The religion of Paul Dirac

Paul Dirac was one of the giants of physics in the 20th century.  He made fundamental contributions to our understanding of quantum theory, along with Einstein, Heisenberg, Pauli, Schrodinger, and others.  In the 1920's, before the current age of Big Science, the world's leading physicists could sit down in a room together, apparently, and discuss such idle topics as politics and religion.  A Wiki article relates the story of one such conference, quoted from Heisenberg's book.  I thought it was pretty funny (make sure to read until the end):

"...Dirac said:

“

I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.

”

Heisenberg's view was tolerant. Pauli, raised as a Catholic, had kept silent after some initial remarks, but when finally he was asked for his opinion, said: "Well, our friend Dirac has got a religion and its guiding principle is 'There is no God and Paul Dirac is His prophet.'" Everybody, including Dirac, burst into laughter."

I made a graph

I made this graph in order to try to answer the question:  Is a public health system more expensive than a private one?  The x-axis is government expenditure on health as a percentage of total health expenditure.  The y-axis is total health expenditure, as a percentage of GDP.

The orange diamond represents the United States.  Data is from 2007 and compiled from the World Health Organization 2010 report.  The solid blue line is a linear fit.

The countries shown are from the top 27 countries by GDP per capita. Not shown are those countries which spend less than 4% GDP on health:  Singapore, and the Islamic/Arabic monarchies Qatar, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.  Also not shown are countries which receive external resources for health:  Israel.

List of countries shown:  Luxembourg, Norway, United States, Switzerland, Netherlands, Australia, Austria, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, Finland, France, Japan, Republic of Korea, Spain, Italy.

Thoughts?

The Climate Change Debate

One remarkable aspect of the climate change debate is the difference between public and scientific opinion.  Only 49% of the American public says rising global temperatures are a result of human activities (Gallup, 2007-2008).  In contrast, 97% of climate scientists are convinced by the evidence that it is "very likely" greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for "most" of the "unequivocal" warming of average global temperatures over the last half of the 20th century (U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010).

In this respect, the debate over human-caused global warming is similar to the "debate" over the evolutionary origins of species.  Among the public, the most basic principles of biology remain controversial:  about half of Americans say they do not believe humans share a common ancestor with other species.  One may even find a few dissenting biologists, somewhere, willing to speak to legislators of the need to teach evolution in schools only as a scientific "controversy".  Their climate-change counterparts can be found making vastly disproportionate contributions to Congressional hearings, or the Wall Street Journal. 

A recent review of climate change evidence characterized the debate this way (Proceedings of the Royal Society, 2010):

"The history of science reveals a series of ‘controversies’. These often develop into a state where there is little debate within the relevant academic community (and what there is tends to be on peripheral issues), yet widespread popular debate remains. This usually occurs because the research has challenged the beliefs of a significant fraction of the population at large. The nature of the controversies, however, has changed. Where, for example, the advances made by Galileo and Darwin faced opposition because they challenged the established teachings of organized religion, climate scientists in the developed world have faced opposition from their more secular societies because they challenge beliefs that justify lifestyles and/or political allegiances (Malka et al. 2009; Nisbet 2009)."

But as the article points out, there is a crucial difference between the climate change controversy, and the evolution controversy.  While "humankind could often afford to wait for previous controversies to abate", in the case of climate change there is evidence that "time for effective action is extremely short".  The American Physical Society, which represents thousands of physicists (including yours truly!) agrees:

"The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now."