ALJAZEERA Plate pious bias in the Hindu-dominated job grip, many are jump to fold replica identities.One time prize off her silver armband embossed with the word "Allah" in Arabic, Ayesha Begum puts red-and-white conch bangles on her wrists and vermillion powder on her top - the signs of a traditional Hindu individual in eastern India. Begum, a Muslim, changes her style every sunrise otherwise she foliage her home, 50km east of Kolkata, the funds of West Bengal region, but she works as a housekeeper in a underground hospital. "Complete the day in the hospital I kingdom this Hindu style. Each person current knows me as Hindu and calls me 'Lakshmi' - a working-class Hindu nominate," Begum, in her olden 30s, told Al Jazeera. "Equally I did not approve in accomplishment a job, I followed the insinuate of some friends and posed as a Hindu. In two shakes of a lamb's tail I landed this job in a hospital." Hospital officials asked her to get first-class female housekeepers from her commune. "Equally I told them current were Muslim women who were looking for jobs, they believed it would be perk up if I brought non-Muslim candidates," she believed. Begum's case is not unambiguous. Tons Muslims in India moan they character pious bias in the country's Hindu-dominated job grip. Muslims who wait secured jobs pretending to be Hindus are intensely slam about their place of work. Noorjahan Khatoon, 42, who lives in a uptown slum and works as a local cook in a Hindu farmhouse in a luxury Kolkata neighbourhood says none, not even her constricted relations know but justification she is employed. "My children do not know in which commune I work, let one by one the model of my employer. I don't speak about any information about my task with being," believed Khatoon, who puts on conch bangles and vermillion powder on the select of her hair to prove up a Hindu style. "I am certain if my employers learn I am Muslim, I energy be in flames." Mail agencies Muslims affectation as Hindus are totally found in grind jobs in the unorganised district but worker's model documents are not normally hunted. Some announce agencies corner to corner the glory are portion Muslims find jobs in Hindu workplaces by introducing them as Hindus. Just about all clientele in my license are Hindu and limit of them help not to expend Muslim. - Sudhin Bose, last planner of a local help announce license Honest, such as a local ally was found dead at the apartment of a Bahujan Samaj Do (BSP) follower of house of representatives in New Delhi, legalize open the balk was a Muslim individual from West Bengal working current despite the fact that modish Hindu uniform. Wearing interrogation, the planner of a New Delhi-based underground announce license told legalize he had introduced the individual as a Hindu - and he had done in the same way with many other Muslim candidates to get them jobs in the interior funds. Sudhin Bose, who managed a local help announce license in Kolkata until a moment ago, get hard that a good measurements of Muslims work in the civil pretending to be Hindus. "Just about all clientele in my license are Hindu and limit of them help not to expend Muslims," Bose told Al Jazeera. "Pompous than short the job-seekers our license positioned were Muslims from finish villages and civil slums. Commonly we introduced them as Hindus to our Hindu clientele - and they got the jobs." "I am certain many announce agencies fake such secret policies out of rigorous transnational to help Muslims find jobs in the civil," he believed. Sanctimonious lean In 2005, the executive unpaid the Sachar Situation to slap whether Muslims were neglected in outgoing, lucrative and moving terms. The group of representatives out of the socio-economic disorder of limit Muslims was as bad as that of the Dalits, who are at the patch achieve of the Hindu-caste ranking, the same referred to as the "untouchables." Ayesha Pervez, who works on minority issues and has authored rumor on India's working Muslims, believed job-seeking Muslims character the obliged of bias even faint unorganised sectors. "The bias - which is zip but pious identity-based prohibition - exists in organised executive sectors too. In West Bengal, Muslims cause to feel 27 percent of the populace. But their classical in state-government jobs is as low as four percent," Pervez told Al Jazeera. "Workforce bias armed forces Muslims to fake replica Hindu identities. At the same time as of this bias, limit Muslims are disqualified to progress their humble of living." Across-the-board intolerance on Muslims the same keeps them from living in city India, Pervez additional. Disdain Whilst limit appoint that anti-Muslim intolerance has crave existed in primarily Hindu Indian partaker, the public for Muslims has turned step by step vile in many states in the previous thumb a lift of decades. This is a improve of improved lack of sympathy of Hindu pro-independence organisations, says outgoing radical Ram Puniyani. Sometimes I intuit I wait done whatever thing nobly inexact by faking a Hindu model, and wait downgraded my own religion. - Ayesha Begum, Muslim individual affectation as a Hindu to get a job In two shakes of a lamb's tail whilst 2002 get-together offensive in western Gujarat region - such as first-class than 1,000 population, totally Muslims, were killed in riots - many Hindu organisations launched a untruth gripe asking Hindus to boycott Muslims in all day-to-day procedures. "Such a factor leads to thought composite amongst the targeted community," believed Puniyani, who campaigns in squeeze of get-together melodiousness. "This belief of flux [among Muslims] is intensified by the improved lucrative challenges to make all ends trace - with means of support issues on one hand and a outgoing divisiveness, leading to ghettoisation on the other. "Such ghettoisation of Muslims in cities have the benefit of Mumbai and Ahmadabad undeniably shows how the rigorous acclaim among communities has left. And so the socio-economic enlargement of the minority community has caught up." Tons Muslims say they intuit hurting at having to pretense as Hindus. "Sometimes I intuit I wait done whatever thing nobly inexact by faking a Hindu model, and wait downgraded my own religion," Begum believed. "I shall be very lightweight if some day I get a good job but I shall be free from this qualities." SOURCE: ALJAZEERA
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum GeniusbyGraham Farmelo ISBN-10: 0571222781ISBN-13: 978-0571222780"Studying the Strangest Man"by Lee Billings September 15th, 2009SeedFor more than five years, former physicist Graham Farmelo devoted himself to unlocking the secrets of one of the most important and curious figures of 20th century science, Paul Dirac. He was born in 1902 and died in 1984, and though lionized by his peers for his fundamental work in quantum mechanics (among other things, he predicted the existence of antimatter and won a Nobel Prize when he was only 31), Dirac's legacy has fared poorly among the general public. During his research, Farmelo found that most residents of the "famous" physicist's hometown of Bristol didn't even know who Dirac was. Unquestionably, this is due to Dirac's reclusive and taciturn behavior; his social quiescence was so extreme that it inspired his fellow physicists to invent an unofficial unit of measure for the minimal number of words a person could speak in polite company: a "Dirac," roughly one utterance per hour.But as Farmelo delved deeper into Dirac's life for his new biography, The Strangest Man, he discovered surprising complexity and contradiction that gives new appreciation to the physicist's character: Despite what many perceived as a lack of empathy, Dirac married, raised children, and forged several close lifelong friendships. Despite his professed distaste for unscientific reasoning, in his later life he became increasingly obsessed with philosophical, even religious, questions. And despite his love for the rarefied subject of theoretical physics, Dirac also had a passion for "lowbrow" cartoons and comic books.Farmelo spoke with Seed's Lee Billings about the process of researching the book and his astonishing hypothesis that could explain, once and for all, Dirac's enigmatic behavior.Seed: What motivated you to spend five years writing a book about Paul Dirac?Graham Farmelo: I used to be a theoretical physicist, and I can say that everyone in that profession is interested in Dirac. He's often said to be "the first really modern theoretician" or "the theorist's theorist." I remember as an undergraduate coming across my first taste of Dirac's physics, something called Fermi-Dirac statistics, which governs the transistors and electron flow in your computer. I was blown away, a bit like a young music student listening to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." Dirac's first papers on quantum mechanics still look modern, more than those of any of his fellow pioneers. The mathematical imagination and beauty of those articles is amazing. I wanted to write a biography of him to try to communicate the power and scope of his work to non-specialists who are nevertheless curious about science, and to try to understand his remarkable personality.In my time in physics, I met quite a few "Dirac fanatics," people who are obsessive about him. I'm speaking to you from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and I've spent several lunchtimes recounting to the physicists here some new "Dirac stories."Seed: "Dirac stories?" Can you give me some examples?GF: Certainly. At the end of a lecture, Dirac agreed to answer questions. Someone in the audience piped up: "I didn't understand the equation on the top right of the blackboard, professor." Dirac was silent for more than a minute. When the moderator asked him if he'd like to answer the question, Dirac shook his head and said, "That wasn't a question. It was a comment."Here's another: Over dinner one evening at Saint John's College, Cambridge, an American visitor who was desperate to meet the formidable Dirac steeled himself to ask, "Are you going on vacation this summer, professor?" Silence. About 20 minutes later, Dirac turned to the visitor and said, "Why do you ask?"Seed: He sounds like quite a deep, literal thinker. Did Dirac have any interests outside physics?GF: Yes, a lot, but he just didn't talk about them. He read widely, from Tolstoy to John le Carr'e. Among artists, he loved Rembrandt and Salvador Dali. Like Einstein, Dirac's taste in music was mainly classical, but in later life he had a thing about Cher. To settle a dispute with his wife, he bought a second television so that he could watch a Cher special while she watched the Oscars.Seed: The book includes several revelatory passages documenting Dirac's personal life. How did you research and verify that material?GF: I devoted a lot of time tracking down Dirac's surviving friends, people who knew him very well. The most important one I found was his last great friend, Leopold Halpern, an expert on relativity who slept in the open air, refused to wash with soap, and liked to slice open baked potatoes with a karate chop. A few years ago, when Halpern was at death's door with prostate cancer, he flew across the country to Florida, where Dirac spent the latter part of his life, just so he could row me up Wakulla Springs. He and Dirac used to go rowing every weekend. That was a special trip for me: Even now I'm looking at my arm and there are goose bumps. He showed me places where they talked, even where they went skinny dipping. Two and a half months later, Halpern died.I spent several months consulting the Dirac archive at Florida State University in Tallahassee, which was virtually untouched. Dirac was an FSU professor for the last 14 years of his life. I found amazing things, not just letters from great physicists like Heisenberg and Schr"odinger but also an amazing cache of weekly letters from Dirac's mother, spanning almost 20 years. Many historians would've probably turned their noses up at these, but I found in them a dramatic story that illuminates Dirac's home life and upbringing. I was also blessed with beginner's luck when I happened to meet Dirac's younger daughter at a centenary celebration of his birth. We hit it off well, and one day in her kitchen while I was visiting her, she showed me something like 120 private letters between Dirac and his first serious girlfriend, later his wife. Keep in mind, this man hardly spoke a word, and here he was opening up, writing whole pages-epics for him. I couldn't believe my luck. Here was Dirac talking about his father with whom he didn't get along at all, and about what it felt like to be someone conscious, that he was unlike most other people, unable to empathize with them. This is just my opinion here, but I believe he demonstrated many symptoms of what we now call autism, though that condition had not been identified at the time.Seed: You think Dirac had undiagnosed autism?GF: I did not go into this book project thinking Dirac was autistic in any way. When I started researching him all those years ago, I barely even knew what the term "autism" meant, and certainly didn't apply it to Dirac. But as I researched, I encountered rumors about Dirac being autistic, about Einstein being autistic, and speculations that autism was more prevalent in scientists and mathematicians. So during one of my stays at Cambridge, I went to see Simon Baron-Cohen, who is arguably Britain's leading expert on autism. He knew nothing about Dirac, but, to my amazement, he began describing patterns of behavior that exactly correspond to Dirac's. Let me stress that this is just a hypothesis, and that I'm personally very skeptical of attempts to psychoanalyze people who are dead. This isn't theoretical physics; I can't do a slam-dunk experiment to prove it.Seed: What were some of the behavioral indicators?GF: There are many of them: inability to empathize, extreme taciturnity and literal-mindedness, a passion for a routine, narrow interests, a lack of physical coordination, dislike of sudden loud noises, and so on. Many of the "Dirac stories" told by physicists are, in my opinion, actually autism stories. When people are laughing at these things, they forget what they're actually doing is mocking.Seed: Do you think those traits might have helped him in his work or given him a unique perspective?GF: Well, he was certainly as focused as a laser and as logical as a computer. He also had a fascinating way of looking at mathematics. He had a phrase, "My equation is smarter than I am." He really did think that a good equation could be more intelligent than its creator. There's a kind of mysticism in that. In the last 15 or 20 years of his life, he became obsessed with the philosophy that, for a piece of mathematics to be useful in fundamental physics, it must be beautiful. For instance, he thought the theory of photon and electron interactions-what we call quantum electrodynamics-was ugly, so he wouldn't accept it. He had this extremely rigorous sense of beauty, and saw each successive revolution in physics progressing through increasingly beautiful mathematics.Dirac, to his dying breath, pursued this quest for mathematical beauty. For him, everything apart from that principle was just details. The job of the fundamental theorist was to look for mathematically beautiful laws. That's why the string theorists are on the right track, even though there aren't experiments to bear them out at the moment.Seed: So Dirac would be a fan of string theory, you think?GF: Well, when people get old, they tend to basically think that everything's gone to the dogs, and there was an element to that in Dirac, who took virtually no interest in the latest findings in his field. But if you apply his idea about sticking to mathematically beautiful generalizations of past theories and to hell with experiments in the short term, then this philosophy should embolden string theorists, yes. "Quantum Leap"byLouisa GilderNew York TimesThis biography is a gift. It is both wonderfully written (certainly not a given in the category Accessible Biographies of Mathematical Physicists) and a thought-provoking meditation on human achievement, limitations and the relations between the two. Here we find a man with an almost miraculous apprehension of the structure of the physical world, coupled with gentle incomprehension of that less logical, messier world, the world of other people.At Cambridge University in 1930, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar took a class in quantum mechanics from the 28-year-old Paul Dirac. Three years later, Dirac would become the youngest theoretician to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics up to that time (50 years after that, Chandrasekhar would become one of the older ones). Chandrasekhar described Dirac as a "lean, meek, shy young 'Fellow' " (i.e., of the Royal Society) "who goes slyly along the streets. He walks quite close to the walls (like a thief!), and is not at all healthy." Dirac's class - which Chandrasekhar took in its entirety four times, even though Dirac taught it by repeating material from his recently published textbook word for word - was "just like a piece of music you want to hear over and over again."Dirac is the main character of a thousand humorous tales told among physicists for his monosyllabic approach to conversation and his innocent, relentless application of logic to everything. Listening to a Dirac story is like slipping into an alternate universe: Dirac reads "Crime and Punishment" and reports it "nice" but notes that in one place the sun rises two times in a day; Dirac eats his dinner in silence until his companion asks, "Have you been to the theater or cinema this week?" and Dirac replies, "Why do you wish to know?"His work was as sui generis as his social skills. "The great papers of the other quantum pioneers were more ragged, less perfectly formed than Dirac's," explained Freeman Dyson, who took Dirac's course as a precocious 19-year-old. Dirac's discoveries "were like exquisitely carved marble statues falling out of the sky, one after another. He seemed to be able to conjure laws of nature from pure thought." (Most notably, Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter in 1928 because his just discovered relativistic electron equation required it.) "It was this purity that made him unique."In 1990, Helge Kragh wrote "Dirac: A Scientific Biography," a useful resource comprising physics, a little history and a dessert of Dirac stories in a chapter entitled "The Purest Soul." And indeed, what else besides quantum mechanics and amusing anecdotes did this great and single-minded physicist's life hold?"The purest soul" is a quotation about Dirac from Niels Bohr, as is Graham Farmelo's title. ("Dirac is the strangest man," Bohr said, "who ever visited my institute.") But purity and strangeness were not the whole story. Kragh's book offers a collage of a brilliant and peculiar man seen from the outside; Farmelo's is a tapestry, and he provides glimpses of the inside.A senior research fellow at the Science Museum in London, Farmelo gives us the texture of Dirac's life, much of it spent outdoors - from long Sunday walks as a young man, looking like "the bridegroom in an Italian wedding photograph, dressed in the suit he wore all week, his hands joined behind his back, both feet pointing outwards as he made his way around the countryside in his metronomic stride"; to late-life canoeing trips with Leopold Halpern, a physicist even stranger than he, "through forests of sassafras and American beech trees, draped with Spanish moss. The alligators made scarcely a sound: the silence was broken only by the rhythmic sloshing of the paddles, the cry of a circling osprey, the occasional shuffling of wind passing through shoreline gaps in the forest." (After lunch, they swam and paddled back, "scarcely exchanging a word.")We follow Dirac from his pinched and chilly childhood in Bristol (a few blocks away from the two-years-younger Archie Leach, a k a Cary Grant); through his discovery, visiting the Bohrs in Copenhagen, of what a happy family was like; his fiercely loyal friendship with Werner Heisenberg; his joyful beach honeymoon, still in a three-piece suit; his careful fatherhood (constructing for his daughters' cat a door wider than its whiskers); to his death in Florida - "a place where recreational walkers are regarded as perverse" - in 1984.The science writing in "The Strangest Man" isn't glib, but neither does it require problem-solving on the part of the reader. In most cases, Farmelo presents the technical matter clearly and efficiently, and in all cases - one of the great joys of the book - Dirac's scientific insights are placed within the circumstances in which they were born: e.g., the "sweltering July" of 1926 when Dirac, sitting at his college desk, produced his paper on what became Fermi-Dirac statistics.In a prologue, Farmelo describes a visit to the elderly Dirac paid by his biologist colleague Kurt Hofer. Through the eyes of Hofer, we see Dirac suddenly break out of monosyllables to talk for two hours with increasing vehemence about his monstrous father. This represents the author's careful decision to keep the tale Dirac told about his childhood separate from - even as it overshadows - the rest of the book, and it ends with Hofer's thoughts, not Dirac's: " 'I simply could not conceive of any childhood as dreadful as Dirac's.'... Could it be that Dirac - usually as literal-minded as a computer - was exaggerating? Hofer could not help asking himself, over and again: 'Why was Paul so bitter, so obsessed with his father?' "The conflict between this prologue (which gives ample reason for Dirac to be bitter about his father) and the seemingly warm family life that emerges in the first chapter casts a tension over the rest of the book very similar to that felt when reading a mystery. And as in a mystery, the penultimate chapter sheds new light. There Farmelo delves into a sensitive exploration of the possibility that Dirac was autistic, and of the ways in which his lack of facility in reading the emotions of others affected their perceptions of him and his perceptions of them. The emphasis on Dirac's childhood as a story - one Farmelo (along with me) believes to be true - usefully reinforces the importance of point of view.In a memorable episode, Dirac and his wife visit their closest friends, Peter and Anna Kapitza, in Russia. In 1934, the long arm of the Soviet state had wrenched Kapitza, despite his devoted long-distance fellow-traveling, away from his lab at Cambridge under Ernest Rutherford and back into the Soviet Union. In 1937 the friends reunited at the Kapitzas' summer house in the piney woods of Bolshevo, "with wild strawberries ripe for gathering and a fast-flowing river close by." They arrived only "days before Stalin authorized the torture of suspected enemies of the people," Farmelo writes. "On the roads around Bolshevo, some of the trucks marked 'Meat' and 'Vegetables' hid prisoners on their way to be shot and buried in the forests to the north of the city which Dirac admired through his binoculars."Farmelo handles such scenes with a refreshing, cleareyed understanding of how complicated the world actually is. Dirac did not - probably could not - know what the Soviet Union really was; he also could not know who his father really was, and his father could not really know him. These complexities and unresolvably cubist perspectives make, paradoxically, for the most satisfying and memorable biography I have read in years.Paul Dirac
"by Massimo PigliucciThe recent American Atheist ad campaign, the one that says that religions are scams, is a bad idea, on all fronts. Before explaining why, I have to remind readers that I've had a close connection to AA for years. Former AA President Ellen Johnson made me an honorary life member of the organization; the President who succeeded her, Ed Buckner, is a close friend of mine; and I have appeared several times on their TV show, next to current President Dave Silverman. So, I hope I will not get excommunicated as a result of what follows, it would be a shame (though not something unheard of either).The new ad says: "You KNOW they're all SCAMS," and it's signed "American Atheists - Telling the truth since 1963. They" are at least five of the major religious traditions, as is made clear by a set of symbols accompanying the poster. In an interview, Blair Scott, communications director for American Atheists (another person whom I know and respect), explained that the "target is not the Christians, but all the atheists and agnostics still in the closet who are still pretending, still playing the game, still putting up a facade."There are three reasons why this is a bad idea. First, the ad is simply making a preposterous claim that cannot possibly be backed up by factual evidence, which means that, technically, it is lying (but see below for another interpretation). Not a good virtue for self-righteous critical thinkers. Second, it is a really bad PR move, even if the target audience is in fact limited to closet atheists and agnostics. Third, it is an even worse PR move when it comes to the public perception of atheists considered more broadly.Beginning from the top of the list, a scam" is defined as a dishonest scheme, an intentional fraud. Now, it is certainly the case that "some" religious leaders have made knowingly fraudulent claims to their followers in order to either make money or otherwise unethically gain access to power or sexual favors. But to imply that all or even most religious leaders (and communities) knowingly do this is an extraordinary claim which simply does not even begin to be backed up by the necessary extraordinary evidence. And when one makes a claim that is not substantiated by facts one is either lying (if the statement is made while being aware of the lack of necessary evidence) or is deluded. Either way, AA ought to know better.Then again, in my dealings with the skeptic, humanist and atheists communities over the years I have noticed a peculiar lack of critical thinking among some atheists. Atheists are not necessarily skeptics (and vice versa), though they typically pride themselves in being smarter and more honest than religious people. The statistics may back up the honesty claim to some extent (proportionately far more Christians than atheists inhabit American prisons), but sometimes I wonder about superior smarts or critical thinking abilities. Yes, we atheists know that there is no god (not as an absolute epistemic certainty, of course, but in the same way in which we know that there are no unicorns - lack of evidence and reason in favor of the positive claim). We can even recite the basic reasons why we don't think there are gods, which according to philosophers since Plato, means we really have "knowledge" of this (knowledge being justified true belief).Yet, several atheists I have encountered have no problem endorsing all sorts of woo-woo stuff, from quasi-new age creeds to "alternative" medicine, to fantapolitics. This is partly because many of them seem to be ignorant of the epistemic limits of science (in which they have almost unbounded faith) and reason (ditto). At the very least it seems that we ought to treat factual evidence with due respect, and claiming that religions are scams flies in the face of the available factual evidence. Hence, it is a bad idea that damages our reputation as an evidence-oriented community.The second reason why the AA ad is not likely to do much good is because it probably fails at its own core mission, reaching out to "closeted" agnostics and atheists. I wager that most reasonable people who do not believe in gods will look at that sort of ad and react just like Groucho Marx famously did: "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." I certainly wouldn't want to join that club, except for the fact that I'm already a life member of it. The reason most closeted atheists might not like the ad is twofold, of course: on the one hand, it is factually wrong (see above), and therefore does not inspire trust in the organization that sponsored it. On the other hand, it is unnecessarily rude, which brings me to another important sore point within the atheist community: anger.I get it, a lot of atheists are recovering from religious indoctrination, often of the harshest fundamentalist kind, and they are therefore angry about all the time they have wasted and all the emotional suffering they have endured. I went through my own short anger phase in atheism after I moved to Tennessee (where religion was as in your face as it could possibly get, the place priding itself in being the buckle of the Bible Belt). Anger is good as a transitory psychological state, because it gives us the energy to reexamine broad aspects of our lives, laying the ground for a more thoughtful future self. But if it stays in our system it quickly becomes both corrosive at the personal level and undermines our overall goals as a community.American Atheists has a history in this respect, going back to the controversial figure of its founder, Madalyn Murray O'Hare. She brought us the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision that made unconstitutional the practice of forcing our children to recite a prayer in public school, and the nation should always be grateful to her for that. But she was also, by all accounts (I never met her) a pretty abrasive woman who instilled something of a personality cult at AA. It doesn't have to be that way. My friend Herb Silverman (no relation to Dave, as far as I know), president of the Secular Coalition for America, prides himself in organizing regular breakfast meetings with religious people in his community in Charleston, NC, and while I assure you that Herb doesn't mince words when it comes to explaining to people what he thinks, he often wears a "Your Friendly Atheist Neighbor" t-shirt, which manages to shock and endear at the same time. Our own Reasonable New York coalition, in its previous incarnation, sponsored a very successful ad campaign in the Big Apple, featuring the motto "A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?" The ad was both friendly and factually correct (we got the number from national figures on the percentage of non religious people in the US, and if anything we probably underestimated the number for New York, notoriously ripe with infidels). We were not saying that one is an awful person if one believes in gods, we were simply pointing out that plenty of good people don't believe, thus indirectly undermining the most recurrent argument for why religion is a positive force in society (the alleged link with morality).Lastly, Blair Scott said that the targets of the AA campaign did not include religious people. But why not? How is the secular community going to grow if we do not strive to make secularism a mainstream position? And how are we going to do that if we keep talking just to ourselves? Granted, no ad is going to change the mind of the religious fundamentalist, but there are plenty of somewhat religious people out there who might be interested in a positive message, and are sure as hell going to be turned off by a (factually inaccurate) negative one.Sometimes it seems like atheists could benefit from learning a bit of elementary psychology, or ask a professional ad agency to help them "brand" themselves to the general public. Yes, the AA ad did generate publicity, including an appearance by David Silverman on the O'Reilly show. But did you watch it? It was hard not to cringe a few seconds into it, and you know you are in trouble when even Stephen Colbert points out that it is not good PR strategy for the atheist in the room to look uncannily like the Devil. Of course Colbert also mercilessly made fun of O'Reilly's idiotic "arguments" for the existence of God - but that's my point: Colbert elicited laughs and possibly some serious thinking, neither of which will be forthcoming as a result of the AA ad.By the way, before anyone misunderstands me, I'm not advocating any sort of wishy-washy position about the existence of god. Let's not throw around silly accusations of "intellectual dishonesty" or "accommodationism." All I'm saying is that both the accuracy of the message and the way it is presented matter, at least if you wish to build a better society, which I assume is what we are all trying to do. If the goal is simply to feel superior by pissing people off, I'm not interested.[Dave Silverman, the President of American Atheists, has graciously accepted my invitation to write a guest commentary in response to this post, it will appear soon.]
Reference: wiccalessons.blogspot.com
By Melon JanewIf you are getting a psychic reading on the psychic hotline and dont like the psychic, then its your best bet to just thank the psychic for their 2 minutes of your time and move on. You can usually tell if a phone psychic is good or not if they are with you for at least 2 minutes on the phone. Every phone psychic knows that they have around 30 seconds to win your approval. It doesnt sound like that much time, but the average psychic reader charges anywhere from 1.99 to 4.99 per minute to talk to them on the phone. That money can buy you an entire meal at some fast food restaurants. You have to decide on what psychic you would like to use by just giving them a chance. I personally go to a psychic when they are advertising their specialties on the front page of a website. That lets me know that they are secure about the advice that they are about to give to me. The psychic reading was never meant to give anyone a specific time frame. However, psychics are pressed by their clients to give specific dates that 99% of the time does not come to pass. The date is always later or earlier. It does never when the psychic says it will happen. This is common in the psychic industry. Its interesting to see just how many people want to have a psychic reading done for them and so often people dont take out the time to really focus on the reading itself. In my opinion, you should just listen to what the psychic is saying rather than asking a thousand questions. If you are a psychic and wondering how you can start your own psychic group, then there is no better way than to start it by offering free spiritual classes. There are several places that you can start this. You can start this out of your home or one of these other places: community building, public library, new age center, bookstore, friends home, Unitarian churches and other spiritual gathering halls. As your group expands, you can pay for space at a local hotel that has showrooms for businesses. You would be surprised at how many hotels are willing to help you at a discounted rate. When we do so, we can begin to wonder more about ourselves and we can also see from the past that we may have made a mistake a few times and now have the strong ability to correct ourselves through any sort of pain that we may be encountering. We have to learn from our past mistakes and try to promise ourselves that we will never make the same mistake again. You should take every single day as a one shot deal. This means that you have to carefully examine what you want to do with your life in a daily basis and then decide on which way you are going to go about it. You have to ask yourself how you are going to improve your life and in which way you can make something happen. You have to decide on your own whether or not you are going to make something happen for the better. I think that psychics have a way with telling others whats on their mind in a unique way. About the Author: I like to give spells to summon ghosts and spells to summon ghosts on my site weekly.
A pentacle is a characteristic advertisement of jewelry that symbolizes Pagan. A Pagan wears a pentacle non-discriminatory as Christians strength wear a steer or Jews strength wear a star. The meaning of the symbol is that the five points on the star unpleasant the spirit or self, and the four elements of air, water, earth, and fire.
Wiccan pentacles are restricted by a circle. A full-size pentacle can be second hand as an altar or as a sacred space of its own. Wiccans also very recurrently wear a pentacle necklace as a symbol of their cartel. Pentacles are frequently second hand for protection and in Pagan rituals.
The spirit is the top worry of the pentacle which represents the god and goddess who we love. Air is the air that we current. Tarn is the debilitate we addiction to snag. Propel is the luminosity in our form. Globe is the pit of nourishment. The spirit and the four elements are recurrently painted. The spirit is light purple or silver, the air is yellowish-brown, the water is sad, earth is green and fire is red.
Wiccans use the pentacle symbol as an amulet in magical evocations. A metal pentacle strength by the symbol of a careful spirit, energy or magic that is evoked upon. Wiccans frequently use the pentacle as a magical tool to summon reliable energies or spirits. Pentacle jewelry is striking and you can recurrently find plentiful metal hand-crafted pentacles bejeweled with silver and gemstones.
THE Extend AND THE FOUR ELEMENTS
Immediately what is Halloween Holidae Spirit?
Contemporary are a lot of 31 language posts separation on this month.
Contemporary is the NaBloMo separation on (I am not hop if I got the initials suit on that one or not)--which is basically a herd of nation state show 31 blog posts in 31 days...alone, I do not engage to do that (equally I relay done it at irregular intervals in need the use of witty Halloween cat pictures).
Contemporary are nearly Halloween 31 posts special effects separation occuring on nearly blogs that I perform (perform witches, get 31 posts in October--it is a natural).
On my own end, in addition the 31 Days of Halloween Kitties on this blog, I was with hang-up in apportion tell somebody to some of the photos that are separation to be recycled on the Turtle Chimpanzee Facebook fanpage. (Turtle Chimpanzee is a "wiccan and pagan kind" set of children stories by J. M. Monkie...which are separation to be illustrated by me--as brusquely as I get my foster in trappings.)
Patrick Zukeran
History of the Watch Tower
One of the most aggressive and fastest growing cults is the Jehovah's Witnesses. Today they have a worldwide organization that numbers about 3.5 million members operating in 205 countries. Several factors account for this rapid growth. The first is their zealous door-to-door evangelism. Second, we Christians have failed to make a solid defense of our faith against their attacks when they have come to our door. The result is the Witnesses continue unchallenged in the propagation of their organization and deceive many. Third, the rise of the cults are a fulfillment of the prophetic warnings given by Jesus and the Apostles.
In this essay I want to look at the beliefs of the Witnesses and then give the reader practical witnessing strategies. The history of the Jehovah's Witnesses begins with the founder of the organization Charles Taze Russell. He was a member of the Congregational Church who came to reject the doctrine of hell and eternal punishment. In 1870, with no formal education, he began a Bible society which eventually named him pastor. In 1884, he founded Zion's Watchtower and Tract Society in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is now the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. Since then they have mushroomed into an organization which produces more literature in one year than the Christian and Catholic churches combined. And, of all the cults, their missionary forces are the most well trained in evangelism.
Witnesses deviate from biblical Christianity in several areas. I will discuss some of their major doctrinal errors. First, like all the cults, they deny the Trinity. They believe there is one God, Jehovah. Jesus, is actually Michael the Archangel, the first of God's creation, who became flesh at the incarnation. After the resurrection, He returned to heaven as Michael the Archangel.(1) The Holy Spirit is not God but an active force much like electricity or fire.(2)
Second, Witnesses deny the bodily resurrection of Christ, but instead believe He was raised as a spirit and manifested Himself several times in different materialized bodies.(3)
Third, they deny the existence of hell and eternal punishment, but believe in total annihilation after death. Only the elite ruling class, the 144,000, are allowed to go to heaven. The faithful Jehovah's Witnesses remain unconscious after death till they are resurrected in the Millennium. Those who are not in the organization are annihilated after death.(4)
Fourth, Witnesses have a works-oriented salvation. Salvation is not based upon a relationship with Christ, but found in the organization. One must serve the society, and depending on one's faithfulness and absolute obedience, one may be saved.(5)
Fifth, they believe that Jesus returned invisibly in 1914 and established His throne in heaven. At Armageddon, God will destroy all evil, and abolish all the world's governments, and establish a new Paradise on earth. Then the living and resurrected Jehovah's Witnesses will inherit Paradise earth. The 144,000 mentioned earlier will rule with Jesus. At this time all unbelievers who have died will be raised (with some exceptions) and will study under the Witnesses during the Millennium, a period of a thousand years. Studying with them will be the unbelievers who have survived Armageddon. After the thousand years, their faith will be tested because God will release Satan from the abyss. At that point all unbelievers will have to choose between Satan or Jehovah. Those who reject Jehovah will be annihilated.(6)
Clearly the doctrines of the Jehovah's Witnesses deviate in critical ways from sound biblical principles. Next, I want to discuss approaches to evangelizing Jehovah's Witnesses.
False Prophecies of the Watch Tower
One of the most effective ways to evangelize Jehovah's Witnesses is to destroy their faith in the Society. Remember, salvation is found only in this organization. The Watch Tower Society is seen as the spokesman for God. If you can show Witnesses the serious errors of the organization, they will begin to have doubts and questions. This can sometimes lead them to leave the Society.
Attacking the Society's record of false prophecy can cause JWs to to question the organization. This approach is effective because they claim to have the true understanding of the end times. If we can show them that the organization has been constantly wrong in the area of prophecy, this will certainly make an impact. When the Jehovah's Witnesses show up at your door again, begin first by asking them, "Are you prophets of God?" Some will say, "Yes." Others may say, "We are prophets in a sense." You must make it clear there is no such thing as "a prophet in a sense." There are only true prophets and false prophets. Some may deny being prophets. If so, show them a copy of the April 1, 1972, Watch Tower article on page 297, which states clearly that they are prophets.
Second, define clearly what makes a true prophet and a false prophet using Deuteronomy 18:20-22. A true prophet speaks in the name of Jehovah and predicts future things which come to pass. A false prophet speaks in the name of Jehovah and predicts future things which do not come to pass. Make sure they understand this, for this is the most critical step.
Third, ask them, "Is there an organization that fits the character of a false prophet?" That's when you say, "Let's take a look at the Watch Tower Organization." Have handy copies of the articles mentioned here. The 1889 issue, "The Time is at Hand," page 101 states, "The battle of the great day of God Almighty (Rev. 16:14), which will end in A.D. 1914, with the complete overthrow of earth's present rulership, is already commenced." This 1914 prediction of Christ's return never came true.
Then the Watch Tower predicted that Christ would return in 1925. The 1918 issue of, "Millions Now Living Will Never Die," p. 89 states, "Therefore we may confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the faithful prophets of old, particularly those named by the apostle in Hebrews 11 to the condition of human perfection." This proved to be another false prophecy.
The Watch Tower made a third prophecy of the return of Christ; this one was to occur in 1975. The August 15, 1968, issue of, Why Are You Looking Forward to 1975?, p. 494, predicted the return of Christ in 1975. Once again the Witnesses were shown to be false prophets. If the Witnesses don't believe these articles are real, tell them to look them up in their church's library.
Another interesting prophecy is found on page 154 of their book You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth. Here they state, "Some of the generation living in 1914 will see the end of the system of things and survive it." Most of the 1914 generation are dead, and the few remaining are very old. In just a few years, the Watch Tower will again have another false prophecy. When presented clearly, the record of the Watch Tower's false prophecies is a very effective tool in witnessing to JWs.
The Name of God
Another effective avenue of witnessing to the Witnesses is in the name of God. Jehovah's Witnesses state that God's true name is "Jehovah." They say the term "God," is merely a title, and that the real name for God is "Jehovah." In fact they go so far as to say that unless one calls on the true name of God, "Jehovah," one cannot be saved.(7)
Let's take a real close look at the name "Jehovah" and see if it is in fact the true name of God. The term "Jehovah" is actually a false reading of the Hebrew pronunciation of God, or YAHWEH. Allow me to explain where the word "Jehovah" comes from. The words in the Hebrew Old Testament contained no vowels. The words were constructed of consonant letters only. The Scribes knew what vowels to use in the pronunciation of the words by the construction of the consonants, the context, and memory. It was written this way until the fifth century when the Masoretes added the vowels under the consonants in their version of the Old Testament known as the Masoretic Text.
The name of God in the Old Testament spelled YHWH, was considered holy, and was not to be read aloud. Instead, when the Hebrews came upon YHWH, they would say ADONAY, which means "Lord." In order to indicate this substitution, the Massoretes placed the vowels of ADONAY or the English equivalent of e, o, and a underneath the consonants of YHWH. Later some Christian translators mistakenly combined the vowels of ADONAY with the consonants of YHWH producing the word "Jehovah." Now the term is recognized to be a late hybrid form never used by the Jews. That's the origin of the word "Jehovah." Let's now look at what other scholars say about the name "Jehovah."
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: "Jehovah" -- False reading of the Hebrew YAHWEH.(8)
Encyclopedia Americana: "Jehovah" -- erroneous form of the name of the God of Israel.(9)
Encyclopedia Britannica: The Masoretes who from the 6th to the 10th century worked to reproduce the original text of the Hebrew Bible replaced the vowels of the name YHWH with the vowel signs of Adonai or Elohim. Thus the artificial name Jehovah came into being.(10)
The Jewish Encyclopedia: "Jehovah" -- a mispronunciation of the Hebrew YHWH the name of God. This pronunciation is grammatically impossible.(11)
The New Jewish Encyclopedia: It is clear that the word Jehovah is an artificial composite.(12)
According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, p. 680, vol. 7, "the true pronunciation of the tetragrammaton YHWH was never lost. The name was pronounced Yahweh. It was regularly pronounced this way at least until 586 B.C., as is clear from the Lachish Letters written shortly before this date."
Therefore, for Jehovah's Witnesses to insist Jehovah is the true name of God and that one is saved only if he calls on that name, is an error. When Witnesses appear at your door explain to them the name "Jehovah" and read what the scholars say about Jehovah. Also remember, God uses many names for Himself such as, King of Kings, the Lion of Judah, the Alpha and the Omega, and others. When JWs realize what the authoritative sources have to say, especially the encyclopedia references, they will begin to realize the need to take a serious look at this error in the organization.
The Bodily Resurrection of Christ
A third subject area for effective witnessing to Witnesses is the bodily resurrection of Christ. Witnesses believe that Christ's crucified body was disintegrated by Jehovah never to exist again. Accordingly, Jesus was raised as a spirit who then materialized and appeared in several different fleshly bodies as the angels had done. Indeed, it was in this form that He appeared to His disciples; i.e., He wasn't in a human body; He just appeared to be human. He ascended into heaven as a spirit and once again became Michael the Archangel.(13) This doctrine can be easily disproved.
First, in Luke 24:36-43, Jesus clearly states in verse 39 that He is not a spirit but a man of flesh and bone. He even ate food to prove that He was not a spirit but had a physical body. In John 20:24-27, Jesus shows Thomas His wounds. Jesus is clearly demonstrating to His disciples that the body previously on the cross had been resurrected. If Jesus had a different body than the one on the cross, He would have been deliberately deceiving the disciples. Ask the Witness, "Would Jesus deliberately deceive His disciples into believing something that was not true?"
Next, turn to some passages where Jesus predicts the resurrection of His body. In John 2:19-21 Jesus says, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." See Acts 2:26-27, another prophecy of the Messiah's bodily resurrection. Clearly the prophecies and Jesus' appearances prove a bodily resurrection.
Witnesses cite 1 Peter 3:18 and 1 Cor. 15:44-50 to back up their belief. In 1 Peter 3:18 we read, "Christ died once and for all... he being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the spirit." This verse does not prove Jesus is a spirit. This verse says that Jesus was raised in the Spirit and by the Spirit of God who gives life. Romans 8:11 states that the Holy Spirit was involved in raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus was not raised as a spirit but by the power of the Holy Spirit.
According to 1 Cor. 15:50, "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." Since Jesus is in heaven, Witnesses say He must be a spirit.(14) They are correct in saying that the earthly body cannot enter heaven. However, when Jesus rose, He had a glorified body (Luke 24:39). Therefore, He can dwell in heaven because of His glorified state. According to 1 Cor 15:39, "All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another.... There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies." Christ's glorified body allows Him to travel in the earthly and heavenly dimensions. Some verses indicate that Christ exists in heaven in bodily form. "For in him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" Colossians 2:9. The verb "dwells" in the Greek is katoikei, and is in the present tense. In other words, Jesus has a glorified body in heaven, the one that was resurrected. Note also 1 Timothy 2:5, "There is one God and one mediator, the man Christ Jesus." The verb "is," is a present tense verb also. How can Jesus be a man if He is Michael the Archangel? Seeing these errors may prompt them to seek the truth.
The Holy Spirit
A fourth avenue of effective evangelism with Jehovah's Witnesses is the subject of the deity of the Holy Spirit. As I mentioned earlier, the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Holy Spirit is not a person because they see the Holy Spirit as a force--much like electricity or fire. Here is what Jehovah's Witnesses say about the Holy Spirit.
In their book You Can Live Forever In Paradise on Earth, they state, "As for the `Holy Spirit,' the so-called third person of the Trinity, we have already seen that this is not a person but God's active force."(15)
In their magazine Why Should You Believe in the Trinity? they state, "To a certain extent it (Holy Spirit) can be likened to electricity, a force that can be adapted to perform a great variety of operations."(16)
Here are some verses that are effective in proving the deity of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 5 Ananaias and Sapphira lied to the church about the amount they sold their land for and the amount they gave to the church. Peter confronts them on this issue and states in 5:3, "Ananaias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit...?" Peter later states in the next verse, "You have not lied to men but to God." Here the Holy Spirit is called "God" with a capital G both in our Bibles and in the Witnesses' Bible. Another interesting question to ask Witnesses is, "Can you lie to a force like fire or electricity?" The answer is "No." You can only lie to an intelligence, a person.
In Acts 13:2 the Holy Spirit speaks, "While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, `Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'" Ask the Witness, "When was the last time electricity or fire spoke to you?" It is obvious only an intelligent person can communicate in language.
Ephesians 4:30 states, "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God." Any logical person should realize you can only grieve a living being. Ask a Jehovah's Witness, "How can you grieve or bring sorrow to an impersonal force like electricity?"
When you put all these facts together, the fact that the Holy Spirit is called God, He can be lied to, He speaks, and He can be grieved, the evidence shows that the Holy Spirit is a person, not an inanimate force. When presented clearly, I have not met any Jehovah's Witness who have been able to refute these verses.
God bless and good Witnessing!
(c) 1994 Probe Ministries
Notes
1. You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth (Brooklyn: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1982), p. 39.
2. Ibid., p. 40.
3. Reasoning From the Scriptures (Brooklyn: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1985), pp.333-36.
4. Ibid., pp. 76-80.
5. Live Forever, pp. 350-55.
6. Ibid., pp. 170-84.
7. Ibid., pp. 41-44.
8. "Jehovah," Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1973 ed.
9. Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 16., 1972 ed.
10. "Yahweh," The New Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 12, 1993 ed.
11. "Jehovah," The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 7, 1904 ed.
12. "Jehovah," The New Jewish Encyclopedia, 1962 ed.
13. Live Forever, pp. 143-45.
14. Ibid., pp. 143-46.
15. Ibid., p. 40.
16. Should You Believe in the Trinity? (Brooklyn: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1989), p. 20.
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