The Grand Design, by Hawking and Mlodinow

I admittedly skimmed this book, but a few thoughts occurred to me as I did.


* Quantum mechanics is baffling as always.

* M-theory (aka, string theory) predicts that uncountable billions of universes exist and are continuously created from nothing with almost unlimited variation in the laws of physics in each. In their view, this eliminates the strong anthropic argument for God's existence.

I dislike the way they present M-theory as being true, with just a few tweaks and experiments needed to fill in the blanks. The reality is a lot messier than that, and some physicists are turning their backs on it due to its untestable claims of 10 dimensions, branes, multiverses, and so on. For example, in this specific instance, the creation of other universes can't be observed or tested.

However, let's assume for a second that M-theory is true. Then I'd ask, why are the M-theory laws this way and not some other way that would produce 0 universes?

* Philosophically, they are determinists. That means no supernatural being can change things "miraculously". The balls on the pool table will proceed on their vectors and the dead will stay dead. They admit it also implies that what we experience as free will and consciousness are ultimately illusions. They're the mechanical result of billions of deterministic chemical reactions in our brains.

Something feels funny here. They got rid of the possibility of miracles by saying that neither God nor even people can really change anything in the universe through a free choice. Does that seem right? I just decided to move my left elbow. Was the universe expecting that?

Anyway, it was an interesting skim. I read a book about M-theory last year. Maybe I'll read something else physics related after I get through some of the other things I'm reading.

Decision Points, by George W Bush

You may or may not have liked George W as president, but either way you really should read his book Decision Points. The book reads as if you're sitting around a backyard BBQ as he recounts tales of his life, complete with behind the scenes details and every word told in his voice.

Some of those details break the caricature. For example, did you know W is a voracious reader of American history? He read 16 Lincoln biographies alone during his presidency.

He talked about all the major issues - 9/11, Iraq, WMDs, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, the financial meltdown, and so on. He put you in the moment with the information and constraints he had to weigh, and then explained why he made the decisions he did. I also like the way he pointed out the risks of the other options he had available to him.

I thought he honestly admitted his mistakes while defending some unpopular decisions that he still believes were right. For example, he brought up whether he would have approved waterboarding top al-Qaeda members if he had to do it again. The response was pure W - "Damn right." If it's true that information was part of the chain that led to Osama, it's hard to argue he had a point.

This is truly a book for all the Monday morning presidents among us. I liked it as much as I liked Ulysses S. Grant's Civil War memoirs, which I also recommend highly.

The Doors of the Sea, by David Bentley Hart

The subtitle is "Where was God in the tsunami?", referring to the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 200,000 or more people a couple years ago. Taking the reaction to this horrific event as a springboard, Hart discussed how evil and destruction can be consistent with belief in a good God. It's a short book, and by no means were the arguments fully drawn out, but it did a great job of sketching the outlines and explaining the main points.

I appreciate the way he tore down various Christian viewpoints that either trivialize pain or try to make it seem like everything, including death and suffering, are somehow part of God's master plan. He explained a more authentic Christian perspective, contrasting it at times with other religions, especially Hinduism. He also spent some time on God's providence, contrasting his view with that of some modern Calvinists. In order to maximize God's sovereignty, some make God responsible for every horrible thing in the world, a view of God that's contrary to what we know of Jesus.

Sidebar - He didn't bring this up, but if you've seen "The Invention of Lying", the religion the main character invented is eerily similar to what some people really do believe. It irritates me for the same reason when people thank God for getting a good parking space. To me it doesn't allow room for a truly free universe, but instead makes God into a puppetmaster.

I love these words about the "vacuous cant" one hears when tragedy strikes.

However - fortunately, I think - we Christians are not obliged (and perhaps are not even allowed) to look upon the devastation of that day - to look, that is, upon the entire littoral rim of the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal and upper Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children - and to attempt to console ourselves or others with vacuous cant about the ultimate meaning or purpose residing in all that misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation. Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces - whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance - that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred.

Jesus's resurrection was the beginning of God's revolt against the current "god of this world" and the misery that characterizes so much of human life.

Easter utterly confounds the "rulers of this age, and in fact reverses the verdict they have pronounced upon Christ, thereby revealing that the cosmic, sacred, political, and civic powers of all who condemn Christ have become tyranny, falsehood, and injustice. Easter is an act of "rebellion" against all false necessity and all illegitimate or misused authority, all cruelty and heartless chance. It liberates us from servitude to and terror before the "elements." It emancipates us from fate. It overcomes the "world." Eater should make rebels of us all.

The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara

The Killer Angels is historical fiction about the battle of Gettysburg, told from the points of view of four or five different officers. I remember chapters from the perspectives of General Lee, Longstreet, and Armistead from the Confederate army, and Colonel Chamberlain from the Union army. There may have been one or two others too.

I have a brother-in-law who is a retired Army officer, and he told me that this book is basically required reading for the officer corps. Plus, I just visited Gettysburg for the first time last month. I wish I would have read it before I visited.

The book retells both the strategy and the happenstance of the battle. To me, one of the most interesting things was to learn about General Lee's many strategic blunders. I'd always heard he was a brilliant general, but the truth may be more that he was a beloved general. He sent thousands of men charging up a mile long hill to Cemetary Ridge (Pickett's Charge). The ridge was topped with a massive amount Union artillery. It was a killing field.

General Longstreet was Lee's chief aide, and although he deeply admired Lee, he knew Lee's strategy was destined to fail. The Union position was simply unassailable. He pleaded with Lee to retreat and pick a different place to fight, preferably a place where the Confederate army would have the high ground and be dug in.

In the end Lee believed the men's morale would suffer if they retreated, and that their bravery would somehow prevail. He ordered the attack and lost the battle. Of course at that point he had to retreat anyway.

Anyway, there are a lot of other really interesting and moving parts to this book. It's a fast read too. Recommended!

Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith

Many people don't know about Adam Smith's other major book besides The Wealth of Nations. Unfortunately my library doesn't have copy of Theory of Moral Sentiments, at least it has a compilation with some long excerpts.

I'm sure I can find it online for free since it's now in the public domain. Maybe I really do need a Kindle!

He had some interesting thoughts on why we fear death.

We sympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real importance in their situation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life and conversation; to be laid in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated, in a little time, from the affections, and almost from the memory, of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful a calamity....

That our sympathy can afford them no consolation seems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other distress, the regret, the love, and lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, serves only to exasperate our sense of their misery. The happiness of the dead, however, most assuredly, is affected by none of these circumstances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the profound security of their repose. The idea of that dreary and endless melancholy, which the fancy naturally ascribes to their condition, arises altogether... from our putting ourselves in their situation, and from our lodging, if I may be allowed to say so, our own living souls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this case. It is from this very illusion of the imagination, that the foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive.

I liked his analysis of why people who are in love make such bad company sometimes. "The passion appears to everybody, but the man who feels it, entirely disporoportioned to the value of the object."

He was perceptive about what people really want when they try to get rich. In his mind, people don't really want money or even the things money can buy. Instead, they want the honor that is paid to rich people. This is shown first by people who pretend to be rich even though it ends up bankrupting them.

Vain men often give themselves airs of a fashionable profligacy, which, in their hearts, they do not approve of, and of which, perhaps, they are really not guilty. They desire to be praised for what they themselves do not think praise-worthy, and are ashamed of unfashionable virtues which they sometimes practice in secret, and for which they have secretly some degree of real veneration. There are hypocrites of wealth and greatness, as well as of religion and virtue.... Many a poor man places his glory in being thought rich, without considering that the duties which that reputation imposes upon him, must soon reduce him to beggary, and render his situation still more unlike that of those whom he admires and imitates, than it had been originally.

And again...

To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhapily, the road which leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions... It is not ease or pleasure, but always honour, of one kind or another, though frequently an honour very ill understood, that the ambitious man really pursues.

The following is one of the best analyses of ambition I've read. The reasoning is sound and the writing is memorable. It almost tells a story.

The poor man's son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around him, admires the condition of the rich. He finds the cottage of his father too small for his accommodation, and fancies he should be lodged more at his ease in a palace. He is displeased with being obliged to walk a-foot, or to endure the fatigue of riding on horseback. He sees his superiors carried about in machines, and imagines that in one of these he could travel with less inconveniency. He feels himself naturally indolent, and willing to serve himself with his own hands as little as possible; and judges, that a numerous retinue of servants would save him from a great deal of trouble. He thinks if he had attained all these, he would sit still contentedly, and be quiet, enjoying himself in the thought of the happiness and tranquillity of his situation. He is enchanted with the distant idea of this felicity. It appears in his fancy like the life of some superior rank of beings, and, in order to arrive at it, he devotes himself forever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness.

To obtain the conveniencies which these afford, he submits in the first year, nay in the first month, to more fatigue of body and uneasiness of mind than he could have suffered through the whole of his life from the want of them. He studies to distinguish himself in some laborious profession. With the most unrelenting industry he labours night and day to aacquire talents superior to all his competitors. He endeavours next to bring those talents into public view, and with equal assiduity solicits every opportunity of employment. For this purpose he makes his court to all mankind; he serves those whom he hates, and is obsequious to those whom he despises. Through the whole of his life he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real a a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power, and which, if in the extremity of old age he should at last attain to it, he will find to be in no respect preferable to that hmble security and contentment which he had abandoned for it. It is then, in the last dregs of life, his body wasted with toil and diseases, his mind galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments which he imagines he has met with... that he begins at last to find that wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind than the tweezer-cases of the love of toys.

He goes on to point out that a nail clipper may give just as much real happiness as the more obvious advantages of wealth like large houses, servants and so on. The difference is that what wealth brings is obvious whereas a nail clipper is easy for other people to overlook. Therefore, if you chiefly want other people to admire you, you'll try to get rich and not just buy a new nail clipper.

Smith recommends being as lazy as possible while enjoying the simpler pleasures of life. Or as Jesus said, "Be careful of all kinds of greed. Life is more than the abundance of one's possessions."

Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor is such a powerful writer that after reading Everything That Rises Must Converge, I was a little scared to read any more of her books. I'm glad I got up the nerve. Wise Blood is the kind of book that you'll wake up thinking about at night.

Hazel Motes' grandfather was a graceless fundamentalist preacher and during Haze's childhood, although he felt his sins deeply, Jesus was nothing but something to make him feel guilty.

[His mother] hit him across the legs with the stick but he was like part of the tree. "Jesus died to redeem you," she said.

"I never ast him," he muttered.

Haze felt himself haunted by Jesus, a Jesus he hated and feared with all his heart. If only he could avoid him... "there was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin."

When he left home for the army, he took his Bible and his mother's eyeglasses. One night, in a flash, he realized he actually didn't believe in such a thing as a soul. Without a soul there could be no sin and no need for any Jesus to redeem sin. He became an atheist. Still, although Jesus was present in a positive way exactly once in the book, in Haze's mind he seemed to lurk everywhere, even in the curses others used.

Haze became a preacher of atheism, attempting to convert people to a Church Without Christ. This led to some very ironical scenes, such as when his church split when it had only two members. The split-off Holy Church of Christ Without Christ wanted to take a more seeker friendly approach. There was also a competing "false prophet" who as it turned out, was a false false prophet. The false false prophet really did believe in Jesus and was just preaching unbelief for the money.

Haze was just as fundamentalist in his atheism as his grandfather had been in his Christianity. "Blasphemy is the way to the truth and there's no other way whether you understand it or not!" Strangely though, as much as he claimed to not believe in a soul or sin, his own sense of personal guilt grew. He lived a graceless and isolated life, a monk of nihilism, attempting to pay for sins which he didn't believe really existed. If hell exists, this story describes what it must be like.

I highly recommend this book. You won't soon forget it.

Unconditional Parenting - Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason, by Alfie Kohn

Lately we've been talking about how best to teach our children to become mature adults. Frankly, a lot of the advice out there seems modeled on puppy training, whether that's positive reinforcement ("Good job coming to daddy! Here's your dog biscuit!") or punishment ("I am the alpha dog! You shall learn to fear me!"). It's all behavioralism and I believe people are more than the sum of their behaviors. I also want to raise adults who think for themselves, not dogs who come running when their masters whistle.

Alfie Kohn offered a radical alternative in this book. He disagreed with any method meant to control a child, whether that's praise, criticism, time-outs, or spanking. Instead parents should be respectful and responsive to their children, treating them as they themselves would like to be treated.

He cited several studies showing that the more children are controlled, the less internal motivation they have to adopt their parents' values. External control seems to squelch true moral growth in favor of a simple reflex to avoid punishment or gain praise. Think about the last time you improved some area of your life. Was it because someone nagged, praised, or beat you until you finally gave in? Or was it because you saw someone else living in a way that you admired, and with whom you perhaps had a close relationship? Which method is likely to produce more authentic change and growth?

I liked this paragraph about why controlling your children can be so difficult and ultimately impossible:

... in the final analysis, we really can't control our kids -- at least not in the ways that matter. It's very difficult to make a child eat this food rather than that one, or pee here rather than there, and it's simply impossible to force a child to go to sleep, or stop crying, or listen, or respect us. These are the issues that are most trying to parents precisely because it's here that we run up against the inherent limits of what one human being can compel another human being to do.

Most parents can probably relate to this:

When I say that we should make sure we're not saying no too often or unnecessarily, I don't mean that our convenience, our wants, don't count, too. They do. But they shouldn't count for so much that we're gratuitously restricting our children, prohibiting them from trying things out. When you come right down to it, the whole process of raising a kid is pretty d---ned inconvenient, particularly if you want to do it well. If you're unwilling to give up any of your free time, if you want your house to stay quiet and clean, you might consider raising tropical fish instead.

He underscored how hard it can be to communicate unconditional love when children are doing things that truly are bad.

"We accept you, but not how you act" is particularly unpersuasive if very few of the child's actions find favor with us. "What is this elusive 'me' you claim to love," the child may wonder, "when all I hear from you is disapproval?"

Look deeper than the behavior. Keep a more important goal in mind than peace and quiet.

It may sound obvious, but we sometimes seem to forget that, even when kids do rotten things, our goal should not be to make them feel bad, nor to stamp a particular behavior out of existence. Rather, what we want is to influence the way they think and feel, to help them become the kind of people who wouldn't want to act cruelly. And, of course, our other goal is to avoid injuring our relationship with them in the process.

There was some deep parenting wisdom in this book. I have a feeling I'll be pondering its implications for a long time.