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Tag: Albert Einstein

  • Opposition unserious, very disdainful of the truth – Mohammed

    For not acknowledging the achievement of the Muhammadu Buhari Administration, the opposition in Nigeria is unserious and very disdainful of the truth, information minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said.

    Besides, Mohammed also accused the opposition of deliberately perpetually blind to the monumental achievements of this Administration.

    He spoke yesterday in Abuja at the inauguration of the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) governing council.

    The minister noted that opposition has made the practice of government perception managers very difficult with the speed at which it spew out fake news.

    He said: “It is a tough time to be a public relations practitioner. I should know. At the Annual Conference and General Meeting of the NIPR in Ilorin in April 2017, I did say that for the Government Perception Manager, whether he or she is the Minister of Information, Commissioner for Information, Spokespersons for the President or Governor or for any government agency, it is an almost impossible task these days.

    “Today, that observation is more valid than when I first made it in 2017 – especially for the Government Perception Managers. This is because we have an opposition that is unserious, very disdainful of the truth, lacks ideas and believes that being in opposition means crying wolf where there is one and spewing out fake information at the speed of light! Where is the seriousness in an opposition party throwing out a spurious figure of 10 trillion as the amount of money that has been looted under the present administration? What is Nigeria’s annual national budget?

    “How do you react to an opposition that is deliberately perpetually blind to the monumental achievements of this Administration?

    Read Also: Buhari has delivered, says Lai Mohammed

    He however noted that the current administration has recorded a number of unprecedented achievements, seen and acknowledged by Nigerians who have benefitted from them, even when opposition said they have not seen them.

    “While naysayers say they have not seen all these achievements, Nigerians who are benefitting directly from them have testified to the reality of the successes. ” he said.

    While also identifying the social media as another wedge to professionalism in the practice of public relations in the country, the minister however urged practitioners not to be tied of project ting the image of their establishment.

    He said, “I said the challenges faced daily by the perception managers have been made tougher by the Social Media, that the challenges have defied everything the practitioner may have been taught about perception management, public relations and all, and that the government spokesperson, in order to succeed, must be a Cicero, a Socrates, an Albert Einstein and a Machiavelli all rolled into one.

    “Public relations practitioners, whether working for government or not, must never be tired of projecting the image of their establishments, even when some people decide to play the blind or the spoiler. They must never be discouraged or allow themselves to be disenchanted. Yes, it is a tough job, but if they don’t do it, no one else will.”

    In his remark, Mukhtar Sirajo, President and Chairman of the governing council want public and private sectors against appointing non-professionals as spokespersons.

    “Therefore, only trained and certified public relations professionals are invited to deliver the needed quality service in this regard. Accordingly, the NIPR enabling law, which is an Act of the National Assembly, criminalizes the current practice where non-public relations professionals are appointed to discharge public relations duties in government offices and Organizations as spokespersons or communication managers,” he said.

    This Sirajo said will help check the dissemination of fake news and hate speeches.

    He also decried the idea of engaging foreign public relations firms by political parties and candidates, a practice he said could jeopardize the security and stability of the country.

    The newly elected president also hinted of NIPR’s idea of constituting the tribunal to check unwholesome activities of people practicing public relations.

  • Albert Einstein, science and religioin

    There are so many enriching, stimulating ennobling and enlightening thoughts on diverse aspects of life – human rights, education, friendship, freedom, morality, politics, science etc. – in Albert Einstein’s collection of essays simply titled ‘Ideas and Opinions’. We have, however, chosen to focus today on the great scientist’s views as regards religion, morality, God and the relationship of these phenomena to the scientific vocation and imagination. Einstein’s essays which will inform the reflections in this piece are: ‘Religion and Science’; ‘The religious Spirit of Science’ and ‘Religion and Science Irreconcilable?’

    Some of the keenest intellects and most outstanding personalities of our time – scientific and non-scientific – have dismissed religion as utterly pre-scientific and mythical. In the same vein, they have derided the idea of God as a veritable illusion. Here in Nigeria, for instance, the late engineering genius, Professor AyodeleAwojobi, was a professed agnostic. He said he had no evidence to prove the existence or otherwise of God. The late Dr. Tai Solarin and BekoRansomeKuti were also lifelong atheists who denied belief in the existence of the supernatural. Yet, the trio were veritable moral exemplars and fighters for truth and justice whose lives showed that there is no necessarily ineluctable nexus between religious belief and a moral outlook on life.

    The British mathematician, philosopher and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950, Professor Bertrand Russell was also a professed atheist throughout his long life. I remember poring for hours over his treatise titled ‘One hundred reasons why I am not a Christian’ at the central library of the University of Ibadan as a student. A contemporary scientist who is a passionate advocate of atheism is Professor Richard Dawkins, is the English ethnologist and evolutionary biologist, whose explosive book, ‘The God Delusion’, published in 2006 has sold millions of copies around the world. He contends in the highly controversial and polemical book that the whole idea of God’s existence is a delusion and that religious belief is difficult to distinguish from some form of insanity. On a personal note, I find it difficult to believe that such a complex, intricate and well-ordered world like ours could have come into existence simply by chance or that creation can exist without a creator. Would it not be ridiculous if somebody claimed that Professor Dawkin’s book simply sprang to life by chance without an author that conceived, designed and wrote it? But then, mine is no scientific mind and my seeming ignorance may thus be permitted.

    Now, there are important points of convergence as well as fundamental divergences between Richard Dawkins and Albert Einstein’s conceptions of God, religion and morality. Like Dawkins, Einstein does not believe in what the former describes as an “interventionist, miracle-working, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible”. Both men denounce the idea that there is a supernatural and personal God who interferes with the affairs of men and the universe. Another point on which both men are agreed in my view is their belief that there is no logically necessary relationship between religion and morality; that man does not need religion in order to be good. As Einstein puts it “A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs, no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death”. This observation reminds us of the Sufi Muslim poet who wrote: “O Lord, if I worship thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell; If I worship thee in hope of heaven, deny me of heaven; But if I worship thee for thy own sake, withhold not thy beauty everlasting”.

    However, unlike Dawkins who mercilessly deprecates religion and launches a most vicious and virulent attack on the notion of God, Einstein demonstrates a greater respect and understanding of the role of religion in promoting the good and welfare of humanity. According to him, “For the moral attitudes of a people that are supported by religion need always aim at preserving and promoting the sanity and vitality of the community and its individuals, since otherwise this community is bound to perish. A people that were to honour falsehood, defamation, fraud, and murder would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long”. Yet, he also laments the wide gulf between the lofty claims and ideals of religion and the actual lived experience of humanity. In his words “For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one’s fellow men”.

    Einstein traces the evolution of religion from beliefs based on fear of the supernatural that characterized primitive human society to the social and moral conception of religion and a God who, protects rewards and punishes a human species that he loves and cherishes. This he says is found in Judeo-Christian religion as well as the religions of the peoples of the Orient. For him, however, the highest conception of religion is what he describes as the Cosmic Religious feeling – which he obviously favours personally. This Cosmic religion, he claims, is borne of “the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought”. Continuing, he avers that “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views”. In other words, despite his lack of belief in a personal God who intervenes in human affairs, Einstein cannot believe that such a well ordered world as ours could exist without a designer.

    For Einstein, then, science is not necessarily a substitute for religion. He believes that both phenomena serve qualitatively different ends. Science provides man with the knowledge of what is; how various parts of an observable physical universe relate to each other but it cannot dictate “what should be the goal of human aspirations”. He argues that our fundamental ends, aspirations and purposes as human beings cannot be determined by scientific demonstrations, “but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly”.

  • 112-year-old Japanese certified as world’s oldest living man

    Guinness World Records on Tuesday recognised Masazo Nonaka, a 112-year-old Japanese national, as the world’s oldest living man.

    Nonaka, who lives in a family-run hot spring inn on the northern island of Hokkaido, received a certificate from Erika Ogawa, vice president for Japan at the record-keeping organization.

    The former inn owner in the town of Ashoro now likes to spend time with his family and also reads newspapers, watches TV and indulges in sweets, according to Guinness.

    Nonaka was born on July 25, 1905, just months before Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity. In 1931, Nonaka married Hatsuno and went on to have five children with her.

    Nonaka has seven brothers and one sister, who live nearby in the town.

    He was certified as the world’s oldest man after Francisco Nunez Olivera in Spain died in January at the age of 113.

    “Mr Nonaka’s achievement is remarkable – he can teach us all an important lesson about the value of life and how to stretch the limits of human longevity,” said Craig Clenday, Guinness World Records’ editor-in-chief.

    The world’s oldest living person is Nabi Tajima, a 117-year-old resident of the southern Japanese prefecture of Kagoshima, according to the U.S.-based Gerontology Research Group.

    She was born on Aug. 4, 1900.

    NAN

  • Wake up Nigerian Youths

    Wake up Nigerian Youths

    According to Albert Einstein “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”. Unfortunately, that’s what we are doing. We made ourselves grumps that fail to give solutions.

    I believe it is utterly due that we bring a significant portion of the youths of Nigeria to the sad reality that they are guilty with lack of depth and originality; their level of thinking is pedestrian (no offence).

    They have remained at the aboriginal state of being – the same with their progenitors.

    The primary responsibility of Universities, Polytechnics and other institutions of higher learning is to shape and mould their products (students) such that they stand out in the originality of their ideas.

    Considering a few reputable international institutions of higher learning like Alexandria University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ), we can see a consistent pattern in the way their products leave indelible prints on the social, economic and political pedestals of the world.

    However, due to issues of mismanagement, corruption and lackluster, especially amongst the tertiary institution’s management, they continue to reproduce half-baked and almost no competence graduates into the labour market.

    Apart from the grotesque incompetence amongst the leaders in our nation, it is even more heartbreaking to know that the youths can hardly see beyond now; they seem to be infected with a myopic syndrome (shortsightedness) of vision…unable to see beyond today.

    Globally, youths are breaking new grounds in medicine, technology, philosophy, mathematic and other significant field. On the contrary, a large number of our youths have become huge liabilities and disappointments.

    There is hardly a country in the world where people love, celebrate and idolise their oppressors like Nigeria. We think we change governments but all we do is replace one oppressor with another.

    Bearing in mind that we spend at least four (4) years in tertiary institutions, coupled with strike, yet, we are not fully accepted by the society to be competent and experienced enough to wield the wand of power.

    The youngest person in the cabinet of this present government is 48 while the oldest is 68.

    It is pertinent that we are reminded of our past leaders who lived a life of impact. Among them are the likes of Mt Mbu who became Foreign Affairs Minister at 23 and the first Nigeria chief Representative in USA, Washington Dc between 1959-1960. Also, Pat Utomi became a Federal Adviser at 27.

    Presently, this age bracket as it stands today are no longer qualified to even be leaders of youth wings of Political parties; this age bracket is barred from aspiring certain Political offices.

    The sad reality is that many youths within the above age brackets are still writing the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board ( JAMB ), West African Examination Council ( WAEC ), National Examinations Council ( NECO ) etc.

    A bright future is not some event we fold our hands and expect to happen, but one that we are actively involved in its unfolding.

    While other youths are carrying the destinies of their nations, we are busy in the “busyness” of carrying the bags of politicians.

    To further drive home my point, in 2012, 19-year-old Proscovia Alengot Oromait was elected as a member of parliament. Now 24 years old, she is the youngest person ever elected to office in not only Uganda but the entire African continent.

    The future will come regardless of what we do or don’t do; but how the future will come is totally dependent on what we do or don’t do.

  • Scientists detect gravitational waves for third time in history

    Scientists detect gravitational waves for third time in history

    Scientists have for the third time, detected gravitational waves, ripples in space and time, demonstrating that a new window in astronomy has been firmly opened.

    David Shoemaker, Spokesman for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, said the waves were picked up by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) on Jan. 4.

    The research result showed that they were generated when two black holes collided to form a larger black hole billions of light-years away from the earth, as was the case with the first two detections.

    Shoemaker noted in the research result that “we have further confirmation of the existence of stellar-mass black holes that are larger than 20 solar masses.

    “These are objects we didn’t know existed before LIGO detected them.

    “It is remarkable that humans can put together a story, and test it, for such strange and extreme events that took place billions of years ago and billions of light-years distant from us.”

    According to Laura Cadonati, the Deputy Spokesperson, it looks like Einstein was right even for this new event, which is about two times farther away than our first detection.

    Gravitation waves were predicted by Albert Einstein over a century ago and were detected for the first time in September 2015.

  • Demystifying securities investment management

    Demystifying securities investment management

    Albert Einstein, famous for his Special Relativity  Theory which in some way changed the world, at least from the perspective of physics, was also a firm  proponent of social justice and responsibility. But he was also something of a philosopher. Some of his thoughts reflect the reality of life. For instance, he is quoted as saying: “ Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I am not sure about the universe.”

    But my favourite Einstein quote is that which states” “ A ship is always safe at the shore – but that is NOT what it is built for.” That succinctly summarises the fact that we cannot run away from taking risks, because life itself is about taking risks.

    I will take a deliberate risk by starting this review in violation of our natural reading order.  Towards the end of  Eghosa Imade’s book, Security Investment Management, there is an illustration that has become universally familiar.  Inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Auguste Rodin’s bronze sculpture of a nude figure sitting on a rock with his chin on one hand as though in deep thought, is referred to as “The Thinker”.

    Since its public appearance in 1904, it has been cast in multiple versions around the world and has become a fitting image that represents philosophy. But then our concern here is about finance, economy and possibly accounting. Accounting, for me, suggests accountability, something we do not seem to truly bother about in this country and that has led to a lot of our deficiencies that have become the Nigerian disease. But more on this later.

    The progress of a society inevitably manifest through the quality of thinking that is encouraged. It does not matter the quantity of resources available to that society as long as the capacity to utilize those potentials are not harnessed. In a sense this encapsulates the Nigerian situation. A country bursting with enormous human and natural resources, that it used to be referred to as the “Giant of Africa”. A potential it has woefully failed to fulfill.

    That appellation was not just a reference to its geographical, but essentially to its large population and economy. The preface of Imade’s book  is a telling commentary on the relationship between population and economy, two important development indices. It is also, unfortunately, a sad commentary on Nigeria.

    For instance, he notes that: “Sorely structured as an import-dependent economy, the volume of trade economic activity by Nigeria is built around a sole natural resource: crude oil. Worse, with dysfunctional refineries at home, even the critical value-added jobs are also shipped abroad, thereby docking the economy of the competitiveness that should naturally be hers, were the consummable petroleum products processed by our citizens here, giving the nation some leverage to improve its balance of payment profile. That mirrors our crass dependency on other economies for such a pivotal commodity with overarching tendencies on the national economy and security. Precisely because we export jobs overseas, our GDP, indeed our national income, is grossly trimmed by the avoidable huge import bill.”

    Imade further adds: “ Therefore our exchange rate is blighted by the vagaries associated with the commodity in the international market. Which is why the economy is afflicted by the Dutch disease; a situation whereby a nation’s foreign reserve grows for exogeneous reasons and not because of the value adding activities of its citizens. The egregious and widespread poverty, unemployment, privation, destitution  and misery poignantly underscore this point.”

    Indeed just as there is a Dutch disease, we must frankly admit that there is a Nigerian disease, which the last part of the aforementioned quote hints at. We must  not be lulled into not doing the needfulls, a reality check and taking pragmatic steps however risky they may be. Much better than being stuck in the harbour of our failure.

    The current rebasing euphoria only restates the familiar anthem of potentials. Nigeria will always have economic possibilities. The challenge is to go beyond the possibilities and make them into practical economic realities. We do not even have to radically think out of the box, so to speak, because the lessons of history all over the world provide solutions applicable to our own situation. It just requires taking the appropriate ones.

    First step is accepting that we have a problem. Second is making the right diagnosis.  For instance Imade notes: “ The fallacy of financialism and the specious outlook of a strong economy  fly in the face of an uncompetitive and wobbly manufacturing sector, a small clique of ingratiating businessmen , spoilt with patronage by their cronies holding evanescent state power; a condition that accentuates the lopsideness of wealth and income distribution in the country.”

    Nigeria at this point needs a leadership that has the corrective will. A leadership that is willing to take risks in properly and actively diversifying the economy, and not docking the economy with manipulative tendencies that amount to wating time  and resources, while we remain stuck in this pitiful harbour.

    What Imade’s highly technical book offers, for instance, to borrow his own phrase, is a means of economic wellness through the capital market. That can only be possible when we have a proper understanding of what it entails, especially in the area of Securities Investment Management.

    The book started life as a Masters thesis, as Imade himself admits, and benefits from a rigourous study of relevant texts providing a formidable cornerstone. Clearly, the work has also benefitted from the author’s vast experience as an accountant, financial educator and public commentator. Therefor what is on offer is a treasure trove  that will dispel fears about financial investment management. It will help those willing “to seek better and more profitable ways of harvesting a fair return” without taking unnecessary risks. This detailed exploration of investment management in almost 240 pages is commendable. It shows us , apart from the technicalities, that there are peculiar risks with well documented examples. This therefore gives us the power of relevant  knowledge to circumnavigate the potential minefields as we steer out of the harbour.

    We can call this work a homegrown solution and it is fittingly so. Imade shows, through this work, the can do spirit of the Nigerian especially if he is given the enabling environment. Our dependency penchant can be reversed if we truly wish to change by boldly taking risks. We can have our own Einsteins and Rodins who can make impactful contributions not only in Nigeria, but also beyond. Eghosa Imade, take  a well-deserved bow.

  • ‘We need paradigm shift in Oyo politics’

    ‘We need paradigm shift in Oyo politics’

    In this piece, a member of a partisan group, ‘Oyo Renaissance’, Ayo Akande, contends that Oyo State is ripe for a paradigm shift in participatory governance.

    As Albert Einstein considered the imperative of change, he made the popular statement that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That statement, made decades ago by the renowned scientist, still holds true today.

    As the 2015 general elections draw near, this saying should tug at the heart-strings of the people of Oyo State. It should nudge them to wake up from their individual and collective slumber, a slumber so deep that their state, once-so-greatthat it was called the Pacesetter State, is now anything but great.

    Oyo, our common heritage, had begun that journey to greatness, until its course was altered. Altered by its people and their leaders; altered by not-well-thought-out decisions to place it in the hands of leaders with parochial tendencies and without direction.

    Oyo State has had its fair share of disappointments. It is either those at the helm of affairs are too clueless to recognise the people’s plight, too arrogant to understand the suffering of the common man or too selfish to render genuine service.

    We have even seen many who falsely professAwoism, pretending to be apostles of the immortal Obafemi Awolowo’s ideals.Once they win elections, Awo’s ideals are the last things ever found in them and they brazenly advertise a total lack of the servant-leadership spirit of the sage.

    Under the guidance of the most unsuitable captains of the ship, Oyo State has continued its nosedive and it is only a matter of time before it hits the rock bottom. But, as the saying goes, omoonilu o nifekotu (a prince cannot have pleasure in the dispersal of his father’s kingdom), we in the Oyo Renaissance Group can no longer siddon look. Afterall,‘Ajise bi oyolaari.’

    As the 2015 governorship election approaches, these politicians, across different political parties, have again decided to take Oyo State people for another ride. The same set of people who had fooled the people before with sweet electioneering promises that have gone unfulfilled are angling again to get the people’s votes.

    Of course, to them, the people of Oyo State are always there to be deceived every election year. They come in different to gas and present themselves as interested in the common progress of Oyo State, but we know their fruits, and by their fruits Oyo State people must know them. The people of Oyo State are no fools and are better prepared now.

    The experience of‘Idera’under Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja was stagnation wrapped in docility. ‘Oyato’ was nothing more than brigandage.

    They even celebrate payment of salaries and irregular pensions as if governors are elected to come and pay salaries. Salary is a statutory  right; it is only in the land of the fools among disillusioned workers that such becomes a bargaining factor for  the votes of the civil servants and the populace. But, for how long more can the people continue to live with this visionless-ness?

    Though we do not believe in the widely-held assertion that Oyo State cannot elect someone twice as governor, the efforts of former governor who are now seeking the support of our people, are disappointing. As the words go around, Ladoja and Alao-Akala might be seeking after nothing but vendetta and vain-glory.

    If what they understand governance to mean is to defend a wife’s interests at all costs, just bear the title of  governor, throw parties, run the state as a private business, receive instructions from women-friends, marry more wives across nations, wearAnkara fabrics in a show of fake populismor, while they claim Ajumose, they turn the state into a personal estate, then the people of Oyo State should declare the duo of  Rashidi Ladoja and Adebayo Akala unfit for any elective office in 2015. They should also ignore their cronies in whatever guise they may come.

    For those who believed that Akala’semergence as governor was accidental because he is a ‘non-Ibadan’, Oyo state is one and is beyond such divisive opinion. Justice and equity, of course, demand that all zones in the state have good personages who can and must be governor. Besides, Ibadan is a cosmopolitan city that is largely populated by so-called non-indigenes. It is not a taboo, therefore, for non-Ibadan zones to produce a governor in their own state,afterall, no one becomes the governor without the good support of all the zones in Oyo State. Oyo should be more forward-looking and realistic to put behind every primordial sentiment andthe people should search and vote for competence that can bring about arenaissance.

    We in the Oyo Renaissance Group believe the right time for change is now. Oyo State needs truly visionary leaders, who will serve them and their interests and not impostors and vain rulers. Governance of Oyo state is beyond a display of riches, and it should be structured beyond emergency interventions to bait the electorate. It’s about servant leadership and sustenabilitythat will reposition the state. We must judge right and vote right by voting for true leaders with the love of the people at heart.

    It will be disastrous to rely on the inept experience of governance which some of the aspirants parade to take Oyo on the plane of development. Care must also be taken with any ambitious but dubious generational shift.

    The people of Oyo State  must play the political game better by saying enough to deceit and injustice.

     

     

     

     

  • The mind of Albert Einstein (2)

    As we noted last week, there are so many enriching, stimulating, ennobling and enlightening thoughts on diverse aspects of life – human rights, education, friendship, freedom, morality, politics, science etc. – in Albert Einstein’s collection of essays simply titled ‘Ideas and Opinions’. We have, however, chosen to focus today on the great scientist’s views as regards religion, morality, God and the relationship of these phenomena to the scientific vocation and imagination. Einstein’s essays which will inform the reflections in this piece are: ‘Religion and Science’; ‘The religious Spirit of Science’ and ‘Religion and Science Irreconcilable?’

    Some of the keenest intellects and most outstanding personalities of our time – scientific and non-scientific – have dismissed religion as utterly pre-scientific and mythical. In the same vein, they have derided the idea of God as a veritable illusion. Here in Nigeria, for instance, the late engineering genius, Professor Ayodele Awojobi, was a professed agnostic. He said he had no evidence to prove the existence or otherwise of God. The late Dr. Tai Solarin and Beko Ransome Kuti were also lifelong atheists who denied belief in the existence of the supernatural. Yet, the trio were veritable moral exemplars and fighters for truth and justice whose lives showed that there is no necessarily ineluctable nexus between religious belief and a moral outlook on life.

    The British mathematician, philosopher and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950, Professor Bertrand Russell was also a professed atheist throughout his long life. I remember poring for hours over his treatise titled ‘One hundred reasons why I am not a Christian’ at the central library of the University of Ibadan as a student. A contemporary scientist who is a passionate advocate of atheism is Professor Richard Dawkins, the English ethnologist and evolutionary biologist, whose explosive book, ‘The God Delusion’, published in 2006, has sold millions of copies around the world. He contends in the highly controversial and polemical book that the whole idea of God’s existence is a delusion and that religious belief is difficult to distinguish from some form of insanity. On a personal note, I find it difficult to believe that such a complex, intricate and well-ordered world like ours could have come into existence simply by chance or that creation can exist without a creator. Would it not be ridiculous if somebody claimed that Professor Dawkin’s book simply sprang to life by chance without an author that conceived, designed and wrote it? But then, mine is no scientific mind and my seeming ignorance may thus be permitted.

    Now, there are important points of convergence as well as fundamental divergences between Richard Dawkins and Albert Einstein’s conceptions of God, religion and morality. Like Dawkins, Einstein does not believe in what the former describes as an “interventionist, miracle-working, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible”. Both men denounce the idea that there is a supernatural and personal God who interferes with the affairs of men and the universe. Another point on which both men are agreed in my view is their belief that there is no logically necessary relationship between religion and morality; that man does not need religion in order to be good. As Einstein puts it “A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs, no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death”. This observation reminds us of the Sufi Muslim poet who wrote: “O Lord, if I worship thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell; If I worship thee in hope of heaven, deny me of heaven; But if I worship thee for thy own sake, withhold not thy beauty everlasting”.

    However, unlike Dawkins who mercilessly deprecates religion and launches a most vicious and virulent attack on the notion of God, Einstein demonstrates a greater respect and understanding of the role of religion in promoting the good and welfare of humanity. According to him, “For the moral attitudes of a people that is supported by religion need always aim at preserving and promoting the sanity and vitality of the community and its individuals, since otherwise this community is bound to perish. A people that were to honour falsehood, defamation, fraud, and murder would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long”. Yet, he also laments the wide gulf between the lofty claims and ideals of religion and the actual lived experience of humanity. In his words “For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one’s fellow men”. Does the Boko Haram menace and other forms of religious intolerance and violence not come to mind here?

    Einstein traces the evolution of religion from beliefs based on fear of the supernatural that characterized primitive human society to the social and moral conception of religion and a God who, protects rewards and punishes a human species that he loves and cherishes. The latter he says is found in Judeo-Christian religion as well as the religions of the peoples of the Orient. For him, however, the highest conception of religion is what he describes as the Cosmic Religious feeling – which he obviously favours personally. This Cosmic religion, he claims, is borne of “the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought”. Continuing, he avers that “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views”. In other words, my understanding is that despite his lack of belief in a personal God who intervenes in human affairs, Einstein cannot believe that such a well ordered world as ours could exist without a designer.

    For Einstein, then, science is not necessarily a substitute for religion. He believes that both phenomena serve qualitatively different ends. Science provides man with the knowledge of what is; how various parts of an observable physical universe relate to each other but it cannot dictate “what should be the goal of human aspirations”. He argues that our fundamental ends, aspirations and purposes as human beings cannot be determined by scientific demonstrations, “but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly”.

  • Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and socialism

    They are two of the most towering intellects of our contemporary age. They are both Germans. One is a foremost physical scientist, the other a path-breaking social scientist. At the turn of the century in Y2000, they were adjudged the most influential intellects of the last millennium. I refer to Karl Marx and Albert Einstein. In an opinion poll conducted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2000, Einstein emerged as the pre-eminent intellectual of the millennium with Marx coming a close second. Yet, they belonged to two different worlds. Karl Marx demonstrated unprecedented insight into the inner workings and internal contradictions of capitalism while Einstein is noted for his revolutionary scientific findings on the nature and evolution of the universe. Karl Marx lived from 1818 to 1883 and Einstein from 1879 to 1955. In Y2000, I personally cast my lot with Marx as man of the century. His scholarship had cast a shadow on virtually every sphere of knowledge in our student days. Little did I know that there was a significant confluence between the thoughts of Marx and Einstein on the contentious of socialism.

    Einstein developed the general theory of relativity that won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. Karl Marx was a first class philosopher, sociologist, economist and revolutionary intellectual. Yet, both thinkers were of kindred sociological and ideological affinity. I refer here to a unique article by Einstein in the very first edition of the ‘Monthly Review’, a Marxist magazine published in May 1949. By the way, Monthly Review, a unique magazine that has been associated over time with such great Marxist thinkers as Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Leo Huberman, Harry Magdoff and Samir Amin to name a few, is still being published today. It analyses politics, society and economy from a radical Marxist perspective even if is not doctrinaire in its approach to ideology. This magazine, which can be accessed free of charge online, is surely not where one would expect to find an article by Albert Einstein. But the great physicist’s article in its maiden edition is titled ‘Why Socialism?’, it is an article in which Einstein undertakes a penetrating critique of capitalism, which even at that time was in the throes of another of the cyclical crises that have become a permanent feature of this mode of production and makes a compelling case for a planned, socialist economy. Given the current crisis in which capitalism is embroiled worldwide, the views of Einstein in this article are still of abiding relevance.

    Since he is a natural and not a social scientist, Einstein begins by asking if it is “advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism”. In other words, should economic issues be left strictly to economists who supposedly have the requisite scientific and technocratic knowledge to tackle such issues? Einstein’s answer after examining the character of economics as a scientific discipline and the inability of science to determine ethical ends like socialim is that “we should be on guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society”.

    Having settled this issue, Einstein goes on to examine the biological and social nature of man and the implication of these for the organization of society. In opposition to the assumptions of neo-classical economics that society comprises isolated, atomistic individuals each pursuing his or her selfish interest and that an invisible hand will magically regulate the free market in the collective interest, Einstein contends that the society is superior to the individual as the latter can only exist within the context of the former. In his words, “The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society – in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence – that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labour and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society”.

    Implicit in this perception of the relation between the individual and society is Einstein’s opposition to the excessive individualism characteristic of capitalism. Thus, he laments that “Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. Denouncing the ‘economic anarchy’ of capitalist society, Einstein contends that “The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depression. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labour and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before”.

    In the light of the collapse of communism and the world wide triumph of neo-liberalism, is Einstein’s advocacy for a planned, socialist not now anachronistic? Surely not. In the first place, capitalism itself remains severely in crisis plunging millions across the world into poverty and misery despite the ever increasing affluence of a tiny minority. With the technological attainments of humanity, the level of global poverty is inexcusable. Even more interestingly, Einstein with remarkable prescience had as far back as 1949 identified the problems that would confront any effort to build a socialist society and these were the very factors largely responsible for the ultimate collapse of the communist bloc decades later. In his words, “The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy assured?” The inability of the communist states to successfully solve these problems is responsible for the current global triumph of capitalism.