Einstein - God

Many a times I've come across the banal usage of Einstein's quotes that invoke the word "God". Einstein's philosophical writings do not show any significant adherence to a deity in the usual sense of the term "God". Einstein differed on principle when it came to any collective ideology, be it nationalism or organized religion. The very idea of a mass taking part in collective activity is an intellectual anathema. The most important reason for the utter naiveté involved in quoting Einstein is that he's after all a scientist. A human scientist. He is not beyond reproach, neither is he infallible. Unlike patriarchal prophets of gods, a scientist cannot be an egoist regarding his intellectual engagements. Therefore, Einstein's arguments or pronouncements are not capital truths, less so are his opinions. Quoting him doesn't  attest to the veracity of any argument.

What is "artificial"?

If humans are a part of Nature, then why are their creations "artificial"? It makes little sense to worry about how humans may harm Nature. The only harm we maybe causing is to the survival of the species homo sapiens sapiens. Rest of the chatter is pure hubris.

Abrahamic Monotheism

The trio comprising of the Old and New Testaments and the Quran forms the defining elements of the departure from the pantheon of El that Abraham undertook. In his footsteps developed a characteristic notion of a true God which over generations shaped into the monotheistic school of Abraham.

The peculiar aspect of this brand of monotheism is acknowledging the existence of many Gods. However only one, namely the Abrahamic God, is the "real" one. This makes me wonder what is monotheism?: Is it the belief that there is one deity, God, who may express itself in many forms, or the assertion that there are many deities, all but one of whom is the true/real God?

Faith

The concept of faith is often cited as that ethereal ingredient which connects man to divine, notwithstanding its slavish implications. 

In the days of yore, when civilizations were cradling to life, the curiosity of many  a man was quenched by invoking divinity. Gods were beings of supreme power, and sometimes wisdom, who knew the answers to those worries that ailed the early human's mind. They at once seemed to answer all the burning queries and provided a purpose to life. A marvellous invention! Faith was necessary for the Ego of man to believe that it had the answer to everything, that it was special.  The ignorance of man was thus replaced by the wisdom of the unknowable. The divine rug covered all. Delusion flourished. Yet discomfort lingered on in the minds of few. They eventually challenged the scriptural propaganda of the He-who-knows-all.  Science loomed ominously in the horizon.

Although at some level all sciences need axioms, which are similar to faith, the real merit of science is the capability of making falsifiable predictions. The concept of a deity who knows all cannot predict anything. Seen in another way such an entity is in fact a measure of scientific ignorance*. Thus the more scientific knowledge we amass, either the kingdom of this entity shrinks or humans become more divine. Either way the pedestal wobbles increasingly with time.

Probably there are things that are fundamentally unknowable ( Godel's incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, etc) and a god or two may lurk in these sublime crevices of logic. But there is an important distinction: these unknowabilities are quantifiable. In other words one can precisely estimate where ignorance begins and how. This knowledge of ignorance eventually begets more knowledge.

Faith is a crutch one certainly needs to start tapping into the cumulative human knowledge, but it is unnecessary beyond a point. Unfortunately this point is non-universal.




* The assumption that all knowledge is necessarily scientific maybe incorrect. But all impersonal or, objective  knowledge is most likely scientific. Although both subjective and objective knowledge are potentially consequential, the only knowledge retained over time is the objective one.

wget with Windows PowerShell

You will need: Windows PowerShell

Enable script execution:
  1. Open powershell as administrator.  
  2. Check the status of script execution:
    Get-ExecutionPolicy
  3. Most  likely it will report Restricted. In that case you need to change (for this purpose you needed administrative privilege) the status to allow script execution. Type:
    Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
    Note that this is the minimal allowance for scripts. For more info look here.
The script:
Here's a script that emulates wget. It has an option for iteration.
$client = new-object System.Net.WebClient
foreach ($counter in < start > .. < end >)
{
   $source="< part of web address before counter >"+$counter+"< rest of the web
address >"
   $destin="< path of destination before counter  >"+$counter+"< rest of the path >"
   $client.DownloadFile($source,$destin)
}
$counter controls the iteration. Multiple counters can be used. The text in <...> along with the < & > symbols need to be supplanted by actual data of interest.