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The foreign exchange (FX) market has the highest daily trading of all financial assets; annualized FX trading equates to an astounding 13 times global GDP. Multinational corporations are, necessarily, major participants in the FX market. In order to hedge their currency risk, these companies trade large volumes of FX-based derivatives. However, the playing field for these trades is often tilted in favor of their banking partners.
Multinational corporations usually obtain FX derivatives from banks through over-the-counter (OTC) trading. The unregulated OTC derivatives market generally offers companies the best selection of instruments, but a series of scandals in which banks have been caught gaming various OTC markets indicates that caution is appropriate.
In 2011, the Bank of New York Mellon was sued by both the New York attorney general and the United States attorney general in Manhattan for routinely overcharging customers in the processing of FX transactions. The AGs claimed that the bank defrauded clients of more than $2 billion. In the same year, State Street Bank was sued by several state pension funds and investigated by the SEC for similar allegations. A year later, it was determined that many of the largest banks were gaming LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate), which underpins $350 trillion in derivatives. Some were found guilty and fined, including Barclays ($200 million) and UBS ($1.5 billion).
Then, one year after the LIBOR scandal, a systematic rigging of the WM/Reuters fixing rates was revealed. (See the sidebar How WM/Reuters Fixing Works, below.) Apparently, some major banks were front-running client's closing spot trade orders, which were large enough to move the market. A bank would sell or buy ahead of the client, then try to move the benchmark rate in its favor. While one bank alone may not have enough reserves to substantially change the rate, the four largest banks—Deutsche, Citigroup, Barclays, and UBS—control more than 50 percent of the market. Traders at these banks would text one another to determine when client orders matched up enough to facilitate moving the fix. By making a large number of low-volume trades within the one-minute window during which the WM/Reuters rates are calculated (also known as "banging the close"), the banks could move the fix and square their positions profitably.
Price manipulation is not the only way in which banks pose risks for their foreign exchange clients. Counterparty credit risk is another concern. When Lehman Brothers moved from investment-grade credit to bankruptcy over a single weekend in 2008, the company had more than 67,000 open trades. While Dodd-Frank, Basel III, and other regulatory changes have reduced this risk by requiring banks to maintain higher Tier 1 capital ratios, multinational corporations still risk having their derivatives contracts become worthless should a bank default during times of high volatility/low liquidity.
Like any corporation, banks are the fiduciary of no one but themselves. It behooves anyone trading derivatives to do so with caution and with a defensive attitude. Fortunately, there are specific actions that a corporate treasurer can take to create transparency and safety where obfuscation and danger prevail.
One of the most effective methods for minimizing costs is to bid out every trade, especially every trade that is a significant size. To guard against price manipulation, multinational corporations need to establish trading relationships with multiple counterparties and ask for bids from each one. For a treasurer who's shopping around an FX transaction or derivatives trade, it's crucial to know where the market is. Companies should not depend on their banks for quotes of the spot rate or forward points.
Instead, you need to use independent third-party sources to determine the spot and forward prices at the time of each trade. This exposes each bank's true bid-ask spread. Spot rates are easy to verify using services such as TrueFX, but forward points are not as easy to pinpoint.
Subscriptions to Bloomberg, SuperDerivatives, WM/Reuters FX Indices, and Interactive Brokers are not cheap, but they can pay for themselves by revealing where the market truly is. Avoiding a misquote of 10 basis points (bps) on the forward rate—which consists of the spot rate plus forward points—for a trade worth US$2.5 million per month would cover the cost of a typical subscription.
A treasurer may also want to specify that trade pricing will be tied to the WM/Reuters fixing rate. Despite the recent scandal, WM/Reuters fixing rates are the most transparent and liquid in the foreign exchange market. Specifying that trades will be priced at the WM/Reuters spot rate allows a treasurer to bid out the trade's forward points, preventing any possibility of a skewed spot quote.
Very large corporations must make very large trades to hedge their transactional risk, and the size of those trades creates another kind of pricing risk. Very large trades can actually move the market, and large companie's banks may be tempted to front-run their trades. Banks will usually know the direction a client needs to trade, and this may skew their bid-ask spread for the client's trade.
A corporation can use several tactics to address this risk. The first tactic is to split the trade among several counterparties. This reduces any one bank's visibility into the size of the overall trade, which may remove the temptation to front-run it. Tying the trade's pricing to the WM/Reuters fixing rate and placing the trade just before the fixing period will prevent banks from communicating to determine the total size of the trade.
The second tactic for preventing front-running is to trade anonymously with multiple liquidity providers. This can be achieved through the use of a prime broker and a trading platform, such as FXall or 360T. In this type of transaction, the prime broker places the corporate order anonymously through the trading platform, which automatically queries the market for the best pricing. Banks and non-bank FX providers such as Alpha Global Exchange and Infinity International can respond to a request for quote (RFQ)/request for spread (RFS). See Figure 1.
OTC derivatives usually serve corporate hedging needs better than exchanges because they enable the company to set tenors and notionals with precision. (See OTC vs. Exchange-Based Trading, below.) However, savvy corporate treasurers use the futures market in two ways. The first way is through exchange-based trading; when a company's desired notionals and tenors match the size and expiries of available instruments, trading on an exchange offers much lower counterparty risk and more pricing transparency.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) recently developed a hybrid facility that offers some of the benefits of exchange-based trading while preserving some of the flexibility of the OTC market. Essentially, the CME allows for a variety of OTC trades to be settled and cleared through the exchange. This eliminates bank counterparty risk because the CME becomes the counterparty. Thirty-eight currency combinations are eligible for trading through this service, and maturities can be any valid business day between spot and two years. Both the bank and the corporate FX client have to agree to use the CME service, of course.
The second way in which exchanges can help corporate treasurers is by creating pricing transparency in the OTC market. Exchange-traded derivatives usually expire on the third Wednesday of the month. The value of a future and a forward of the same expiry must converge, or else there would be an arbitrage opportunity. If a treasurer specifies that his OTC trades should expire on the third Wednesday of the month, the OTC prices that banks quote should match the exchange pricing, thus creating pricing transparency.
International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) Master Agreement is the cornerstone of any transactional relationship between two parties engaged in OTC financial transactions. (See ISDA Key Components, at right.) It should come as no surprise that ISDAs between corporations and banks have traditionally been rather one-sided. If a company's credit rating is downgraded beyond a certain level, its banking counterparty will notify it that it has triggered the terms of its CSA and that it needs to post additional collateral. But even if a bank actually defaults on a corporate customer, the company will likely have no opportunity to collect any collateral.
For example, a typical CSA might call for the exchange of collateral if either party's credit rating is BBB or lower. The company may be able to operate for quite some time with a BBB rating, or even at a below-investment-grade level. If the company's credit rating were to drop to BBB, the bank would have ample opportunity to obtain collateral under this CSA. However, if a major bank's credit rating fell to BBB, that would likely be the straw that broke the camel's back. The bank would no longer have sufficient capital to post collateral, and its cost of funds would have already increased to a level that makes operating as a bank problematic. The bank would be much more likely to default at this same credit rating, so a CSA with these terms would provide a false sense of security to the corporate counterparty. What can a corporate treasurer do to level the credit-risk playing field? First, it's imperative to monitor counterparty exposures on a timely basis and to set triggers for action. These triggers should be based onreal-time indicators of a bank's risk of default, such as its level of credit default swaps (CDS). As the bank approaches the limits you've set, reallocate your short-term trades and/or cash deposits as much as possible.
For longer-term exposures, such as cross-currency interest rate swaps or long-dated forwards, consider posting margin utilizing the services of a third-party collateral manager. Collateral managers accept and remit collateral based on the mark-to-market status of the outstanding trades to each financial counterparty. Companies and their banks need to spell out in their CSAs both the role of the collateral manager and the objective measures of risk that will be used to set collateral requirements for both parties.
One other approach to reducing the counterparty risks posed by banks is to limit their re-hypothecation rights. Figure 2, below, demonstrates how re-hypothecation works. In the illustration, Company X is required to post collateral because it is out of the money on a series of trades with Bank A, its counterparty bank. Bank A, in turn, is out of the money with respect to some transactions it's engaged in with Bank B. So at the end of the day, Bank A must post collateral to Bank B. Rather than coming up with its own funds to use as collateral, Bank A prefers to cover its agreement with Bank B by "re-hypothecating" the collateral it receives from Company X.
For Company X, this arrangement can be highly problematic if Bank A is at risk of default. If the trades happen to move back in Company X's favor, Bank A may no longer have the funds to return Company X's collateral. Rules have been very loose in governing how banks can re-hypothecate collateral, under the argument that it frees up capital and makes lending cheaper. Unfortunately, this has resulted in some circumstances where multiple counterparties have claims on the same collateral. In the bankruptcy of MF Global, for example, untangling the complex trail of commingled assets and collateral claims took years.
Whether or not to grant your banking counterparties re-hypothecation rights on the collateral you might end up sending them is an item for negotiation. If you do not grant re-hypothecation rights, the bank will likely add to the trade a funding charge, which may be significant. One Fortune 100 treasury manager, with whom we recently discussed this issue, noted that the funding charge his company faced during negotiations would have been prohibitively expensive, so although the company considered its options, in the end it granted re-hypothecation rights to its counterparty.
Because it is largely unregulated, the over-the-counter market for FX derivatives is full of hidden and costly traps that threaten to catch up unsuspecting corporate treasurers. Tactics companies might encounter from their banking counterparties include outright price misquotes, skewed bid-ask spreads, front-running of large trades, asymmetric ISDAs and CSAs, and re-hypothecation.
Fortunately, multinational corporations have a number of options for leveling the playing field. All treasurers engaging in derivatives trades should obtain accurate and unbiased market information, and should bid out large transactions. Once they know where the market is, treasurers can consider splitting trades among multiple counterparties or trading anonymously to prevent front-running. They can time their OTC trades to coincide with CME maturity dates and the WM/Reuters fixing schedule. They can negotiate CSAs that are more fair. They should monitor their bank's credit ratings along with their exposure to the banks, and they should consider utilizing third-party collateral managers. A corporate treasury team that uses these tactics in its FX derivatives trading dramatically reduces its risk of being overcharged or caught flat-footed by credit issues among its banking counterparties.
About the Author
Atlas founder and Chief Investment Officer, Jonathan (Jono) Tunney, brings deep and broad expertise to bear on global economic analysis, asset allocation, business valuation, portfolio design, and risk management. His experience includes responsibility for worldwide currency risk management and more than $100 billion in annual foreign exchange transactions as Director of Foreign Exchange for Hewlett Packard. He also has experience in treasury, corporate finance and strategic planning, including valuation, deal structuring and negotiations for equity investments and acquisitions, and tax strategy and dividend policy analysis. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from Stanford University, an MBA in Finance from the Anderson School at UCLA, and the Chartered Financial Analyst Designation.
The information contained in this publication is provided for information purposes only. The information contained herein has been obtained or derived from public sources believed to be reliable, but we do not represent that it is accurate or complete and should not be relied upon as such. Any opinions or predictions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice.
All rights reserved. Please cite source when quoting.


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subset: commoncrawl


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Good morning.
This is Washington, so there will be hearings.
Today's centerpiece of congressional inquiry bears the title, "Affordable Care Act Implementation Failures: Didn't Know or Didn't Disclose?" See where this is going?
The morning gathering will be the first in a promised series of GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee hearings into the implementation of Obamacare and its well-documented challenges.
The witness list is stocked with contractors in charge of the administration's snake-bit health care insurance sign-up website. Here's the lineup: Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president, CGI Federal; Andrew Slavitt, group executive vice president, Optum/Quality Software Services, Inc.; Lynn Spellecy, corporate counsel, Equifax Workforce Solutions; and John Lau, program director, Serco.
We anticipate finger-pointing.
The Associated Press reports that the contractors in testimony prepared for the committee will attempt to shift blame for problems to the administration. Late changes and lack of coordination, they say, bollixed up the system.
Slavitt in his prepared testimony, according to the AP, "blamed the administration, saying that a late decision to require consumers to create accounts before they could browse health plans contributed to the overload. 'This may have driven higher simultaneous usage of the registration system that wouldn't have occurred if consumers could window-shop anonymously,' he said."
You can read submitted testimony for yourself here.
Meanwhile, a handful of Senate Democrats, including two — Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas — who face difficult reelection races in 2014, have called on the administration to lengthen the Obamacare enrollment period.
At The Hill, Cameron Josephwrites that "Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, have signed onto Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's , D-N.H., push to extend the time in which uninsured people can buy insurance. Pryor also expressed concerns with the law's individual mandate — set to take effect next year — if the exchange website isn't fixed soon." Says Pryor:
"I believe, given the technical issues, it makes sense to extend the time for people to sign up. In addition, the administration should state clearly how the enforcement mechanism will work if people can't sign up in time. We all want to see the law work, and I hope the administration will take a hard look at this reasonable suggestion."
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who has overseen the health care act's rollout, is expected to testify next week.
Also this morning, President Obama will attempt to reintroduce immigration into the Capitol Hill conversation, after weeks dominated by government shutdown, default, and health care battles.
The political bottom line, succinctly put by Marc Caputo in the Miami Herald, is this: "Obama jumps into immigration reform Thursday. Does this mean it's dead or alive?"
Here's his analysis:
1) The president wants to make good on his campaign promise to get it done, and this is a chance to work with the House.
2) The president knows the House won't pass it. So he wants the proverbial cat to die on their doorstep. And he wants Hispanics to know where the body lies.
The fact that GOP House Speaker John Boehner this week declared an immigration overhaul "important," did little to change anyone's perception of the political reality in the House.
In his morning speech, the president is expected to deliver what his aides characterize as a call for Congress to pass "common sense immigration reform."
Ted Cruz's Better? Other? Half
With Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz's recent elevation to the national stage, it was only a matter of time before his wife, Heidi, 41, began sharing the spotlight. Here's today's New York Times profileof the "vegetarian with a Harvard M.B.A." who's a managing director at Goldman Sachs.
Writes Ashley Parker: "She works for Goldman in Houston, where she lives with the couple's two young children, and as her husband's fame has increased — depending on the audience, he is among the most pilloried or revered members of the Senate — she has maintained a low profile."
And, finally, here's what we've also been reading about:
-Name change voter ID law confusion in Texas, reported by the Texas Tribune.
-Maryland Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Doug Gansler's supremely ill-advised teen drinking party attendance, reported by the Baltimore Sun.
-Debate in Illinois over minimum sentencing laws, reported byNPR's Cheryl Corley.
Oh, and we don't care about the rooms in Mitt Romney's new house, hidden or otherwise. Leave the man alone.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Wherein a surgeon tells some stories, shares some thoughts, and occasionally shoots off his mouth. Like a surgeon.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Smoke Scream
My parents were smokers; in the case of my dad, it was three or four packs a day for forty years before he just up and quit one day, cold turkey, many years ago (not soon enough to avoid the need for home oxygen at the end of his life. But still...) Mom smoked far less, and quit the same day he did. After my grandfather's heart attack, he quit, too; but usually kept an unlit Tareyton in his mouth -- the kind with the cardboard tube on the end -- to chew on. Until his stroke.
Of course I took it up. Stole packs from my dad's pockets and sneaked with eighth-grade friends down to the swamp behind Reed College, smoked and coughed until we got the hang of it, and proceeded to be cool. I blew great smoke rings, learned the "French Inhale," could light a match in a matchbook with one hand, pop a flame with my fingernail, or on my shoe. I didn't smoke much until college, and then it was only five or ten sticks a day. I kept it up, I'm embarrassed to say, through med school and even -- more's the shame -- while a surgical intern. Somewhere there's a picture of me at the VA Hospital, working on a chart, wearing my whites, cigarette polluting coolly from my hand.
On the day I got married I quit but began again three months later, when I shipped off to Vietnam. Cigarettes were so cheap over there, I really couldn't afford not to. The last cigarette I ever had was when the stewardess (flights back to The World were on Pan Am jets -- "Freedom Birds," we called them) announced we were about to land at Travis AFB. Skrunked it out, and that was that.
I mention all this to confer authority when I say what a terrible thing it is to do. How easy it is to tell smokers when operating, and when caring for them afterwards. Not to mention when first seeing them from across the room, or hearing them. Lady who looks twice her age, facial skin wrinkled like a scrotum in winter, voice sounding like shifting gears without the clutch. Guy with a chest over-expanded by trapped air, honking up crud into a brown and stiff tissue. Holding it with yellow fingers.
Put smokers to sleep, they cough on their breathing tubes; the gooey crap that needs to be sucked out of their lungs to keep their oxygen levels up looks rotten, thick in pus. Brown, or green, or black. Or red, sometimes. The corruption thus vacuumed out streaks the tubing for a foot or two, slime from a dying slug. A smoker bucks like a horse untamed when waking up, straining sutures scarily. Many a time I've leaned on an incision to keep it from coming apart, a desperate sort of single-stroke CPR, waiting for the anesthetist to get them calmed down. When still in training, I had a smoker-patient wake up with such a convulsive cough that it popped every single stitch, pk-pk-pk-pk-pk-pk, like a tommy-gun, which is what led to taking up the leaning maneuver (as well as a change in suturing methods.)
Smoking retards healing. It increases the risk of leaks where we sew bowel, and of wound dehiscence or late herniation. If you want much in the way of cosmetic surgery and you're a smoker, fergit it until you quit. The chance of successful limb-salvage surgery -- bypass grafts around blockages and hooked to small distal vessels -- is greatly reduced in smokers; welcome to Stumptown. (I used to live there.) In hospitals, particularly on surgical floors and in ICUs, evidence of the hazards of smoking is everywhere. Opening a chest and seeing a normal lung, pink as a baby's tongue, fluffy as a feather, is as rare as it is beautiful.
When I worked at that VA hospital, I saw guys holding cigarettes in stubs of former fingers, sucking smoke into a tracheostomy. Rules be damned: people sneak out to stair wells or onto fire escapes to smoke after surgery. And lie about it after, oblivious to their smell. It's rough. The good news is that, in regards to surgery and anesthesia, the effects are lessened to some degree even with a week of abstention. Much longer is much better.
My advocacy does have limits. I thought it cruel and stupid when an attending refused to let a patient, dying of lung cancer, have the pleasure of a smoke. What's done is done. Give a guy a break.
[The post was written a while back, before this.]
31 comments:
- mibsphil said...
Thanks for this post. I'm one of the lucky ones. I smoked some in high school and college, but I was able to quit smoking only once, in 1977, without a relapse. My husband, however, smoked for probably 40 years and now has advanced COPD and emphysema. He's an otherwise robust 59 year old guy who looks great on the outside but must use oxygen and take a cabinet full of drugs (various inhalers, nebulized albuterol, pills, etc.). He can no longer work, but he stays as active as he can. Although we still travel, we must make arrangements for oxygen and we must always allow for long layovers when we fly because he can't run through an airport for a plane. Much of our life is organized around managing his disease. Nicotine is a terrible addiction, and hard to quit. Whenever I see kids smoking, I wish I could just take them by the hand and show them my husband: this is what will happen to you. Not if, but when.
- rlbates said...
Dr Sid, like you as a teenager I
"stole" one of my mom's cigarettes. Trying to copy the adults. Thank God I choked so badly when I inhaled that first time that I NEVER tried another one. Some of my siblings weren't that lucky.
Very nice post. - 3/14/2008 11:34 AM
Another "near miss" almost smoker here, but my mother's unfiltered Pall Malls smelled so bad that I held my breath and ran out of the house on school mornings, as they made me nauseated.
Had the experience of a patient smoking via his trach, while on portable O2 - during his wheelchair transfer from the SICU for vascular probs to a regular surgical bed. The volunteer wheeling him was clueless. Also worked with an onc-ENT surgeon who refused to write DNR orders for any of his patients. So they would be resusciated until they succumbed from all of the mechanical chest damage. Ever try to maintain an airway on a long term chemo/irradiated/surgicaly excised missing jaw and face patient? That's one memroy that I'll never be able to shake. And they were almost always the patients who we rolled outside so they could smoke through whatever airway they had left. Damn nicotine and the corporations who even now, are increasing the nicotine doses in cigs while shortening them. Really something. - 3/14/2008 12:11 PM
- therapydoc said...
Oh, this is a GREAT post. I'm linking to it at the end of the month in the March Back 'Acha because I haven't seen anything close about smoking. Thanks so much.
- Jens Knudsen (Sili) said...
Never took it up, myself. My parents was always a bad example to me. The tobaccocough was not a thing I liked.
Mum was diagnosed with COPD Summer of 2006 - about three weeks after she'd gone cold turkey. Lungcancer was found not long after and she died January 2006 - at 55.
Said that had she known how terribly she'd be having it, she'd have kept smoking and just dropped dead. - 3/14/2008 12:56 PM
Good post Sid!
My dad too smoked most of his life - until in his early 60's when asbestosis reared it's ugly head (due to years of exposure, starting in his teens repairing steam engines for UP, then later as a mechanical contractor building & repairing boiler plants). His lungs didn't get him in the end though - a brain aneurysm 10 years later did.
My mom was a non-smoker, and I managed to avoid it as well, though my younger brother & sister both took up the habit.
And be nice when you talk about "Stumptown" some of us still live here! We may not be as big or modern as Seattle, but the commutes are a whole lot better - and at least we're going to get to keep our NBA team! :-) - 3/14/2008 3:57 PM
- Patrick Bageant said...
I'm confused.
Some doctors refuse to allow their patients a cigarette? How does that actually play out?
If both sides really pushed the issue, the presumable result would be that the patient confronts a choice: either depart the hospital AMA, or light up on the premises and face legal consequences for trespassing/reckless endangerment (depending on what kind of contract they signed on admission, and given the presence of medical o2). But neither of those involve the physician no allowing the patient to smoke, per se.
I'm guessing that what actually happens is both sides DON'T really push the issue. I bet attending doctors tell patients they are not allowed to smoke, and patients, being passive like may patients, believe them. Which (to me) only goes to show how iron clad a nicotine addiction is NOT.
Anyway. What the hell do I know?
My second observation has to do with a conversation with a friend about two weeks ago, in which I suggested that cigarettes are just not on the radar for my generation the way they were for previous generations. (My friend is in his 40's, I am 25.) He countered by suggesting that there is a class issue, in that I am also a well educated white guy in a university town, and not, say, a janitor in a mill-town. He suggested that although smoking may not be on the radar for me, I an not necessarily representative of my entire generation either.
Fair point, really. I certainly don't feel representative of my peers, that's for sure!
But Dr. Schwab's post cuts against his argument. Because (I am pretty sure) that Dr. Schwab comes from a well educated, intellectual family. Which suggests that the educated middle/upper class of previous generations also enjoyed their tobacco. So, while I may be representative of the social class from which Dr. Schwab hails, that class in my generation has moved away cigarettes.
This is all a long way of me trying to bend Dr. Schwab's post to my own narcissistic ends: Smoking is becoming progressively less cool among the more educated in my generation, and I am living proof that my friend is mistaken.
That covers the college educated. With respect to the less fortunate, well, at 5 bucks a pack and rising, things are looking up for those mill-town janitors as well. - 3/14/2008 5:29 PM
- Sid Schwab said...
patrick: two aspects. First, nowadays it's generally a hospital policy, ie, patient sign an understanding that smoking is not allowed. It was not always so.
Second, as you may already know. A generation ago, smoking was cool, was promoted as cool, and there were commercials showing "doctors" smoking and recommending a particular cigarette. The "smoking as actually bad for you" concept is relatively new. Used to be that everyone smoked in movies, on TV. I'd say it's mainly the clear connection to disease that's only been promulgated in the last few decades -- along with "banning" it from ads and media -- that's change things so dramatically. - 3/14/2008 8:03 PM
- Sid Schwab said...
also: when a smoker is in the hospital, generally they're given nicotine patches, etc, to help them with their addiction while there. And after, if they desire it.
- Unknown said...
Hey there Dr. S.
thank you for coming more than halfway and not passing judgment...
yeah, some folks do quit cold turkey and never look back.
For others, smoking is a DAMN hard thing to give up. Why do some people fall so much harder than others? Are we lacking the fortitude, the inner discipline, the smarts? Are we just weak and maybe lesser people?
I am one of those who fell HARD In the first week I started smoking, I was up to a pack a day by Saturday. Age 13. Three to five packs per day for the next 20 years.
Then the REAL struggles began...trying to quit. Pretending I had quit. Substituting other addictions.
I have surrendered the smokes, only to replace them with nicotine replacement product addiction. Shameful and weak but damn if I can give this up...it has been going on for years. Thank god they have become OTC.
My husband's papa was a surgeon. We keep our loose change in a 1952 ladies hospital auxillary award ashtray that his mama got -- an engraved ashtray being a dandy gift at the time. Useful and beautiful.
Chewing 12 mg of "Fruit Chill" as I write this...
anonymous fan - 3/14/2008 11:38 PM
- Sarah said...
My toddler son is on oxygen because he has Interstial Lung Disease. Being around smokers is HORRIBLE for his lungs. I have had soooo many smokers light a cigarette right in front of my son, and it can be clearly seen he is on oxygen.
It's also a fire risk. No open flame is supposed to be by oxygen.
I also often have to go past, I will say inconsiderate people that are smoking right by the doors of the hospital, with my son in his stroller, on oxygen. (and no smoking signs right next to them).
I honestly feel like people smoking on hospital grounds where, it says there is no smoking allowed on the hospital grounds, should be kicked off the property. Period. Sorry but my son should not have to endure more lung damage and possibly um, FIRE because some idiot lights a cigarette or puts his ciagrette with my son in touching distance.
If people want to smoke in there own home, I could care less, but when do it around my son, i find them very selfish and inconsiderate. - 3/15/2008 1:14 AM
this stuff has just brushed up my old memories.
i was also a chain smoker.i thought it to be coll and a style symbol,untill one day.
i woke up in the morning and looked at my hands,they were shaking..
i felt so nervous.i went to a doctor.he adviced me to quit smoking or i can even have heart attack.
from that day i started up to quit smoking.i used various resources and links..they helped me a lot in quiting smoking.
be healthy,live healthy - 3/15/2008 1:47 AM
- Not Important said...
Last week, I rented the original The Pink Panther with Peter Sellers. There were several cigarettes in the movie, and it really struck me how much the practice was glamorized. That was in 1963. I was born in 1970, and my childhood had a lot more smokers in it than my adulthood does.
Oddly enough, I seemed to know from the earliest age that smoking was really bad for you. I remember being all of four years old and begging my father to quit. Then, when I went to college to study health information management, part of the curriculum was a two semester course in human anatomy and physiology, complete with cadaver lab. It was there that I saw up close and personally what smoking does to ravage a person's body. Of course, you see it most clearly in the lungs, but other places are seriously affected, too. If I remember right, this specimen was actually riddled with cancer from a primary lung lesion. My wish at the time was that I could have taken pictures to show some of the smokers in my life. Who knows if it would have made the slightest difference, but it just showed me that even as a small child I was onto something about smoking. Of course, I have some bad habits of my own, but none as surely lethal as smoking.
What an eloquent post. Absolutely beautiful way of saying Please Stop Smoking.
"...Lady who looks twice her age, facial skin wrinkled like a scrotum in winter, voice sounding like shifting gears without the clutch."
This particular line was the one that stood out to me, the one that I felt was so damn accurate and the one which I hope you don't mind me stealing when discussing this topic with my own patients.
Thanks for a wonderful post. I will put a link to it in my own blog in the hope that maybe it will help some of my readers decide to quit.
Sam - 3/15/2008 7:36 AM
- JP said...
Great idea for a post, Dr. Schwab. Clearly it hits home for many. Like you with the dying lung cancer patient, I'm of two minds with my ailing Mom and this nastiest of habits: give in or Gestapo... Smoking is a lose-lose for those who don't smoke, as well.
I'm 49. I can remember when they made candy cigarettes for kids that looked like scaled-down versions of the real thing, down to the packaging, and how upset my parents were that when I got some at Halloween, they were my favorites. A little borrowed cool factor for a little kid with Mormon parents who didn't smoke like everybody else's did. Uh, yeah, that went over real well at home.
Meantime, thank you for being compassionate towards your patients and seeing things through their eyes. The kindness, even more than the cigarettes themselves, surely meant a lot to them. - 3/15/2008 4:48 PM
- Patrick Bageant said...
Yes, it's remarkable how attitudes change. And in a short period of time.
My father smoked two packs a day for over 40 years and now he is beginning lose the battle against COPD. Amazingly, to him it seems easier to tote an oxygen bottle and avoid stairs than it does to quit smoking. You get used to anything I guess, and sooner or later it just becomes your life.
I am not and have never been a smoker, but I swear I can smell that ashtray in the picture on your original post -- it jerks me right back to being a kid on my father's back porch. I can only imagine the effect the picture would have on him.
You alluded to public awareness of health as a reason for the major change in attitude toward smoking -- you suggest that people my age are much more aware of the issue than people from your parents' generation. That makes sense, but it also raises some pretty interesting questions (or, interesting to me at any rate).
Despite the success with smoking, the public health picture is far from sunshine and flowers. People from my generation make their own poor health choices. I'm thinking specifically of diet and exercise. And maybe lifestyle-mental-health-depression choices, although those relationships are more speculative.
Unlike smokers your parents' age, my peers KNOW how shitty a big mac and video game lifestyle is. But that the effect that knowledge has on decision making seems minimal.
Why do you think that is?
Maybe anti-smoking campaigns work because they catch kids at young ages, warn them, and convince them to be passive and refrain from an activity, where diet/exercise requires a positive effort?
Or because the first big mac tastes better than the first cigarette?
Or maybe they are successful where diet and exercise campaigns fail because human creatures are programmed by evolution to conserve energy and store calories by avoiding excess activity and eating rich foods?
I donno. But I do know that ashtray looks freaking gross! - 3/15/2008 8:51 PM
- Sid Schwab said...
Patrick: those are good questions, to which I don't know the answer. It's true, I think, that smoking is increasing in young girls more than boys; if so, it's really hard to figure, unless it's a perverse form of "you go, girl." When I see kids smoking near their high school or middle school, I always feel like saying something: like, do you know how ugly you'll be in a few years, or, do you know how bad it'll taste to kiss you. I don't say anything, of course.
- Patrick Bageant said...
There is a perception among young women who smoke that quitting will produce a weight gain.
Unfortunate as that perception is, that's a huge (de)motivator.
I'm off to bed.
Looking forward to your weekend post . . .
- Bruce said...
Dear Sid,
A few years ago, a patient of mine was hospitalized with recurrent, metastatic throat cancer. He was terribly weak and could barely get back and forth to the bathroom. One evening, he climbed out of bed, shut the door, opened the window, climbed back into bed, and lit up.
Unfortunately in the process, he managed to set his bed on fire. Alarms, fire department, and upheaval followed. The hospital thought about pressing charges but did not. Very memorable.
Some of our patients will never quit. Fortunately, the number of teens smoking continues to drop.Not certain if this link will work, but the percentage of 12th graders that have had a cigarette in the past 30 days has dropped from 36% in 1997 to 22% in 2007. Not perfect, but it is good news.
See http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/data/07data/cfig07_1.pdf.
Great post! - 3/16/2008 6:27 AM
- Sid Schwab said...
Bruce: thanks for the link. In my book there's a story of a woman who set her bed on fire at UCSF; also quite memorable...
This one really hit home. I'm 25 and have just quit smoking (as of January) after 10 years of smoking. I come from a full family of smokers - there is not one person in my family who has not smoked regularly at some point in their life.
The effects and consequences of smoking are well known now and the only reason that someone would continue to smoke in light of such knowledge is for three reasons - 1. Fear - of failing, of not having the cigarette to use as a crutch for emotions, of losing your dearest 'friend', of gaining weight and 2. Denial - that you'll be one of the few lucky ones that never gets cancer or lung disease, etc. and 3. Resignation - if you're already sick and dying from lung cancer - what's the point in slowing the inevitable?
I just hope that I didn't smoke enough or long enough or quit with enough time to repair the damage that I've done. It's hard to think about your own mortality in your 20's. - 3/17/2008 9:36 AM
- Lisa said...
My grandfather died of mesothelioma back in the 80's. He'd been a smoker all of his life. When he was in the hospital about to die he was desperate for another cigarette. He snuck into the closet of his roomate, stole some ill-fitting clothes [he was very tall], and tried to sneak out of the hospital to have a smoke. The nurses caught him and brought him back before he could get out the door.
I always felt terrible that they did that to him, still do. He was going to die anyhow, what would it matter. :(
I used to drink pretty heavily when I was in my early 20's. One night a fellow barfly, a girl I knew, was matching me drink for drink. I took a good look at her, realizing all of a sudden that if I didn't quit - I could look like her. That scared me straight more than anything else. She was slightly over 30 and looked at least 45, with leathery wrinkled skin. Yikes. - 3/18/2008 1:58 PM
- james said...
Well lisa ,that was funny.
I mean atleast for some reason you quit smoking..
Still i can help you in a better way...Try this link out,it helped me a lot in stopping smoking--
quit smoking
great work...
james - 3/20/2008 11:34 PM
- John Doogan said...
Excellent articel to read!
Hearing a story from a DOctor or someone who has seen smokers under a knife is a story worth hearing.
I'm not a smoker but my father was a smoker and developed lung cancer and died when I was in my teens. He was only in his mid-forties and looked like he was 65 years.
It is a sick world we live in and one where this addiction takes the weakest by the balls and squeezes every bit of life out of them. - 4/15/2008 2:27 PM
- This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
- This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
- Sid Schwab said...
Hey, John and Cynthia; you need to read the warning on the comment window. Spam gets trashed. Shame on you both.
- Hayley said...
I had to comment on this post, old though it may be... I work as a Cancer Co-ordinator for the NHS. The hospital where I work is supposed to be "smoke free", but every day I come across a patient with cigarette in hand.
It's interesting - I work with the Lung Cancer team, and the lead clinician said to me that he could understand why older people smoked; they gave cigarettes out in the war to boost morale, and the negative side effects weren't widely known. But weget younger patients, smokers who would have been aware of the danger even when they started smoking. To his mind, there was no excuse for them.
I've never smoked. I have a vague intellectual curiosity about why people smoke, but not enough to light up myself - a particularly nasty bout of pneumonia as a child ensured that.
Having said that, our friendly neighbourhood oncologist, on the suject of terminal lung cancer, is of the opinion that the patient may as well enjoy the vice whilst living out their days.
I guess my philosophy is more complex - smoke if smoke you must, in spite of the health hazards, but do it well away from me and mine. Selfish? Maybe. But in a free choice culture if people want to play Russian roulette with their lives they have the right to. But they don't have the right to do so with mine, which is why I get so angry with people who smoke on hospital grounds. - 1/04/2010 3:42 PM
- Sid Schwab said...
Thanks, Hayley. I totally agree.
Moving this post to the head of the list, I present a recently expanded sampling of what this blog has been about. Occasional rant aside, i...
In no way is it false modesty to say that physicians are not healers. At best, what we do is to grease the way, to make conditions as favora...
Finally I'm getting around to writing about the gallbladder. Don't know what took me so long, seeing as how, next to hernias it'...
I finished the previous post with the sad story of my patient, illustrating diagnostic difficulties at the fringes of biliary disease. An...


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Mushrooms are one of my all time favorite foods and one of my favorite ways to enjoy mushrooms is in a quick and tasty pasta with bacon, cream and cheese. I had not had this dish in a while and I was recently reminded of it by a post on Butter and Sugar for spaghetti with mushrooms and bacon . I stopped by the market on the weekend to pick up the ingredients and I came home with a combination of shiitake, cremini and oyster mushrooms. While I was walking by the butchers shop I noticed that they were selling bacon that they had made and I wondered how it would compare to the store bought vacuum sealed packages that I normally use. They had a few different types and I thought that I would start by trying the double smoked variety. This meal comes together in under 20 minutes and the results are always good. You just can't go wrong with creamy sauteed mushrooms, salty bacon and cheese! The double smoked bacon was pretty good. It was thicker and not nearly as fatty as the vacuum sealed and it did have a nice hint of smokiness which went nicely with the mushrooms and pasta.
Wild Mushroom and Double Smoked Bacon Linguine
- 4 strips bacon (cut into 1 inch pieces)
- 8 ounces wild mushrooms (sliced, your favorite mushrooms)
- 1/2 pound linguine (I used whole wheat) (gluten free for gluten free)
- 1 clove garlic (chopped)
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 1/4 cup white wine (or dry sherry, or chicken stock)
- 1 splash heavy cream
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon parsley (chopped, optional)
- parmigiano reggiano (grated)
- Cook the bacon in a pan and set aside retaining 1 tablespoon of the grease.
- Add the mushrooms and saute until golden brown and just starting to caramelize, about 7-15 minutes.
- When the mushrooms are halfway done start cooking the pasta as directed on the package.
- Add the garlic and thyme to the mushrooms and saute for a minute.
- Add the wine, deglaze the pan and simmer to reduce a bit.
- Remove from the heat and stir in the heavy cream, bacon and parsley.
- Season with pepper. (It should already be salty enough from the bacon.)
- Toss the mushrooms with the pasta.
- Serve topped with the parmigiano reggiano.
Wild Mushrooms Sauteed in Butter, Sherry and Lemon
Roasted Mushroom Pesto on Penne
Mushroom and Thyme Farro Salad
Shrimp and Mushroom Fettuccine with Corn and Pancetta
Spinach Salad with Bacon, Caramelized Onions, Mushrooms and Blue Cheese in a Bacon Pan Sauce Dressing Topped with a Hard Boiled Egg


text:
It is unfortunate that the view has gained so many adherents. See the comments section for some more of my ideas on how to avoid the various red herrings and non sequiturs that are often brought up in its defense.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Finding God in My Own Mind
It is unfortunate that the view has gained so many adherents. See the comments section for some more of my ideas on how to avoid the various red herrings and non sequiturs that are often brought up in its defense.
33 comments:
RE is merely a lot of hot air surrounding the equivalent of a three-year old child's answer to why he stole a cookie - Just Cuz
- February 14, 2010 at 10:57 PM
- Luke said...
Keep pressing. You may yet get some helpful answers, at least from Robert.
- February 15, 2010 at 3:44 AM
- mikespeir said...
I think the assertion is that God instills into us, unlearned, an awareness of his existence. It's a view I would have subscribed to at one time. I don't buy it anymore. I think this "awareness" is really inculcated into some people during their religious upbringing. They grow up confusing first and second nature.
That's not to say that there aren't certain "first nature" needs we all groan under, predominately the need to feel secure. We all feel a little insecure. Then, when this God character is posited as the ultimate solution to our insecurities, we might very well want to grasp for him in response to the need. Our mistake is in thinking that the innate need is for God. It is not. The need is for security. - February 15, 2010 at 3:59 AM
I'm an atheist, but I've had spiritual moments/experiences of a profound magnitude. I don't think they have anything to do with god(s) though. One was rather chemical (heavy dose of alcohol while playing in a jam session, leading to a brief ego-killing trip), and the other was more visually stimulating (sense of extreme awe looking down from the summit of a volcano crater).
I feel like we should safely be able to separate the spiritual from the divine. - February 15, 2010 at 8:29 AM
- Bobcat said...
I will indeed respond to this. Probably not until Tuesday or Wednesday, though.
Rob Gressis - February 15, 2010 at 11:39 AM
- M. Tully said...
My Sensus Bulshiticus tells me that RE is bullshit.
Would the RE supporters care to respond (and by respond, I of course mean without intellectual hypocrisy)?
OK, really, intuition as THE final arbiter? Did the Enlightenment not happen to these people? Do they not realize that we have both split and fused atoms? That matter and energy are in fact equivalent? That just because you flipped a coin 8 freaking times in a row that came up heads that the next toss is still 50-50?
No, apparently not. I really must publish a book titled, "Sensus Bullshiticus" (c). - February 15, 2010 at 8:45 PM
"In fact, if God exists, and wants us to come to know him, I would expect us to be hardwired for belief in God"
Well this isn't what we see. People are not hardwired for specific belief in a specific God. The observation which has been made is that people across many cultures have a tendency toward religious belief in general. I.e. It is nothing more specific than stating that people everywhere can be superstitious. It is no more evidence for the omni-philosophical God than it is evidence for all the variety of rain gods and fertility gods and volcano gods.
And, on the flip side, religious disbelief is also found in a wide variety of cultures. - February 16, 2010 at 11:37 AM
Do you think that the people who talk about their religious experiences are just lying to you? Do you think they're lying to themselves?
There is very good evidence that most people lie some of the time. There is very good evidence that some people lie to themselves. There is also very good evidence that people's knowledge of their mental processes is not as thorough as they believe it to be. The evidence for dishonesty and delusion is much more solid than the evidence for the existence of any god.
Which brings us right back to the original question: if you want to claim that some of those people, at least some of the time, are not lying either to us or to themselves, how can we tell? - February 16, 2010 at 11:42 AM
- Bobcat said...
Hi Matt,
I posted a synopsis of our conversation on Prosblogion. The first version of my post accidentally published early, so one of the trackbacks is to that old post. The new post is up, though, and there are already some comments on it.
I still haven't responded to any of your objections, but at least the post is up, so others can respond to your challenge. Anyway, I'm going to post my own remarks as soon as I can.
Rob - February 18, 2010 at 3:30 PM
- jkshields said...
The Intro Bit:
I originally posted this on Common Sense Atheism,... but then realized it had sparked an entry on your blog here, so I am re-posting.
"Matt McCormick: There's still no one who can offer some details about what it's like to have this sensus divinitatus or the testimony of the Holy Ghost?What's it like when your radio is tuned to the God channel?Please give me some reasons to think that you all are not just putting us on. "
I don't fall into the category of a "reformed epistemologist" but after reading about this debate on Prosblogion I thought I'd give it a shot. I doubt what I describe would be hailed by RE proponents as the experience which justifies 'proper basicality.' I am not sure if that experience can be described in the way you are asking for; it is similar to asking someone to describe the sorts of feelings, sights, smells, or apprehensions that are occurring which justifies saying "I am a person." Forgive me if I talk in Academ-Theo-glish, I am trying to avoid it.
The Answer Bit:
Since you have asked for sights and smells etc. I will do my best to put what I would call "an intuition" in these terms. Most of the time my knowledge of God being is like a buzzing, above the sense of interior thought monologue,… and/or the series of incoming thought perceptions. It is the sensation of community, similar to the sensation when two people are reading in a room, even though they are occupied with separate ideas there is more than a concept of communion, there is a metaphysic,… a real relation between us. But I become even more aware of God's being (primarily verb not noun) when I try to push away from this buzzing/relation-awareness. It is similar to the feeling of missing a step, surprise, and then fear, and then pain. And whether you end up in a heap on the floor or catch the next step, you are thankful to feel ground beneath you although aggrieved at the whole event. When I try to think "There is no God" there is an unbearable emptiness and meaninglessness to my present awareness, my knowledge and presumption of personal and intellectual history become scrambled like looking at 0s and 1s instead of program output on a computer, and I have no sense of momentum to the next moment.
I don't know if that is the kind of description you were looking for, but it is much more a result of what I would call a meditation on God (in the style of Descartes) or Schleiermacher's feeling of absolute dependance than a true testimony (which is more about our perceptions of God's activity in the world post-conversion and not about the being of God, which is meta-conversion?) and I think anything which undergirds proper basicality will have to be a similar meditation, which may come down to (as your anonymous commentator said sardonically, but seems to me serious enough) "Just Cuz". - February 19, 2010 at 4:38 AM
- Matt McCormick said...
Thanks JK. This is very interesting, and more enlightening than much of what I've gotten on this. But it's still problematic, I think. What you are describing is a bunch of sensations or feelings, and you've heavily interpreted them as having a particular significance and indicating God's existence. That could be fine, but what's important is how you get from the first to the second. You realize, of course, that feelings can arise from a lot of sources, some of them external and many internal. And you realize that even when the source is external, we are often mistaken in the conclusions we draw about what's really going on. So the $64k question for someone who infers God in this way is, what is your error checking, corrective, or disconfirmation methodology? What measures have you taken or do you take to be able to say first, I have had a bunch of (remarkable) feelings, and second, from among all of the alternative natural and supernatural alternative explanations, I have sufficient grounds to conclude that the feelings are caused by this particular God and not something else?
And I have to say, that I think the notion of needing to actively seek out and then disprove all of the relevant alternative hypotheses is something that many religious folks in this tradition bother with. They already believe in God, they have a particular ideology that they subscribe to, then when they have some funny feelings, they take those without much more effort to disconfirm as evidence for God. The problem, of course, is that this doesn't provide justification for us in any other ordinary circumstances. More later.
MM - February 19, 2010 at 1:11 PM
- TaiChi said...
"You realize, of course, that feelings can arise from a lot of sources, some of them external and many internal. And you realize that even when the source is external, we are often mistaken in the conclusions we draw about what's really going on. "
Hi Matt. You wouldn't be able to point me towards a paper or the like that expands on this explanation?
This sounds like an idea I've had for some time, which I took from a theory of how panic attacks work. Roughly, the subject notices some stimulus (this might be a bodily sensation, or something external), interprets it as threatening, which then alters the perception of the stimulus in line with the interpretation, which then feeds back into the interpretation. The positive feedback loop quickly leads to a full-blown panic attack, and what was ambiguously threatening has become terrifying.
I think mystical experiences could be explained in a similar way to this - as interpretation and stimulation feeding off one another - and it would do just as well for road-to-Damascus type experiences as for minor mystical experiences.
Any Pointers or thoughts for me on this? - February 19, 2010 at 8:31 PM
- M. Tully said...
You wrote, "When I try to think "There is no God" there is an unbearable emptiness and meaninglessness to my present awareness, my knowledge and presumption of personal and intellectual history become scrambled like looking at 0s and 1s instead of program output on a computer, and I have no sense of momentum to the next moment."
But, in the end, the program output is the results of 1's and 0's isn't it?
Why can't we appreciate the results of the 1's and 0's on the screen for what they are? Why do you think that invoking magic is necessary to appreciate the program? - February 19, 2010 at 9:24 PM
- T said...
When we (the human species) don't have all the information at hand for something/anything, our minds tend to "auto-fill" the missing peices of information. Magicians rely heavily on these processes to complete their illusions. When something looks to be a certain way and we don't readily understand what took place, we make sense of the event using what we DO know. Even our eyes fill in missing peices of information, leaving no one to say they are immune to this process. Proper thinking has to have safeguards to minimize the effect of this "auto-fill" process our brains do. I wish I had time to look up this specific study, but I seem to remember elements of this may be outlined in an article titled, "Less guilty by reason of adolesence." I believe this article described some of the neurological processes that occur during flight or fight responses. During highly emotional events the logical processing of information is dimished and events are often highly altered when an individual later "recalls" those events.
RE seems to fit nicely in with the neurological "auto-fill" processes, including confirmation baises that we are all prone to.
I appreciate this site because it helps one to understand these pitfalls and to build safegards into one's critical thinking skills. - February 23, 2010 at 7:17 AM
I am thinking the internal checking process is a priori but maybe the excerpt below is has somethign to do with RE?
"There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God." - March 2, 2010 at 3:36 AM
Atheists often ask, "where is the evidence for God"
A possible problem with this is that the issue of God is not evidence based much like science, math and many disciplines that have a "philosophy of" in front of them. So maybe when atheist ask for evidence they are asking for too much. Basically they are being unfair in requiring theist to give them a proof of an issue that only requires an argument. The acceptance and practice of science has no proof but an argument (philosophy of science). Even logic has no definitive proof as the meta proof of the proof can still be questioned for a proof by the sneaky theist.
I recently sat on a jury and during deliberations encountered that half the jury wanted to acquit the man because the evidence that existed was not enough. I thought that this was interesting because I wondered what amount of evidence would be enough. It was suggested by some jurors that if the man was on trial for a lesser crime they would convict him easily. But this strikes me as shifting the level of evidence in accord with the level of crime. This seems inherently unfair as an X amount of evidence should convict a man, whether the committed shop lifting or murder.
My point here is that asking for evidence for God's existence may be unfair. It isn't like God is a Zebra in the animal kingdom that can be checked for DNA. Science, math and other disciplines are not evidence based as well and we would think it bizarre to ask where the evidence is for incorporating the existence of the scientific method into our lives.
So, are atheist being unfair in asking for evidence of God?
If not what amount of evidence is necessary for an atheist to believe in God?
CS - March 2, 2010 at 4:26 AM
I've had many 'spiritual' experiences, but I find them to be irrelevant to the existence of some invisible being. It is more of a personal, subjective thing. To experience a god would probably be more objective if it were to happen.
The Atheist Perspective - March 3, 2010 at 5:05 PM
- M. Tully said...
You directed your question to Matt, but here is my take:
"So, are atheist being unfair in asking for evidence of God?"
I'll give you my short answer,"NO."
Now, for my long answer. If I want to discover if a phenomenon is true then I look for evidence. That is if I want to know if I put it in my bag of knowledge and expect it to deliver consistent results, then I look for evidence. I do that because to do otherwise requires me to surrender any sense of truth.
Evidence is the final arbiter. In fact, it is the common human definition of sanity. No matter what logically seems right or what makes me feel good or any other criteria, in the end the proof is in the evidence. No rational person in their day-to-day lives denies this on important issues.
I don't believe in common sense as the final arbiter because common sense is frequently wrong. How do I know intuition is frequently wrong, the evidence.
Why shouldn't I believe in Zeus, Vishnu, Bigfoot, and anal probing alien abductors? Really, give me a good reason why I shouldn't without resorting to an argument from evidence.
You can't. You'll use evidence to refute all of the claims of the above entities. But when it comes to your pet entity you ask for special dispensation. Why should I dismiss all those other entities because of a lack of evidence but accept yours because I'm setting the bar too high for you?
Or, to be consistent, are you saying that I should believe anything anyone suggests because evidence doesn't matter? - March 3, 2010 at 5:26 PM
- M. Tully said...
"If not what amount of evidence is necessary for an atheist to believe in God?"
Short answer: Evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Long answer: Real life, no equivocation miracles.
Now, I don't know what your theological leanings are, but I'll give you a couple of examples from the Christian Bible.
In Joshua chapter 10, Joshua asks the sun to stand still and, "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the people had revenge upon their enemies."
Now, today we know that at the equator the linear velocity of the earth is about 1,000 mph. If tomorrow the earth suddenly stops and the majority of life isn't killed by that rapid acceleration, I'm going to start to say, "Hey maybe there is something supernatural at work here (still probably not going to worship it because the event only happened to enable the slaughter of sentient beings, but hey, it's something)."
Or in Matthew, chapter 27: "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who were fallen were raised; And after coming out of the graves after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many."
A number of verifiable corpses suddenly rising from decomposure and reconstituting themselves? Yep, you'd have my attention.
According to that ancient text, events like those above used to happen with some regularity. Now, not so much so. Hmmm?
How about an easy one. God, Gods, spirits (holy or otherwise) all rest on a single premise; consciousness without a material brain. You want to hook me (or at least get me to follow the lure)? Demonstrate it, just once. Just once demonstrate consciousness without a material brain. I'm no ideologue, I promise you'll have my attention. - March 3, 2010 at 6:05 PM
I have no idea what you mean by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. One reading of David Hume and the problem of induction ought to convince you that scientific evidence is not certain. So I don't know what type of evidence you are referring to nor to what extent. But if you were a reasonable person you ought to have a falsification for your non belief in God or I am just going to convince you of having faith in your position.
For the consciousness problem of materialism Try reading Saul Kripke on identity theory. He provides an nice elaborate argument using modal logic suggesting that mental states cannot be the same as physical states of the brain.
CS - March 3, 2010 at 6:51 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
CS, you're conflating "evidence" with "empirical observations." Arguments count as a form of evidence or reasons that would justify believing. That's all the my demand for evidence is. Provide some grounds or reasons that render believing reasonable. If that's an unfair request, then I don't know what to say. Sounds like you're wanting to bracket off God belief from any sort of real rational scrutiny the way the reformed epistemologists are doing. I'm not willing to do that. The belief in God is too central and influential in too many people's lives for us to just let it go uncritically.
Kripke's now dated argument about consciousness not withstanding, no one in the philosophy of mind really doubts that mind emanates from or is dependent upon the brain. Whatever the explanatory details are about mental states and consciousness, the existence of minds is grounded in brain function. - March 3, 2010 at 10:17 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
Tully, I have to disagree with you about these kinds of proof. A miracle like stopping the earth from turning might be sufficient, under the right circumstances, to indicate that some supernatural force of adequate power to stop the earth exists. But that's a long way from showing than an omnipotent, omniscient, all good, singular, personal monotheistic God is real. If I told you I could bench press 1,000 lbs, and then I only did 100, would you take that as sufficient evidence for the stronger claim? I've addressed miracles in a lot of earlier posts too. See the category at the left on miracles.
MM - March 3, 2010 at 10:48 PM
- M. Tully said...
"A miracle like stopping the earth from turning might be sufficient, under the right circumstances, to indicate that some supernatural force of adequate power to stop the earth exists. But that's a long way from showing than an omnipotent, omniscient, all good, singular, personal monotheistic God is real."
Matt, I agree. I shouldn't have equivocated supernatural with omni-god. But dang, at least you could have given me credit for lowering the bar for the other guy. - March 6, 2010 at 5:59 PM
- M. Tully said...
"For the consciousness problem of materialism Try reading Saul Kripke on identity theory."
Mmmm, my reading list is pretty full, can you give me the quick and dirty on how Kripke demonstrated consciousness without a material brain?
I'll wait.
And that goes to your other question, and the whole "problem with induction" thing, there is no problem with induction. Yes, if I looked everywhere that was reasonable and never saw a black swan then I would hold that all swans are white, but it is a tentative conclusion. If a black swan is demonstrated then I change my assumption. But now let's look at the alternative. If I looked everywhere that was reasonable and never saw a black swan then I would hold that there MUST be black swans (as well as yellow, red, green and purple with pink polka-dots). And that is the real problem with any non-induction idea of knowledge. - March 6, 2010 at 6:22 PM
David Hume on the problem of Induction. Its often taught in a history of modern philosophy course or Phil of science course
Kripke also raised the prospect of a posteriori necessities — facts that are necessarily true, though they can be known only through empirical investigation. Examples include "Hesperus is Phosphorus", "Cicero is Tully", "Water is H2O" and other identity claims where two names refer to the same object.
Finally, Kripke gave an argument against identity materialism in the philosophy of mind, the view that every mental fact is identical with some physical fact (See talk). Kripke argued that the only way to defend this identity is as an a posteriori necessary identity, but that such an identity — e.g., pain is C-fibers firing — could not be necessary, given the possibility of pain that has nothing to do with C-fibers firing. Similar arguments have been proposed by David Chalmers
CS - March 9, 2010 at 6:58 AM
Trying to prove or disprove God is like going down a never ending rabbit hole. You will spend the rest of your life wrestling with the issue taking it from this perspective.
As far as Kripke and Chalmers I believe they are still around and would beg to differ on your claim that nobody in the Phil of mind would agree with them. From my last course in Phil of mind not to long ago these current philosophers held a lot of weight in the field. Now if you're suggesting that the eliminative materialist camp is popular you are being disingenuous. That camp is a minority in the field of Phil of mind and have some pretty bizarre positions that reduce widely accepted mental states of belief, desire, lust etc as just physiological processes. In fact Kirpke's argument flat out refutes such thinking by suggesting that the state of pain cannot be stimulation of C-fibers. And I am not aware that any philosopher that has put up any effective argument against kripke to date. But you're more than welcome to post evidence supporting your claim that Kirpke's argument is outdated or that elminative materialism is a dominant position in the Phil of mind.
CS - March 9, 2010 at 7:20 AM
- M. Tully said...
So I'll take it that Kripke never demonstrates consciousness without a material brain.
My point being (for this as well as the Hume thing, which by the way I believe I stole the swan analogy from Hume) is that whatever problems materialists may have in explaining consciousness, they are insignificant compared to the problem the immaterialist has; that is having absolutely no basis for their premise. It has never been demonstrated anywhere. Consciousness is just the latest place the god of the gaps has retreated to. But where is the warrant to go from we don't understand "x" part of consciousness to ergo I know it is something that has never been shown to exist.
Think about it, going from I don't know to therefore I know it must be something that I have no evidence for.
Likewise for problems induction has. It's not perfect, but nothing comes close to delivering the results. Which is why when we really want to figure something out, it's what we use. We have learned a great deal about the universe by realizing that predictable patterns exist and can be discovered and used to make testable predictions, that is to say by using induction. - March 9, 2010 at 7:32 PM
I understand where you are coming from. I made the same argument as a Phil undergrad when first presented with mind/body dualism. But there is much more to think about then presuming it is silly to think a mind may not be a material thing. Its a complicated topic and one that is not as simple as you infer. But identity plays a large role in materialism that equates mental states with psychological processes (brain states)
If you were to agree with Kripke's argument then you can only conclude that minds are not material. Since we only have material vs. non material then by the law of exclusive middle concluding either one or the other is logically sound.
I really think you should read Kripke's argument against materialism (i.e. identity theory). I think it would give you a better appreciation for the subject matter even if you don't agree with him. Personally, I am not sure whether the mind is material or not. Remember, I am agnostic about most things...
CS - March 10, 2010 at 6:16 PM
- Matthew Griffin said...
Your question seems like it would be difficult to answer in any context, though maybe I am misinterpreting. What I mean is, even if you merely asked me to tell you how it feels to sense a Zebra, I think I'd have a hard time getting the point across...
I remember picking up a Christian flier on campus while taking your Philosophy of Mind class, which asked me "describe yellow" to a blind man. It would be really hard to do that, right?
Though my second scenario is not quite as analogous to the God Sense (since a blind man is incapable of sensing yellow), I imagine this is how Christians feel when asked a question like yours.
This is, of course, assuming that people are sensing God in the first place. Another concern, as you rightly point out, is if people sense God then why have 'faith in God'? We don't have faith in the Yellow or in Zebras. - March 11, 2010 at 1:54 AM
Hi, I have been reading a lot of the articles that really address my questions and thoughts, unlike some other websites I frequent regarding religion and atheism.
I wondered if I might guess what it feels like to sense god. In my experience, it is called neurosis. For example, some people get a really good "lucky" feeling when they notice a digital clock on certain numbers, or feel that a sandwich tastes slightly better if it is cut on the diagonal. Small differences make all the difference between ok and not quite ok, unease, and even a brief euphoria. Some people feel a boost whenever they see dogs, eat spaghetti, or smoke a cigarette, and feel significantly worse when they see snakes, eat oatmeal, or run out of cigarettes. Normal physical responses for peculiar preferences - some hate what we like and vice versa.
jkshields' description sounded a lot like that to me. When God is "there," it feels like he/she is not alone, in a comforting way, like knowing you have food in the refrigerator without having to look at it, and so do not have a reason to fear going hungry, and unlike paranoia. When crisis is averted or survived, it feels like misplaced gratitude, attributing this catch to a divine being... relief like knowing your spouse's flight landed safely when you are yourself scared of airplanes. When imagining a world without god or god has suddenly disappeared, to a point where one doesn't know what to do (!?), maybe that is like losing your glasses or your keys. There are some people who become uneasy if there is one dirty spoon in the sink, and some who fidget if someone is 30 seconds late, or if something on their desk isn't perpendicular. Common feelings that are unreal but real.
I think we all can relate to my examples as if you imagine god to be vitally important to the outcome of major events as well as to imagine god to be an individual factor, a peculiarity of yourself that gives you moments of highs and lows - they tick in your brain when they happen, but not exactly the same way for everyone. Someone else said they might be more like a panic attack, but I don't think sensing god always has to be that dramatic.
I don't know where neuroses come from, but I find it telling that I share a few with my sister that we never realized until we were adults. Things "feel right" when minor details are what, to the individual, is "right," and when those details are slightly askew or even haphazard, most rational people will bear through it silently with internal unease, but some people have the embarrassment of not being able to function until they, oh, recite the list of states in alphabetical order, as if this were on the same level of importance as finding your keys before you can leave the house.
I have heard people try to describe how it feels to know god or to receive messages in their heart or whatever, and none of them sounded remarkably different than a neurosis of no realistic bearing, being that I don't believe in god, but I imagine it is more for them like the example with the airplane making it ok. However:
Thousands of flights make it ok every single day. Fear of flight is one of those things that's really irrational, but most of us tend to excuse it. Most of us can relate to wanting to check on an individual's safety in such a situation, and never think twice that their taxi will go off a bridge or something else that might happen but usually doesn't. It just makes us feel better to check than not know, and find out everything's still ok, even if it can go bad some other way.
I hope my examples made sense. This is a really interesting blog with a lot of great topics, but a lot of academic language I'm not used to. - March 14, 2010 at 1:32 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
Thanks very much Kodie, and thanks for reading. You're examples are helpful.
MM - March 14, 2010 at 2:11 PM
- everettattebury said...
TaiChi said:
This sounds like an idea I've had for some time, which I took from a theory of how panic attacks work. Roughly, the subject notices some stimulus (this might be a bodily sensation, or something external), interprets it as threatening, which then alters the perception of the stimulus in line with the interpretation, which then feeds back into the interpretation. The positive feedback loop quickly leads to a full-blown panic attack, and what was ambiguously threatening has become terrifying.
When I read this I thought of the little child in bed who convinces himself there is a monster in the closet, and the superstitions of the jungle tribes in Papua New Guinea who blame misfortunes on invisible witches.
I'll bet the tribal members think that their beliefs in witchcraft are "properly basic" too. - March 19, 2010 at 6:14 AM
- normdoering said...
I've got some videos on Alvin Plantinga on my youtube channel that you might find useful and enjoyable:
http://youtu.be/oSjRRp_3SSI - June 12, 2011 at 12:06 AM


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