On my last post I received a comment:

Stephen Hawking, Einstein and many more genius physics believe in God.

Funny enough, and after a phase of absence and doubt, my beliefs started recovering when a portuguese physics professor once told me that it’s when you see the smallest particle and, still, all its complexity, that you acknowledge that Maths and Physics only explain what God created.

Replying to this with another comment would be a waste. This comment deserves more!

In any book about philosophical argumentation book you’ll learn that one of the best ways to win an argument is to quote an expert. For example, if I were to argument about a C++ feature, nothing better than to find a quotation from Scott Meyers to assert the point I was trying to make. In some sense the commentator tried to do that, willingly or not, regarding the support of his belief in God. However, believing in God cannot be considered as evidence of his existence. Not even if geniuses believe in him. More than that, If I were to believe in God, their belief should not account to me as greater evidence than someone else beliefs. This is so because although they might be geniuses, they are also humans and the belief in God is much more of a human necessity than a physics assertion. Otherwise all physics, geniuses, or less geniuses (like probably the Physics Professor) would believe in God because they would understand that given the amount of complexity the world has, only God could have created this (which is also another false idea, as I’ll talk next).

The commentators assertion that “it’s when you see the smallest particle and, still, all its complexity, that you acknowledge that Maths and Physics only explain what God created” is something that resembles the Goldilocks dilemma mixed with the usual beauty argument. Even though the fact that things are complex are no evidence for Gods existence, redirecting the reader to the Anthropic Principle solves the issue [B. Carter, The anthropic principle and its implications for biological evolution, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A, 310, 1983, 347-63]. Informally the issue is as follows, things are complex to our eyes. That’s a fact, and there are still things that are not explained at all but scientific research is filling those unexplained gaps. The existence of God however, doesn’t explain however why things are complex at all. We live in a planet, in a universe where everything fits. Universal constants have the right values. We are on the planet which supports life. Everything seems to fit as in a very intricate complex puzzle and this is amazing. Still, if things were not this way we would not be here wondering these issue, if we are it’s just because things, by evolution, and not by design, turned out to be this way. It’s like the fact that by putting a monkey pressing keys on a keyboard will possibly generate a 10 line poem. Note that, this is not the only planet in the universe, there are planet in the order of billions of billions. This is pretty huge! And as far as we know 1 generated life. So there were many, many, many trials and errors and many texts inserted by the monkey that didn’t result in a poem. This is definitely an argument (not an evidence) against Gods existence, not in favor of it. In my view, if God really existed, he would either create only one planet with us inside or a lot of planets which could generate life. Another view of mine is, if we are God creation, Gods puppies, God was damn stupid by creating the sun with limited existence and imposing us such huge limitations on space travel. Because one day, the sun will stop generating heat and either we find another planet where we can survive (and do some kind of Noah’s Ark) or we will all be killed and no puppies will be left for God to play with. Either he will have to create some more people, or he’ll live in a boring eternity with nothing to play with. Either way, it was not smart the sun creation.

Regarding the commentators assertion that Einstein and Stephen Hawking believe in God, I can only say that he is wrong and provide evidence. Einstein sometimes invoked the name of God (and he is surely not the only atheist scientist to do so). In fact, Hawking dramatic religions convictions misconception come from the ending of his “A Brief History of Time”: ‘For then we should know the mind of God.’ One of Einstein’s most eagerly quoted remarks is ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ But he also said,

‘It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as out science can reveal it.’

In fact, Einstein ‘religion’, if people wish to call it that way is a non-supernatural religion. Some of his quotes which provide a feel for what this means:

‘I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is somewhat a new kind of religion.’,

‘I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.’,

‘The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.’

References are from Max Jammers book “Einstein and Religion”. Hawking’s ‘God’ is in fact as Einstein ‘God’. Many physicists have this tendency to use the word ‘God’ to mean something definitely not related to a supernatural, personal God advertised by the Christian church. Also, many references to this and other scientists come from Dawkins “God Delusion”.

On a personal note, I know one portuguese theoretical physicist (a friend and not to be found in Portugal anymore), which also uses the word of God and religion as mere words to mean things not related to religion. Quotes likes “Only God could f****n ‘ do this.” is found among the ones I keep in my logbook. I also use the word Jesus and God in contexts sometimes related to science but be sure that no religious belief is to be found in me. Still, I need to assert that religious belief is per se not a bad thing. If it helps you structure your life, if it helps you go through the day and if it helps you smile, believe… believe in God, Ala, or the flying spaghetti monster. No belief, however, be it from geniuses, not geniuses, politics, presidents or Nobel winners will contribute as evidence to Gods existence.

What about if Santa Claus had the same spiritual essence as God?

• Santa Claus would be praised during the whole year;
• Nobody had even seen him, or knew how he is like, because he never showed up except for the time where he sent his son to be killed for all human sins;
• We would have to go to a church where people gather to hear a guy talk about Santa Claus, his kindness, his greatness, his…;
• But on the other hand, nobody would receive any presents at no time during the year but instead would be nice to give some money to the guy who has a direct line with him (the guy at the church) and some of us would even pilgrimages;
• Most of the time when talking about Santa Claus we would be either very serious, crying, or deeply depressed;
• Santa Claus would not travel with his nice reins, he would be everywhere so he need not to be travel anywhere;
• People would think that if they do behave, they will go to live with Santa Claus for all eternity… those badly behaved would probably go to live with the Grinch;
• And incredibly, people of all ages, children, teens, adults and elderlies would believe he exists;

I could go on and on but isn’t it amusing that people are able to deeply believe in God and at the same time know for certain that ‘obviously’ Santa Claus doesn’t exist? Oh, I know what you’re thinking… Santa Claus doesn’t come to put presents on my shoe…. it was my [gran]dad. Ok, but you could believe, they were spiritually forced by Santa Claus holly spirit which is somewhere, or [errr] everywhere, to do that by cheering up the spirits [brought down by God].

… God had the same spiritual essence as Santa Claus?

• It would be great because there would be a very well-defined season during the year to speak about God, and afterwards it would be nonsense to speak about him;
• During that season we would be offering presents to each other;
• We wouldn’t need to go to the church, God would come into our houses;
• Our parents would fake being God and when we got to be old enough, we would be told that there was no God at all and it was all just for the fun of it;
• God would be synonymous for happiness and well-being and when talking about him, we would be happy and celebrating;
• Every one would be happy to know that God goes to the skies with the help of his reins, instead of having (his son, or himself, depending on how you interpret Jesus), mutilated, tortured and stuck to a cross to pay for all Human sins;
• People would be using all around the world a figure of an old man with long white beard, a happy face with a huge smile instead of a dying man stuck to a cross in their neck.

Mind the Gap is one of the most famous quotes in London and whereabouts. Coming for the subway stations in London, “Mind the Gap” warns the passengers of the gap between the trains and the platforms. In fact, today no unusual big gaps are to found, yet in the past when the stations were built in curves big gaps existed between trains and platforms so a sign was needed to warn passengers of it. A mate, Federico [aka Fede], which came to Southampton for 4 months during his PhD in Spain is leaving and he is unusually fond of “Mind the Gap” to which I often reply “Do not leave your bagage unattended” [it will be removed and maybe destroyed], the warning usually heard at English airports.

Fede said yesterday in his farewell dinner : “You have a lot of sections in your blog. Are you crazy mad?”. Oh well, the only thing I can say to you is:

“Mind the Sections”

 Edit: Fede just told me that he has not said “Are you crazy?” but said “Are you mad?”. Since that changes everything with regard to this post I felt I needed to change this to honor his words.

Daniel Jackson in his book Software Abstractions: Logic, Language, and Analysis (OIP) approaches the problem of finding out through Alloy (a software specification language) if it is possible for you to be your own grandpa.

As a first approach if we define parent as being the union of the set mother and the set father and grandpa as being a man and a parent of one of our parents, we cannot possibly be our own grandfather. However, what happens if we include in the definition of parent the step-parents also, i.e., our fathers wife and our mothers husband? Then it is possible… but it is also a crime because the easiest way (as the smallest model for being our own grandpa) is incest. If you marry one of your parents, then you’ll be your father, but you’ll also be your grandpa by applying the same idea on yourself again. Think about it!

Now, what if we rule out incest? If we dismiss people marrying their own parents? Is it possible?

It turns out that it is. Consider a Man0, whose mother is a Woman0. Man0 is married to Woman1, Woman0 is married to Man1. The mother of Man1 is Woman0. Basically, you have two couples, in which the wife in each is the mother of the husband in the other. So, Man0 is his own granpa!

Daniel Jackson then informally tells the reader that this questions was answered many years ago in terms of song. This song, the lyrics and a diagram at how this is possible can be found at : http://gean.wwco.com/grandpa/
(Note however, that the song’s description of the model matches none of the two presented in the book, which I transcribed to this post)

No matter how you think about it… it’s always quite confusing to be your own grandpa!

I just had tea with milk for the first time… It’s very nice! I didn’t expect it!

Note: tea here refers to black tea if no more specifics are given.