Atheism of Astronomy: A Reply to Critics

SINCE "The Atheism of Astronomy" was published many letters of comment and criticism have reached the Truth Seeker. Some of these were printed in the paper, and I am extremely grateful to Editor Smith, as well as to the various contributions who have helped to widen the scope of the discussion.

Some of the letters which have reached me privately express a deep interest in the subject of astronomy. Some are very illuminating on the behavior patterns of mankind--and some very religious. One, from an exotic female, I am told, can only be construed as a burning love letter, proposing that I accept Jesus, through her. I had no idea that a simple work of mine, defending "gross'' materialism and a godless universe, should have caused such a "spiritual" awakening and religious fervor in one of my readers. Others, as pathetic as this, seem more interested in the salvation of my soul than the facts I discussed. Still another, hopeless of my future, has already consigned me to regions close to the core of the earth. Communications like these have been conveniently filed in the wastebasket for future consideration.

Rabbi Ahron Opher, of the Hebrew Tabernacle, Washington Heights, New York City, who wrote me concerning "The Atheism of Astronomy," calls attention to the theories of "Keppler," "Genes," and "Ettington" as likely to refute its arguments. The way these learned doctors of Judaism toss the names of scientific men about. (and misspell them) is enough to make a freshman groan.

Rabbis of today get their wisdom from the ancient Jews, whose knowledge of the world was below that of the not very over-bright Egyptians. Says the historian Buckle: "Science properly so called, the Egyptians had none; and as to their wisdom, it was considerable enough to distinguish them from the barbarous nations like the old Hebrews, but it was inferior to that of the Greeks, and it was of course immeasurably below that of modern Europe."

Kosher knowledge today is canned ignorance from the past.

I propose here to consider some of the more recent issues raised by several of my critics. Among these is the question as to whether or not there are likely to be other worlds inhabited like the earth.

One writer argues that since millions of stars can be seen merely as tiny points of light, there may be planets, unseen through the telescope, circling about them. He is entitled to his "may". We know enough, however, of our planets close at hand, the peculiarity of their origin, and their requirements for the sustentation of life, to accept a conclusion other than that planetary existence is a minor occurrence, and that life, as we know it here, is as nothing at all in the stellar depths. Those who believe in a "well-populated" universe will have to "populate" billions upon billions of "white hot" stars.

Some find it difficult to believe that life is a rare occurrence in the universe and that the earth is probably the only inhabited planet of our system. It is their contention that such a "unique" situation is counter to the "expectancy" one would look for among so many worlds. They seem to think that physical and chemical forces, operative everywhere, must necessarily bring into existence things very much alike through to the universe, and that we should always find duplications. This is definitely not so.

One does not have to look far into space to confirm this. Nature can be as sparing and restricted in some of its activities as lavish in others. There are many "rare" occurences in nature. Such as the evolution of a Darwin or a Shakespeare out of so much human scum. Since our earth began there has been only one age of Reptiles. The dinosaur was "unique" among all forms of life. Among the multitudinous species of plants and flowers, "Dionaea muscipula," a distinctive type, is found only in one tiny corner of the globe. The kangaroo is a native of Australia -- and nowhere else.

The manatee is restricted to a few tropical waters, the gorilla to small areas in Africa. The rarity of planets and the scarcity of life in space are in no way startling to one who takes a long range view of things. It is a view which is definitely warranted by the findings of astronomy, which show that what happens at one point in space does not have to be duplicated elsewhere. The sun is an exceptional star, and its planets are an exceptional "birth."

As to the question, Whence comes intelligence?, it will be found answered in any good text-book on organic evolution. Intelligence, both in the race and in the individual, gradually develops with the brain and the nervous system. It is a physiological activity which manifests itself in a large part of the biological world, including man. It is not a mysterious subject at all, except to those who like to indulge in a "tyranny of words." And it is readily comprehensible, I believe, to any individual who is not too deeply absorbed in contemplating Plymouth Rock and in asking why, if matter really thinks, rocks cannot "acquire knowledge?

Psychology, true to its ancient heritage, is still dominated by a vast amount of Hottentot ignorance. Psychologists of the mystic school still talk of the mind as a ghost. What cannot be picked up and weighed on a butcher's scale must be a "spirit". They cannot seem to grasp that a motion of matter in the skull, or a vibration in the nerveganglia of the brain cannot be taken out of one's head and tossed on scales. They are as obsessed with a belief in spirit possession as the "benighted" savage, who, seeing a watch for the first time, concludes there is a ghost inside. The savage sees a "spirit" in the watch case, the mystic sees a "spirit" in his head.

The spirit mongers can no more comprehend the mechanistic character of the brain and its material functioning than they can comprehend the implications of materialism in their broader aspects. Life, they think, must be a dreary, meaningless affair without a recognition of "spirit." Being muddled on the one hand, they are sure to be muddled on the other. They are as quickly disturbed over a godless universe as a ghostless brain.

One critic marvels how a materialist, facing the "dismal" picture I have drawn, should "so shuffle the faculties of his mind" as to preserve his "poise" and "equanimity." I have seen, perhaps, a fair share of the grim side of life. But I see no reason why any man, unless his nerves are shattered or he faces some unbearable afffiction, should jump off a dock or turn on the gas. No one need become panic stricken merely because there is no paternal intelligence in the sky. Life can be made an interesting adventure in solving human problems and mastering the art of living. That art consists, in part, of cultivating one's intelligence and helping others to rise from the slough of ignorance and superstition.

If any one should be dejected and disheartened by the evils of the world, it is he who, having accepted belief in a guiding "intelligence," is compelled to witness the cruel behavior and callous indifference of his "Heavenly Father." It is the Christian who, praying to be relieved from an excruciating cancer, gets nothing in return but a celestial slap in the face, who should feel his despondency most. It is the theist, not the atheist, who should be tempted to slit his own throat. That is something our pedagogical theists and blackboard "psychologists" will never understand.

Certainly nothing I have put into words could offer a more "melancholy" picture of things as they are than that presented in the mass hysteria caused by our recent "invasion" by monsters from Mars. The radio broadcasters simply over-estimated, as I have done myself too often, the average intelligence of the race. It was the "spiritually-minded," who are said to derive "poise" and "equanimity" from their convictions, who were most easily demoralized, and who fled to their churches like flocks of frightened geese. If had they known more about Mars and less about "spiritual" matters, they would have probably enjoyed the radio entertainment.

Those who talk of: the dreariness and drabness of existence for the materialist, deceive themselves. Such jargon as that we must search for understanding in the depths of infinite reality" belongs to the age of priests. The materialist can be, and generally is, the highest cultivator of the finer things of life. He is better able to appreciate the cultural and esthetic values of life precisely because his eyes are open and he can think more clearly. In the fine arts and, in science, in music and drama, he generally excels. Lucretius, the greatest of didactic poets, was a materialist. So, too, was Holbach, whose home, indeed, was "one of the chief social centers of culture in Europe." Haeckel, who believed in neither God nor immortality, was an artist of high rank, whose hundreds of drawings of marine life in color would have made him famous independent of his accomplishments in the biological field. Buchner, whose "Force and Matter" rocked the religious world took time off from scientific pursuits to write exquisite verse. Vogt so lived that he, was "a brilliant man, of exceptional culture" whose "standard of conduct was rigorous'' and "humanitarian zeal intense." It was the teaching of Diderot, says Bury, "that man's energies should be devoted to making the earth pleasant." Girard, the philanthropist, put this into practice by founding a university and giving away millions to the poor. In brief, the zest for life and the cultivation of character will not be dulled because, of the discovery that there is no one in the clouds interested in our welfare.

Those who look for a moral crack-up under materialism, or for an era of gloom, should turn again to the pages of history. Under "spiritual" influences men became morbid, sour, and cruel. And it was precisely the most "spiritual" ages which contributed most to the destruction of man's happiness. Buckle, writing of the Scotch Kirk and its influence, says:
"Cheerfulness, especially when it rose to laughter, was to be guarded against. . . . Smiling, provided it stopped short of laughter, might occasionally be allowed; still, being a carnal pastime, it was a sin to smile on Sunday. Even on weekdays, those who were most imbued with religious principles hardly ever smiled, but sighed, groaned and wept.... A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish."

Of what significance, therefore, are fulminations against materialism? The plea that we acknowledge a "spirit" within and accept an "intelligence" in the clouds is Sunday school prattle. Man has progressed morally, and grown culturally, in proportion as he has abandoned these ideas. The closer we stick to matter the more we understand the workings of the universe. Culture has been advanced by ditching the ghosts.

What has "spirituality" to offer? The age of "spirituality" and ghost worship marks the most degrading and bloody period of man's existence. Those who sought culture in the "depths of infinite reality" by glorifying "spirit" and degrading matter usually ended up by burning one another at the stake. It was a sordid age, when pious scoundrelism prevailed and fanaticism ran amuck. No tragedy has equaled the dark ages of religion, when "spirituality" triumphed and materialism was crushed.

These things will never come again if men learn to think.

Mysticism In Modern Physics

MATERIALISM has triumphed over every attempt to discredit it on the ground of new discoveries in physics.
-JOSEPH McCABE, The Triumph of Materialism, p. 25.

MY able friend, Edwin Tenney Brewster, raises a pertinent question concerning the present status of materialism. Briefly, he puts the question: "Has materialism been discredited by the new physics?"

The answer, of course, very much depends on what one understands by the "new physics". Today almost anything goes, in a world of four dimensions and "curved" space. Ever since the Einsteinian vogue for verbal quackery arose we have been victimized by words. To the Waldemar Kaempfferts of modern "physics," lump of iron is no longer an aggregation of compact particles but "congealed energy"; to some of our rationalists and freethinkers abroad, calling themselves materialists, matter is "a cluster of behaviors".

How "behaviors" can ''cluster" or otherwise behave so as to become matter, or "energy" can be come "congealed" into an ax-head or a crowbar, is left to the imagination. The tyranny of words still plays havoc with clear thinking.

Actually the "new physics" is not essentially new, nor is it all physics. A good part of it is not even sane or intelligible. On the whole, it is a conglomeration of yoga mysticism and highly diluted science with a generous sprinkling of Berleian metaphysics. Our transcendental physicists do not deal with moving particles of substance in the manner of 19th century materialists, but with a "dematerialized", fast fading universe rapidly being absorbed by a spiritual world. To them, matter is obliterated or is suffering an eternal black-out. In a word, the material universe has been shot from under us.

But has it?

Materialism is defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica as "the theory which regards all the facts of the universe as explainable in terms of matter and motion, and in particular explains all psychical processes by physical and chemical changes in the nervous system."

The early materialists taught a material world, composed of tiny moving particles called "atoms". These were the indestructible bricks of the universe. "The conception that matter is made up of particles or atoms, and that these particles are in a state of ceaseless motion, is to be met with in Hindu and Phoenician philosophy," writes Sir Edward Thorpe. 1 "It was taught by Anaxagoras, Leukippos and Demokritos to the Greeks, and by Lucretius to the Romans."
1. History of Chemistry, p. 20.

The early concept of the atom was that of a hard, impenetrable, bullet-like particle. So far as we know, this may be a perfect description of the ultimate atom, far down. It is not our present idea of what we call the atom in laboratory work. Our present "atom" is a solar system itself, composed tiny material particles revolving around a central mass.

Of what, then, does the present atom consist? "The normal atom", says Jeans, 2 "consists of protons, electrons, and energy, each of which contributes something to its weight". Each part of the atom is material. The "energy" released from the atom in the form of radiation carries weight. All radiation is material. Even A- and B- rays are "material particles", says Jeans.3
2. The Universe Around Us, p. 118.
3. Ibid, p 119.

NO one has improved on Maxwell's concept of "energy". "Energy", says he, 4 "cannot exist except in connection with matter. . . . It has no individual existence, such as that which we attribute to particular portions of matter."
4. Matter and Motion, pp; 165-166.

"Energy" is merely a blanket term or convenient expression for matter at work. Yet it is loosely argued that since matter is reducible in terms of "energy", matter can thereby be destroyed or replaced by "energy". But every erg of "energy" is always identified by mass and weight. These are physical properties. We never find "energy" running around loose like a ghost nor apart from matter. "An erg of energy, in any form", says Eddington, 5 "has a mass of 1.1.10-21 grammes". Wherever we find "energy" we find matter.
5. Stars and Atoms, p. 97

A good deal of verbiage has wrapped itself around the "new physics". Words and phrases are used with little or no regard for their accepted meanings. Some of this is deliberately done to distort the facts. We still hear the "splitting" of the atom, referred to as if it meant the "annihilation" of matter. It means, of course, nothing of the kind.

What is "splitting" the atom? Briefly, separating the positive and negative charges of electricity called protons and electrons, of which the atom is composed. These were isolated by "bombarding" the atom with high power radioactive particles bearing a positive charge. Some of these "bullets", in hitting the nucleus, or positive charge of the atom, were repelled or deflected from their paths. The positive and negative particles of the atom were thereby exposed. The atom had been "split".

The sub-atomic world is material throughout. Our mystical physicists cannot name a single ingredient of the "split" atom that is not material. An electron, says Jeans, 6 is "a plain material particle". The electron has definite mass and weight so has the proton, which, is 1,855 times heavier than the electron. Nor can the mystic escape by saying that since everything is "electricity" We can dispense with matter. "Electricity is material", says Millikan. 7 Wherever we turn, we are confronted by matter.
6. The Universe Around Us, p. 130.
7. The Electron, p 186.

The "splitting" of the atom has in no way discredited the doctrine of materialism. On the contrary, it has strikingly confirmed what materialists have all along maintained, namely, that the ultimate unit of matter would probably be found very far down and that matter is subject to further division. That which passed for the "indivisible" atom in the laboratory would be broken down or found to consist of finer units.

The ancient Greek materialists held these views, which later were ardently championed by the great Roman materialist, Lucretius. Buchner, whose famous "Force and Matter" is a classic of materialism, taught that we must expect a finer division of matter before we reach the indestructible unit, or real atom. Years before Sir J. J. Thomson "split" the atom near the end of the last century, Buchner wrote: 8 "It has also become very probable through recent investigations that the substances heretofore regarded by us as elements or original bodies are nothing of the kind, but are themselves compounds, and that the so-called atoms therefore consist of units of a higher grade, as the molecule does of atoms". In a word, the "splitting" of the atom was here foreseen by a "gross" materialist of the 19th century.
8. Force and Matter, p. 38.

Clearly, then, the "splitting" of the atom has in no way ''exploded" the teaching of materialists. Matter is as indestructible as ever, and is so acknowledged in every text book on chemistry and physics. Not even the most mystical of modern physicists can deny this. Eddington, a leading exponent of transcendental physics, emphatically states: "We have no evidence that the annihilation of matter can occur in nature." 9
9. Stars and Atoms, p. 101

The whole plea for a metaphysical "physics" rests on the erroneous idea that since we cannot predict certain activities far down in the atom, materialism is ruled out. Our inability to register all movements in the sub-atomic world merely means that our implements of detection have not yet been brought to a proper state of precision. We are here dealing with rarefied forms of matter or infinitely small particles, whose complicated motions are beyond the range of our most sensitive instruments. We are facing a world of infinitesimal particles, moving about at terrific speeds and in variable orbits. How small these individual parts are may be visualized from the fact that the hydrogen atom alone weighs only 1.662x10-24 grammes, while the nucleus itself has a diameter of only a millionth of a millionth of an inch.

So far as the parts that make up the "split" atom are concerned, we know that they are material, the central portion, or nucleus bearing a positive charge of electricity, the electron (or electrons) bearing a negative charge. What their patterns or configurations are no one knows. "Neither you nor I", says Jeans, 10 "have any direct experience of either electrons or protons, and no one has so far any inkling of what they are really like." We can visualize their appearance and arrangement only by what occurs or by observing the behavior of the atom.
10. The Universe Around Us, p. 133.

Here lies an Elysian field far the metaphysician and the mystic and a crop of falsehoods. Matter, says the mystic, is becoming more "unpredictable", more "ghostly", more "uncertain", more "unreal", as we delve into its interior. Which is sheer rubbish.

The Heisenberg experiments are frequently cited as damaging to materialism since they are supposed to show there is no stability underlying the physical universe. We cannot depend on what the electrons will do next. This is ludicrous enough. If Heisenberg has knocked "predictability" out of the realm of microcosmic phenomena, he hasn't bothered our laboratory technicians. Real physicists today smile at our sub-atomic mystics and religious ghost chasers. In spite of highly complicated movements within the atom itself, steel girders still stick together, the Empire State Building is where it was before, and you can lease an office in the structure without fearing that it will disappear when your hack is turned. "Predictability" in physics and chemistry is a safe procedure for those who do not follow the rainbow chasers of "modern physics". Matter is still with us, regardless of the grasshopper antics and hopping around of tiny electrons. And it stays put. I myself own a chip of an Egyptian obelisk which is thirty-five centuries old. In spite of its "unpredictable" sub-atomic movements, I predict it will remain a piece of granite for ages to come.

At the World's Fair, General Electric generates 10,000,000 volts of electricity in its exhibit of artificial lightning. "Predictability" in every sense of the word! The charge is under complete control and is child's play in the hands of the operator. Here is physics for you, and no one is disturbed over Heisenberg's headaches as to what may happen next far down in the atom. All physics of a genuine character is based on "predictions" of what matter will do.

As Joseph McCabe wrote me not long ago, "there has been far too much nonsense written about a new physics and new astronomy favoring religion". I quite agree with him, and I lay the blame primarily on the muddlers of science who play up to the religious phantasies of popular credulity.

He who talks of art, and music, and other beautiful things of life as transcending the world of matter forgets that they are grounded in the very matter he affects to despise, and that even a rainbow is as physical as a bar of iron. A great drama, a wonderful painting, a superb statue cause reactions in the human organism as physical or materialistic as the drop of a hammer on our toes. "No one can doubt,"' says Bertrand Russell 11 "that the causes of our emotions when we read Shakespeare or hear Bach are purely physical. Thus we cannot escape the universality of physical causation."
11. The Analysis of Matter.

"Modern physics", writes Jacques Loeb,12 "is mechanistic." And he adds: "Since no discontinuity exists between the matter constituting living and nonliving bodies, biology must also be mechanistic." We must face the fact that all that is, is matter in motion.
12. Mechanistic Science and Metaphysical Romance (Yale Review.)

Real physics today has done something more than "split" the atom. It has blasted metaphysics sky-high and annihilated the pretensions of religion. It is crass mysticism and not "crude materialism" which is committed to the ash heap by modern Science. The doctrines of the mystics are as dry and dead as dinosaur dust.