The planned suicide operation of Al-Balawi took place following a significant improvement during the recent years in the capabilities of the “West” in tracking and eliminating terrorists – while they were still in relatively early stages of introducing new attacks. Tons of money was spent on improving the abilities of terrorist-fighting organizations, and the associated technology reached peaks unknown before.

Still, Al-Balawi’s teachers and operators were armed with a different kind of weapon. Using simple tools, while taking advantage of known human mind weaknesses, they managed to make their flock actually believe of an almighty judge, sitting somewhere in the heavens, expecting them to kill as many “heretics” as possible. In return the judge will grant them the pleasures of the “afterworld”.

Al-Balawi’s perception of the world was different than the actual reality. For him, the sand on which he was standing was “created” by that judge, together with the first human. Other humans carefully selected later on by the judge, passed the judge’s rules to mankind, and the judge’s wishes were indisputable.

– * — * –

When this is your view of the world – even better – when you are able to generate more and more people with such a view of the world – no sophisticated means of tracking and eliminating are useful.

The right way to tackle religious terror in the long run is not by using sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles for remote elimination, or with sensitive equipment for bomb detection, just like the right way to fight epidemics is not with Aspirin. The right way to struggle with religious terror in the long run is by means of education. When you have the privilege of being exposed to hard evidence and research, when you truly realize and understand the way in which you’ve been gradually developed from your ancestor apes, when you know how easy it is to fool the human mind – you do not expect to meet your dead victims after a terror attack.

Very few organizations worldwide deal with active education of religious believers with the purpose of changing their view of the world. In most cases, such an activity is perceived as interfering with one’s beliefs, many times even as “missionarism” or “hurting religious feelings”. On a state/country level, it is doubtful whether any Western entity is dealing with that.

While the necessity of an institutionalized “secularizing” process may be in dispute, there is a legitimate action that can certainly be taken: Exposing people, as much as possible, to scientific truths. Guided tours of museums are much cheaper than manufacturing more sophisticated elimination devices, and educational watching of lab experiments is much easier to produce than turning even more parts of airports into fortresses.

As time goes by, the rest will happen anyway.

Want some examples? Sure you do. Here are some references to the world around us, quoted from some recent Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspapers:

From ‘Family’, April 2013: “The heads of the regime … who desire to convert our religion, are worse than those who have murdered us along generations”; and also: “A state is no more than a piece of cloth on a stick”.

From ‘The Fountains of Salvations’, December 2012: “The modern heretic is he who applies scientific criteria to the research of our sages’ texts … We should dream of replacing the shitty intellectual clothes with sacred clothes”.

From ‘Faithful Tent-Peg’, January 2013: “All residents should avoid entering stores whose owners use non-kosher cellular phones”; and also, approaching the elections in Israel: “Many have not yet received the formal message to the voter. The Ministry of Interior directs citizens to the forbidden Internet”.

And last but not least:

From ‘Y.N.R. Center of Marriage and Family Studies’, a guide to the wedding night: “Put a towel underneath. In case of a question it will be easier to bring in front of the rabbi”.

“It is a remnant of the ancient wall that surrounded the Jewish Temple’s courtyard, and is arguably the most sacred site recognized by the Jewish faith outside of the Temple Mount itself” — Wikipedia

Obviously it has become to be a popular praying location for many religious Jews, as well as a place to visit for many others.

When many of the readers of this article were young, the ancient wall exchanged hands. During the Six-Day War (June 1967), it was taken (many would say taken back) from the Kingdom of Jordan into Israel. Soon after, the whole area in front of it was renovated and opened to the public.

At that time, you could see many families visiting together the old remarkable historical remnant. Some for religious reasons, others for the sake of patriotism, and many others for sheer curiosity. Associated with that much importance, it was basically free for all.

Well, not any more. At some point of time, religious politics took over, and the place was announced “holy”. In practical terms, it means that the State of Israel officially forbids men and women to be together near the ancient wall. Imagine a family visiting together the place that became one of the symbols of Old Jerusalem, forced to separated. Husband separated from wife, father from daughter, etc.

It could be done differently. A solution which is good for all could easily be implemented. For example, an area for those who prefer separation and another area for those who want to be together. But since when the needs of the citizens are more important than those of the politicians??

Priests were to stay “pure”. At least as viewed by the public. Otherwise, the gods might be angry at them and cause some earthquake or something. Hence, they were not allowed certain things, which you may guess. You guessed only a part of it: They were also not allowed near dead people.

In Hebrew, a priest is a ‘Cohen’. In fact, many people who carry this last name nowadays (or related names, such as ‘Kogan’, ‘Katz’ and others) are descendants of ancient priests.

Tiberias is an ancient peaceful town kissing the Sea of Galilee. As such, some locations within the town appear to contain old bones from ancient times. Still, new roads have to be built for the public.

But the “impurity” of these antique bones is not allowed to reach Mr. Cohen’s new Mazda passing by above the road! No problem. We have found a solution. Let’s spend 20 times the original cost of the road, and build it during several years on top of many specially-designed concrete bridges.

Now Mr. Cohen is safe, and there will be no earthquake.

Most of the statistics we hear about refer to allegedly “important” things: The balance between “left” and “right”, the options for the next coalition forming the government, the expected economic decrees, you know. Yet, there was one minor piece of statistics that evaded most people’s attention: The amount of people wearing a “Kippah” (religious skullcap) in the new parliament has dramatically increased and is now nearly 40 persons (out of 120).

In order improve the correctness of this data, let us remember some extra facts: (1) The “Kippah” is mainly a Jewish thing, while the parliament also contains members of competing spiritual trends, such as Muslims and Druses, who share many beliefs with fellow religious Jews; (2) The Jewish Kippah goes on the heads of male believers. The statistics somehow ignore the female ones; (3) Many of the so-called “secular” members also proudly declare their strong relations with the local religions, up to declaring their belief in similar contents.

Altogether, it is probably an underestimation to say that about 50% of our elected representatives share the basic beliefs of the local religions. One of two believes that some alien created the sun after the Earth. Half of our parliament thinks woman evolved from man. Every other person knows of ancient heroes riding horses into the sky. And these are the people who decide my future.

God help us all…

While nearly everyone tends to look at things from the traditional “political left and right” point of view, it seems that almost every major political party tends to place at least one religious figure in its list of candidates. Sort of “there is no harm in trying”. You know.

This has gone beyond the manning issue, and actually penetrated our day-to-day language. A few days ago, our Minister of Home Front Defense, Mr. Avi Dichter, was interviewed and quoted saying that “The new president of Syria is not going to be a Rabbi”. As if a ‘Rabbi’ is a synonym for ‘the best person available’.

The hot figure nowadays is the right wing person, ex high-tech success, Mr. Naftali Bennett (Google to see, if you feel the urge to). And the recent hot topic in the news is the public discussion about his opinion in following (or rather not following) military commands, when it comes to potential evacuation of settlements.

Now, I really don’t feel like arguing about politics and the issue of settlements. Nor do I want to discuss Mr. Bennett’s specific words about this. What strikes me as odd about this story is the fact that there are other things Mr. Bennett also says, and no one seems to care.

Wearing a small skullcap (”kipa”), Mr. Bennett says every morning “Bless the one who has not made me a woman”. He also recites other unthinkable sentences as part of his periodic prayers. Actually he teaches his children that the sun and the moon were created three days after Earth.

Now, either Naftali Bennett says things in which he doesn’t believe himself, or he believes in things long doomed by the human race. Both ways, most of his critics don’t seem to give a damn about all these lasting sayings, but they repeatedly quote his single slip of the tongue in that interview. Is it because when it comes to the real issues, they also daily say the same things and have the same beliefs?

I’ve been volunteering for several months, helping small children in the age of 10 years or so with their homework from school. Many of them attend what is known as the Israeli “National Religious” school system.

One might think it’s alright to teach religious contents in a religious school. After all, where else would one teach it better? Still, I felt uneasy with some of the material. It took me a while to figure out what’s wrong: The contents are religious indeed, but the title for that specific course and accompanying book is… ‘History’.

Thus, small children at age of 10 years learn in the same page of their “History” book that King David was the father of King Solomon, and that God promised David a long-lasting kingdom. In another page they learn that King Solomon built the first Jewish Temple, and that God chose him to do so for certain reasons. Altogether, they learn that the Bible is literally pure history. The book, by the way, is said to be officially approved by the Israeli Ministry of Education.

In a way, this is like teaching that the Sun and stars circle Earth, under the title of ‘Science’. Being a nation that struggles to maintain historical memories, we should exercise increased caution in teaching history properly.

From the chapter ‘All Is Foreseen Yet Freedom of Choice Is Given’, from the book ‘Games of Awareness‘.

… A slightly different topic, yet related to our current conversation, is the old debate about ‘What if…’. In many cases, this phrase is used innocently, replacing future tense by past tense: Instead of asking: ‘What will you do if you find a million dollars?’, one may simply ask: ‘What would you have done, if you had found a million dollars?’ – This is not the case we are dealing with.

The specific question of ‘What would you have done if you had found a million dollars in the age of ten’, however, carries a completely different nature (assuming the reader is older than ten). Since you didn’t really find a million dollars when you were ten, this question carries a hidden assumption about the possibility of such a thing happening. For such an event to occur in the past, one of two things must happen: Either our reality is not deterministic and enables two different events to occur at the same time (both the event of finding the dollars and the scenario of not finding them), or determinism still exists, but the question discusses a ‘parallel universe’ in which determinism led to a different scenario – much like ours – but slightly different in finding the said dollars. From here, the road is short to promoting the common idea of a universe splitting endlessly, upon each event and decision point.

Suppose I am walking in the street, passing by a large stack of bills without noticing it. Someone else picks up the money and takes it, while I am left frustrated, thinking: ‘What would have happened if I had noticed it and had taken it myself’. Perhaps the right answer is that if I had practiced a different state of attention, then the circumstances leading me to that moment would probably have been totally different, and then perhaps the event that caused the money bills to be there in the first place – would have occurred differently, and they wouldn’t have been there at all.

In a deterministic world, a good answer to the question ‘What would you do if you were now served frog legs for dinner’ could be: ‘I would finish eating and would cross the road in order to climb the Eiffel Tower’, since the question probably discusses a totally other world, in which I am currently in France. The English comedian Benny Hill was once asked (in his TV show) what he would do if he came home and found his wife with a stranger in bed. He answered that he would hit the stranger with the stranger’s white cane…

During the soccer world cup game between Germany and England in June 2010, the referee disallowed a clear goal by England. Later Germany won the match 4-1, much to the English disappointment. As a result, many claimed that retroactively, disqualifying that goal didn’t change much. Didn’t it really? One may argue that had the goal been awarded, the English team would have been in a totally different psychological state during the rest of the game, which might have crucially influenced its proceeding. Still, the more interesting claim is that had the referee allowed the goal, the game would have proceeded differently even before the controversial moment. For the sequence of events to lead to a different decision by the referee, the sequence itself had to be different from before. Maybe the game would have been stopped by some reason, or maybe it wouldn’t have taken place altogether, or perhaps all of us would not have been here at all.

The genre of ‘What if…’ is tightly coupled to the philosophical discussion of ‘time travel machine’, especially the theoretical ability to travel back in time and change things, or decide differently. A famous ‘time travel machine’ paradox discusses the outcome of going back in time and killing, say, your grandfather before the time he met your grandmother. In a deterministic world, the paradox is found in the very ability to decide or do something different than what’s been done.

Given the theoretical existence of a time travel machine, the paradox may be found in the very decision to go back in time and perform the change. ‘The End of Eternity’ by Isaac Asimov elaborates on this specific issue.

The American comedian George Carlin (1937-2008) joked about the contradiction between supposedly having a ‘Divine Plan’ and praying to God with requests whose significance is changing that plan.

‘What if…’ questions may apply to reality changes in different times, but also to changes in place and in awareness. The Israeli singer Yehuda Poliker said in a TV interview (Israeli channel 2, September 9, 2011): ‘No one asked me whether to bring me to this world’. Suppose Poliker had been born one hour later – Besides the usual questions about the effect on his character and destiny, would this have been… Yehuda Poliker? Someone else carrying Poliker’s awareness? Someone else altogether? The Israeli politician Ehud Barak (Israel’s defense minister at the time of writing this) once said: ‘If I were a Palestinian at the right age, I would – at some stage – join one of the terrorist organizations’. This immediately generated some political excitement. The more interesting mind challenge is not associated with joining or not joining some terrorist organization, but with the essence and the meaning of the phrase ‘If I were someone else’, and its implications.

It’s a day full of contradictions, some of which are rather odd.

According to the Jewish “Halacha” (religious laws and tradition), it used to be a happy day, in which men chose women for the purpose of establishing a family. According to the same “Halacha” it is now a sacred day, in which people are damn scared for their future and afraid of their own shadows.

According to the same tradition, towards the end of the day, the gates of Heaven are allegedly closed and prayers (asking God for forgiveness) find it more difficult to break through. There is of course an exact known minute when God is no longer accepting new calls. Yet, the day of Yom Kippur may once every few years postpone by a whole month, due to the old complex calculation of the Jewish calendar, inherited from the ancient Babylonians and Greeks. It’s truly amazing how God seems to have adapted the management of Heaven’s gates to this early remarkable man-made invention of Babylonian and Greek astronomy.

According to the strict Orthodox Jewish rules, keeping the “Sabbath” is more important than observing the rules of Yom Kippur. Still, most so-called secular Jews observe Yom Kippur rules and not the “Sabbath”.

God is allegedly everywhere, so he (she? It?) is in different time zones where Yom Kippur is still in effect or not in effect at the same time. Must be a very confused God.

So, if you fast on this day because you think it’s “healthy”, if you fast because you call it a “tradition”, if you do so and talk about the general feeling of belonging… Prove it to yourself that you are right and not suffering from OCD: Sometimes during the day eat a small bread crumb. Perhaps even a single grain of rice.

Then go back to fasting.

“Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about”
‘Strawberry Fields Forever‘, The Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1966

Theorem:

Given God’s religious definition, it is impossible to prove the existence of God.

Proof:

Part 1 – Some definitions and basic conclusions

Rene Descartes‘ idea of our entire world being no more than something found in our mind, is well demonstrated by the famous ‘Brain in a Jar‘ thought experiment (also known as ‘Brain in Vat‘):

Imagine that when you are deeply sleeping at night, an evil scientist arrives at your room. Without waking you up, he carefully removes your brain from your skull, while keeping it alive, floating in a jar of nourishing substance, and connecting all required neurons to a super-computer. The computer, using some complex and sophisticated software, feeds your brain with electrical signals, similar to those it was accustomed to before, thus mimicking ‘virtual reality’.

You feel as if you wake up in the morning after, and experience various things. You may sense walking in the street, seeing the weather gets bad and rain starting to fall. You eat something sweet that you like. In practice, these are all illusions – caused by the electrical signals sent from the super-computer, as part of its ‘conversation’ with your brain in the jar, under our scientist’s control.

At his discretion, the scientist may generate a totally different reality for you. Rain will be replaced by a sunny day, sweet by salty. If he wishes so, he can bring real ‘miracles’ into your reality: The Sun may rise in the west and set in the east, and you may be able to fly high in the sky or dive deep in the ocean. As far as you are concerned, all these are absolutely realistic. The scientist and his computer may even erase whole periods from your memory, bring you back in time to experience other events instead, and you will never be able to tell the difference.

Two issues in this story are worth some elaboration.

The first one is the scientific method. It teaches us to objectively research natural phenomena in order to understand their meaning and the laws of nature behind them. We need to conduct controlled experiments and measure their results using objective tools. Yet, in our ‘Brain in a Jar‘ story, even if we conduct such experiments and are strict in keeping all the rules, still their outcome will reflect the specific laws of nature dictated by the software in the scientist’s computer, and those may be totally different than the laws of nature in the scientist’s own world.

The second issue has to do with our inability to know we are under the influence of the scientist’s computer. According to what we feel as well as the results of our possible scientific experiments, we will reach the conclusion that our experiences constitute the one and only reality.

By summing up these two issues, while in the ‘Brain in the Jar‘ scenario, we reach the inevitable conclusion about every other entity except ourselves: We can never absolutely distinguish between the following three options: (a) The entity does not exist; (b) The entity exists, but has no consciousness and self-awareness; (c) The entity exists and possesses consciousness and self-awareness.

Part 2 – Continuing with the proof

Logically, there can be exactly two possibilities: ‘God’ exists, or ‘God’ does not exist.

If it does not exist, then it is impossible to prove its existence (since from such a proof we will conclude its existence, and we are dealing with the case where it does not exist).

If it does exist, then by definition it is also (i) ‘almighty’ (in human terms) and (ii) possesses own consciousness and self-awareness. The technological capability of our evil scientist is (by definition) inferior to that of ‘God’. Therefore we can conclude it is possible (as superior capabilities are possible). Hence, all our conclusions derived from the possibility of such capability are also true.

One of these conclusions was our inability to prove that any other entity except ourselves exists and/or possesses consciousness and self-awareness. In particular, we cannot prove that a conscious ‘God’ exists outside ourselves.

Hence, in any of the two possibilities above, it is impossible to prove the existence of ‘God’.

Q.E.D.

(Adapted from the book ‘Games of Awareness‘, Chapter 2 – ‘Brain in a Jar‘.)