Too much of information, but not too much of wisdom!

Today I saw an interesting interview with Ralph Nader, among other things, a lawyer, a political activist, and an independent candidate in the American presidential campaign. In the interview, Nader questions that, with the outcome and development of internet, people are overwhelmed with tons of information and do not have enough time to process it into wisdom. 

Nader continues and explains what is the chain used to process senseless bits of information to a more deeper understanding of the world: 

                Information -> Knowledge -> Judgment -> Experience -> Wisdom.

First, one must know what is the information, that would be knowledge. Then with this knowledge one must think critically about it, that is, judge the knowledge, and then, base his/her actions on this judgement leading to experience. Finally, only after he/she has experimented and seen the outcomes of his/her actions, he/she transforms pieces of information into wisdom. 

Engineers vs Logicians

This past week I was attending a summer school about software verification, called VTSA, in Saarbruecken. There were many interesting lectures and I could learn much about model checkers and SAT solvers, giving me very good impression of the event.

From a more proof-theoretic and automated deduction perspective, it was interesting to see what is researched in model checking and in SAT solvers. They seem to do more engineering oriented research, trying to have good implementations and algorithms to overcome the state space explosion when modeling always more complicated softwares; while we try to work more in expressiveness of the logic and postpone, as much as possible, to implement specific algorithms that can handle some specific cases. So there is a contrasting approach in the communities: the theorem proving employes more logicians, while the model checking community employes more engineers.

However, I was very impressed on how far the engineers/model checkers/SAT solvers can go by "hacking" logic to be efficient. They seem to have many more applications cases than the automated theorem proving community, and seem to attract more and more the attention of industries. The negative aspect is that the size of software models seems to be growing much faster than the computational power of computers, what implies that more "hacks" would be necessary to obtain efficient implementations, and with these "hacks" more mysterious these systems would be. Moreover, the properties that we would like to be proved also tend to be more expressive, and hence may not be possible to check them by using model checkers at all. Therefore, I believe that in the future there will be an increasing demand for theorem provers, and to meet this demand, we must research more logic. This does not mean, however, that model checkers will not be used any longer. I believe that for simple properties, model checkers will continue to be used in larger scale, as proving with model checkers is in general easier than with theorem provers.

Modern Person?

Recently, Andrea brought to my attention a very curious way of Indians classifying a person as a modern person, what is not at all common in the western world. For an Indian, modern people are those that do not wear traditional Indian clothes, and that are more flexible towards traditions, such as dating or flerting, enjoying the nightlife, and other more "western" habits. As Indian society has not yet freed itself from religious/traditional habits, specially those traditions related to relationships before marriage and women suffrage, this classification is normal in India, but long forgotten in western cultures, where these movements happened one or two generations ago. That was indeed a very curious observation of cultural differences affecting language.

Working Holidays? Why work?

In the past three weeks, I was traveling through Australia, passing from Sydney, Alice Springs, in the center, and Cairns, to the east coast. As I was traveling alone, I prefered to stay in hostels, where is easier to meet people and enjoy more my stay. I met people from several nationalities, Germans, lots of them, French, Dutch, etc. What surprised me the most is that they are not ordinary backpackers, as those that we see in Europe and travel around for maybe 1-2 months. They were the so called Holiday-Workers, people that obtain a special visa and that are allowed to work, usually in blue collar jobs, and stay in Australia for longer periods, visiting the country. Though the idea seems interesting, I still did not understand why is this a good option, compared to the alternative of working in Europe and only then coming to Australia for a shorter period.

Each time I met one of these working-holiday students, I would ask why they do not just come for a short period, only for vacations. I obtained different answers: some would say that they come for the culture experience, what is not very convincing, since the Australian culture is not that different from the European and, moreover, with the jobs they do and the places they stay, they meet more Europeans than Australians; others said that they came here to save money for passing their universities later. What is also not very satisfying, since the living cost in Australia, specially the hostel rates, are very high, and I really doubt that the get some money out of this trip, when considering that they have to pay an expensive flight ticket.

I think the real reason for them to come here in hoards is a more basic one: independence. These holiday-workers are students that just finished their high school and are eager for "freedom" from their parents. They are constantly partying and getting wasted. What brings me to my point. Why work in Australia? Isn't it better to work in Europe and make short holidays there itself?

Achieving Perfection

This week, me and Andrea were at Barcelona, visiting the town for a week and what impressed me the most was the Casa Batllo, a house designed by the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. In my trips through Europe and elsewhere, I've seen several beautiful momuments and buildings, but this house had something more, it was not only beautiful, but also practical. All ornaments had not only its place in the house's sea world theme, but also its function in mainting either the rooms and halls illuminated, ventilated or something else.

This is exactly what research is all about: finding beautiful symmetries in theories that are also useful in, say, computer science. A theory that is only beautiful lacks the same as a theory that is useful but ugly. Gaudi, indeed, achieved perfection in his research field.

It is a matter of respect!

One does not need to search too far to find stupidity and foolishness out there. I've already given some examples in previous posts such as religion and extreme nationalism, but many more can be found in the same category: obedience to any authority, like to the state, to your boss and even to your parents. All of these examples have a common factor: respect. For example, people respect their priest, without even questioning if the respect is truly deserved.

Deserved. That is the key word, when I think about respect. To obtain my respect, one must deserve it, by demonstrating that he/she has noble thoughts and more importantly that he/she acts accordingly to those thoughts. There is no such thing as respect your boss, or respect your priest, or respect your parents, or respect the elder, etc. This is simply brainwashing, as in religion, or, as brilliantly put by Baltasar Gracian in his book: The art of prudence; people are just being prudent. For example, it is probably most of the cases that a soldier shows "respect" to his/her superior, so that he/she does not suffer any consequences such as punishments, or maybe having his/her career progression blocked.

In any of these cases, namely of brainwashing or of prudence, the respect given is not really a truely deserved respect. In the former case, brainwashing a person to respect something or someone is not really making him/her to think that respect derives from a logical reasoning of the merits of the respected person or object, but only from an almost dogmatic perspective. In the latter case, respect derives not necessarily from merit of the respected, but from the utilitarism of the one that respects. So the next time someone tells you to respect someone else, ask him why should you do so.

Paris for the Parisiens?

The past week, I received a visit from a very good Brazilian friend and as it was his first time in Paris, we did the whole Eiffel Tower, Champs Elyssee, Saint Michel, etc tourism. One of his comments that I found interesting was that the people he was seeing in the metro and other public places did not look very French. I immediately responded that he is completely right because the Parisiens are long far away for their holidays.

Most of the world knows Paris and would like to visit or live in Paris: La ville de l'amour! However, now that summer began and with that the student holidays, Parisiens are all away, leaving the hordes of tourist behind. Because of this invasion of tourists, Paris does not feel to be empty at all. The metro system is fuller than ever, as well as the streets and squares. I guess this is normal for touristic cities, such as Rome, Paris, London, etc.

This is very curious for a Brazilian because for vacations we usually go to the beach, leaving our cities completely empty. Furthermore, the people that are in the costal cities do not go to other cities but just overcrowd even more the restaurants and bars near the shore. So it is very seldom that a Brazilian city is full of people that do not live there.

The Orange Machine is showing how to do it

These pasts weeks, I've been following the European Football Cup, and after watching almost all games, up to now, the Dutch team really seems to be the one taking the cup this year.

I always liked the Dutch team, as they say it is the European team that resembles the most with the Brazilian style of playing the game. However, they were always eliminated, most of the time not even reaching the final. But now, after beating Italy and France by big margins, I think it has come time to make justice and give the cup to them.

Well, football is not basketball and not always the best team wins, or as we say in Brazil: football is like a surprise box. So it might be too early to put all my money on the table, but from now on I am cheering for them.

German Nationalism is Back

Before the last world cup, held in Germany, it was always a taboo for a German to show his nationalism, as this was considered almost as a Nazi tradition. For instance, when I arrived in Dresden three years ago, it was easier to find a person wearing a Brazilian shirt than a German one. However, after the football event, this taboo is surprisingly over and now because of the European championship (EC), you can see everywhere cars displaying proudly the German flags on city streets.

Though it is nice to see that this long lasting taboo is over, it still makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. There is clearly a segregation of the Turkish community in the German society. For example last Saturday when Portugal and Turkey opened the EC, it was surprising to see that most of the Germans that I saw were supporting Portugal and not Turkey. I cannot see any good reason for Germans to do so, other than their xenophobia towards the Turks. In Brazil, we usually cheer for the weaker team, or the team that is plays fair, or if there is community of that nationality living in Brazil, we support them. But this was not the case in this match, since Portugal is clearly one of the favorites for the title and as far as I know the Portuguese community in Germany in very small.

What makes me more afraid is that the Germans that were supporting for Portugal were not uneducated people, but university students. After the match, I asked some of them, why you do not cheer for your fellow Turkish? They immediately demonstrated their discrimination towards them, by saying that the Turkish community is terrible and low-class people. From where they got this idea is not very clear to me, but I could only think that in Hitler's time this was the same propaganda towards the Jews. I just hope that this uprising German nationalism is controlled by not following the examples of Germany's recent history.

Finally made it to Paris

As I mentioned before in another post, Paris is very pleasant city to do biking, but the banlieue, that is, the outskirts of Paris, is perhaps even better. I actually live in Antony, to the southern part of the banlieue near to the airport of Orly (not Charles de Gaule to the north of Paris). Nearby there is a very long and beautiful passage for bicycles that connects Paris and Massy-Palaiseau, called la coullee verte.

I usually use the coullee verte when I go by bike to Polytechnique, which is further to the south. However, it was not until today that I used this way to go to Paris. I really liked the way, though it sometimes lacks adequate signs to guide the bikers to the correct directions (I actually got the wrong track twice). The part that connects Antony and the beginning of Paris is very fun, since the landscape is nice and especially because you do not have to stop in the crossing that often. However, when you reach near Paris things begin to change. The landscape is no longer green but filled with ugly buildings and worst, you sometimes have to wait for some minutes at the crossings until the traffic lights turn green.

Besides theses inconveniences, I think the path is overall very pleasant and I leave the recommendation.

Does anyone work in May?

Because of the presence of so many holidays, May is certainly a very unusual month in Europe. For instance, we are approaching the middle of the month and until now we had three holidays from which two coincidently fell on a Thursday resulting on a total of five holidays. Counting also the weekends, people actually worked only for three days!

Not that I am complaining, but since people have their vacations now in July and August, I begin to question the saying we have in Brazil that Brazilians have too many holidays. There are definitely less than in any European country.

P.S.: In France, things get even better. Here people already have every Friday afternoon free because of their 35 hours journey. (Vive la France:)

Velib Experience

In the past year, Paris has been transformed into a biking town, what I would call the Velib phenomena. Everywhere, you can see these little bike stations from where you can grab a bike, called Velib, ride for a while and leave it any other free station. Since Paris is relatively small, with good metro system, and not having many slopes, Velib has turned out into a huge success.

Finally this past weekend, me and Andrea took the courage to rent two Velibs and for merely one Euro each, we could have it for the whole day. I should also add that we were a bit lucky with the weather; it was a sunny warm afternoon. Soon after you begin riding the bike, you can notice its strength and that it is a bit heavy, but very comfortable. I enjoyed a lot going near the Seine by bike and now that summer is coming, I think the Parisien streets will be full of them.

The awful German language

Today I read a very funny and informative text from Mark Twain discussing the bad and good aspects of the German language -- more often the bad aspects. You can find the text here.

Passau -> Paradise (?!)

This week I am staying in Passau, a city in the southeast of Germany near the border to Austria, mostly known for being the place where the three rivers: Danube, Inn and Ilz join together. Many German cities are rather small and basically survive because of universities that attract many students. Passau is not different. Everywhere you see students passing with their backpacks or riding to class. However, after some time, one can notice in Passau something very different from other student towns in Germany: for each man there are 5 girls!

Since I come from an engineering school, where the proportions are exactly the opposite, I found myself in a very unfamiliar situation: studying at the university library surrounded only by girls! At a first moment, one might think that Passau is a paradise for men. However, soon after you stay and sit in the table and hear the conversations, you can realize that this environment is too "girly"! They are constantly talking about superfluous issues, like how the girl in the next table is dressing and so on. What leads me to my second observation: Girls in Passau are very well dressed. One thing that I noticed in the streets of Munich, Koln, Dresden, and other German cities that I visited is that, differently from Paris, girls do not take much care about their appearance. I am still trying to understand why there is this different line of thought here in Passau.

Paper Accepted!

Just received this weekend the IJCAR acceptance notification with three reviews of my submission (together with Dale) about focusing and linear meta-logic. I've already commented about this paper before; the main contribution was to use the focusing theorem to encode different object logics, by just playing with the polarity of meta-level atoms.

The reviews were really good (3 accepts from 3 reviewers with high confidence). They did not point out any major problem in the paper and even pointed out some interesting directions that we already thought of tackling, for example, to obtain in a similar fashion an encoding of focused proofs, and perhaps, ultimately provide an alternative proof of the focusing theorem for linear logic. I think that is too ambitious, but I am already able to encode focused proof systems, such as LJF and LKJ, by extending the focused proof system used in the paper, to one with non-canonical exponentials. I hope that this will be my next contribution to the area.

Now, after this positive boost to my confidence, I have to start seriously to find some more deeper results.

Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

It is not that common in the scientific community to find scholars that dedicate their precious time to the advertisement of science to the general public. Perhaps the most famous examples are Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman (definitely one must read his books :) and Stephen Hawking. Dawkins and Krauss are two, say, more recent examples of this sort of scientists. I've already written a bit about Richard Dawkins, an Oxford professor of evolution. Lawrence Krauss is a physicist at Stanford University, who seems to be very active in the US.

Today I saw a very enlightening and interesting debate among them. The format of the debate was also very different since there was no moderator, so they discussed freely about anything they wanted. They discussed from the beauty of science to social impacts of scientific education. One comment that I found very interesting is that, when discussing about morality, people tend to put science in a lower level with respect to religion. However, when there is a serious problem, such as an epidemic, people forget about what they previously said and resort to scientific methods. For instance, when there was the risk of an bird flue epidemic, the same government that allowed creationism to be taught in schools, discusses about the possibility of the virus to mutate, what would allow for it to contaminate humans, but does not discuss the possibility that the virus was created to destroy us.

Crazy Weather!

One of the worst of aspects of living in Europe is the weather. Today, for example, it was snowing, even though we are officially in spring. However, the worst is not the cold, since the houses here usually have a good heating system and to go outside it is enough to protect yourself well. The rain is terrible, specially because it affects my mood; more specifically, my working mood is completely destroyed. In the three winters that I've passed in Europe, this was definitely the most annoying; it was a constant period of light and cold rain. I just do not feel in the mood to work; at least not without some chemicals such as chocolate or coffee (the Illy version of the latter is the best; thanks to Andrea :).

Today, after four doses! of coffee, I've written some pages, and for that I am glad, but I seriously hope that spring comes soon!

My first Embraer

Many do not know that the third largest airplane manufacturer is a Brazilian company named Embraer. Specially for we that graduated at ITA, Embraer has a particular importance because it was for the success that Embraer now has that our university was originally created: to build the human resources to start and populate the Brazilian aeronautics industry.

Although I met with several people that work at Embraer, it was not until last Monday, that I was able to enter an Embraer airplane, more specifically the Air France ERJ 145 with capacity for 50 passengers. My impression of the plane was really good. Though it is smaller than the usual Airbus that is commonly used in these regional flights, it was really a comfortable trip.

The Amazing Chomsky

Today I watched a documentary about Noam Chomsky called Rebel without phase (available in youtube), containing several of his interviews about, among other subjects, politics, culture, society and history. Chomsky is amazing for several reasons: he is arguably the most important linguistic in our history; despite of his scientific and scholar duties, he is an active peace and political activist; for instance, since the 60s he continuously criticizes American foreign policies and American society; it is unbelievable the amount of knowledge he has and how much he reads to keep him updated; for example he reads per day an average of six newspapers and per month about eighty journals! But what II found the most amazing about him is that, with his very calm tone, he is able to enlighten an audience about any issue, never mind how polemic it is, with a flawless reasoning based on well constructed arguments and illustrative examples.

I leave the suggestion: Noam Chomsky!

New Capital Sins

This week the Christian Church released a new, longer, list of the capital sins, by augmenting the original list, composed of the seven original capital sins, with the following six acts:

1. Perform a genetic modification;
2. Pollute the environment;
3. Cause social injustice;
4. Cause poverty;
5. Be extremely rich;
6. Use drugs.

What I found ironic in this list is that the church itself committed at least three of the sins above. First, cause social injustice: the church was directly involved in the holocaust, and other social injustices to the Jews throughout history; second, cause poverty: the church accumulated money by obliging Christians to pay royalties to the church, even though many could not afford it; what leads to the third point, be extremely rich: the church owns the best lands in almost every European city, where churches are placed with golden statues and ornaments. A fourth point could be the use of drugs, since some would say that religion is a drug.

Secret for doing a PhD: Motivation

Today was really strange. Though I already found some interesting stuff and wrote some papers/drafts, I woke up very worried about my PhD progress, specially when thinking about how much more is needed to have a whole thesis. So after some initial hesitation, I decided to go to the lab and try to work a bit to fill out the gaps needed to finish my work. First thing I did, after arriving at the lab, was to go to my supervisor's office and discuss some issues that I found interesting and just after some minutes my mood was completely different: I was excited again! Motivation was definitely the necessary ingredient for changing my mood from completely desperate to full of hope!

Xenophobia in Europe

It is tragic to see an increase of aversion towards foreigners in Europe. Just to see what extreme right wing candidates say and how much support they have is really disappointing in the so called civilized continent. After some time in Europe and staying for some time in three different European countries: Germany, Portugal and France, I could see that Xenophobia may come from completely different reasons:

1) In Germany, the hostility towards foreigners, specially the Turkish community, comes mostly from the unemployed, lower class Germans that think that foreigners are stealing their jobs.

2) In Portugal, there is clear the separation between Portuguese, Brazilian and Africans. The Portuguese still regard Brazilians better than Africans because Brazilians, specially in the last years, come to Portugal in more "respected" positions; for instance as Dentists, in Marketing positions; while the Africans have the less paid jobs like maids, electricians, plumbers, etc.

3) In France, it is not really more an employment issue than a class issue. More than two hundreds years after the French revolutions (1st and 2nd), the French society values more class and etiquette than education and qualification. This is why in Paris everyone is so well dressed; they want to be part of the aristocracy. So differently from Germany and Portugal, the origin of the French Xenophobia is not from economic reasons, but from cultural/historical one: the French higher class still believe that they have a different blood: le sang bleu.

Stereotypes

This week in my French class, we were discussing about the different misconceptions (just a note, curious to see how many words in English come from French: mis = put) and stereotypes different people have from each other. For instance, my French professor said that French think all Brazilians wear only havaianas and stay at the beach surrounded by mulatas in strings. Later, I commented that Brazilians think that French are not very hygienic; for instance we often say, when someone does not take shower but only puts perfume, that he/she took a French bath. My professor was really surprised to hear about this.

So much for an electrical eng. degree!

The past weeks, or I should rather say months, my computer was giving me a very hard time. Whenever I needed more processing power, such as when I watched a video at youtube, the computer restarted. I rapidly assumed that it is an overheating problem, which I confirmed using some temperature monitoring softwares. To solve this I took my computer yesterday to a computer maintenance store, where the technician told me that it would take me 49 euros to clean the computer and supposedly avoid this overheating.

49 euros!!! I thought. That is really a lot of money just to clean a computer, so I immediately rejected the offer and came back home. Today, I decided to do the job by myself. So there I go and open the computer, of course unplugging it first and removing its battery. But immediately after, I face the first challenge: the screws! They are so tight that it takes me almost half an hour to remove them all. The second challenge is to open the laptop's case. After several attempts, I was not able to open it, even after almost breaking it with the screw driver! However, I could partially open it so that I could see the circuits and manage to clean the laptop's cooling device.

After all this drama to open and clean the computer, I close the case and turn on the computer. My worst fears come true: first neither the laptop's keyboard neither the the wireless adapter are working, and second the problem of overheating is still there!

My (not) accepted paper.

Since me and Dale wrote our CSL paper last year, Incorporating tables into proofs, I've been trying to extend its results and search for more interesting applications that could be, in the future, included in a journal version of this paper. More specifically, I've explored one of the sections of the paper which proposes to represent a proof as a partially ordered set of atoms, called table, that could be used as a proof object in the Proof Carrying Code framework. I developed an algorithm to extract from an existing proof a tree of tables, showed that one could easily reconstruct a proof where atomic formulas are not proved twice, and also showed that the algorithm's complexity is a bit more than linear (to be more precise: n s log n, where s is the upper bound in the size of program's clauses).

I submitted, to CiE 2008, a paper titled Using tables to obtain non-redundant proofs, containing this algorithm and these results. Finally, last week I received an e-mail from the program chair saying that the paper is accepted to be presented in the conference, but not to be published in the conference's pre-proceedings. The reviews were very curious; the first reviewer seemed to know focusing and proof theory very well and recommended my paper to be published; the second reviewer wrote a very small paragraph criticizing the paper's presentation, giving the impression to not have put much effort in reading the paper, and gave me a borderline grade; the third reviewer appreciated the proof theoretical results but got me in the point that I didn't have more deeper experiments that would give a higher cogency to the applicability of my algorithm in PCC, but nevertheless, suggested my paper to be presented in the conference.

I am not sure what to think about this result. I am of course disappointed that it wasn't accepted for publication, but on the other hand, I wrote the article by myself (Dale was not very excited on this idea) and the comments were not too bad. As a consolation, I got a free trip to Athens in June, when I will have to present my results :).

Focusing Rules!

Me and Dale finished the last week a new paper, which we already submitted to IJCAR: Focusing in Linear Meta Logic. The paper shows that by changing focusing annotations in a same meta-logic specification one can encode different object-logics. There are several interesting observations and results in the paper: First, the specification we use is very declarative; for instance, object-logic rules do not contain side formulas. Second, we obtain adequacy results for several proof systems, from sequent calculus to natural deduction and tableaux systems. Third, from these adequacy results, one can interpret that these different systems are, in fact, just systems with different focusing annotations. Fourth, from these adequacy results and linear logic's focusing and cut-elimination theorems, we obtain new modular soundness and (relative) completeness results for all these systems.

We will only know if the paper is accepted in April. Hope the reviewers enjoy focusing as much as I do!

Who can understand Girard?!

The name Jean-Yves Girard might be an unknown name for those outside the field of logic, but I can say that he is a G-E-N-I-O-U-S! His achievements are found in several fields, from proof-theory and type theory to complexity theory and computer science; for instance, linear logic, the logic of all logics, is one of his inventions.

In the next week, Girard is going give a series of lectures about his new and very exciting discoveries that relate hyperfinite factors, a subfield of linear algebra, and Ludics, a theory, closely related to games semantics, that uses the location of formulas instead of propositions. To follow his lectures, I've been trying to read, in the past couple of days, his last book The Blind Spot. However, the following problem is evident from the beginning: Girard is a terrible writer! It is simply impossible to follow his line of thought because each point he makes is miles away from the next point! It is so disappointing that makes me wonder: Who can understand Girard?!

Religion

In the past months, I have been reading Richard Dawkins' recent book, The God Delusion, and it really made me think about how people are so deeply brainwashed by religion, usually with the most ridiculous ideas, that they become blind to common sense and, in some extreme cases, intolerant to other beliefs.

One good example of how religious beliefs can instigate, not only a person but an entire society, to ignore reason is the battle between the conflicting theories of Creation and Evolution. Creationism states that all living beings exist as they are because of an inherent "intelligent design" that is present in the DNA. While Evolution explains the existence of living beings by the process of Natural Selection, where beings more adaptable to its environment are selected from the beings less adaptable. Though there is a enormous amount of evidence supporting evolution and no evidence supporting Creationism, some states in the US have adopted Creationism in the educational curricula because of the pressure of religious groups that can't accept the Evolution theory, since it contradicts directly with Christian beliefs of how the world was created, but accept Creationism that supports these religious beliefs.

But why do people still believe in some Religious dogmas, despite the overwhelming amount of evidence against it? This is one question that Dawkins tries to answer in his book, for which I try to summarize. One problem with the Abrahamic Religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, is that all of them preach that faith is the greatest virtue. This is why a religious person still believes in dogmas that are proved wrong because it would require of him more faith to believe on it, and hence he would be regarded as more virtuous.

Dawkins uses the examples of Abrahamic Religions because both the autor and to the target western readers are more familiar with them. But one can't generalize this explanation to other religions, such as Hinduism, since they don't have a set of dogmas, and therefore, faith is not a cornerstone for the existence of Religion. And yet, Hindus often disregard evidence, for example, in India there is a generalized belief in astrology.

Dawkins, as an evolutionary biologist, gives a more satisfying explanation to another question, why are there so many religious people in the first place. His answer has to do with a misfiring of the following Darwinian characteristic: Children that believe and obey blindly to there parents have a higher probability to survive and hence, to give continuity to the species. This is simply because children do not have the time to verify the things said by parents; if for instance, a parent tells a child not to jump a cliff and this child does not obey, the result would be disastrous. Even though there is no Darwinian advantage for believing in Religion, a misfiring of this characteristic happens that results in children adopting the religious beliefs of their parents.

There are many other interesting issues discussed by Dawkins; for instance, he tries to argue why there is not a God; why religion can be bad, for which some reasons I commented here; where do our morals come from (perhaps I will discuss more about this topic later); and the conscious raising to not label a child with the religion of his/her parents.