Audio log: Dirac

Two characters argue about Dirac.

## Location

As you enter the area with the music box, you'll see in the water two lights with a sharp-shaped rock between them. The tape lies hidden on top of the rock.

## Transcript

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.

Paul Dirac, 1927
as related by Werner Heisenberg

So you see what I'm saying here.

Yep. This one doesn't fit either.

How would you characterise the way in which it doesn't fit?

It's ... about arguing, and it's about being greatly disturbed by issues that are relatively small. It's not aiming high, it's not about ultimate truth, not really. It's mostly about what some stupid people are doing that is wrong, compared to what I am doing that is right.

But Paul Dirac was definitely a truth-seeker ... in the domain of physics at least. Yeah but I don't feel that attitude in this piece at all. If a belief is just formed in opposition to other beliefs, ... it can't be fundamental? It can't be that deep.
But you know, where he says the thing about natural processes, he starts to outline an actual philosophy.

Hmm, interesting. There's something that could stand on its own, that isn't just rejection and opposition. But then he drops it.

Well, this isn't the atheist manifesto we need. I'll keep looking.

You know, at one point Dirac also wrote this:

"One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe." I think he meant God in an Einstein kind of way.

He said that? Same guy?

Same guy. Later in life though. People are strange. Scientists are stranger.

Yes they are.

## Story implications

There is a discussion here about what types of arguments are more or less valid in the context of seeking fundamental truths.

There seems to be some romantic chemistry between these two characters, judging by intonation. It stands to reason that in a big project like this, people spend so much time together that they can end up falling in love, even when one is a scientist and the other is religious.

None of the quotes that are in this audio logs exist anywhere else in the game.

## Relation to the six themes of the Witness

This quote relates to Theme 1: Skepticism.

This quote is two characters discussing why certain arguments are more or less fitting for the quest for fundamental truths. They are being skeptical of the pieces quoted here.