Monthly Archives: November 2013

Science and Religion’s Means to an End

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Einstein’s writing on the contradictory nature of science and religion explains the limits of human knowledge and use of the scientific method. He believes that only religion can give us the sense of “ultimate and fundamental ends.” In addition, he adds that this is directly related to the democratic ideals and therefore with the discarding of religion, the democratic spirit is being set aside as well.

The part of this excerpt I found most intriguing was Einstein’s focus on ends and means. He states that while objective reasoning gives us “tools”, as individuals we need religion to get to goal or even long for a goal. He sees no way for an individual to develop to serve mankind without this higher power. It’s interesting because in a time where scientific progress was being made in such large strides to serve mankind, Einstein takes an opposite view explaining that only religion can serve this purpose.

In an era in such desperate need of moral guidance, why did so many flock to a scientific way of thinking?

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Einsteins article “Science and Religion” explains the connection between knowledge (science) and religion. Einstein believes that knowledge is extremely important and must be taught at school, but that this knowledge cannot teach us anything beyond how facts are related and conditioned to each other. Religion is the missing key to this equation. Einstein states: “to make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man”. Religion brings everything together with knowledge, humans will obtain the highest aspirations and judgements with this tradition.

I found this article to be extremely interesting because we currently live in a world that is dominated by technology and its advancements rather than a world that is controlled by religion. Religion in the modern world does not connect the facts together and enhance our knowledge. Religion is a belief of a “God” who controls power. Technology, although rather scary, has grown rapidly in the past decade that it is becoming the new “God”. Technology rules our everyday life in all aspects. This can be big or small: anything from a cell phone to a machine gun to an industrial machine. Technology trumps Religion in all aspects of life.

How has religion changed roles over time and when did this happen?

Einstein’s Science and Religion

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The reading “Science and Religion” consists of two articles written by Albert Einstein. They both argue science and religion are interdependent.  Einstein wrote that science could not exist without the questioning of one’s surroundings and pushing the boundaries of knowledge and fact, which are fundamental principles accompanying any religion. Likewise, religion could not exist without knowledge and fact, as knowledge lays the groundwork for ethics and rules.

Throughout the reading, Einstein made a couple of references to the Church. At the end of the second article segment, Einstein wrote why he believes a priest must become a teacher in order to get his message across. As Einstein was Jewish, I found it very interesting how he offered examples from the Catholic religion instead of Judaism. I thought of a reason this might be. My thought is that Einstein was a self-loathing Jew. He experienced the rise of Nazi Germany first hand, and was fortunately saved and allowed to immigrate to America because of his scientific work. He won the Nobel Prize in 1921, and moved to American in 1933. The Nazis burned his books and put out a hit on him in spite of all of his accomplishments. From the reading, it is obvious that Einstein believed that religion is important to incorporate into society and into one’s life, but is it possible he hated his own religion? Was he hiding his Judaism to be taken more seriously, as anti-Semetism was running rampant at this time? Or was he just appealing to the public and the majority?

Pussy Riot Member Moved without Family’s Knowledge

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The jailed member of Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was moved to a Siberian prison during an almost month-long period while her family was unaware of her whereabouts. Russian prison authorities moved Tolokonnikova after a highly publicized hunger strike over a distance of several thousand miles without telling her family  where she was being moved. Movement of prisoners often takes this long because the trains that transport the prisoners stop many times in different prisons throughout Russia. Russian authorities also are not legally required to say where a prisoner is being moved until after a transfer has taken place.

Today it was confirmed that after 24 days without contact with her family, Tolokonnikova was moved to a prison in the region where she once lived with her mother, Krasnoyarsk. Her husband initially believed Tolokonnikova was being moved to the town of Nizhny Ingash, which is 185 miles away from Krasnoyarsk. Tolokonnikova is currently in the hospital for convicts in Krasnoyarsk instead of the prison, being treated in a tuberculosis hospital. While she does not have tuberculosis, she is being treated for the hunger strike complications.

Is it ethical to move prisoners without notifying their families? What would the American reaction be if something like this happened to a prisoner in the United States?

 

 

 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gciKYJkfXvRRedTJWDS9iejQ0eyw?docId=514fe0ae-a58a-4779-ae62-7d5be9df86c5

Science and Religion

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We are currently living in an era defined by a technological renaissance. Humanities machines, weapons, and access to knowledge have surpassed the imaginary limits of many 20th century novelists and—to be quite honest, elicit in me a curious sense of caution as to our limits. The Internet, genomics, Solar-Photovoltaics—these are instruments and ideas that would have been inconceivable fifty years ago. My generation has always been exposed to a world of knowledge that hadn’t existed a few years before our birth. The Internet can provide us with the answers to all of our non-transcendental questions almost instantly. To many, religion is regarded merely as the manifestation of the human unknown—meaning, it is the explanation of what we have yet to prove with science. As an atheist myself, I used to frequently dwell on God’s existence, or more appropriately, the disproof for God’s existence that I could piece together using logic into a vain philosophical argument which proved to me nothing. To many, ‘logic’ and religion are incompatible.

Einstein takes a very different standpoint. He argues that religion has the answers to our aspirations and nature—something which cannot be entirely explained using proof. Einstein claims that overzealous nationalism and totalitarianism are destroying the human spirit, by resting their crosshairs on destruction rather than creation. Objective knowledge, he argues, is extremely important and has been colossal in its achievements. But does not, however, come close to giving us the meaning of our existence.

Things To Come

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William Cameron Menzie’s film Things to Come is an adaptation of a novel by HG Wells.  Produced in 1936, this science fiction film explores England’s dystopic future that comes as a result of a devastating war, which is significant in the way that it accurately predicts World War II.  England first experiences a regression to the dark ages, which is followed by a period defined by obsession with progressions of technology.  Authoritarian leaders are in power during each of these eras.

Ironically, England’s regression comes as a result of too much progress, as advancements in weaponry cause mass destruction on a wide scale and medical advancements lead to the spread of a virus by the enemy which kills half of the world’s population.  This could be an exaggerated representation of the state of Germany after World War I.  The progress-obsessed regime which follows holds advancements in technology above human lives.  This is best exemplified in the scene which the attack by John Cabel’s followers leaves the “boss” of the old regime dead.  Cabel implies that one dead man means nothing in comparison to the new world of progress that will rise.  This disregard for human life is similar to that of Hitler, who believed in killing off whole races for the sake of progress.  While Hitler’s views were obviously much more extreme than those of Cabel, they both hold progress above individual lives.

Overall, the film warns against taking progress too far, as both severely flawed regimes come as a result of obsessions with it.

Military Technology in Things to Come

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The military technology reflects in Things to Come reflects that of World War I, only occasionally showing new developments in the context of a World War I-style conflict. H.G. Wells reflected pre-war conceptions of how the next war would occur, showing masses of troops crossing trenches into no-man’s land, tanks massed and charging across rough terrain, as well as gas attacks. It is interesting to note that Wells’ pre-war conceptions versus how the war actually occurred are similar to how pre-World War I writers envisioned the Great War; both were able to determine the technology that would make a difference on the battlefield, but both failed to realize how it would be used and how much of an impact these technologies had.

Wells does get one key thing right however, and that is the use of leftover military equipment. Most “futuristic” war movies show the latest and greatest in terms of equipment and guns, but Wells shows the true reality of going to war- the reissue of old equipment in order to sustain such a massive army. Soldiers are shown equipped with the old rifles leftover from World War I and are seemingly absent of any submachine guns or squad operated weapons (i.e. the Bren Gun). Also, instead of single, fixed wing aircraft, the British are shown using biplanes, which they did in fact use in World War II. However, in reality a biplane would not keep up with the newer combat fighters that were developed in the 1930s.

Alexandra Kollontai

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In a number of her written works, Alexandra Kollontai asserts the soviet necessity for ‘free love.’ This is a free love founded on a “singular morality” for both men and women, unlike the male-dominated, capitalistic, love. She advocated a revised view of sexuality that moved away from the “bourgeois dichotomy of gender and assumption.”

If Kollontai was to successfully revise gender in the Soviet Union,the soviet woman’s “double-burden” would not have existed. In Kollontai’s works she advocates a cultural equality between men and women (while also the complete Socialization of child-raising –“The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.”) which would have balanced home work between the great many mothers and fathers of the Union equally.

Alexandra Kollontai founded the “Women’s Department” in 1919 and also served as the People’s Commissar for Social Welfare. Though she opposed “bourgeois” liberal feminism, many of her works advocate for strong social reform for women in the Union.

For further reading see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/

Working Women in Russia

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The women’s double burden of simultaneously juggling their working life with their domestic lives has not improved much since 1936 in Russia. Up until the late 1970s, women practically had twice the workload as men. In the 1930s, the Soviet state basically falsely advertised women’s emancipation by massively increasing women’s participation in the workforce while undermining their facade by cutting wages in half and reversing the importance of the states role in child raising and placed it on the Russian family.

In the United States in the 1950’s, you see a more complete split in the working and domestic spheres with gender roles. The stereotypical nuclear family, such as ones that can be recognized on the popular television show “Mad Men”, would have a man in the workforce, with the women taking care of the domestic chores and child raising. In modern American society, where women have a much larger share of high paying jobs than they did roughly 70 years ago, there are more male figures which are involving themselves more heavily in the domestic environment, where the women make most of the income.

One things which fascinated me about women’s jobs in Soviet Russia throughout the 20th century is that they consistently dominated teaching and education. How revered were teachers in the Soviet Union compared to the United States? What about in compared to a culture which places a higher emphasis in education? Such as China or Korea?

Things to Come

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Things to Come is a 1936 movie adaptation of the book, written by H.G. Wells. This movie continues Wells’ tradition of using powerful science-fiction stories to critique politics. Things to Come focuses on the possibility of war, and the devastating effect it will have for the next century, on England and the world.

There is one powerful scene that can be used as metaphor for the 20th Century till, and beyond, 1936. During the early stages of the war, an enemy pilot who is gassing the country is shot down, and then is promptly attended to by the protagonist, John Cabal. They bemoan the necessity for battling each other, and the enemy eventually dies of gas poisoning, after giving away his gas mask to a young girl whose family he might have killed. This scene exemplifies the rapid rise of the modern state in the 20th century. The state had so much power and influence that they could send ordinary men into battle without their consent and desire. After the carnage of the First World War, the power of the state continued to increase as it controlled economic aims for revival. The movie reflects this increasing power, as years into the future the only widely available goods are weapons, rather than consumer goods.