Just a couple of footnotes on the David Brooks piece, and on our religion / metaphysics threads in general.

(1) I get irritated at the way people toss around the word “materialist.” (Brooks: “In this materialist view …”) I have no idea what this means. Dictionary.com defines “materialism” as “the philosophical theory that regards matter and its motions as constituting the universe, and all phenomena, including those of mind, as due to material agencies.” The problem with that is that in our current understanding, “matter and its motions” are deeply mysterious, with radical problems of causality and measurement still subjects of debate.

The June issue of Seed magazine has a good article, not yet online, called “The Reality Tests,” about some researchers in Vienna still attempting to validate the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, as against the “hidden variables” versions that keep cropping up (Einstein, Bohm, Bell). So far Copenhagen’s holding up pretty well, which means that the world is a very weird place indeed. No offense to anyone, but I can’t help smiling when I hear people mention “the mysteries of faith.” If it’s mysteries you want, go into particle physics. The word “reality” (which, said Nabokov, should never appear without quotation marks) turns up a lot in the Seed article (though without quotes).

(2) The subject of Albert Einstein’s religious faith gets tossed around a lot. Now a letter written near the end of his life is up for auction in London. It makes plain that whatever he may have said & thought when younger, Big Al was an atheist when he left the world.