This book is an epistemological nightmare. Rizzi asks the reader to take on radical and unfounded views, sometimes without even a loose explanation or logical construction beyond “That makes sense, right?”

Even though I disagree with nearly every tenet of Rizzi’s philosophy, I still would give it a respectable two or three star rating if it weren’t for:

• His obvious lack of a copyeditor;
• His entire disregard for even addressing other points of view;
• His attempt to tackle complex issues with a poorly developed philosophical toolbox; and, most importantly,
• His total lack of logical flow or structure beyond asking the reader to accept things on his authority.

Though no doubt a great physicist, Rizzi seems to have lost his notion of rigor in trying to invent a new realist approach to the philosophy of science. His biggest flaw, in my opinion, is in his confusion of the nature of words; he oftentimes seems to think that he can pull universal truth out of the English language.

Unfortunately for him, the English language is neither an authority on nature nor a system he’s totally mastered himself.

All in all, avoid this book — especially if you don’t have the scientific grounding to understand why it’s wrong on your own.

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Damage from Tsunami near Sendai, Japan. In this article, we'll examine whether prayer or labor can help; more importantly, we'll discuss whether prayer contributes to or detracts from the amount of assistance provided.³

As the situation continued to worsen in Japan a little over a week ago, many of witnessed Wall posts and tweets and blogs and so forth where people sent their thoughts and prayers to the Japanese. We listened to our friends and our parents and grandparents — and perhaps, for some, ourselves — pray for the victims and ask God to look on them with mercy and compassion and healing.

And many of us laughed at those who thought it would do any good to pray.

Neurological Benefits of Prayer and Meditation

But prayer is a complex phenomenon, and I had a lengthy discussion with my friend, physicist, and Christian Kemper Talley about what prayer is and how it affects us as humans.

Prayer has likely been around as long as religion has been… perhaps longer, even. We have written records of prayer rituals that are at least 5,000 years old. ¹ But, rationally, what does prayer do to us? Why do we feel the way we do after prayer? Intense prayer, usually by those who are serious practitioners (like nuns and monks), activates the frontal lobes and shuts off the parietal lobes, which are traditionally thought to process sensory input and create subjective reality for the owner of that particular brain. ² It turns out meditation — even secular meditation — has the same neurological effect.

So prayer does affect the pray-er, in a way that most would consider positive and clarifying. But does prayer have an immediate external effect? Does it help enact magical action at a distance? If enough people pray together, can the power of that prayer somehow be channeled for good?

I must resoundingly say “no”, and many rational Christians I know would agree with me. Even if prayer affected the “will of God”, God could only affect the world by urging people to do good things (impossible by Judeo-Christian doctrine, as that denies someone’s free will) or by enacting a physical miracle. Even those who believe that miracles exist typically agree that they’re rare. So what’s the point in praying?

Positive Prayer

My friend argues — validly, I think — that the internal clarification provided by prayer or meditation mediates positive work by the believer. Sure, one might argue, the prayer itself may not work magic: but the now-motivated servant of God now has impetus and will power to get up and go affect real physical change. This could be done my any means, from donating money to the Red Cross to helping coordinate relief efforts online to flying straight to Japan and picking up a shovel. I won’t deny that this is a valid argument in favor of prayer — or, at least, meditation (which I’ll consider a superset of prayer).

But I know of many people who don’t pray — and even many people who are atheists — who do the same things. They go out and help. They donate. They contribute. So prayer isn’t the exclusive course to motivating oneself to enact change. In a perfect world, a secular rationalist who loves humanity first might even help more than a faithful believer who loves God first.

But all of this is pretty obvious, so here’s what I really want to talk about: what are the negative effects of prayer, and are they outweighed by the positive effects?

Negative Prayer

Here’s a problem that I perceive with prayer (in this context): those who believe that prayer truly does work, that prayer has a material, action-at-a-distance, miracle like capacity to affect change may feel that prayer is a substitute for real service. I know people, especially adults in their 30s – 50s, who pray every night for Japan’s recovery but have never donated a cent (let alone flown to Japan to do service, but that’s more understandable). Whether prayer here is a facade of caring these people hide behind or a genuine impression that they’re doing good things by praying, it remains that they’re relieved either the social pressure or the divine edict to contribute to the community by replacing it with prayer. (I’d be interested to find a study on this, but don’t feel like doing too much research: someone send me an article if you can find work investigating this question! In the meantime, read this article from the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion for a somewhat related and interesting study.)

Is there a balance?

I’ve occasionally been accused, upon revealing myself as an atheist, to necessarily be a self-centered nihilist. But this certainly doesn’t follow. I love humanity; in fact, I think I love it more than many religious believers do. More than anything I want to see us keep maturing as a species. I want to reach for the stars, to disassemble the quantum, to live in a state where resources aren’t a problem and menial tasks are provided for us by our artificial intelligences, by our critical thinking and our advances in science. I feel that devoting ourselves to various sky-wizards (as my friend Mark calls God and kin) holds us back, and takes up the precious time we do have in our lives to enjoy the people we love, work on fulfilling projects for the pursuit of truth and happiness, and enjoy the spectrum of experience available to our sensory apparatuses.

There are many who think likewise.

So is prayer worth it? My fundamental question is one of an inequality; does it hold that:

good[prayer] > bad[prayer] ?

More precisely, does

good[prayer] – bad[prayer] ≥ good[non-prayer] – bad[non-prayer] ?

I’m not sure that it does. In fact, I’m personally pretty sure that it doesn’t. This is a question for anyone to think about, but I ask that, if you do, you do it objectively: take an unbiased look at those around you, note who prays, note who volunteers, note who donates. Note who the atheists are, who the lazy Christians are, who the serious religious believers are.

And ask yourself if it’s worth it.

[1] – Stephens, Ferris J. (1950). Ancient Near Eastern Texts. Princeton. pp. 391–2. (via https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Prayer#Forms_of_prayer)

[2] – Prayer may reshape your brain… and your reality. NPR News, 2009. This is a layman’s overview of a particular journalist’s experience, but there are many studies using functional MRI’s to map brain activity during prayer or meditation that are easy to find on the web.

[3] – By Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon (NASA Earth Observatory), via Wikimedia Commons [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:2011_Earthquake_and_Tsunami_near_Sendai,_Japan.jpg]. This image is in the public domain because it was created by NASA.

I was supposed to read this in high school, but I just didn’t feel like it then. They made a big deal about it being a great novel, you know? My teacher was in love with it. That kills me. It really does. But the rest of the class was just full of goddam phonies.

All that aside, this really was a great novel; I’m glad I finally read it! It’s hard to classify what this book is: at times you feel like it’s a coming-of-age novel, but by the end it seems that Holden hasn’t really learned much; he has, however, been saved by the overwhelming power of kin selection. The end of the novel begs the reader to hypothesize about Holden’s future, which is left open. Mr. Antolini’s prophesy seems avoided, but despite his narrow escape from destroying his life he unaltered in his perception of “phonies” and a pessimist can do little but suppose that Holden will have the same experience at his next school that he has at the previous few.

On the other hand, Holden is growing up. Even if he doesn’t show it in the story’s narration, we know that kids get older and wiser. We know that eventually he’ll be more clear minded and realize what’s going on around him. And the experiences throughout the novel may just be the foundation he needs to take a firmer stand on life and step boldly into a more lucid future.

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This book was a captivating read… but not exactly what I was looking for when I read it. Though flavorful — and I can appreciate that this is book is written for a specific audience that I might not be a part of — I felt that Aczel could have dared to present a little more mathematics in a few places. There were about two or three pages devoted to silhouetting Cantor’s diagonal proofs for the countability of the integers and reals, but besides occasionally inserting a statement of the continuum hypothesis he shied away from presenting anything much deeper than a layman’s explanation of some very important mathematics.

I’m glad I read this book, and I still would have if I’d known more about the content ahead of time. It was well-composed and gave me lots of interesting trivia and historical context. Just know that if you’re looking for something that tells you much more about infinity in the mathematical sense than the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page, you’ll want to find a different book.

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As an intriguing side note, I had a very strange introspection during our yoga nidra, which I partially shared in class. When we were (in meditation, of course) walking through the forest, I realized that — looking on myself from the third-person — I had someone with me. It was my friend Samantha, who sort of tragically died at the beginning of the summer. She followed me to the temple, and was even looking in through the windows when I told her to stay outside. I interpreted this experience as my inability to let go of her, and I think that that self-analysis was extremely helpful over the following weeks to clear some things up for myself in a personal way.

The thing I most feared going into this class was the potential for over-mystification. But I was pleasantly surprised with the objectivity by which you (Anita) presented material that had to do with neuro- or physiological effects related to meditation. I’m glad you went about it that way; the one day we had a substitute, I could ocassionally couldn’t concentrate through the unsubstantiated metaphysical dogmas that were being attached to the practice (don’t get me wrong, it was a good practice… but I’m a scientist, and I’ve overly analytical from time to time, and it’s not a peaceful meditation environment for me when I’m listening to things that are wrong, unsubstantiated, or based on faith or myth).

So overall, it was great! Thanks so much for the class and for your expertise that you shared with us!

PS (this wasn’t included in the actual “final reflection” note I posted): I didn’t write this while sober.

From the outside, our apartment is a strange mix between Sam’s old apartment, some latrines I saw whitewater rafting once, and an abandoned strip mall of two or three shops. From our front door (in a row of three-ish front doors) to the wooden fence about 25 feet away is asphalt, and it slopes down pretty rapidly because our apartment is on an asphalt hill (the slope looks like a logistic curve). There’s one street light, but it’s bright. It’s not a classy, well-kept street lamp like you might see in downtown Charleston, but rather an old halogen bulb on a 30 foot pole like you might see at a deserted soccer field.

Inside, the guy I anticipated had, indeed, showed up. He had written his name in sloppy handwriting on the blackboard in our kitchen and was climbing like a monkey all over the counters. We have a drab color scheme, bland in a left-over-from-the-sixties-but-faded-and-dusty kind of way. I realize that I’m in love with Leela, but she’s disappeared.

The next day — although I never slept — I go into “downtown”, which is mostly in the style of urban Cantha (from Guild Wars; Cantha is mostly shambles built by commoners in a style reminiscent of archetypal Asian architecture… scattered among the shambles are more well made and colored gates and bridges built by the government) but includes some winding outdoor staircases and modern city decor like dumpsters and dirt patches, which seem to hail from my Half Life 2 playtime. I’m helping Joel find his girlfriend. We search, and search, but can’t find her. As we go up and up some outdoor staircases on the side of the apartment complex, the safety rails vanish, and I eventually fall from many stories up, presumably dying on impact.

But it’s okay. I respawned. When I go to pick up my inventory from where I died (a la Minecraft), I see a glint in the grass. I click to pick it up… Jackpot! It’s a ring encased in a diamond block, surrounded by 6 emeralds, and it classifies as “Herbal”. Unfortunately, I don’t have an iron pickaxe, so I’ll keep it in my inventory for later.

I am Fry. A few times I go to the gates to leave the city, but everyone cries out for me to stay, and I give in several times, admitting that when they’ve asked me to stay before I usually find something good. The gates are large, wooden red arches with an Asian-looking wooden lattice that would rise to let me through if I decided to leave.

When I finally do go home, there’s a party in my apartment. Joel is eating macaroni and cheese, and lamenting over the loss of his girlfriend. I realize that he’s talking about Leela. I try to comfort him, and I tell him about this time that I lost something and never found it again. I suggest that, perhaps, his girlfriend became a drug addict or something and ran away, and that he’s better off this way. He seems to take solace in my tale, and asks to be excused — he’s going to go sit in his closet.

Some stuff happens after this that I might not remember. But I very clearly remember the end of my dream.

I have to say, I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t seen Leela lately. I’m not Fry anymore, though; I’m Matthew. There’s no more Guild Wars computer graphics; I’m at a public school. I’m walking down a concrete sidewalk under an aluminum awning (like they had in middle school) when I come to a small building. The building is brick, roughly squarish from above, one story, windowless, and has glass double doors right in the middle of the side of the building — they are, in fact, identical to the doors on the first floor of Kinard. All around the building is bright green grass, with trailers and other buildings in the distance. When I walk in, I see the layout of the building: it’s just a single hallway, with classrooms scattered on each side. There are identical doors at the other end of the hallway-building. About a third of the way in, on the right, there’s a photographer and some press correspondents looking in on Leela talking to Eli David (from NCIS). I find it odd, though, that Leela’s hair is now brown. Oh well. I want to talk to her as I walk by, but don’t want to interrupt whatever’s going on; it seems that they’re all about to walk into an auditorium. So I keep walking, but I hear/know that she begins to follow me when she sees me. Her footsteps quicken. I say “Hello, Leela”, and she slips around in front of me, back to the double doors, blocking my way and looking up at me (she’s slouching, an arm against the pushbar on each door). We exchange a few witty remarks, and I realize that she’s not just Leela. She’s also Samantha. And she asks if I want to go on a date. I (obviously) agree, and we walk outside under another of those awnings. There are trailers off to the side (because CCSD doesn’t have money to build new classrooms). As we’re walking hand in hand, Kevin Kramer walks up. I feel bad, knowing how it must look when I was helping him look for her before and now here I am walking with her. She looks at us accusingly, and mentions that I had said she was a drug addict and disappeared. But we just ignore him, and walk into the sunlight, hand in hand. I’m very, very happy. And I can tell she’s happy too. And the rhythm of bliss continues to wash over me until I wake up.

As I’ve told many people, I’ll be deleting my Facebook account and migrating to a Diaspora (http://joindiaspora.com) node as soon as they release their end-user alpha (although I’ve been playing with it on some test nodes and it looks quite nice). I’m also now on a mission to migrate away from Google services, and I’ve made a lot of progress… although I’ll probably be married to my Gmail account for some time (until grad school, in fact, when I plan to switch to my school’s servers if they don’t use Google Apps).

I’ve stopped using Google Chrome in favor of Firefox; I’ve set my default search to http://duckduckgo.com instead of Google; et cetera, et cetera. And it’s actually pretty fun discovering new services to use!

I’ve also started to move my music library around and organize everything on the file system. This way, I can easily swap between music players… for example, even though it has a dismal library management system, I’ve temporarily switched to VLC in lieu of iTunes. (Since I jailbroke my iPod, I can sit music right into the little device using SCP; no need for complicated Apple-Databases.)

Besides my computeristic endeavors, lots of other things are changing in my life. My social life is beginning to warp in unexpected ways (some good, some bad). I’m growing up as a physicist. My reading list is expanding. And my roommate brought me cinnamon rolls in bed the other day.

Things are looking up.

I’m also continuing to memorize poetry, and I’m working on the super-long poem “Tintern Abbey” by Wordsworth (which I encountered via my friend Araba when it reminded her of me):

The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
‘Mid groves and copses.

I’m planning some good posts for the next few weeks, so if you used to follow my blog, you may be interested in doing so again soon. Ciao!

Of course, I would never do that. I decided to set her up for Linux like I did with my mom’s old laptop. But on such an old computer with a Pentium III and 128 MB RAM (which I eventually brought up to 256), I decided that my normal options (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora) for introducing people to Linux weren’t viable, so I went with Xubuntu (which runs the XFCE desktop).

Fail.

Three times I installed Xubuntu, and three times I got grub errors on firstboot which for the life of me I couldn’t resolve. These aren’t the kind of problems that should happen when you install an upper-level user-friendly operating system on a very standard (albeit aged) machine. So what did I do?

I installed Arch, and it works great. Arch has yet to fail me. Ever. I’m starting to like it more and more, and I think I may start contributing with what I can to Arch soon. Although I do plan to package minitube for Fedora if nobody else has yet, and I think I need to update Xinha for F13 unless someone else did it.

In other news, I started reading/following the blog/YouTube channel of Christina Rad, an attractive atheist with some intriguing hobbies like kittens and telescopes.