. Not praying, not even thinking of God. Immersing myself in my music and reading. Reading then was all about science. Now I know how to explain the universe and how it got here without needing the intervention of a divine being. Boy, wouldn't Dawkins be proud of me. So explain it? Okay.
Long, long ago there was something rather than nothing. Why not? One is as likely as another. Some people may want to say God came first, but as Sherlock Holmes always said, the simplest solution to a problem usually turns out to be right. Occam's razor. So rather than postulating a being like God who must be incredibly complex, let's posit a hunk of substance, incredibly simple. Well, at least simpler than God. This hunk of something blows up into a sort of universe (nothing like our present universe, of course, but a blob of spacetime with not much going on, in fact far too simple to support or evolve life). This universe implodes and when it reaches a singularity state (squeezed to infinity) it rebounds on itself and blows up again, this time creating a slightly more complex bit of spacetime. And this process goes on and on through eternity till one day the latest cosmos in this batch of evolving universes produces ours. So complex with the parameters so finely tuned that eventually it gives birth to life and eventually us. And maybe even other intelligent aliens elsewhere.
So that's it. All safely explained and safe. Except it wasn't. Something is missing from this. It is so unsatisfactory. And eventually my atheism started to crumble and I didn't feel so sure about it anymore. This just couldn't be it.
Or could it? Was this not wishful thinking on my part? Selfish and not wanting to die into nothing (not that I'll know much about it if I do). Still, it wasn't satisfactory. So now I had to become that dreaded being called an Agnostic. Sitting on the fence. Well, for me it's the only honest way to be. While I admire a person who has faith, I certainly don't admire blind faith. And being an atheist for me is also blind faith. So I sit and wiggle my toes in agnostic land.
I don't want to be an agnostic. I would prefer to somehow know God. But unfortunately I don't. I've tried to communicate with him, but he never seems to answer. Or I haven't been able to see the answer he gives me.
Peter, the rock of the church, denied three times. I've denied many times. Sometimes, I still do. But today I've taken to praying a little. And that feels good.
But then another problem crops up and that is free will. Is there really free will? For example, I don't decide what interests I have. I had a fascination with science (especially particle physics and cosmology) when I was a teenager (I still have this interest), but if somebody told me then that I'd be devouring books on religious history from my forties onwards, develop an interest in and read the Bible (old and new testaments) accompanied by a massive biblical commentary, I'd have said rubbish. Now I'm sixty-one and looking back on my birthday trip with my sons to the Holy Land last year. Who'd have thought?
I also don't decide what beliefs I have. I didn't pick agnosticism, or Catholicism, or atheism. I didn't pick to be born in Ireland to a middle class family. I don't believe I went out and chose my wife. Out of lots of girls I met and some I dated, she was the one who decided to stay with me. Or did she?
So Help, I don't believe in free will.
Help I'm an Agnostic.
Help I'm a Rock.
So what has this "song" got to do with anything? Well it sort of encapsulates my feelings today for then and now.
I'm an agnostic. Ah horror of horrors! Why doesn't he get off the fence and make up his mind? Well, I'll tell you why. I can't be a believer and I can't be an atheist. I have been both and here's what happened.
I was a full blown believer in God and Catholicism till I was about 18 or 19 years of age. I'll always remember the day when full of fear I pretended to go to mass, but instead headed off to the seafront and sat on the rocks (there's that rock theme again) looking out at the hill of Howth. What a restful place and as I sat there deciding to become fully atheist, the fear gradually lifted. Suddenly (I'm reminded of St Paul being clobbered by a bolt of lightning, although this was nothing like that, but there were similarities) I felt okay. The fear had gone. I wasn't going to hell. I wasn't going to be blasted out of it by a vengeful God sitting in his heavens with nothing else to do but watch me. "God," says God, "There's Fergal doubting Me! I'll soon put a stop to that!"
I went home and have not been to mass since (except for weddings, funerals and now Easter and Christmas as my partner drags me along - mind you, I don't protest too much).
So now I was a full-blown atheist. Not praying, not even thinking of God. Immersing myself in my music and reading. Reading then was all about science. Now I know how to explain the universe and how it got here without needing the intervention of a divine being. Boy, wouldn't Dawkins be proud of me. So explain it? Okay.
Long, long ago there was something rather than nothing. Why not? One is as likely as another. Some people may want to say God came first, but as Sherlock Holmes always said, the simplest solution to a problem usually turns out to be right. Occam's razor. So rather than postulating a being like God who must be incredibly complex, let's posit a hunk of substance, incredibly simple. Well, at least simpler than God. This hunk of something blows up into a sort of universe (nothing like our present universe, of course, but a blob of spacetime with not much going on, in fact far too simple to support or evolve life). This universe implodes and when it reaches a singularity state (squeezed to infinity) it rebounds on itself and blows up again, this time creating a slightly more complex bit of spacetime. And this process goes on and on through eternity till one day the latest cosmos in this batch of evolving universes produces ours. So complex with the parameters so finely tuned that eventually it gives birth to life and eventually us. And maybe even other intelligent aliens elsewhere.
So that's it. All safely explained and safe. Except it wasn't. Something is missing from this. It is so unsatisfactory. And eventually my atheism started to crumble and I didn't feel so sure about it anymore. This just couldn't be it.
Or could it? Was this not wishful thinking on my part? Selfish and not wanting to die into nothing (not that I'll know much about it if I do). Still, it wasn't satisfactory. So now I had to become that dreaded being called an Agnostic. Sitting on the fence. Well, for me it's the only honest way to be. While I admire a person who has faith, I certainly don't admire blind faith. And being an atheist for me is also blind faith. So I sit and wiggle my toes in agnostic land.
I don't want to be an agnostic. I would prefer to somehow know God. But unfortunately I don't. I've tried to communicate with him, but he never seems to answer. Or I haven't been able to see the answer he gives me.
Peter, the rock of the church, denied three times. I've denied many times. Sometimes, I still do. But today I've taken to praying a little. And that feels good.
But then another problem crops up and that is free will. Is there really free will? For example, I don't decide what interests I have. I had a fascination with science (especially particle physics and cosmology) when I was a teenager (I still have this interest), but if somebody told me then that I'd be devouring books on religious history from my forties onwards, develop an interest in and read the Bible (old and new testaments) accompanied by a massive biblical commentary, I'd have said rubbish. Now I'm sixty-one and looking back on my birthday trip with my sons to the Holy Land last year. Who'd have thought?
I also don't decide what beliefs I have. I didn't pick agnosticism, or Catholicism, or atheism. I didn't pick to be born in Ireland to a middle class family. I don't believe I went out and chose my wife. Out of lots of girls I met and some I dated, she was the one who decided to stay with me. Or did she?
So Help, I don't believe in free will.
Help I'm an Agnostic.
Help I'm a Rock.
Monday, March 1, 2010
The End of the World and the LHC
Before last Christmas the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) recommissioned their Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle machine with great success allowing it to collide atomic particles at the highest energies ever achieved in a laboratory. It was then shut down to allow for the winter period.
It has now started up again (Sunday 28th Feb) and the first beams of 2010 have been circulated in each direction. Over the next few weeks, the machine will be ramped up to about half it's design energy and then allowed to run for about 18 months. Then it will be shut down to allow extra work to prepare for bringing it up to it's full design energy.
This delay to full energy, while disappointing, is necessary for various technical reasons. It will mean the LHC will be competitive with the other big accelerator at Fermilab in America. Therefore in my opinion the LHC is unlikely to deliver any exciting new physics while running at this energy level.
So, those who believe that the machine, when running at it's full design energy, will create a black hole which will end the world can breathe a sign of relief.
What is the LHC? Basically it is an underground circular pipe approximately 27 kilometres in circumference through which protons (a member of a family of particles called hadrons) are accelerated and smashed together at four different points where the two rings of the machine intersect. These points are crammed with detection gear to measure the results of the collisions. Two protons smashing together at these incredible energies can produce a huge amount of other particles and the analysis of these collisions help scientists to build their theories of the fundamental nature of matter and the universe.
Machines like the LHC have helped build the theory called the standard model which is a description of how our world is put together at a fundamental level. It shows that there are four forces in our universe: two familiar: electromagnetism and gravity and two not so familiar: the strong and weak nuclear force. According to this model, quarks are the building blocks of matter and forces act through carrier particles exchanged between the particles of matter.
However, there are some things in our universe which the standard model can't explain. One of these is the vexing question as to why we need two very different theories to explain the very small and the very large. Quantum mechanics explains the very small (atoms etc and is the standard model mentioned above) while Einstein's general theory of relativity explains the very large. It has long been assumed that one theory should explain everything, yet these two theories cannot be reconciled. A theory which tries to do so is called String theory, the only problem being that there is not one iota of evidence for it. A beautiful theory with no shred of proof. This is one area the high energies of the LHC may be able to throw some light on.
Another problem is dark energy. Since the creation of our universe (the big bang) which happened about 14 billion years ago the universe around us has been expanding. Naturally you would think the expansion rate would begin to slow as the force of the big bang began to be resisted by gravity. However, a number of years ago this idea was shattered by the discovery that the universe was actually speeding up. So something must be creating an outward force and this was called dark energy. We have no idea what this dark energy might be so this is another area which the LHC will be examining.
How do particles have mass? What gives different particles different amounts of mass which react in different ways to the different forces? One answer is a particle called the Higgs particle (named after a physicist called Peter Higgs). This is a particle we definitely expect to find with the LHC. Of course not finding it means our standard model is wrong and will have to be looked at again. So even if we don't find what we expect, this will be fascinating in it's own right.
When we measure the amount of mass in our universe we find that the matter that we can see (stars, galaxies etc) only comes to a small percent of the total. About a quarter is some other sort of matter which we can't see called, appropriately, dark matter (different to dark energy). Will the LHC elucidate this problem?
Some other questions remain. Why is there more matter in the universe than antimatter? Are there more than 4 dimensions (three of space, one of time) in our universe? String theory for example exists in 11 dimensions (depending on the version of the theory). And of course, as these questions get answered, you can be sure they will give rise to lots more questions, some of which we haven't even thought of.
Now, let's get back to those who tried to stop the LHC being switched on because they said that the energies of this machine are so great they will give rise to a black hole which will destroy our planet in seconds. I like to refer to them as "end of the world" guys because they are just another in a long line of doomsday prophets who have been with us throughout history.
If you read the gospels you will find that Jesus himself fully expected the world to end if not within his own lifetime, then shortly thereafter. After all he did say "there are some here who will not die before they see the kingdom of God coming with power" (Mark 9:1). Of course some say that this is a literal interpretation and Jesus didn't mean that at all. Whatever the case, St Paul among many other disciples certainly seemed to believe that the end of the world was nigh.
There are tens if not hundreds of different predictions of the end of the world since New Testament times. For example around 1000 AD, there were many who were convinced that the Antichrist was about to arrive and usher in the end of days. The black plague of 1346 seemed to many to signal the last days. Just google end of world predictions to find many of these prophecies.
And in our own time we are all awaiting December 2012. Interestingly this is beginning to tie in nicely with the LHC black hole producer. As this machine will only run on half energy for the next 18 months, this brings us up to September 2011. Only 15 months or so to go till December 2012. So the machine may run longer on half energy and then be shut down for a little longer than expected. So it starts up again at full energy in December 2012 in good time to agree with the Mayan calendar prediction of the end of the world.
However, just as all the other predictions of the end of the world were wrong, I have no doubt that not only is the 2012 prediction a load of cobblers, but the possibility that the LHC will produce a black hole to swallow us all up is also wrong.
And in case you are worried, the energies of some cosmic rays striking our atmosphere every day have been measured as way in excess of anything the LHC could generate. And they haven't produced any black holes. Yet!
It has now started up again (Sunday 28th Feb) and the first beams of 2010 have been circulated in each direction. Over the next few weeks, the machine will be ramped up to about half it's design energy and then allowed to run for about 18 months. Then it will be shut down to allow extra work to prepare for bringing it up to it's full design energy.
This delay to full energy, while disappointing, is necessary for various technical reasons. It will mean the LHC will be competitive with the other big accelerator at Fermilab in America. Therefore in my opinion the LHC is unlikely to deliver any exciting new physics while running at this energy level.
So, those who believe that the machine, when running at it's full design energy, will create a black hole which will end the world can breathe a sign of relief.
What is the LHC? Basically it is an underground circular pipe approximately 27 kilometres in circumference through which protons (a member of a family of particles called hadrons) are accelerated and smashed together at four different points where the two rings of the machine intersect. These points are crammed with detection gear to measure the results of the collisions. Two protons smashing together at these incredible energies can produce a huge amount of other particles and the analysis of these collisions help scientists to build their theories of the fundamental nature of matter and the universe.
Machines like the LHC have helped build the theory called the standard model which is a description of how our world is put together at a fundamental level. It shows that there are four forces in our universe: two familiar: electromagnetism and gravity and two not so familiar: the strong and weak nuclear force. According to this model, quarks are the building blocks of matter and forces act through carrier particles exchanged between the particles of matter.
However, there are some things in our universe which the standard model can't explain. One of these is the vexing question as to why we need two very different theories to explain the very small and the very large. Quantum mechanics explains the very small (atoms etc and is the standard model mentioned above) while Einstein's general theory of relativity explains the very large. It has long been assumed that one theory should explain everything, yet these two theories cannot be reconciled. A theory which tries to do so is called String theory, the only problem being that there is not one iota of evidence for it. A beautiful theory with no shred of proof. This is one area the high energies of the LHC may be able to throw some light on.
Another problem is dark energy. Since the creation of our universe (the big bang) which happened about 14 billion years ago the universe around us has been expanding. Naturally you would think the expansion rate would begin to slow as the force of the big bang began to be resisted by gravity. However, a number of years ago this idea was shattered by the discovery that the universe was actually speeding up. So something must be creating an outward force and this was called dark energy. We have no idea what this dark energy might be so this is another area which the LHC will be examining.
How do particles have mass? What gives different particles different amounts of mass which react in different ways to the different forces? One answer is a particle called the Higgs particle (named after a physicist called Peter Higgs). This is a particle we definitely expect to find with the LHC. Of course not finding it means our standard model is wrong and will have to be looked at again. So even if we don't find what we expect, this will be fascinating in it's own right.
When we measure the amount of mass in our universe we find that the matter that we can see (stars, galaxies etc) only comes to a small percent of the total. About a quarter is some other sort of matter which we can't see called, appropriately, dark matter (different to dark energy). Will the LHC elucidate this problem?
Some other questions remain. Why is there more matter in the universe than antimatter? Are there more than 4 dimensions (three of space, one of time) in our universe? String theory for example exists in 11 dimensions (depending on the version of the theory). And of course, as these questions get answered, you can be sure they will give rise to lots more questions, some of which we haven't even thought of.
Now, let's get back to those who tried to stop the LHC being switched on because they said that the energies of this machine are so great they will give rise to a black hole which will destroy our planet in seconds. I like to refer to them as "end of the world" guys because they are just another in a long line of doomsday prophets who have been with us throughout history.
If you read the gospels you will find that Jesus himself fully expected the world to end if not within his own lifetime, then shortly thereafter. After all he did say "there are some here who will not die before they see the kingdom of God coming with power" (Mark 9:1). Of course some say that this is a literal interpretation and Jesus didn't mean that at all. Whatever the case, St Paul among many other disciples certainly seemed to believe that the end of the world was nigh.
There are tens if not hundreds of different predictions of the end of the world since New Testament times. For example around 1000 AD, there were many who were convinced that the Antichrist was about to arrive and usher in the end of days. The black plague of 1346 seemed to many to signal the last days. Just google end of world predictions to find many of these prophecies.
And in our own time we are all awaiting December 2012. Interestingly this is beginning to tie in nicely with the LHC black hole producer. As this machine will only run on half energy for the next 18 months, this brings us up to September 2011. Only 15 months or so to go till December 2012. So the machine may run longer on half energy and then be shut down for a little longer than expected. So it starts up again at full energy in December 2012 in good time to agree with the Mayan calendar prediction of the end of the world.
However, just as all the other predictions of the end of the world were wrong, I have no doubt that not only is the 2012 prediction a load of cobblers, but the possibility that the LHC will produce a black hole to swallow us all up is also wrong.
And in case you are worried, the energies of some cosmic rays striking our atmosphere every day have been measured as way in excess of anything the LHC could generate. And they haven't produced any black holes. Yet!
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