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function RevEngRSISeries( Series: Integer; Period: Integer; RSIVal: Float ): integer;
begin
var Bar, UC, DC, AUC, ADC, ExpPer: integer;
var sName: string;
var Value: float;
sName := 'RevEngRSI(' + GetDescription( Series ) + ',' + IntToStr( Period ) + ',' + FloatToStr( RSIVal ) + ')';
Result := FindNamedSeries( sName );
if Result >= 0 then
Exit;
ExpPer := 2 * Period - 1;
UseUpdatedEMA( true );
Result := CreateNamedSeries( sName );
UC := CreateSeries;
DC := CreateSeries;
for Bar := 1 to BarCount - 1 do
begin
if @Series[Bar] > @Series[Bar-1] then
@UC[Bar] := @Series[Bar] - @Series[Bar-1]
else
@DC[Bar] := @Series[Bar-1] - @Series[Bar];
end;
AUC := EMASeries( UC, ExpPer );
ADC := EMASeries( DC, ExpPer );
for Bar := Period to BarCount - 1 do
begin
Value := ( Period - 1 ) * ( @ADC[Bar] * RSIVal / ( 100 - RSIVal ) - @AUC[Bar] );
if Value >= 0 then
Value := @Series[Bar] + Value
else
Value := @Series[Bar] + Value * ( 100 - RSIVal ) / RSIVal;
SetSeriesValue( Bar, Result, Value );
end;
end;
function RevEngRSI( Bar: integer; Series: Integer; Period: Integer; RSIVal: Float ): float;
begin
Result := GetSeriesValue( Bar, RevEngRSISeries( Series, Period, RSIVal ) );
end;
{$I
'RevEngRSI'}
var yPos: Integer;
yPos := 8;
Procedure drawLab(lab1, lab2: string; labColor: integer);
begin
DrawText( lab1+' ', 0, 600, yPos, labColor, 9);
DrawText( lab2, 0, 680, yPos, labColor, 9);
yPos := yPos+14;
end;
Function getLastAsString(theSeries: Integer): String;
begin
var v: float;
v := round(GetSeriesValue(BarCount-1, theSeries)*100)/100;
Result := FloatToStr(v);
end;
Procedure drawRSI(rsiLabel: string; rsiPeriod, rsiSetting, rsiColor: integer);
begin
var theSeries: integer;
theSeries := RevEngRSISeries( #Close, rsiPeriod, rsiSetting);
drawLab(rsiLabel, getLastAsString(theSeries), rsiColor);
PlotSeries( theSeries, 0, rsiColor, #Thin );
end;
var RSILENGTH, RSIENTRYLONG, RSIEXITLONG, RSIEXITLONG2: Integer;
var START, DAYSINTRADE, BAR, P, PBB: Integer;
RSILENGTH := 5;
RSIENTRYLONG := 25; // Set this at 21, 25 or 30
RSIEXITLONG := 45;
START := 10;
//========================================
Var HighRsiSeries, LowRsiSeries: Integer;
HighRsiSeries := CreateSeries();
LowRsiSeries := CreateSeries();
HideVolume;
// RSI is smoothed, in other words, averaged bar to bar
// Create initial TotalUp and TotalDown
Var Diff, TotUp, TotDn: Float;
TotUp := 0;
TotDn := 0;
Var i: Integer;
For i := (Start-RSILength)+1 to Start Do Begin
Diff := PriceClose(i+1) - PriceClose(i);
If Diff > 0 Then
TotUp := TotUp + Diff
Else
TotDn := TotDn + Abs(Diff);
End;
For Bar := Start+1 to BarCount - 1 Do Begin
// Add in current bar into totals
Var HighUp, HighDn, LowUp, LowDn: Float;
// Create bar high
HighUp := TotUp * (RSILength-1);
HighDn := TotDn * (RSILength-1);
Diff := PriceHigh(Bar) - PriceClose(Bar-1);
If Diff > 0 Then
HighUp := HighUp + Diff
Else
HighDn := HighDn + Abs( Diff ) ;
HighUp := HighUp / RSILength;
HighDn := HighDn / RSILength;
// Create bar low
LowUp := TotUp * (RSILength-1);
LowDn := TotDn * (RSILength-1);
Diff := PriceLow(Bar) - PriceClose(Bar-1);
If Diff > 0 Then
LowUp := LowUp + Diff
Else
LowDn := LowDn + Abs( Diff ) ;
LowUp := LowUp / RSILength;
LowDn := LowDn / RSILength;
// Calculate RSI values
Var RsiHigh, RsiLow: Float;
RsiHigh := 100 - (100 / ( 1 + (HighUp / HighDn))) ;
RsiLow := 100 - (100 / ( 1 + (LowUp / LowDn))) ;
// Store into price series
SetSeriesValue(Bar, HighRsiSeries, RsiHigh);
SetSeriesValue(Bar, LowRsiSeries, RsiLow);
// Update TotUp, TotDn for this Bar
TotUp := TotUp * (RSILength-1);
TotDn := TotDn * (RSILength-1);
Diff := PriceClose(Bar) - PriceClose(Bar-1);
If Diff > 0 Then
TotUp := TotUp + Diff
Else
TotDn := TotDn + Abs( Diff ) ;
TotUp := TotUp / RSILength;
TotDn := TotDn / RSILength;
End; // End For
// Plot RSI
Var RSIPane: Integer;
RSIPane := CreatePane( 075, true, true );
Plotseries( HighRsiSeries, RSIPane, #red, #thin );
Plotseries( LowRsiSeries, RSIPane, #green, #thin );
//Plotseries( RSISeries(#close, RSIlength ), RSIPane, #blue, #thin );
DrawText( 'RSI(5) High/Low', RSIPane, 4, 4, #black, 10 );
DrawHorzLine(RSIentryLong, RSIPane, #green, #dotted );
DrawHorzLine(RSIexitLong, RSIPane, #red, #dotted );
drawRSI('RSI(5) at 50', 5, 50, #Red);
drawRSI('RSI(5) at 25', 5, 25, #Green);
drawRSI('RSI(14) at 30', 14, 30, #Fuchsia);
var BBUp, BBLow, MA: integer;
BBUp := BBandUpperSeries( #Close, 20, 2 );
BBLow := BBandLowerSeries( #Close, 20, 2 );
MA := SMASeries( #Close, 20);
PlotSeries( MA , 0, #Blue, #Dotted );
PlotSeries( BBUp, 0, 559, #Thin );
PlotSeries( BBLow, 0, 559, #Thin );
drawLab('BBands(20,2)', getLastAsString(BBLow)+', '+getLastAsString(MA)+', '+getLastAsString(BBUp), #Blue);
Efforts to Suppress the Scientific View..
Revival of scientific methods Buffon and the Sorbonne Beringer's treatise on fossils Protestant opposition to the new geology ~ the works of Burnet, Whiston, Wesley, Clark, Watson, Arnold, Cockburn, and others..
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/whitee02.html
About the chronology of the Apocalypse..
Most exegetes date the Apocalypse of John as a text written about 80 A.D. or even much later..
The arguments are the following..
In the text are mentioned seven or eight kings of Rome (emperors), there is an allusion to a great fire in Rome, probably in 64 under Nero (vaticinium ex eventu) and the number of the beast is 666, probably the number of Nero (QSAR NRWN in Hebrew letters)..
Counting and beginning with August, not taken into account Galba (68-69), Otho (69) and Vitellius (69) one arrives at Domitianus (81-96)..
These arguments do not particularly shed light on this mysterious text. Moreover they are in contradiction with this text..
It is said that five kings are fallen and that the seventh is not yet there, but will not remain a long time. It follows that the Apocalypse has to be dated during the reign of the sixth and that the cryptogram 666 reveals his name..
According to the former opinion Nero should be the sixth, but that is impossible because in the list of the emperors he is the fifth..
According to the text the destruction of Rome should happen during the reign of the seventh, who cannot be Nero..
The solution that Domitianus is the seventh, or the eight is quite unsatisfying, because he reigned not precisely a short period. One has also to skip arbitrary Galba, Otho and Vitellius..
The reason for this hermeneutic chaos is the fact that a number of details were not understood very well, e.g. the eighth king who was one of the seven. [Octavian was the Eighth ~ Noel]
The method, which is applied here, is centred upon these details, taking into account the typical special mental processes, the loose construction, the symbolic, hermetic and idiosyncratic style, the contamination of mental concepts and representations. Notwithstanding these particular traits, some details may be exact allusions, metaphors that should be identified. This identification should proceed from an exact representation of the cultural background at the time the Apocalypse was conceived. In the previous interpretation this exact representation is lacking. It was forgotten that the name Caesar was not a title of a function, but a proper name, it was forgotten that the list of emperors we have now does not coincide with the succession of Caesars, that the description of the fire of Rome (borrowed from Ezekiel) is entirely different from the description of the real fire (Tacitus: an indescribable chaos in the city) and an expression as "the eighth king who was one of the seven" remained completely misunderstood.
Octavius, the eighth, was the original name of Octavianus Caesar Augustus, who was adopted by Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was murdered because he was suspected that he wanted to become a king. And there existed also the legend of the seven kings of Rome. The legend of these seven kings at the beginning of Rome is here projected to the end. Rome will disappear during the reign of the seventh. (who will not reign a long time). As the seventh has not yet arrived, the Apocalypse has to be dated during the reign of the sixth, because five have fallen yet. As Octavius is the eighth, the seven are Caesars. The first one is Julius Caesar ( first king); the second is also the eight: Octavius Augustus; the third Tiberius; the fourth, often forgotten, Germanicus; who died poisoned and who possessed the imperium maius; the fifth Gaius Caligula, the sixth Claudius and the seventh Nero. The Apocalypse can be dated in 45-47 and not 90 or later.
There is a drake and two beasts: The first beast has seven heads and ten horns, the second has only two horns. Of course the first beast symbolized by these heads the seven kings of Rome, one of them deadly wounded (Julius Caesar). The ten horns are the governors of the ten provinces of the Roman Empire (the drake).
The drake gave power to this beast (the imperial power) . The beast reigns 42 months: this is exactly the period of the reign of Caligula who reigned from the 1st July 37 till the 21st January 41 and who wanted to be worshipped as a god (Zeus Epiphanes Neos Gaios, even in the temple of Jerusalem. The second beast has only two horns, it decrees the worship of the emperors and the taxes; it reigns under the supervision of the first beast, the emperor. This is clearly the senate of Rome with the two consuls at the head. But the beast is also a man and this man has the number 666. Written in Greek characters 666 = Chi Ksi, Digamma. Digamma signifies 6, Ksi signifies 60 and Chi signifies 600. For digamma the signification is clear: five kings fell, the sixth Caesar is there: so digamma signifies the sixth; Ksi is the abbreviation of Kaisar, the Greek pronunciation of Caesar; for Chi one has to remember that the emperors were Roman emperors: 600 = DC in Latin and that is Divus Claudius, as divus was the mode the emperor was addressed. Divus was a title, which was object of mockery for Jews and also for Romans (cf. L. Seneca, Divi Claudii Apocolocyntosis). This Claudius was ugly like a beast, as said his own mother (Suetonius). One sees that this is a mixture of allusions: the death of Caesar, the reign of Gaius, and the reign of Claudius. Probably the beast comes from the sea, because the battle of Actium was at the origin of the power of the beast (Augustus). By opposition the second beast had to come from the earth.
The term beast takes probably his origin in the physical appearance of Claudius. Seneca says that the gods created his body when they were angry (Sen. Apoc. 11). It was completed by the traits of the beast in Ezekiel ( with the face of a lion, etc. ). It is situated in the Jewish-Roman conflict (taxes and worship), the symbolic short period of the reign of Gaius, the symbolic cipher of Claudius. So one can deduce the procedure of composition: the text is an agglomerate of historical details, loosely unified by symbolic figures. The Apocalypse can therefore be dated in the year 45, because this date is also concordant with the other historical sources. In 49 Claudius banished the Jews from Rome, because they were restless under the instigation of a certain Chrestos (Suetonius). If the Apocalypse was known in Rome in 47, it is quite understandable, that the Jews were in a revolutionary mood, not only because of the taxes and the worship of the emperor Gaius, but also because they were instigated to set fire to Rome and to refuse to pay taxes. It was a campaign of civil disobedience and terrorism, severely repressed by Claudius. So Suetonius is right when he calls the instigator Chrestos.
According to Suetonius a senator said to Nero that he wished that Rome would not be destroyed during his reign. Nero answered that he wished that, because he hated the small streets of ancient Rome and wanted to reconstruct it. So one can suspect that at that time the prophecy was known. Afterwards Nero did not hesitate to arrest the Christians as guilty for the fire of Rome (he let them burn themselves and for the insult to the emperor they had to fight clothed with furs of wild animals, because the apocalypse of course calls the emperors beasts. Anybody should understand that. For the hypothesis that the Apocalypse has been written before 47 the strongest argument is the harmony of all historical sources and the fact that they make sense.
The fact that Claudius is described unanimously as a beast, as a monster by Suetonius, by Seneca and by the apocalypse was also due to the fact that he suffered from a vigorous head-and-hand-tremor, that he had an abnormal gait and a raw voice (Sen. Apoc. 5). Seneca is very explicit; he writes that Hercules had seen several monsters, but not all ! His voice is said that of a sea-monster. Seneca accuses Claudius that he condemned numerous people and one can understand the allusions in the apocalypse to the decapitation of a great number of Christian Jews, ordered by Claudius (Apoc. 20,4; 6,9; 18,6; 13,9 & 15; 16,6; 17,6; 18,24; 19,2; 20,4). Those who obey to the laws of Rome are threatened to be condemned by Jesus and to be tortured by fire (Apoc. 14,10) and by tumours (Apoc. 16,2). The saints should persevere and refuse to pay taxes (take the mark of his name (the emperor)) (cf. 13,17 : nobody can sell or buy, if he is not marked by the name of the beast (who was on the coins) and die (14,12). There can be no doubt that the Apocalypse instigated the Christians to civil disobedience, even when they were sentenced to death. The Christ is the instigator of the troubles at Rome, as Suetonius wrote, and Claudius was radical in the repression. By capital punishment and by banishment (49) he tried to dominate the troubles, which found their origin in the hate of Jesus against the emperor who impeded him to come with glory and reign over the whole world. (2 Tess. 2, 1-12). The Jews, and especially the Christian ones, had not the sense of humour that characterises the Roman spirit with regard to the deification of the Roman Emperors. If one reads Seneca, one sees how Romans were full of mockery about these deifications. Claudius is ridiculed as he wants to become a god, and finally is condemned to be a slave, and the fundamental reason is that : tam facile homines occidebat quam canis adsidit (Seneca, Apoc. 10,10) (he killed so easy men, as a dog urinates). The real killer of Jews was Claudius. He was the beast.
It is remarkable that Paul in its letter to the Romans (Rom. 13) tries to obtain submission to the authorities and payment of the taxes (13,6). This letter should have been written in 56, just after the dead of Claudius (54). As Seneca suggests, the young Nero inspired some hope in Rome, also for the Jews who returned there. In the main time Paul was in Rome as a prisoner. Probably Peter came also in Rome and was there during the fire. If the Christian Jews set the fire to Rome, this had to be prepared by Paul and Peter in great secret. Paul in Thess. 2, 1-12, alludes to the thesis of the Apocalypse that Jesus cannot come back because he is impeded by the antichrist: the Roman imperium. But the end will come soon, even during the life of Paul (1 Thess. 4-13). The changed strategy : to pay taxes, to honour Caesar, did not change the fundamental attitude and the hostility against Rome, which was to be destroyed. The contradiction between the Apocalypse (not to pay taxes, to die instead) and the doctrine of Paul and Peter can be understood as an evolution, in the hypothesis that the principal author of the former position was dead, and completely neutralised. If the hypothesis is accepted that Nero and some senators knew that the destruction of Rome was predicted, as Suetonius suggests, then of course during the ten years of Nero's reign there was some rumour. Meanwhile everywhere the Christians were persecuted. The 1st Epistle of Peter (1 Petr, 3, 13-17; 4,11-19; 5,9) mentions these difficulties between 60 and 64. Peter also tries to obtain obedience to the emperor (1 Petr, 13; 4, 17). It is easy to distinguish two periods after 45, the presumed publication of the Apocalypse: the first one a period of troubles at Rome and else till 49, the banishment of the Jews; and a second period (45-64) where Peter and Paul preach the submission to the Law, warning that the end is coming soon. In the mean time Christians have difficulties and are criticised, they have to behave prudently, they should not provoke reactions: that is the doctrine of Peter and Paul and that is in contradiction to the doctrine of the Apocalypse. This is a normal evolution, when there is sufficient repression: outward behaviour normalises, but the inner rage remains.
The question can be raised: If we suppose that Jesus' survival ended in 54, this fanatic revenge against the emperor, who impeded Jesus to come in glory, ended also. It was possible that Peter and Paul took over, and, because it would not be a long time before Jesus would come back (the times are now decisive Paul writes to Timothy (2 Tim., 3.1), it was not very useful to sacrifice a number of lives for the taxes and to resist openly to the new Emperor. So they preferred the secret subversion. Rome had to be destroyed, because it impeded the coming of Jesus.
The first Christians were true anarchists; that has been completely forgotten. The period of ten years before the fire is one of caution. But even after the fire the opposition to Rome of the entire Jewish community was at its apogee. In 66 there was the revolution in Jerusalem, and in Alexandria thousands were killed. From 67 till 135 several revolutions took place. Given the opposition between the doctrine of Peter and Paul and the doctrine of the Apocalypse it would be extremely improbable that the Apocalypse came later than the letters of Paul and Peter. In the year 90 the taxes were yet more than 50 years old, the worship of the emperor was an old tradition; the indignation could not be so fresh as when Gaius prepared his statue for the temple of Jerusalem and when the commercial taxes were new. The real sequence is: indignation, troubles, revolution, repression, outwards submission, inner rage, secret subversion, revolution.
The Apocalypse is therefore the first document of Christianity: the oldest. In the light of these problems one can ask if e.g. a logion of Christ: Give Caesar... has not been added lately as a part of the strategy of the Church in order to obtain that the Christians pay taxes.
The consequence of the change in perspective is important. The Apocalypse is the bridge between the real public life of Jesus and the letters of Paul, and later the Gospel as texts.
That the cited logion is probably a later addition is strongly supported by the fact that (Lc. 22,2) in the trial of Jesus before Pilate the accusation against Jesus is, that he preaches revolution against Caesar, that he forbids to pay taxes and that he pretends to be the Messiah, the King.. And this is confirmed by the Apocalypse., which incites to revolution against Rome and Caesar in order to burn Rome, and which forbids paying taxes (to take the mark of the beast). Luke mentions simply the accusations without being conscious of course that the Apocalypse contained exactly the confirmation of them. When the Gospels are published Jesus is presented as a taxpayer and a loyal subject of Caesar, and this is in accordance with the official strategy of the church. So we have to admit that the historical Jesus indeed preached the revolution against Rome and forbade to pay taxes, if not publicly, certainly to his disciples. In the Gospel discussions about the subject are mentioned (Mc., 12. 13-17).
The Apocalypse is certainly the most primitive document. Is it also a paraphrenic document ? The general opinion of the exegetes about the Apocalypse is that it is a literary work of the genre of the apocalyptic literature (Ezekiel, Daniel, Enoch, etc.) , which contains prophecies about the end of times, predicting catastrophes, with visions, angels and cryptic, symbolic expressions, not always well understood today. ( M.J. Lagrange, Le judaïsme avant Jesus-Christ, Paris, 1931 et id. , Le messianisme chez les juifs, Paris, 1909; E. Schillebeeckx, Jezus het verhaal van een levende, Brugge, 1975). the psychopathological examination of the texts produces different results. Ezekiel, Daniel and Enoch were mental patients, schizophrenics and paraphrenics, showing all typical symptoms of these diseases: receiving revelations, seeing visions, being the elected ones, predicting catastrophes (Cf. K. Jaspers, l.c.). The Apocalypse is not an exception. Characteristic for the Apocalypse is the megalomaniacal sphere, the horrible aggressivity and the narcissism. Symptomatic are the loud voices, crying, the symbolic, idiosyncratic, pedantic expression, the zoopsy (seeing monsters and beasts), the hallucinatory state, the catastrophic predictions, the typical systematic elaboration (Enoch, Ezekiel and Daniel were assimilated). The abnormality of the mental processes can easily be shown: a number of expressions are inspired by a great inflation of the Ego: glory and power to him, omnipotence, anybody will see his power, he will destroy the earth and all peoples, he is the son of Man. The narcissism is enormous: all will adore him, anybody has to proclaim his glory because he alone has power and wisdom (5,12) , he alone is worth to receive the glory, alone the Lamb is worth to open the book with the seven seals, he is the king of the kings, the Lord of the Lords.
All events are cosmic: stars fall, angels occupy the four corners of the earth, thunder and lightning and earthquakes accompany events; all voices are loud crying, some with the voice of the thunder. All punishments are terrible: blood streams abundantly; Rome will be destroyed in one hour or one day (18, 8-9), all kings, all soldiers, all their horses will be eaten by the birds. The beast will be burned living (that is why Nero burned the Christians living), all others will be killed by the Christ himself (19, 17-21), all living beings in the sea will die (16, 3), etc., etc. All these catastrophes are the effect of the anger of God; Rome is described as the Great Hoar and the Roman Empire is identified with the Satan himself.
All this anger, all these catastrophes are due to the fact that all others are supposed to be the enemies of Jesus (the majority of the humanity did not even know who Jesus was) and therefore all are guilty and should be destroyed. Only those who are the elected ones will reign with the Christ for 1000 years. Those who died will resuscitate, when Jesus comes back and reign also during 1000 years. (Cf. also the predication of Paul: 1 Thess, 4, 13-19; cf. 2 Tess., 2, 1-12). This immense irrational aggressivity is a consequence of the enormous inflation of the Ego. The pathological character of these mental processes is, as had been said, well known.
The hypothesis that the source of this text is a megalomaniacal paraphrenic is the only plausible, if one considers the original part of the content, opposed to the assimilated part (the part borrowed from Ezekiel and others). N.B. that it is probable, as the text suggests, that it has been written by a disciple, who is responsible for a number of details and stylistic elements (it was certainly a Jew, because the style is typical: a great number of conjunctions, much less particles) . One could characterize the Apocalypse as the hymn of the wrath, of the anger and the hate, exactly the contrary of the (later) doctrine of Jesus in the Gospel.
If our hypothesis is exact, the Apocalypse reflects better the true mentality of Jesus than the Gospels, which were written later. But even in the Gospels traces remain: the threats against Chorozain, Bethsaida, Capernaum, Jerusalem reflect the same mentality. They reflect the same rage of Jesus against those who do not believe him. And that is the essential element : it contains the proof that Jesus was a paraphrenic, who contended to be the Son of God.
The inhuman characteristic of the Apocalypse, its bestial brutality, the irrational rage are a sufficient proof of his origin: a pathological mind. Nothing in the Apocalypse is love, mercy, all is self-glory, revenge, wrath, power, cruelty. The Apocalypse is in strong contradiction with the doctrine of Paul and John and even with some logia of Jesus in the Gospel. In the Gospel Jesus has been humanised in order to make him more acceptable to the faithful.
As the studies of Bultmann have shown, the primitive Church has modified, adapted a number of logia; a clear example is the logion about the children and the reign of God. In the Gospel of Thomas (R.H. Grant & D.N. Freedman, Het Thomasevangelie, Antwerpen, 1960) some logia have been preserved which explain the pericopes of the Gospel: to be as a child is to be asexual and free of sexual shame (log. 21-22). (Cf. also log 37 & 114: if you make masculine and feminine one). In the canonical Gospels it is said also that in the heaven there is no marriage, virginity is exalted just as in the Apocalypse. The theme is constant: virginity, inhibition of sexual activity."
Dr. Herman H. Somers, ex-Jesuit, translation from the original Dutch.
The Case Against Religion..
Dr. Albert Ellis
Before we can talk sensibly about religion~or almost anything else! ~ we should give some kind of definition of what we are talking about..
Let me, therefore, start with what I think are some legitimate definitions of the term religion..
Other concepts of this term, of course, exist; but what I am talking about when I use it is as follows..
According to Webster’s New Word Dictionary, religion is..
"(1)belief in a divine or superhuman power or powers to be obeyed and worshipped as the creator(s) and ruler(s) of the universe; (2) expression of this belief in conduct and ritual."
English and English, in their Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms (1958), define religion as "a system of beliefs by means of which individuals or a community put themselves in relation to god or to a supernatural world and often to each other, and from which the religious person derives a set of values by which to judge events in the natural world."
The Columbia Encyclopedia notes that "when a man becomes conscious of a power above and beyond the human, and recognizes a dependence of himself upon that power, religion has become a factor in his being."
These, then are the definitions of religion which I accept and which I shall have in mind as I discuss the religious viewpoint in this paper. Religion, to me, must include some concept of a deity. When the term is used merely to denote a system of beliefs, practices, or ethical values which are not connected with any assumed higher power, then I believe it is used loosely and confusingly; since such a nonsupernatural system of beliefs can more accurately be described as a philosophy of life or a code of ethics, and it is misleading to confuse a believer in this general kind of philosophy or ethical code with a true religionist.
Every Atheist, in other words, has some kind of philosophy and some code of ethics; and many Atheists, in fact, have much more rigorous life philosophies and ethical systems than have most deists.
SOMEONE IS RELIGIOUS
It therefore seems silly to say that someone is religious because he happens to be philosophic or ethical; and unless we rigorously use the term religion to mean some kind of faith unfounded on fact, or dependency on some assumed superhuman entities, we broaden the definition of the word so greatly as to make it practically meaningless.
If religion is defined as man’s dependence of a power above and beyond the human, the as a psychotherapist, I find it to be exceptionally pernicious. For the psychotherapist is normally dedicated to helping human beings in general, and his patients in particular, to achieve certain goals of mental health, and virtually all these goals are antithetical to a truly religious viewpoint.
Let us look at the main psychotherapeutic goals. On the basis of twenty years of clinical experience, and in basic agreement with most of my professional colleagues (such as Brasten, 1961; Dreikurs, 1955; Fromm, 1955; Goldstein 1954; Maslow, 1954, Rogers, 1957; and Thorne, 1961), I would say that the psychotherapist tries to help his patients to be minimally anxious and hostile; and to this end, he tries to help them to acquire the following kind of personality traits:
1. Self-interest. The emotionally healthy individual should primarily be true to himself and not masochistically sacrifice himself for others. His kindness and consideration for others should be derived form the idea that he himself wants to enjoy freedom form unnecessary pain and restriction, and that he is only likely to do so by helping create a world in which the rights of others, as well as his own, are not needlessly curtailed.
2. Self-direction. He should assume responsibility for his own life, be able independently to work out his own problems, and while at times wanting or preferring the cooperation and help of others, not need their support for his effectiveness and well-being.
3. Tolerance. He should fully give other human beings the right to be wrong; and while disliking or abhorring some of their behavior, still not blame them, as persons, for performing this dislikeable behavior. He should accept the fact that all humans are remarkably fallible, never unrealistically expect them to be perfect, and refrain from despising or punishing them when they make inevitable mistakes and errors.
4. Acceptance of uncertainty. The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor probably ever will be, any absolute certainties, and should realize that it is not at all horrible, indeed—such a probabilistic, uncertain world.
5. Flexibility. He should remain intellectually flexible, be open to change at all times, and unbigotedly view the infinitely varied people, ideas, and things in the world around him.
6. Scientific thinking. He should be objective, rational and scientific; and be able to apply the laws of logic and of scientific method not only to external people and events, but to himself and his interpersonal relationships.
7. Commitment. He should be vitally absorbed in something outside of himself, whether it be people, things, or ideas; and should preferably have at least one major creative interest, as well as some outstanding human involvement, which is highly important to him, and around which he structures a good part of his life.
8. Risk-taking. The emotionally sound person should be able to take risks, to ask himself what he really would like to do in life, and then to try to do this, even though he has to risk defeat or failure. He should be adventurous (though not necessarily foolhardy); be willing to try almost anything once, just to see how he likes it; and look forward to some breaks in his usual life routines.
9. Self-acceptance. He should normally be glad to be alive, and to like himself just because he is alive, because he exists, and because he (as a living being) invariably has some power to enjoy himself, to create happiness and joy. He should not equate his worth or value to himself on his extrinsic achievements, or on what others think of him, but on his personal existence; on his ability to think, feel, and act, and thereby to make some kind of an interesting, absorbed life for himself.
These, then, are the kind of personality traits which a psychotherapist is interested in helping his patients achieve and which he is also, prohylactically, interested in fostering in the lives of millions who will never be his patients.
Now, does religion—by which again, I mean faith unfounded on fact, or dependence on some supernatural deity—help human beings to achieve these healthy traits and thereby to avoid becoming anxious, depressed, and hostile?
The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t help at all; and in most respects it seriously sabotages mental health. For religion, first of all, is not self-interest; it is god-interest.
The religious person must, by virtual definition, be so concerned with whether or not his hypothesized god loves him, and whether he is doing the right thing to continue to keep in this god’s good graces, that he must, at very best, put himself second and must sacrifice some of his most cherished interests to appease this god. If, moreover, he is a member of any organized religion, then he must choose his god’s precepts first, those of this church and it’s clergy second, and his own views and preferences third.
NO VIEWS OF HIS OWN
In a sense, the religious person must have no real views of his own; and it is presumptuous of him, in fact, to have any. In regard to sex-love affairs, to marriage and family relations, to business, to politics, and to virtually everything else that is important in his life, he must try to discover what his god and his clergy would like him to do; and he must primarily do their bidding.
Masochistic self-sacrifice is an integral part of almost all organized religions: as shown, for example, in the various forms of ritualistic self-deprivation that Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, and other religionists must continually undergo if they are to keep in good with their assumed gods.
Masochism, indeed, stems form an individuals’s deliberately inflicting pain on himself in order that he may guiltlessly permit himself to experience some kind of sexual or other pleasure; and the very essence of most organized religions is the performance of masochistic, guilt-soothing rituals, by which the religious individual gives himself permission to enjoy life.
Religiosity, to a large degree, essentially is masochism; and both are forms of mental sickness.
In regard to self-direction, it can easily be seen from what just been said that the religious person is by necessity dependant and other-directed rather that independent and self-directed. If he is true to his religious beliefs he must first bow down to his god; to the clergy who this god’s church; and third, to all the members of his religious sect, who are eagle-eyedly watching him to see whether he defects an iota from the conduct his god and his church define as proper.
If religion, therefore, is largely masochism, it is even more dependency. For a man to be a true believer and to be strong and independent is impossible; religion and self-sufficiency are contradictory terms.
Tolerance again, is a trait that the firm religionist cannot possibly possess. "I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other gods before me", saith Jehovah. Which means in plain English, that whatever any given god and his clergy believe must be absolutely, positively true; and whatever any other person or group believes must be absolutely, positive false.
Democracy, permissiveness, and the acceptance of human fallibility are quite alien to the real religionist—since he can only believe that the creeds and commands of his particular deity should, ought, and must be obeyed, and that anyone who disobeys the is patently a knave.
Religion, with its definitional absolutes, can never rest with the concept of an individual’s wrong doing or making mistakes, but must inevitably all to this the notion of his sinning and of his deserving to be punished for his sins. For, if it is merely desirable for you to refrain from harming others or committing other misdeeds, as any non-religious code of ethics will inform you that it is, then if you make a mistake and do commit some misdeeds, you are merely a wrong-doer, or one who is doing an undesirable deed and who should try to correct himself and do less wrong in the future. But is it is god-given, absolute law that you shall not, must not do a wrong act, and actually do it, you are then a mean, miserable sinner, a worthless being, and must severely punish yourself (perhaps eternally, in hell) for being a wrongdoer, being a fallible human.
Religion, then, by setting up absolute, god-given standards, must make you self-deprecating and dehumanized when you err; and must lead you to despise and dehumanize others when they act badly. This kind of absolutistic, perfectionistic thinking is the prime creator of the two most corroding of human emotions: anxiety and hostility.
If one of the requisites for emotional health is acceptance of uncertainty, then religion is obviously the unhealthiest state imaginable:
Since its prime reason for being is to enable the religionist to believe a mystical certainty.
Just because life is so uncertain, and because millions of people think that they cannot take its vicissitudes, they invent absolutistic gods, and thereby pretend that there is some final, invariant answer to things. Patently, these people are fooling themselves—and instead of healthfully admitting that they do not need certainty, but can live comfortably in this often disorderly world, they stubbornly protect their neurotic beliefs by insisting that there must be the kind of certainty that they foolishly believe that they need.
This is like a child’s believing that he must have a kindly father in order to survive; and then, when his father is unkindly, or perhaps has died and is nonexistent, he dreams up a father (who may be a neighbor, a movie star, or a pure figment of his imagination) and he insists that this dream-father actually exists.
The trait of flexibility, which is so essential to proper emotional functioning, is also blocked and sabotaged by religious belief. For the person who dogmatically believes in god, and who sustains this belief with a faith unfounded in fact, which a true religious of course must, clearly is not open to change and is necessarily bigoted.
If, for example, his scriptures or his church, tell him he shalt not even covet his neighbor’s wife—let alone have actual adulterous relations with her!--he cannot ask himself, "Why should I not lust after this women, as long as I don’t intend to do anything about my desire for her? What is really wrong about that?" For his god and his church have spoken; and there is no appeal from this arbitrary authority, once he has brought himself to accept it.
Any time, in fact, anyone unempirically establishes a god or a set of religious postulates which have a superhuman origin, he can thereafter use no empirical evidence whatever to question the dictates of this god or those postulates, since they are (by definition) beyond scientific validation.
The best he can do, if he wants to change any rules that stem from his religion, is to change the religion itself. Otherwise, he is stuck with the absolutistic axioms, and their logical corollaries, that he himself has initially accepted on faith. We may therefore note again that, just as religion is masochism, other-directedness, intolerance, and refusal to accept uncertainty, it also is mental and emotional inflexibility.
In regard to scientific thinking,it practically goes without saying that this kind of cerebration is quite antithetical to religiosity. The main canon of the scientific method—as Ayer (1947), Carnap (1953), Reichenbach (1953), and a host of other modern philosophers of science have pointed out—is that, at least in some final analysis, or in principle, all theories be confirmable by some form of human experience, some empirical referent. But all religions which are worthy of the name contend that their superhuman entities cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt, or otherwise humanly experienced, and that their gods and their principles are therefore distinctly beyond science.
To believe in any of these religions, therefore, is to be unscientific at least to some extent; and it could be contended that the more religious one is, the less scientific one tends to be. Although a religious person need not be entirely unscientific (as, for that matter, a raving maniac need not be either), it is difficult to see how he could be perfectly scientific.
While a person may be both scientific and religious (as he may be at times sensible and at other times foolish) it is doubtful if an individual’s attitude may simultaneously be truly pious and objective.
In regard to the trait of commitment, the religious individual may— for once!--have some advantages. For if he is truly religious, he is seriously committed to his god, his church, or his creed; and to some extent, at least, he thereby acquires a major interest in life.
Religious commitment also frequently has its serious disadvantages, since it tends to be obsessive-compulsive; and it may well interfere with other kinds of healthy commitments—such as deep involvements in sex-love relations, in scientific pursuits, and even in artistic endeavors. Moreover, it is a commitment that is often motivated by guilt or hostility, and may serve as a frenzied covering-up mechanism which masks, but does not really eliminate, these underlying disturbed feelings. It is also the kind of commitment that is based on falsehoods and illusions, and that therefore easily can be shattered, thus plunging the previously committed individual into the depths of disillusionment and despair.
Not all forms of commitment, in other words, are equally healthy. The grand inquisitors of the medieval catholic church were utterly dedicated to their "holy" work, and Hitler and many of his associates were fanatically committed to their Nazi doctrines. But this hardly proves that they are emotionally human beings.
When religious individuals are happily committed to faith, they often tend to be fanatically and dogmatically committed in an obsessive-compulsive way that itself is hardly desirable. Religious commitment may well be better for a human being than no commitment to anything. But religion, to a large degree, is fanaticism—which, in turn, is an obsessive-compulsive, rigid form of holding to a viewpoint that invariably masks and provides a bulwark for the underlying insecurity of the obsessed individual.
In regard to risk-taking, it should be obvious that the religious person is highly determined not to be adventurous nor to take any of life’s normal risks. He strongly believes in unvalidatable assumptions precisely because he does not want to risk following his own preferences and aims, but wants the guarantee that some higher power will back him.
Enormously fearing failure, and falsely defining his own worth as a person in terms of achievement, he sacrifices time, energy, and material goods and pleasures to the worship of the assumed god, so that he can at least be sure that this god loves and supports him. All religions worthy of the names are distinctly inhibiting—which means, in effect, that the religious person sells his soul, surrenders his own basic urges and pleasures, so that he may feel comfortable with the heavenly helper that he himself has invented. Religion, then is needless inhibition.
Finally, in regard to self-acceptance, it should again be clear that the religious devotee cannot possibly accept himself just because he is alive, because he exists and has, by mere virtue of his aliveness, some power to enjoy himself. Rather, he must make his self-acceptance utterly contingent on the acceptance of his definitional god, the church and clergy who also serve this god, and all other true believers in his religion.
If all these extrinsic persons and things accept him, he is able— and even then only temporarily and with continued underlying anxiety—to accept himself. Which means, of course, that he defines himself only through the reflected appraisals of others and loses any real, existential self that he might otherwise keep creating. Religion, for such an individual, consequently is self-abasement and self-abnegation—as, of course, virtually all the saints and mystics have clearly stated that it is.
If we summarize what we have just been saying, the conclusion seems inescapable that religion is, on almost every conceivable count, directly opposed to the goals of mental health—since it basically consists of masochism, other-directness, intolerance, refusal to accept uncertainty, unscientific thinking, needless inhibition, and self-abasement. In the one area where religion has some advantages in terms of emotional hygiene—that of encouraging hearty commitment to a cause or project in which the person may vitally absorbed—it even tends to sabotage this advantage in two important ways: (a) it drives most of its adherents to commit themselves to its tenets for the wrong reasons—that is, to cover up instead of to face and rid themselves of their basic insecurities; and (b) it encourages a fanatic, obsessive-compulsive kind of commitment that is, in its own right, a form of mental illness.
If we want to look at the problems of human disturbance a little differently, we may ask ourselves, "What are the irrational ideas which people believe and through which they drive themselves into severe states of emotional sickness?"
EXPLORING THE QUESTION
After exploring this question for many years, and developing a new form of psychotherapy which is specifically directed at quickly unearthing and challenging the main irrational ideas which make people neurotic and psychotic, I have found that these ideas may be categorized under a few major headings (Ellis, 1962;Ellis and Harper, 1961a, 1961b). Here, for example, are five irrational notions, all or some of which are strongly held by practically every seriously disturbed person; here, along with these notions, are the connections between and commonly held religious beliefs.
Irrational idea No. 1 is the idea that it is a dire necessity for an adult to be loved or approved of by all the significant figures in his life. This idea is bolstered by the religious philosophy that if you cannot get certain people to love or approve of you, you can always fall back on god’s love. The thought, however, that it is quite possible for you to live comfortably in the world whether or not other people accept you is quite foreign to both emotionally disturbed people and religionists.
Irrational idea No.2 is the idea that you must be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving in all possible respects, otherwise you are worthless. The religionists say that no, you need not be competent and achieving, and in fact can be thoroughly inadequate—as long as god loves you and you are a member in good standing of the church. But this means, of course, that you must be a competent and achieving religionist—else you are no damned good.
Irrational idea No.3 is the notion that certain people are bad, wicked, and villainous and that they should be severely blamed and punished for their sins. This is the ethical basis, of course, of virtually all true religions. The concepts of quilt, blaming, and sin are, in fact, almost synonymous with that of revealed religion.
Irrational idea No. 4 is the belief that it is horrible, terrible, and catastrophic when things are not going the way you would like them to go. This idea, again, is the very core of religiousity, since the religious person invariably believes that just because he cannot stand being frustrated, and just because he must keep worrying about things turning out badly, he needs a supreme deity to supervise his thoughts and deeds and to protect him from anxiety and frustrations.
Irrational idea No. 5 is the idea that human unhappiness is externally caused and that people have little or no ability to control their sorrows or rid themselves of their negative feelings. Once again, this notion is the essence of religion, since real religions invariably teach you that only by trusting in god and relying on praying to him will you be able to control your sorrows of counteract your negative emotions.
Similarly, if we had time to review all the other major irrational ideas that lead humans to become and to remain emotionally disturbed, we could quickly find that they are coextensive with, or are strongly encouraged by, religious tenets.
If you think about the matter carefully, you will see this close connection between mental illness and religion is inevitable and invariant, since neurosis of psychosis is something of a high-class name for childishness or dependency; and religion, when correctly used, is little more that a synonym for dependency.
In the final analysis, then, religion is neurosis. This is why I remarked, at a symposium on sin and psychotherapy held by the American Psychological Association a few years ago, that from a mental health standpoint Voltaire’s famous dictum should be reversed: for if there were a god, it would be necessary to uninvent him.
If the thesis of this article is correct, religion goes hand in hand with the basic irrational beliefs of human beings. These keep them dependant, anxious, and hostile, and thereby create and maintain their neuroses and psychoses. What then is the role of psychotherapy in dealing with the religious views of disturbed patients? Obviously, the sane and effective psychotherapist should not—as many contemporary psychoanalytic Jungian, client-centered, and existentialist therapists have contended he should—go along with the patients’ religious orientation and try to help these patients live successfully with their religions, for this is equivalent to trying to help them live successfully with their emotional illness.
Dr Albert Ellis is a scholar who holds a Ph.D degree in psychotherapy.
Teach ID in Schools..The Alternative to Darwinism..
What is the origin of life? How did we come to be here? Public schools teach that the answer is evolution. But evolution is not a fact. It is only a theory, and a weak one at that. Darwin's so-called theory cannot explain nipples on men; it cannot explain the sea slug, Eolidoidea; it cannot explain altruism; it cannot explain IRS Form 1040..
Worse, the theory of evolution exhibits an embarrassing lack of fossil evidence. Atheistic Darwinists would have us believe that the United States evolved from the Era of Good Feeling (c. 1820) through Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion (c. 1884) to Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll (c. 1968). But there is no fossil evidence to support this..
Rather than confirming Darwinism, recent fossil discoveries discredit the theory of evolution. For example, an analysis of the recently discovered "Kennewick Man" reveal he was a white, Protestant investment banker, who died of golfer's elbow circa 9200 B.C..
Given its gaps and inconsistencies, many scientists have concluded that Darwin's theory is no longer effective and robust. They have begun searching for alternative explanations..
Idiotic Design
The most compelling alternative is called "Idiotic Design" or "Unintelligent Design" -- the idea humans are so screwed up, they could not have evolved naturally; they must have been designed by a lunkhead.
Dr. Narisch Meschugge, Professor of Certainty at the University of the Loons, is the father of the "Idiotic Design" theory. "It came to me when I was watching Prince Charles on television," Dr. Meschugge explains. "I realized that no amount of evolution and no amount of inbreeding could produce such a jug-eared twit. Clearly, Prince Charles was designed by an imbecile.
"When you see a Pontiac Sunfire, a Buick LaCrosse, or, indeed, any GM car, you realize they did not just happen. They were designed by tasteless morons. Similarly, when you notice Geraldo Rivera, Rick Santorum, or George Steinbrenner, you realize that they did not just happen. They were designed by someone with the IQ of a cauliflower.
The Gauche Gay Conundrum
ID advocates note that Darwinian theory cannot explain homosexuality or left-handedness. How could "gay genes" for not reproducing be passed on?
How could genes that cause lefthanders to smear themselves with ink and injure themselves using table saws be passed on? According to Darwinian theory, these genes should have been selected out.
Idiotic Design theory has no problems accounting for homosexuality or left-handedness, according to Dr. Pazzo Loco, Executive Director of the Institute for the Unglued. "The designer himself (or herself) may have been a gauche gay (or a lesbian lefty). Every time I see a left-hander struggling with a can opener, I see confirmation of Idiotic Design."
Dr. Loco sees evidence of Idiotic Design everywhere. "Men who won't ask for directions when lost. Spouses who argue with each other even though no one has ever won an argument with a spouse. Canadians who actually enjoy watching ice hockey. Comics who lead with, 'Pope Benedict, Dick Cheney, and Donald Trump are in a hot tub with two Cuban lesbians, and the Pope says...'"
"The designer," she concludes, "must a have been a clueless cretin, an out-to-lunch nitwit, a few Valkyries short of a Ring Cycle."
Is ID Science?
Secular humanists claim that ID is not science. This is echoed by the knee-jerk liberal media, most of whom are child-molesting ax-murderers.
Science deals in reproducible experiments. But unique events such as the origin of the Universe, Earth, life, mankind and other kinds of living things cannot be reproduced in the laboratory. Scientists can only speculate. The Big Bang theory and evolution theory are not testable. Ultimately, they must be taken on faith -- just like Idiotic Design.
We have to ask which is more credible -- that once upon a time there was nothing that exploded into everything, that non-living chemicals organized themselves into the first living thing -- or rather that it was planned by an incompetent moron.
"Either we were an inexplicable accident of the cosmos," Dr. Loco asserts, "or we were in some way designed by a slow-witted nincompoop."
Should We Teach ID in Public Schools?
The secular humanists argue for keeping an open mind and looking at both sides of an issue -- when it comes to flag burning, internet porn, or gay marriage. But regarding the origin of life, they demand that only one theory be taught in public schools -- the untestable and discredited theory of evolution.
We should teach both sides of the issue. Students would benefit from a healthy and vigorous debate about alternatives to Darwin's theory. Get the students involved in critical thinking. Let them look at the all the facts that show the theory of evolution is problematic.
Ask students to ponder ten questions:
1 Which better explains Super Bowl halftime shows -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
2 Which better explains the federal subsidies for sorghum farming -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
3 Which better explains hydroplane racing -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
4 Which better explains Reality Television -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
5 Which better explains mosquitoes -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
6 Which better explains official state songs -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
7 Which better explains acne -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
8 Which better explains Ziggy cartoons -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
9 Which better explains Tom Cruise -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
10 Which better explains Toledo, Ohio -- evolution or Idiotic Design?
The Dragon In My Garage..
by Carl Sagan
The following is an excerpt from "The Demon~Haunted World..
"Science As A Candle In the Dark" by Carl Sagan..
a Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author..
(The "Dragon" is a metaphor for God..)
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.
Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative-- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."
Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing about invisible ones--you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.
Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages--but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
http://spl.haxial.net/religion/misc/carl-sagan.html
God.. The Failed Hypothesis..
How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist..
by Victor J. Stenger
Preface..
All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be skeptical, or at least cautious; and not to admit of any hypothesis, whatsoever; much less, of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.
~ David Hume ~
Over the ages, scholars have claimed that they could demonstrate the reality of God by logic alone.1 However, no logical argument is any better than its premises and these premises must be based on more than simple self-consistency. The fact that a hypothesized entity can logically exist does not make it exist. Any premise used must be supported by independent arguments or evidence.
In recent years, arguments for the existence of God have been modernized and tied closer to science and empirical data. Many books have been published purporting that modern theoretical and empirical science support the proposition that God exists and the popular media have been quick to promulgate this view.2
In my 2003 book Has Science Found God? I examined those contemporary scientific claims and found them inadequate.3 In the present book, I will go further and argue that at this moment in time--in the early twenty-first century--science is now in a position to make a strong case against the existence of a God having the attributes that are traditionally associated with the Judaic-Christian-Islamic God. Since the gods of other religions share many of these attributes, the arguments will apply to them as well. [Note: the upper case "God" will be used when referring to any specific God, usually but not always the Judaic-Christian-Islamic God, and lower case "god" to refer to any generic god. I will also refer to God in the traditional masculine gender.]
Whether the attributes we will consider describe the God any individual worships is really not my business but hers. The believer is obviously free to decide if a particular attribute applies to her God. However, at the very least, it makes no sense to guide one's life by the teachings of any religion whose picture of God contains many characteristics that are contradicted by either the logical or empirical facts.
One often hears the statements that science should have nothing to say about religion and that religion should have nothing to say about science. The famed paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould essentially endorsed this view in his 1999 book, Rocks of Ages.4 Gould argued that science concerns itself with understanding the material world, while religion concerns itself with morality. He referred to the two as "non-overlapping magisteria." However, as many reviewers pointed out, this amounted to a redefinition of religion as moral philosophy. In fact, most religions make pronouncements about nature. Furthermore, science is not proscribed from studying any physical object, such as the Shroud of Turin, which may have religious implications.
Still, even some atheist scientists seem to think morality should be the sole province of religion and that science should stay clear of the issue. Perhaps this would be a good strategy for those who wish to avoid conflicts between science and religion, which might lead to less public acceptance of science, not to mention that most dreaded of all consequences--lower funding.
However, we have reached a dangerous point in history, dominated by religious-motivated terrorism and war (not the only such period in history, to be sure) and a movement toward greater religious influence over traditionally secular governments. This is especially notable in the United States, where at this writing some of the most powerful leaders in all three branches of government are moving forcefully to tear down the Wall of Separation of Church and State that has existed since the nation's founding. These same leaders are also demonstrating a disdain for science and promoting faith rather than reason and evidence as the basis for their most important policies.
The time has come for scientists to make a courageous stand--not for or against religion as such but for rational thinking and the critical examination of the scientific evidence for religious claims, including the origin of morality. Science is the study of empirical facts and the factual claims of religion have no special immunity from being examined under the cold light of reason.
We often hear the assertion that science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. Well, it depends on what is meant by "prove" and on what is meant by "God." The Oxford American Dictionary gives as the first definition of "prove": demonstrate the truth or existence of (something) by evidence or argument. Here, I am sure, we can safely modify this to read, "demonstrate the truth or existence, or the falsity or nonexistence of (something) by evidence or argument."
In mathematics and logic, a proof takes us from a set of premises to a conclusion. If no mistakes are made in the mathematical or logical steps, then the conclusion is valid beyond any doubt. But, the conclusion is only as good as the original premises. If a premise is wrong, then the conclusion will be wrong. Or, even if the conclusion happens to be a correct statement, that correctness does not follow from a logical argument based on a false premise. Thus, the purely logical arguments made by Aristotle, Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas and others higher in the alphabet that you will find in the books on the philosophy of religion should carry little weight. Using a famous line of physicist Wolfgang Pauli from another context, they are "not even wrong." I will not consider arguments that are not even wrong.
Obviously a logically consistent model of a hidden god can be developed--one that is not only undetectable but performs no detectable actions. Theologians who propose such models remind me of the creators of computer games. In these games, programmers invent whole new universes in which the characters have all kinds of superhuman powers and many of our familiar laws of physics are violated. The rules of the games are logically consistent. They wouldn't run on a computer if they weren't. However, the computer game universes have little connection to the universe we see around us. They exist in what is called "virtual reality."
As already noted, just because something is logically consistent, it does not follow that it necessarily exists. For the theologian's logically consistent god to have a meaningful existence, he must have something to do with the world--some attributes that can be objectively observed. Otherwise the god just as well may not exist because it has no effect on anything.
On the other hand, unless we are wiling to toss logic out the window we can state with certainty that something logically inconsistent does not exist. Square circles and married bachelors do not exist. While purely logical arguments for the existence of God are not even wrong, the same is not true for purely logical arguments for God's nonexistence. They can be used to prove that a god with specific properties that are incompatible does not exist. For example, a god who is omnipotent and yet limited in power cannot exist. A god who is both all-good and at least partly evil cannot exist. In the first chapter we will review this class of impossibility arguments, although they are not the main theme of this book. It is easy to get out of any impossibility argument--just change the premises. For example, if you do not assume an omnipotent god, then such a god can be limited in power.
While my approach here is similar to the logical approach, in the sense that I will look at the arguments for and against a god with specific attributes, I will be taking a scientific rather than a philosophical point of view. That is, I will rely on empirical facts rather than purely logical analysis. I will examine the objective evidence that can be accessible to science for a god with certain attributes. I will always ask, what do the data say?
The attributes considered will be those of the traditional God of the great monotheistic religions and any other gods sharing those attributes. We will consider the empirical evidence and conclude that, taken in its totality, strongly contradicts the claim that a God with those attributes exists.
Now, theists and even some agnostics and atheists may argue that God is not a scientific hypothesis and so is not subject to scientific tests. I dispute that. As long as we are talking about a God who plays some role in the universe, then such a God has empirical consequences and is thereby subject to scientific test. Certainly the existence of a God who created the physical universe or steps in to control biological evolution and performs other dramatic actions qualifies as a scientific hypothesis.
I will not attempt to deal with any purely metaphysical question as the "true" nature of whatever reality lies out there beyond our ken. Instead I will apply the same technique that is used in science, namely formulate models in terms of language and concepts we humans understand and then examine the empirical consequences of those models. This may not be satisfactory to the reader who wants to know what is "truly real." I would like to know too, but I am not aware of any method within our current understanding of theology, philosophy, or science to ever be sure of the answer, barring some act of divine intervention that can leave us with no remaining doubt. The fact that doubts remain demonstrates that this has not yet occurred.
At the same time, we can carry on and live our lives just fine without settling the issue of the true nature of reality. In science, we rarely worry about whether the elements of our models are also elements of ultimate reality, although most scientists speak rather sloppily as if they are. For example, if physics we currently have a standard model in which matter is composed of a few elementary particles like quarks and electrons. The model is very successful, agreeing with all the observations made to-date. Furthermore, the various parts of the model that deal with technology, such as electronics and nuclear power, are put to great use. All of this happens without ever worrying about whether quarks and electrons are "true" elements of reality.
At the same time, we can consider other models and, based on their failure to agree with the data, conclude that the elements of these models are most likely not elements of reality. For example, we might propose a model with an electrically neutral electron. (The familiar electron has a negative charge while its antiparticle, positron, has positive charge). Such a model would have observable consequences--say in producing some heat in an electronic circuit that cannot be accounted for otherwise. Those consequences are not seen, so it would be very unwise to design circuits based on that model. They probably would not work. And, while we can never be sure that no neutral electrons "really exist," it would seem highly unlikely that they do.
This is the approach we will adopt for the God issue. We will hypothesize various models of gods that are based on the common, traditional teachings of the world's religions, especially but not limited to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We will simply refer to these models as "gods." They are based on readily comprehensible human ideas. We will then test these gods against empirical data. We will find that in every case the tests fail. This will force us to conclude that a god with the attributes of that particular god does not exist beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even if "unreasonable doubt" remains, because we mere mortals cannot know everything, people would be wise not to guide their lives by the teachings of a religion that worships a particular God, when that model is refuted by the data. Like the neutral electron, the model is very likely not to work. For example, it might lead followers to fly airplanes into buildings.
The method of hypothesis testing does not assume any forgone conclusion. If any god model is found to work, not just subjectively as in the common refrain "it works for me" but by passing a risky empirical tests on it usefulness, then scientists will have to accept that fact.
Following a more detailed discussion of methodology in the next chapter, we will proceed to look a the data to see if any of the expected consequences of particular gods are observed. In any given case where an observation fails, the apologist will likely be able to find some explanations. Maybe God simply does not choose to make himself known in that specific way. A god who deliberately hides from us cannot be detected, but such a god cannot at the same time be a god who has much to do with the world.
Uniformly, the God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims is believed to be involved in every aspect of human and worldly life. Surely that God should be detectable by his effects, as would the gods of many other religions. If a particular effect is not seen, then perhaps a good reason can be found. However, our conclusion is not based on just one or a few empirical expectations that fail to be confirmed. Rather, it rests on the totality of failures. If any proposed new subatomic particle failed to be confirmed so many times, no physicist would take it seriously.
In the following chapters we will see, time and again, that the God of the great monotheisms should be eminently detectable by objective scientific methods, where sufficient care is taken to rule out other explanations. And, we will see that the failure to detect God provides a firm, scientific basis for finding him guilty of nonexistence--beyond a reasonable doubt.
Of course these sentiments do not represent what most people want to hear. But if the evidence leads us to such a conclusion, then what good can come from basing one's life on a delusion of divinity? In the last chapter we will examine how it is possible to live happily in a godless universe and that, in fact, such a life can be more fulfilling than one that requires us to surrender to forces beyond out understanding and our control.
This book is written at the level of the general reader. Some of the scientific discussions may require at least a little familiarity with the methods and general results of modern science, but nothing that is inaccessible to the layperson. The one exception is the Appendix, where I give the mathematical details of a model that accounts for the origin of our universe by purely material processes. This model is based only on the well-established theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. To follow the equations requires about a bachelors' degree understanding of physics.
I do not claim that the universe actually came about in this fashion. However, the model serves to refute the oft-heard statement that science cannot "explain" the origin of our universe without recourse to the supernatural.
Notes
_____________________
1. For a good short summary of the arguments for God, see Jackson 2001. Longer discussions can be found in many books on the philosophy of religion.
2. Begley 1998.
3. Stenger 2003. See references therein for the original claims.
4. Gould 1999.
those who cavalierly reject the theory of evolution..
as not adequately supported by facts..
seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all..
~ Herbert Spencer ~ (1820-1903)
The Victorian biologist and early social philosopher Herbert Spencer was a great rival of Charles Darwin's. His theory of evolution preceded Darwin's own, but was soon overshadowed because of the absence of an effective theory of natural selection - although it was Spencer, and not Darwin, who popularized the term "evolution" itself and coined the now-ubiquitous phrase, "survival of the fittest". Although no longer influential in biology, his extension of his theory of evolution to psychology and sociology remains important. His "Social Darwinism" was particularly influential on early evolutionary economists such as Thorstein Veblen, but, more contemporaneously, it was adopted with gusto by American apologists such as William Graham Sumner and Simon Nelson Patten.
Spencer's own thinking was derived in part from the socio-philosophical counterpart of English Romanticist thought - perhaps best exemplified in the work of William Godwin, Thomas Malthus, Thomas Lamarck and von Baer. From the Romanticists, Spencer borrowed the concept of the interrelationship between an "evolving" aggregate and its constituent parts. As an aggregate history progresses, greater specialization and hence diversity is "created" by the Lamarckian adaptation of individual physical and behavioral characteristics to environmental circumstances. Thus, although diversity increases, not all diversity survives in that characteristics and habits that were poorly adapted to the circumstances will disappear. In Spencer's view, evolution is actually a progressive movement towards an "equilibrium" where individual beings change their characteristics and habits until they are perfectly adapted to circumstances and no more change is called for. Thus, Spencer's evolutionary mechanism is not only ultimately cumulant (i.e. it ends), but he also draped it in utilitarian teleological glitter, i.e. the idea that it is "progressive" in an ethical or moral sense - an adequately Victorian notion!
Utah Officials Reject ''Intelligent' Design''
Utah state officials, including the governor, have stood firm against Religious Right pressure to muddle public school science courses with instruction on so-called "intelligent design" (ID).
Late last week Utah's State Board of Education voted unanimously to keep evolution in the biology curricula. The decision came despite mounting pressure from the Religious Right to include ID in science classes.
ID, which was recently backed for public school instruction by President George W. Bush, holds that an intelligent entity is responsible for life's origins. Civil liberties and science groups, such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, however, have long argued that ID is just the latest variant of creationism, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled cannot be taught as science in public schools.
A Utah state senator had called on the Board to require public school teachers to instruct students that evolution is "an unsubstantiated theory" and introduce them to ID.
The Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City's daily, reported that Sen. Chris Buttars told the Board that evolution "has more holes than a crocheted bathtub" and that hundreds of scientists agree with that assessment. The newspaper also reported that Buttars' assault on evolution is being backed by the Utah Eagle Forum, an affiliate of Phyllis Schlafly's national Religious Right lobbying group.
Buttars' attack on evolution and support of ID were opposed by scientists from Brigham Young University and the University of Utah.
"By definition, science does not attempt to explain the world by invoking the supernatural," said University of Utah professor Gregory Clark. "Intelligent design fails as science because it does exactly that – it posits that life is too complex to have arisen from natural causes, and instead requires the intervention of an intelligent designer who is beyond natural explanations. Invoking the supernatural can explain anything, and hence explains nothing."
In turning away Buttars' requests, the Board's position paper on evolution called it a major unifying concept that is appropriate for high school biology courses.
The Associated Press reported that one board member, Bill Colbert, said he personally believes in ID, but that it should not be taught in schools.
"I believe it needs to be taught in the home and perhaps religious institutions," Colbert said.
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (R) also opposed teaching ID as science and said so before the Board voted. In late August, Huntsman, according to a Scripps Howard News Service report, called the public schools "largely secular institutions" and that ID was not appropriate for a science class.
"I would expect my kids in science class to be instructed in those things that are somewhat quantifiable and based on thorough and rigorous empirical research," said Huntsman, who has six children. The governor added that discussion of ID would be proper in sociology or psychology courses, where he said numerous creation theories might be studied. "But that doesn't happen until college, or the later years of high school," he said.
Buttars, not happy with the Board's action, announced he would introduce a bill next year that he would call the "Academic Freedom Act," to force public schools to teach ID.
"The only recourse I've got to get my side heard is to take it to the legislature," Buttars said.
Buttars can do Utah taxpayers a greater service by following the example of state education officials and governor. Those state representatives have it right: religion is not science and should not be presented as such to students.
DNA Testing.. In Our Blood..
It is connecting lost cousins and giving families surprising glimpses into their pasts. Now scientists are using it to answer the oldest question of all: where did we come from?
By Claudia Kalb
Newsweek Feb. 6, 2006 issue ~
Brian Hamman had always wondered: what was up with his great-grandfather Lester? Hamman, an avid genealogist, could trace his patrilineal line back to 19th-century rural Indiana, but there was a glitch in the family records. Great-Grandpa Lester, the documents showed, was born before his parents were married. So was Lester really a Hamman? Was Brian? Three years ago DNA tests confirmed the lineage and a simple family mystery was solved: Lester's parents had hooked up before they walked down the aisle on July 25, 1898. Lester was indeed a Hamman, and so is Brian. "I'm delighted," he says.
For Debra Anne Royer, DNA unlocked a deeper mystery. Adopted at birth, Royer knew nothing about her biological parents. But certain physical traits—wide nose, dark skin—led people to guess that she was Iranian or even Cambodian. "I always wondered," she says. Two hundred dollars and a swab of her cheek gave her an answer: Royer's maternal ancestors were most likely Native American. The knowledge, she says, "makes you feel more of a person."
And then there's Prof. Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr., head of Harvard University's African-American Studies department. Gates always knew he wasn't 100 percent African-American. According to family legend, Gates's only white ancestor was a slave owner named Samuel Brady, who had sex with Gates's great-great-grandmother Jane on his farm in Maryland in the 1800s. But recent DNA analyses turned Gates's world upside down. There was no trace of Brady on Gates's genome. Further testing revealed that Gates, in fact, carries as much Western European blood as he does African—and that one of his white ancestors was probably an Irish servant who met Gates's sixth or seventh great-grandfather sometime before 1700. "I'm thinking I'm a Brady and maybe I'm from Nigeria, and here I am descended from some white woman," says Gates. "It's incredible."
Our blood holds the secrets to who we are, and, increasingly, individuals, families and research scientists are using genetic testing to tell us what we don't already know. Human genomes are 99.9 percent identical; we are far more similar than diverse. But that tiny 0.1 percent difference holds clues to our ancestries, the roots of all human migration and even our propensity for disease. Tens of thousands of Americans have swabbed their cheeks and mailed in their DNA to companies nationwide for testing. Far-flung cousins are finding each other; family legends are being overturned. Six years ago the term genetic genealogy was meaningless, says Bennett Greenspan, head of Family Tree DNA, which has 52,000 customers. "Now the interest is huge." So huge that celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg and Quincy Jones are signing on. This week Gates and other high-profile black Americans will tell their stories on PBS's new series "African American Lives."
As individuals track down their personal family narratives, population geneticists are seeking to tell the larger story of humankind. Our most recent common ancestors—a genetic "Adam" and "Eve"—have been traced back to Africa, and other intriguing forebears are being discovered all over the map. Last month one group of scientists found that 40 percent of the world's Ashkenazi Jews descend from just four women; another reported that one in five males in northwest Ireland may be a descendant of a legendary fifth-century warlord. The most ambitious effort by far is the National Geographic Society's $40 million Genographic Project, which aims to collect 100,000 DNA samples from indigenous populations around the world over the next five years. The goal: to trace human roots from the present day back to the origin of our species. To create, says project director Spencer Wells, "a virtual museum of human history."
Human history lives in our genes. The DNA in each of our cells not only dictates the color of our eyes, it also contains the footprints of our ancestors. A child's genome is almost entirely a mix of genetic material created by the union of mother and father. Only two parts of the genome remain pure, untainted by the influence of a mate's DNA: the Y (passed down from father to son), and mitochondrial DNA (from mother to both sons and daughters). Occasionally, spelling mistakes or mutations arise in these regions, creating unique sequences of A's and G's and C's and T's that serve as genealogical signposts or markers—providing links backward in time, not just to paternal and maternal ancestors but to the places they lived in the world. Scrape the inside of your cheek a few times, and for $100 and up, a testing company will put your DNA under its microscope, map your markers into your own genetic pattern called a haplotype, then tell you which "haplogroup," or major branch of the human tree, you hail from.
Genetic genealogy has developed a cultlike following. Last fall, 175 genetic sleuths from as far away as Hawaii gathered for the second annual Family Tree DNA conference at National Geographic's headquarters in Washington, D.C., to share their haplogroups and bone up on the latest science. The genealogy garb was everywhere. Most notable: double-helix ties and pins with haplogroup logos. Forget HI, MY NAME IS JANE. Here it was R1b (Western Europe) meets J2 (Middle East). Participants who once relied only on birth records and marriage licenses to trace their family roots now listened spellbound as scientists presented arcane PowerPoints with daunting DNA lingo ("nucleotides," "autosomes," "short tandem repeats"). Over cafeteria hamburgers and hot dogs, they shared information about roadblocks they'd encountered in their ancestral paperwork—"nonpaternity events" (polite term for an affair, for example, which may have muddied the lineage) and families that had "daughtered out" (a much-bemoaned end to the family surname). Then they raved about the new frontier of DNA testing. "This is a group of geeks," Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak said with a smile during a coffee break. Her T shirt: GENEALOGY: IT'S IN MY DNA.
For Smolenyak, DNA blew up a family legend. Paper records had her believing that every Smolenyak in the world could be traced back to one of four families in Osturna, Slovakia. But after testing the DNA of individuals in each group, she discovered no genetic connection. "I got smacked upside the head," says Smolenyak, co-author of "Trace Your Roots With DNA." "I was wrong." It wasn't just family lore that interested her: she was dating a Smolenyak at the time (now her husband), and it was nice to confirm that she could bury any fear of a kissing-cousins nightmare. "As it turns out," she says, "I could not have picked a guy more distantly related to me."
DNA testing is forcing some people to rethink their identities. Phil Goff, 42, of Naperville, Ill., thought his heritage was pure English, but a Y chromosome test matched him at least partially to Scandinavia. Now he wonders if he has any Viking blood in him. Alvy Ray Smith, 62, uncovered roots tracing back to the Puritans in 1633. "It was astonishing," says Smith, who thought his closest relatives were Irish potato farmers. "It gave me a whole different model of myself." Nick Donofrio, executive VP of innovation and technology at IBM, which is partnering with National Geographic on the Genographic Project, is a proud Italian. He was stunned when his Y test came back saying he was a member of haplogroup J2, meaning his ancestors had lived in the Middle East some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. "You could have pushed me over with a feather," he says. After Donofrio announced his results on IBM's Web site, his in box started filling up with J2 colleagues. "A lot of Armenians have been sending me e-mails saying 'J2 rocks!' "
Armed with their haplotypes, which function as genetic blueprints, genealogists can now join Surname Projects on the Internet. These online communities bring together other Doolittles or Sanchezes or Epsteins, allowing people to compare genomes. Find a match, and you may be able to fill in branches on your family tree. Looking for relatives without your surname? You can also search within individual testing companies or in public databases like the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, funded by Mormon philanthropist John Sorenson, which has collected 60,000 DNA samples and ancestral charts over the past 4½ years. "Eventually, you'll be able to query the database and find relatives you don't even know you have," says Sorenson's chief scientific officer Scott Woodward.
Some people think they already have. After genetic testing in 1998 revealed that Thomas Jefferson was most likely the father of at least one of Sally Hemings's children, Julia Westerinen, 71, of Staten Island, N.Y., and Shay Banks-Young, 61, of Columbus, Ohio, found each other. They look nothing alike—Westerinen's skin is white, Banks-Young's is black—but they claim one another as cousins. Neither one can prove through DNA that she is related to Thomas Jefferson himself, but that doesn't faze them. Nor does it bother Prinny Anderson, a white descendant of Thomas and Martha Jefferson's. Last week Anderson mingled with Jefferson's "unproven" black relatives at a gathering in Virginia. DNA testing isn't the end-all and be-all, she says. "I'm delighted with these additional cousins."
The science can also uncover links to ancient cultures, even religious heritage. Dr. Karl Skorecki was told from childhood that he was one of the Cohanim, descended from Moses' brother Aaron, a high Jewish priest. He was sitting in synagogue one day when he noticed that another Cohan who was called to the Torah looked nothing like him. "He was a Jewish male of African ancestry, I am a Jewish male of European ancestry," Skorecki, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, remembers thinking. "If he has that tradition and I have that tradition, perhaps there's a greater chance that we share similar markers on the Y chromosome." Would the oral history passed down from Cohan father to Cohan son also be inscribed in their DNA? After studying DNA samples, Skorecki and geneticist Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona uncovered a genetic Cohan signature.
The research led Skorecki's team to Africa, where they tested members of the Lemba tribe, a group that believed they were descended from the Biblical land of Judea. Some of their DNA matched the Cohan signature. "We share a common paternal ancestry," says Skorecki. In 2001, Father Bill Sanchez, a Roman Catholic priest in Albuquerque, N.M., discovered he closely matched the Cohan signature, too. Sanchez's Jewish roots go back to Spain (his mother's heritage is Native American). Today he keeps pictures of his Christian and Jewish ancestors on his wall; in November he traveled to Israel. Now his niece Jessica Gonzales, 24, wants to go. Raised Catholic, she wants to learn more about her family roots. "I've been reading a lot about Judaism," she says.
DNA can now link regular people to high-profile ancestors—from Genghis Khan to the Iceman to the Irish warlord Niall of the Nine Hostages. Genghis-as-Great-Grandpa might be cool cocktail chatter, but since we don't have his DNA, proving direct descent is virtually impossible. Testing family roots through the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA has serious limitations, too: it tells you only about your direct paternal or maternal lineage, not the ancestor footprints hidden in the rest of your genome. Go back 10 generations, and that's 1,024 ancestors, says Stanford bioethicist Hank Greely. "Your Y might be from Japan, your mitochondrial DNA from Mexico and all other 1,022 ancestors from Sweden." Greely worries that customers may not fully understand what they're getting. One company, DNAPrint Genomics, does test markers outside of the Y and mitochondrial DNA, then maps them to four regions of the world (West Africa, Europe, East Asia and the Americas)—that's where Gates got his 50/50 ancestry. But the percentages are only estimates, not certainties. Some scientists are more than a little bit uncomfortable with the test. "I think the science of genetics is too important to become an entertainment," says Stanford geneticist Marcus Feldman, who also worries about the potential for racial stereotyping. With DNA tests, people may begin to link behaviors or characteristics with race, an idea that has been reviled in recent history. "I'm worried the more this is done, the more of that there's going to be."
The mutations in our DNA not only point to long-lost ancestors and homelands, they may also be markers for genetic disease. It's known as the founder effect: populations with marked susceptibilities to certain illnesses tend to be descended from a small group of ancestors who bred only within their own community. Sticking together meant a higher chance of inheriting a disease. The Amish, for example, are more likely to carry a genetic mutation for a condition called polydactyly, which causes extra fingers or toes. Ashkenazi Jews have an unusually high risk of certain cancers, as well as Gaucher and Tay-Sachs diseases. Men and women who inherit the mutation that causes Tay-Sachs are unaffected, but if they mate, they have a one-in-four chance of having an afflicted child. That's why Jewish parents-to-be are offered a panel of genetic tests before conceiving.
In rare instances, genetic mutations can offer medical benefits. Sickle-cell anemia is one of these double-edged swords. Patients who inherit a gene for the hereditary blood disease, which is common among people of African descent and causes red blood cells to lose oxygen, are also more likely to survive malaria. And the gene is highly prevalent in malaria-infested areas of Africa. Why? Scientists believe the gene has been naturally selected for its protective effect. Genealogical-testing companies aren't in the business of medical testing, but if you happen to discover an African ancestry you didn't know you had, should you be tested for sickle-cell? Possibly. In the brave new world of DNA testing, it would be a circuitous route to take. The express highway: submitting your genome for medical, not genealogical, analysis. In the future, this could be as routine as a physical. Already, the marketplace is eager to help. Most genealogical-testing companies stay as far from disease testing as possible, but other entrepreneurs are diving in. For $200 and up, a company called HealthCheckUSA will test your DNA (provided by cheek swab) for eight genetic illnesses, including celiac disease (an intestinal disorder) and hemochromatosis (an overload of iron). "People call us on a daily basis and let us know we helped save their life," says company president Holt Vaughan.
The more we learn about our families, the more we learn about our beginnings. Using DNA markers and mathematical time-clock calculations, researchers have identified our ancestral Adam and Eve. Scientists say that by using Y and mitochondrial DNA, they can date the earliest female to 150,000 to 250,000 years ago and the earliest male to 60,000 to 100,000 years ago. Until DNA testing, scientists debated whether humans originated in Africa or in a number of different places around the globe. These recent findings support the theory that humans descended from a small group of people who lived in Africa tens of thousands of years ago.
But when did groups of travelers leave that continent? Whom did they encounter and mingle with along the way? (At Arizona, Hammer is investigating the question of whether Homo sapiens and, say, Neanderthals mated and bore children.) Do major historical events, such as Alexander the Great's conquest of Central Asia, leave a genetic trail? These are questions National Geographic's Spencer Wells hopes to answer. The Genographic Project, launched last year, is inviting the public to test its own DNA, and already 110,000 individuals have purchased swabbing kits for $99.95. But the project's overarching goal is to collect DNA from indigenous populations worldwide whose DNA could hold clues to our origins and global migration—and to do it fast, before whole populations die out and leave their ancestral homelands. Early testing has already started in Southern Africa, where collaborator Dr. Himla Soodyall has collected blood samples from a small group of the San tribe. Genetically the San have among the oldest roots on earth and, it is believed, they provide a direct chromosomal link to ancestral Adam and Eve. Fi Mntungwa, 28, was one of the first to donate. "We were told about genes and a huge project that is looking into the origins of people across the world. It was very interesting," says Mntungwa. "I want to revive our ancient culture."
Last fall, Wells packed up 500 blood-collection tubes, needles, alcohol wipes and cheek swabs and headed off to Chad, one of the project's first testing sites, where he took 300 DNA samples from towns and villages around the country. Thirty-five to 40 came from members of the isolated Laal community, whose population, at fewer than 750, is declining. Wells fears that this community will die out within the next 10 to 30 years, taking with it valuable DNA and cultural traditions and an ancient language—information that could provide critical insights into the first people to live in Central Africa more than 40,000 years ago. "We can use DNA to figure out some of these great mysteries, to make sense of the past," says Wells.
Not everybody supports the Genographic Project. Indigenous populations have had their share of colonialist pillaging and many, still distrustful of the dominant culture, are wary of handing over their blood and the information it contains. Debra Harry, director of the advocacy group Indigenous People's Council on Biocolonialism, has posted a petition on her Web site opposing the project, which she says has 1,000 signatures so far. But some members of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe in Seekonk, Mass., have already been tested. "We have our cultural story of creation, but there's another story that needs to get out, and it's right inside each and every one of us," says the tribe's chair, Michael Markley. Wells says he understands indigenous concerns, but he has found in his travels that once the details are explained, the excitement builds. "Everybody finds it fascinating that they're carrying this historical document inside their cells." In May, the project will announce plans to sponsor cultural and educational initiatives in participating indigenous communities.
The more we discover our differences, the more we find connections. Wayne Joseph grew up a black American in Louisiana and Los Angeles—even writing a My Turn for NEWSWEEK in 1994 about Black History Month. He heard about DNA testing several years ago and, seeking details about his mixed ancestry, sent away for a kit. "I figured I'd come back about 70 percent African and 30 percent something else," he says. When the results arrived in the mail "I was floored," he says. The testing company said he was 57 percent Indo-European, 39 percent Native American, 4 percent East Asian. No African blood at all. For almost a year, Joseph searched his soul, sifting in his mind the decisions he'd made based on his identity as a black man: his first marriage, his choice of high school, his interest in African-American literature. Before the test, "I was unequivocally black," he says. "Now I'm a metaphor for America." And not just for America, but for all of us.
With Karen Springen, Mary Carmichael and Karen MacGregor in Durban, South Africa
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11080815/site/newsweek/
Boy, they sure did know how to party in late middle ages and renaissance europe:
Catherine Wheel
The Catherine Wheel was a product of the middle ages, especially popular in Germany. The victim's limbs were crushed with blunt objects. His (or her) still-living remains were subjected to the wheel. This meant the mangled arms and legs were threaded through the spokes. The wheel was then hoisted into the air using a long pole. Hungry vultures and crows picked at the body. Death came slowly.
A seventeenth-century chronicler wrote the victim looked like, "A sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood, a puppet with four tentacles, like a sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh mixed up with splinters of smashed bones."
This was one of the most popular spectacles of the time. This, and similar methods of torture, took place in the squares of Europe from 1450-1750. The masses, both common and noble, watched in fascination, cheering at a good wheeling. A woman (or a number of women in a row) brought even greater enthusiasm.
The wheel was named after Saint Catherine of Alexandria from the early 4th century. She was believed to have been killed in this fashion during the rule of the Roman Emperor Maxentius.
http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/opening_cross.stm
What is NASDAQ's new Opening Cross?
The Opening Cross is a process that generates a single opening price reflective of the true supply and demand of a particular stock as the market opens each day. The Opening Cross improves upon the current market open and resolves natural stock buy and sell imbalances at the open.
NASDAQ's trading website provides a list of securities http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/asp/cross.asp?letter=&type=Opening participating in the Opening Cross.
How does it work?
From 9:28 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. (the two minutes prior to the Open), NASDAQ gathers and publishes information about buy or sell interest in a particular stock, including an indicative opening price.
Anyone may view the published imbalance information. https://noii.nasdaqtrader.com/logon.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2frealdata.aspx
(Directions http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/noii_directions.pdf on how to log on.)
This information changes frequently during the two minutes, so NASDAQ publishes updated information frequently, first every 15 seconds, then every 5 seconds. This process allows all investors, big and small, to see an open flow of information and to bid on pricing the imbalance. This ultimately translates into greater fairness and maximized transparency.
Our interactive demonstration http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/openingcross shows in more detail how the Opening Cross works.
What does this mean for investors? How does it help me?
The NASDAQ Opening Cross process means that all investors have access to the same information and their orders get the same treatment. This brings fairness and transparency into the marketplace and that can be a highly active time of the trading day.
he's trying to say open interest is big enough to account for all of the morning's action, so it could just be people rolling in and out of existing contracts. if this is an "opening transaction" as he suggests, then the people who write contracts in that size - the proverbial biggest of the Big Boyz - are quite confident the market isn't going to tank. if anything, it's a bullish sign.
but personally...i consider it meaningless.
Any idea what he means by "interest in each strike is sufficient to cover" ?
Quadruple QQQQs Put Action
Steven Smith
12/6/04 10:20 AM EST
There's heavy put volume in the Nasdaq 100 Trust (QQQQ:Nasdaq) early this morning. Over 62,000 of the January $40 puts, 17,000 of the January $38 puts and 3,800 of the January $37 puts have traded. Open interest in each strike is sufficient to cover, but given that this volume is on pace to "quadruple" the daily volume in the popular ETF, it is likely an opening transaction.
Given that the implied volatility of the QQQQs hit a new 9-year low, it would make sense that someone is putting together the purchase of some downside protection.
at least one of the emails you PMed me didn't make it through. i'm going to try responding to an old email, see if the "reply-to" method works better.
some thoughts on dealing with "market math" posted at another site (no, not that one...)
I am very skeptical that strings, gauge theories, curvature, 4 manifolds, and index theorems really will help directly locate a real or even a statistical arbitrage. I'm sort interested in how higher topology and geometry could be applied towards modeling some shit in derivatives, but, we are not talking God made rules. It's just a planet full of apes buying and selling shit, and the structure and balance of fear and greed changes every day because apes think differently all the time, as events and epochs change. The collective behavior of a planet full of apes is, by my estimates, much harder to model than the universe.
Wow, SEC starts an investigation. Before an election.
Color me surprised.
just changed one. those little firehouses are tricky, lol. little E and i are still working off the red sox inspired buzz, probably be a little while before we're in a sleepable state.
tsk tsk tsk...fannie so naughty...
Hey what are you doing up so late. Go get some sleep.
Think i hear a baby crying. Must be time for a diaper change. -g-
It came from Fuji Sanke TV in Japan.
Shown on Channel 26 KTSF on New Express at 6:30 -7:00 AM this week.
Talked with a women at Fuji TV in LA and they said this is old news in Japan.
http://www.fujitv.co.jp/en/index2.html
Look a the english version...
here is the source:
The Japanese news was on local channel 26 at 6:30 AM Direct TV.
I live near San Jose, California so it is the Direct TV (Satellite).
I'll see if I can get more information on which Japanese News company it was.
Independent channel 26 KTSF (San Francisco)
http://www.ktsf.com/ktsf_e/index.asp
http://www.ktsf.com/ktsf_e/programs/program_guide.asp
You can display a custom program grid by using one or any combination of the options below.
Monday Start Time Later Than : 6:30:00 AM Language: Japanese
Start Time End Time Program Type Rating Language(s) Air Dates
6:30:00 AM 7:00:00 AM News Express FCI (Japanese) News TV-PG Japanese MTWThF
7:00:00 AM 7:30:00 AM Today's Closeup (Japanese) Documentary TV-G Japanese MTWTh
11:30:00 PM 12:00:00 PM NHK News (Japanese) News TV-PG Japanese MTWThF
The news story was originated by FujiSankei TV in Japan and distributed through LA to KTSF as News Express. http://www.fujitv.co.jp/en/index2.html
The LA telephone number is 310-553-5828
The New York Office( Editors) 212-753-8100
It is confirmed and common knowledge in Japan that NK has tested a ND.
i would love to see a reputable source for this. i think...
I have checked my sources again.
It is confirmed and common knowledge in Japan that NK has tested a ND.
There is a refusal of our news media to deal with this important development.
Meanwhile, Bush is making Iran his new target with that press release of a few hours ago.
It seems that the American people no longer have a right to the truth.
The interesting point here is that Bush has now gone on the record as refusing to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/28/bush.tuesday.ap/
Meanwhile, North Korea on Bush's watch has gone nuclear with the test of a very large atomic bomb. I would estimate it to be at least 50 kilotons from the diameter of the mushroom cloud.
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/09/28/n_korea/index_np.html
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/9776990.htm?1c
http://www.iht.com/articles/535387.html
If that does not give one a headache nothing will....
It shows that Bush is "all hat and no cattle".
We simply can not afford to elect self centered idiots to run our foreign policy.
The balence of power in Asia has just shifted.
China is signaling its true ambitions of empire in Asia.
North Korea can not go to the bathroom without China's approval.
Japan must now take agressive steps to defend itself from dragon. This is very important geopolitical news.
Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/asia/eastasia/northkorea/
MSN:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102963/
Did you receive the email with the attachment of references at Yahoo???
For some reason I am having problems getting it out to Sylvester.
Well, it only proves that the government's goals are different from yours. (And mine too, by the way)
While you (and me) value highly our security, our government considers that increased risk is a reasonable trade-off in exchange for lying hands on one of the greatest oil reserves of the planet. The consequences of this move will be affecting the energy producing landscape for at least the next 40 years.
Regretfully the more cynical part of myself reminds me of the obscene profits and power that some American companies are collecting with capital (both monetary and blood) gleefully provided by our government while risking practically nothing. (But what is new here? This is the American Way of making money, how the west was won, how railroads were constructed, etc, etc.)
Sad, but hardly surprising.
H.
I still don't believe it helps Kerry any.
The day after the test, Condi and Colin were on the wires denying it was nuclear. That says a lot to me.
And the attack on Iraq was not ridiculous. I was just the logic consequence of a number of factors. (What good is being the only remaining superpower if you cannot "profit" from it? --BTW: I'm not condoning it. Just stating a fact...)
It was ridiculus to me. It raises the possiblity of a nuclear bomb going off in some city in the US, and at that point, any form of democracy will be dead in this country (I believe Chomsky says this). Invading and bungling the occupation is Osamas dream come true. Al Queada was in decline in 2002, and now it has resurged and grown bigger, according to the intelligence here and abroad.
The CIA was telling the neocons that invading would increase the likelyhood of terrorists attack, not decrease it. And seeing what happened in Spain and Turkey, it looks like they were right.
I still don't believe it helps Kerry any.
And the attack on Iraq was not ridiculous. I was just the logic consequence of a number of factors. (What good is being the only remaining superpower if you cannot "profit" from it? --BTW: I'm not condoning it. Just stating a fact...)
The excuses used were utterly ridiculous, and the still ongoing manipulation of the public almost unbelievable. (So well done that most people now know that Saddam had nothing to do with OSB, had no WMD, and nobody cares...)
I'm half way through Hegemony or Survival, the new book by Noam Chomsky. Very nice exposition on USA foreign policy. (Past and present) Highly recommended.
H.
I am not looking for a disclosure of a media cover-up. I'm looking for a disclosure of evidence that the NK mushroom cloud was nuclear.
If it was a nuke test, it shows just how ridiculus the attack on Iraq was.
Chris,
I fail to see how the disclosure of the cover-up by the Media of a Korean nuclear test can benefit Kerry.
Isn't the Media supposed to lean toward the Democrats anyway?
Besides the panic it would cause would benefit Bush's hawkish stance far more than Kerry's.
I'm sure that Kerry's campaign knows about this. If they are not running with it is because they determined that there's no profit to be found there...
Just thinking aloud.
H.
It has been confirmed to be a nuclear test by the Japanese Nuclear delegation. A delegation from many countries went there a couple of weeks ago and so far only Japan has reported confirmation as far as I know.
These are American reports on North Korea:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=UN%20North%20Korea
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/09/27/nkorea.nuclear/
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6344998
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200409/200409250001.html
http://www.etaiwannews.com/Asia/2004/09/27/1096253444.htm
After what happened to Rather/CBS, i think Kerry will tread very carefully on this, until it is proven to be a mushroom cloud.
I'll see what I can come up with. She heard this on the Japanese TV channels. She does not vote because she is not a citizen.
If Kerry could spring this on Bush on Thursday it might very well be terrific!
Really need some of the Japanese articles on it to send to blogs.
Otherwise it's just spam and noise to them.
When i grow up, i want to be as cool as Mark Cuban.
Or at least as rich... -g-
http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/2252572946170125/
The Stock Market
I get asked all the time to write a book about business and my approach to it. I’m not ready to take that leap yet, but along the way, when I find a book that really impresses me, I try to help it find an audience. In this case, it wasn’t long ago I read my now favorite book about the stock market called The Number by Alex Berenson. I liked it so much, I volunteered to write the forward for the paperback edition which comes out this week.
Here is the foreward I wrote for The Number. I recommend that anyone with an interest in the market jump at the chance to buy it.
In 1990, I sold my company, MicroSolutions — which specialized in what at the time was the relatively new business of helping companies network their computer equipment — to CompuServe. After taxes, I walked away with about $2 million. That was going to be my nest egg, and my goal was to protect it at all costs, and grow it wisely.
I set about interviewing stockbrokers and settled upon a broker from Goldman Sachs, Raleigh Ralls. Raleigh was in his late 20s, and relatively new to Goldman. But we hit it off very well and I trusted him. As we planned my financial future, I made it clear that I wanted my nest egg to be invested not like I was 30 years old, but as if I were 60 years old. I was a widows and orphans investor.
Over the next year I stuck to my plan. I trusted Raleigh, and he put me in bonds, dividend-paying utilities and blue chips, just as I asked.
During that year, Raleigh began asking me a lot of questions about technology. Because of my experience at MicroSolutions, I knew the products and companies that were hot. Synoptics, Wellfleet, NetWorth, Lotus, Novell and others. I knew which had products that worked, didn’t work, were selling or not. How these companies were marketed, and whether or not they were or would be successful.
I couldn’t believe that I would have an advantage in the market. After all, I had read A Random Walk Down Wall Street in college. I truly thought that the markets were efficient, that any available knowledge about a company was already reflected in its stock price. Yet I saw Raleigh using the information I gave him to make money for his clients. He finally broke me down to start using this information to my advantage to make some money in the market. Finally after more than a year, I relented. I was ready to trade.
Notice I didn’t use the word invest. I wasn’t an investor. I just wanted to make money. The reason I was ready to try was that it was patently obvious that the market wasn’t efficient. Someone like me with industry knowledge had an advantage. My knowledge could be used profitably. As we got ready to start, I asked Raleigh if he had any words of wisdom that I should remember. His response was simple. “Get Long, Get Loud”.
Get Long, Get Loud. As we started buying and selling technology stocks, most of which were in the local area networking field that I had specialized in at MicroSolutions, Raleigh put me on the phone with analysts, money managers, individual investors, reporters, anyone with money or influence who wanted to talk technology and stocks.
We talked about token ring topologies that didn’t work on 10BaseT. We talked about what companies were stuffing channels - selling more equipment to their distributors than the distributors really needed to meet the retail demand. We talked about who was winning, and who was losing. We talked about things that really amounted to the things you would hear if you attended any industry trade show panel. Yet after hanging up the phone with these people, I would watch stocks move up and down. Of course as the stocks moved, the number of people wanting to talk to me grew.
I remember buying stock in a Canadian company called Gandalf Technologies in the early 90s. Gandalf made Ethernet bridges that allowed businesses and homes to connect to the Internet and each other via high-speed digital phone lines called ISDN.
I had bought one for my house and liked the product, and I’d talked to other people who’d used it. They had decent results, nothing spectacular, but good enough. I had no idea Gandalf was even a public company until a friend of Raleigh’s asked me about it. What did I think about Gandalf Technologies? It was trading at the time at about a buck a share. It was a decent company, I said. It had competition, but the market was new and they had as much chance as anyone to succeed. Sure, I’ll buy some, and I would be happy to answer any questions about the technology. The market size, the competition, the growth rates. Whatever I knew, I would tell.
I bought the stock, I answered the questions, and I watched Gandalf climb from a dollar to about $20 a share over the next months.
At a dollar, I could make an argument that Gandalf could be attractive. Its market was growing, and compared to the competition, it was reasonably valued on a price-sales or price-earnings basis. But at $20, the company’s market value was close to $1 billion - which in those days was real money. The situation was crazy. People were buying the stock because other people were buying the stock.
To add to the volume, a mid-sized investment bank that specialized in technology companies came out with a buy rating on Gandalf. They reiterated all the marketing mishmash that was fun to talk about when the stock was a dollar. The ISDN market was exploding. The product was good. Gandalf was adding distributors. If they only maintained X percentage of the market, they would grow to some big number. Their competitors were trading at huge market caps, so this company looks cheap. Et cetera, et cetera.
The bank made up forecasts formulating revenue numbers at monstrous growth rates that at some point in the future led to profits. Unfortunately, the bank couldn’t attract enough new money to the stock to sustain its price. It didn’t have enough brokers to shout out the marketing spiel to entice enough new buyers to pay the old buyers. The hope among the “sophisticated buyers” was that one bank picking up coverage would lead to others doing the same. It didn’t happen. No other big investment banks published reports on the stock. The volume turned down.
So I did the only smart thing. I sold my stock, and I shorted it to boot. Then I told the same people who asked me why I was buying the stock that I had shorted the stock. Over the next months, the stock sank into oblivion. In 1997, Gandalf filed for bankruptcy. Its shares were canceled - wiped out - a few months later. I wish I could take credit for the stock going up, and going down. I can’t. If the company had performed well, who knows what the stock would have done?
But the entire experience taught me quite a bit about how the market works. For years on end a company’s price can have less to do with a company’s real prospects than with the excitement it and its supporters are able to generate among investors. That lesson was reinforced as I saw the Gandalf experience repeated with many different stocks over the next 10 years. Brokers and bankers market and sell stocks. Unless demand can be manufactured, the stock will decline.
In July of 1998, my partner Todd Wagner and I took our company, Broadcast.com, public with Morgan Stanley. Broadcast.com used audio and video streaming to enable companies to communicate live with customers, employees, vendors, anyone with a PC. We founded Broadcast.com in 1995, and we were well on our way to being profitable. Still, we never thought we would go public so quickly. But this was the Internet Era, and the demand for Internet stocks was starting to explode. So publicly traded we would become and Morgan Stanley would shepherd us.
Part of the process of taking a new company public is something called a road show. The road show is just that. A company getting ready to sell shares visits the big mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds - anyone who can buy millions of dollars of stock in a single order. It’s a sales tour. 7 days, 63 presentations. We often discussed turning up the volume on the stock. It was the ultimate “Get Loud.” Call it Stockapalooza.
Prior to the road show, we put together an amazing presentation. We hired consultants to help us. We practiced and practiced. We argued about what we should and shouldn’t say. We had Morgan Stanley and others ask us every possible question they could think of so we wouldn’t look stupid when we sat in front of these savvy investors.
Savvy investors? I was shocked. Of the 63 companies and 400-plus participants we visited, I would be exaggerating if I said we got 10 good questions about our business and how it worked. The vast majority of people in the meetings had no clue who we were or what we did. They just knew that there were a lot of people talking about the company and they should be there.
The lack of knowledge at the meetings got to be such a joke between Todd and I that we used to purposely mess up to see if anyone noticed. Or we would have pet lines that we would make up to crack each other up. Did we ruin our chance for the IPO? Was our product so complicated that no one got it and as a result no one bought the stock? Hell no. They might not have had a clue, but that didn’t stop them from buying the stock. We batted 1.000. Every single investor we talked to placed the maximum order allowable for the stock.
On July 18, 1998, Broadcast.com went public as BCST, priced at 18 dollars a share. It closed at $62.75, a gain of almost 250 percent, which at the time was the largest one day rise of a new offering in the history of the stock market. The same mutual fund managers who were completely clueless about our company placed multimillion orders for our stock. Multimillion dollar orders using YOUR MONEY.
If the value of a stock is what people will pay for it, then Broadcast.com was fairly valued. We were able to work with Morgan Stanley to create volume around the stock. Volume creates demand. Stocks don’t go up because companies do well or do poorly. Stocks go up and down depending on supply and demand. If a stock is marketed well enough to create more demand from buyers than there are sellers, the stock will go up. What about fundamentals? Fundamentals is a word invented by sellers to find buyers.
Price-earnings ratios, price-sales, the present value of future cash flows, pick one. Fundamentals are merely metrics created to help stockbrokers sell stocks, and to give buyers reassurance when buying stocks. Even how profits are calculated is manipulated to give confidence to buyers.
I get asked every day to invest in private companies. I always ask the same couple questions. How soon till I get my money back, and how much cash can I make from the investment? I never ask what the PE ratio will be, what the Price to Sales ratio will be. Most private investors are the same way. Heck, in Junior Achievement we were taught to return money to our investors. For some reason, as Alex points out in The Number, buyers of stocks have lost sight of the value of companies paying them cash for their investment. In today’s markets, cash isn’t earned by holding a company and collecting dividends. It’s earned by convincing someone to buy your stock from you.
If you really think of it, when a stock doesn’t pay dividends, there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between a share of stock and a baseball card.
If you put your Mickey Mantle rookie card on your desk, and a share of your favorite non-dividend paying stock next to it, and let it sit there for 20 years. After 20 years you would still just have two pieces of paper sitting on your desk.
The difference in value would come from how well they were marketed. If there were millions of stockbrokers selling baseball cards, if there were financial television channels dedicated to covering the value of baseball cards with a ticker of baseball card prices streaming at the bottom, if the fund industry spent billions to tell you to buy and hold baseball cards, I am willing to bet we would talk about the fundamentals of baseball cards instead of stocks.
I know that sounds crazy, but the stock market has gone from a place where investors actually own part of a company and have a say in their management, to a market designed to enrich insiders by allowing them to sell shares they buy cheaply through options. Companies continuously issue new shares to their managers without asking their existing shareholders. Those managers then leak that stock to the market a little at a time. It’s unlimited dilution of existing shareholders’ stakes, death by a thousand dilutive cuts. If that isn’t a scam, I don’t know what is. Individual shareholders have nothing but the chance to sell it to the next sucker. A mutual fund buys one million shares of a company with your and your coworkers’ money. You own 1 percent of the company. Six weeks later you own less, and all that money went to insiders, not to the company. And no one asked your permission, and you didn’t know you got diluted or by how much till 90 days after the fact if that soon.
When Broadcast.com went public, we raised a lot of money that certainly helped us grow as a company. But once you get past the raising capital part of the market, the stock market becomes not only inefficient, but as close to a Ponzi scheme as you can get.
As a public company, we got calls every day from people who owned Broadcast.com stock or had bought it for their funds. They didn’t call because they were confused during our road show, were too embarrassed to ask questions and wanted to get more information. They called because they wanted to know if the “fundamentals” - the marketing points - they had heard before were improving. And the most important fundamental was “The Number,” our quarterly earnings (or in our case, a loss). Once we went public, Morgan Stanley published a report on our company, as did several other firms. They all projected our quarterly sales and earnings. Would we beat The Number?
Of course, by law, we were not allowed to say anything. That didn’t stop people from asking. They needed us to beat the forecast. They knew if we beat The Number the volume on the stock would go up. Brokers would tell their clients about it. The Wall Street Journal would write about it. CNBC would shout the good news to day traders and investment banks that watched their network all day long. All the volume would drive up the stock price.
Unfortunately, patience is not a virtue on Wall Street. Every day, portfolios are valued by at closing price. If the value of your fund isn’t keeping up with the indexes or your competition, the new money coming in the market won’t come to you. It just wasn’t feasible for these investors to wait till the number was reported by companies each quarter. The volume had to be on the stocks in you fund. To keep the volume about a stock up, and the demand for the stock increasing, you needed to have good news to tell.
Volume, The Number, whisper numbers, insiders granting themselves millions and millions of options - these are the games that Wall Street plays to keep on enriching themselves at the expense of the public. I know this. I have tried to tell people to be careful before they turned over their life savings and their financial future to someone whose first job is to keep their job, not make you money.
Till I read The Number by Alex Berenson, I never had a book that explained how the market truly worked that I could tell my friends, family and acquaintances to read. I never had a book that would truly warn them that the market was not as fair and honest as mutual fund and brokerage commercials made them out to be. I may be a cynic when it comes to the stock market, but I am an informed cynic, and that has helped me make some very, very profitable decisions in the market.
If you are considering investing in the market, any part of it, or if you are considering giving your hard earned money over to someone else to manage, please, please read The Number first.
— Mark Cuban, Dallas, Texas, January 2004
http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/2252572946170125/
Think he's under a little stress these days? Nothing like the thought of prison gang rape to ratchet up the tension.
Ex-Enron CEO hospitalized
Jeffrey Skilling is taken to a Manhattan hospital following reports of his 'erratic' behavior.
April 9, 2004: 7:04 PM EDT
NEW YORK (CNN) - Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a Manhattan hospital early Friday morning after police responded to several 9-1-1 calls from residents complaining he was "acting erratically" on an Upper East Side street corner and "accusing them of being FBI agents," police said.
New York Police department officials told CNN an "intoxicated, uncooperative" Skilling was taken into custody at approximately 4 a.m., after the officer on the scene determined him to be an "emotionally disturbed person." Police took him to a midtown hospital for evaluation.
Skilling was not arrested or charged with anything, police said.
Skilling, the highest-ranked ex-Enron executive to be charged in the government's investigation, pleaded not guilty in February to charges of fraud and insider trading.
He faces 10 counts of insider trading; 15 counts of securities fraud; four counts of wire fraud; six counts of making false statements to auditors, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud.
If convicted on all charges Skilling could spend the rest of his life in prison and pay up to $80 million in fines.
Skilling's attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, was not immediately available for comment.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/09/news/newsmakers/skilling/index.htm?cnn=yes
Dollar Losing Value Against The Quarter
NEW YORK—After falling 6 percent in the past three weeks, the U.S. dollar hit a 208-year low against the U.S. quarter, which had been valued at exactly 0.25 dollars since its introduction in 1796. "The dollar continues to slide against most major currencies," Morgan Stanley analyst Richard Jemison said. "At the end of the day Tuesday, the quarter was trading at .267 yen, .203 euros, and US$0.28. But what we're really seeing here is not just a dollar weakened by a sluggish economy, but an exceptionally resilient quarter-dollar." Jemison was quick to point out that the dollar remains very strong against the nickel.
http://www.theonion.com/index.php?pre=1
Paul Kedrosky
Weekend Reading: Key Indices Surprise With Strength
By Paul Kedrosky
Special to RealMoney.com
4/4/2004 1:13 PM EDT
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/paulkedrosky/10152186.html
News Analysis
• The Nasdaq Composite posted its best weeek since May 2003.
• Technology sector is less likely to feel the pain from higher rates.
• Magal Security Systems continues its winning streak.
Good Sunday morning. Here are some articles and papers worth reading, but first a look back at the week that just finished, and a look forward at the week ahead.
Rally caps, indeed. Last weekend, I said that investors would have their rally caps on, and that turned out to be the case. The drivers were a combination of things, with a good week in place even before Friday's nonfarm employment report, but the result was the same: a straight shot upward. The Dow and the S&P 500 ended the week up 2.5% and 3.0%, respectively. The Nasdaq Composite was up 5.0%. Click here for the weekly performance.
Last week was the best week for the Nasdaq Composite since May 2003. It was the best overall week for the three indices since last fall, and it juiced first-quarter performance -- we went from two of the three main U.S. indices primed for a negative quarter, to none of them having a negative quarter. Granted, the "selloff" in early 2004 was more one of week after week of grinding than one of real percentage declines, but the effect is the same: last week changed the dynamics. Will it last? My inclination is a qualified "Yes." It will last at least a little longer. While the nonfarm employment report has rates on the rise, monetary policy is still highly stimulative in the U.S. The bloom is off consumer financial services and the homebuilders, but other sectors are less likely to feel the pain from higher rates -- technology (and telecom in particular) is chief among them, much to the consternation of its many detractors.
The preceding said, last week's news from QLogic (QLGC:Nasdaq) is at least cause for concern. The company revised downward sales and earnings forecasts, and that had some bears saying that the technology resurgence was faltering, with the hot-hot storage sector not apparently able to drive growth. That seems wrongly skeptical. More likely is that QLogic's reliance on a few companies, troubled Sun Microsystems (SUNW:Nasdaq) in particular, created company-specific problems at QLogic, issues that do not mean much for the entire storage sector, let alone for all of technology.
Turning to the best and worst performers of the week, last week's list of best-performing stocks was led by Magal Security Systems (MAGS:Nasdaq) . The small-cap company has been on quite a run, up 46% this week, and a four-bagger in the past 12 months. There is no obvious driver, other than continuing interest in the security-related technology companies, mostly over continuing speculation that more of these firms will be buyout candidates. Granted, Magal did announce an all-in-one security system, called Dreambox, but that was more of an excuse for a further blip higher than the cause. Click here for the winners.
Over on the list of weekly losers, pride of place went to software company Callidus Software (CALD:Nasdaq) . The company announced that it would miss earnings and sales numbers, specifically that it would lose on $16.5 million to $18 million in sales this quarter, as opposed to making 3 cents a share on $21 million, as it had earlier indicated. The company tumbled 37% on the week, and analysts were scrambling to slam the barn door after the cow had gone. While Callidus may be in creditor trouble, as some are suggesting, it is also a worthwhile reminder of the perils of investing in small companies with concentrated customer lists. The $3 million sales miss might have only been caused by slips at one or two companies; that would have been enough to cause the problem. Click here for the losers.
Turning to the week ahead, next week is basically dead quiet on the economics front. We have the usual drip-drip of employment data, but investors will almost certainly start ignoring that figure for a while, rightly or wrong, on the back of last week's nonfarm news.
Over on earnings, it is still fairly calm sailing out there. The real rush of first-quarter reports won't begin until the following week, but we do have a few worth watching this week. On Wednesday, we will see numbers from wireless standout Research in Motion (RIMM:Nasdaq) , and that will almost certainly be another barn-burner. About the only question is by how much the messaging firm will beat expectations. The same day, we are also due for results from Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq) , which are also expected to be solid, albeit nowhere near explosive. Strange as it may seem, Yahoo! has become somewhat boring to investors, with growth slowing somewhat, and no clear sense exactly that the coherent strategy is going forward. The only other release worth noting will come on Thursday from Abbott Laboratories (ABT:NYSE) , which is looking to break out of its two-year holding pattern.
Finally, here are some articles and papers worth reading:
Editor's note: To access some of these stories, registration or a subscription may be required. Please check the individual links for the site's policy.
• Why home prices are about to plummet, and take
the stock market with them. (Washington Monthly)
• Despite the recent market resurgence, mutual
fund inflows are not at high levels. (Bank of
America -- PDF)
• RealMoney columnist James Altucher has a (very
good) new book out: "Trade Like a Hedge Fund"
• A new wave of bubble companies is emerging in
the U.K. (Independent)
• The demand for security technologies is on the
rise, and consumer products are emerging
alongside government appetite. (Time)
• National Semi CEO Brian Halla is optimistic
about outlook for analog, and the rising number
of sensors embedded in everything. (Electronic
News)
• Early indications of a glut coming in 2005 in
NAND flash market. (Silicon Strategies)
• New compliance regulations are creating
spiralling storage requirements at healthcare
organizations. (Byte & Switch)
• Security issues arising from the Canada/U.S.
border with declining agency funding caused
border to disappear in heavy brush. (New York
Times)
• Former Bush economic advisor Glenn Hubbard is
becoming the dean of Columbia Business School.
(New York Times)
• 3M's innovation engine has been sputtering, but
this time it is looking like it might run
properly. (Business Week)
• Analysts are recommending Tyco again: Are they
early? (Business Week)
• Gene-based medical breakthroughs will come, but
judging by monoclonal antibodies it may take
decades more than expected. (Business Week)
• Air Canada at risk of liquidation, with key
bankruptcy investor walking away. (Globe &
Mail)
• Equity mutual funds barely outpaced fixed income
in 2004's first quarter. (New York Times)
• Genetech is trying to renew itself with a skein
of alliances and deals. (The Deal)
• Security problems with current technology may
mean that they cost more than they benefit.
(CFO)
• Economist magazine has surprising savage cover
piece on the faults of George W. Bush.
(Economist)
• Debate with Jeremy Siegel vs. Bob Arnott over
stock market outlook. (Forbes)
• James Grant argues that the current bond market
is precarious, better suited for speculators
than investors. (Forbes)
• The top-yielding 20% of public companies
outperforms everyone else. (Forbes)
• India is to global services markets what China
is to global manufacturing markets. (Morgan
Stanley)
• Tobias Levkovich's "Other PE" model predicts https://www.smithbarney.com/cgi-bin/redirect/port_strat/040104/us03m129.pdf>
80% chance of 10% decline by midsummer. (Smith
Barney -- PDF)
• Venture capital is booming again, which has
many people justifiably worried -- and will
weigh on future pension returns. (Los Angeles
Times)
• Brazil is refusing to allow nuclear inspectors
to look at an enriched uranium facility.
(Washington Post)
• Traders and central banks are dueling over
Asian currencies, and traders look set to win.
(Bloomberg)
• Fed insiders still not convinced inflation is
turning up -- but many others disagree.
(Bloomberg)
• Barron's lauds LCD markets, and slags the
prospects for the U.S. dollar. (Barron's)
• Research: The wealthy's share of overall assets
in the U.S. is considerably lower than its was
one hundred years ago. (NBER)
• Research: An unanticipated 25 basis-point cut
in interest rates leads to a 1% increase in
markets. (Federal Reserve)
This long working paper from Brad Delong states that outsourcing has barely begun, and the real shocks wont occur for 5 or more years:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000556.html
Because this is an economic transformation that is going to hit not in one shot next year but over the course of the next generation, we have plenty of time: time to build the social safety net, the education and retraining programs, the social and economic institutions needed to turn the coming of trade in white-collar services from a win-lose to a win-win affair for America and Americans; time to rebuild confidence that employment will be full and the duration of unemployment spells short. But we will need all this time, because the magnitude of the approaching economic trade shock will be much larger than anything in our historical memory.
What confidence do we have that the shock will be large? A lot. Consider this: There is nobody in America who in the early 1990s worried more about the impact of trade on the wages of Americans in industries that came under pressure from foreign competition than H. Ross Perot. In his political career as advocate of deficit reduction and foe of NAFTA, there was nobody who clearly and visibly cared more about the long-run economic destiny of average Americans than H. Ross Perot. Yet on February 7, 2004, the Times of India reported that Perot Systems is going to double its employment in Asia from 3,500 to 7,000--which will then be half of Perot Systems' worldwide employment. Remember how H. Ross Perot used to talk about the "giant sucking sound" of U.S. jobs going to Mexico? It's not giant, but it is a sucking sound as people working for Perot Systems process medical bills and design software for other outsourcing operations in India. If the economic logic of "outsourcing" is the overwhelmingly powerful consideration for H. Ross Perot, for what American businesses will it not prove irresistible?
From the WSJ:
A number of Indian companies are choosing to establish a base in Canada, which offers proximity to the U.S. but cheaper skilled labor and tax rebates that can help Indian companies limit costs. And Indian executives say U.S. clients appear more at ease with shifting work to Canada than to India, which has become a magnet for political attacks against outsourcing.
But opponents of U.S. companies' outsourcing practices say that setting up shop in Canada instead of India shouldn't shield companies from criticism. "We should be just as concerned about jobs moving to Canada as jobs moving to India, especially when the private sector hasn't created jobs" in the U.S., says Marcus Courtney, president of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a local of the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America union.
Already, Tata Consultancy Services, Satyam Computer Services Ltd., and Wipro have begun operations in Canadian cities that are easy to access from the Northeastern U.S. Tata says its new development center in Mississauga, Ontario, will give it a foothold in case U.S. sentiment against outsourcing prompts more U.S. companies to stop shipping work to India.
Until last year, Satyam had only 10 employees working in Canada, all of whom worked onsite with Canadian clients. Satyam recently inaugurated a development center in a technology park in Mississauga, outside Toronto, where it plans to house 50 developers by the end of September, says Sanjay Tugnait, who set up Satyam's Toronto office in early 2003. In the next few weeks he plans to visit Satyam clients in the U.S. to sell them on contracting work to Satyam's Canadian facility.
The article does paint a positive picture. Especially when talking about a lack of progammers in India.
Sure hope those housing prices rise quick over there.
Sitting beside someone who makes a 10th of what you do, it's a pressure you feel
i wonder if this was how the brits viewed americans 100 years ago? i guess everyone is different. it always made me feel like the luckiest f'k on the planet, and that i should enjoy the ride while it lasted.
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