• About
  • Photography

The Bully Pulpit

~ (n): An office or position that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue.

The Bully Pulpit

Tag Archives: Stephen Hawking

A Secular Scientist’s Argument against the New Atheists

19 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by jrbenjamin in Religion, Science

≈ Comments Off on A Secular Scientist’s Argument against the New Atheists

Tags

Astronomy, Atheism, Christian, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, David Berlinski, debate, Faith, Gerard Manley Hopkins, interview, Judaism, M Theory, Naturalism, physics, reason, religion, Richard Dawkins, science, Secularism, Skepticism, Stephen Hawking

David Berlinski and Christopher Hitchens

Moderator: Dr. Berlisnki, you’re not a Christian, and indeed, you’re not religious as I understand it. Why do you argue for a Judeo-Christian influence in society?

David Berlisnki: I presume you are not asking me in the hopes of a personal declaration. And I won’t say that this secular Jew has a remarkable degree of authority when it comes to these moral events: after all, I have lived my own life under the impress of having a good time, all the time. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to hear these words from someone such as myself, because at least you are hearing them from someone with no conceivable bias in their favor.

In its largest aspect, Western science is of course an outgrowth of Judeo-Christian tradition, especially to the extent, perhaps only to the extent, that it is committed to the principle that the manifest universe contains a latent structure that can be discovered by the intellect of man. I think this is true. I don’t think this is very far from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ declaration that, ‘the world is charged with the grandeur of God.’ […]

You know, Stephen Hawking just published a book, one explaining, again, how everything began — why it’s there, why we shouldn’t worry about God, et cetera. And to paraphrase the claim that he now makes: having given up on “A” through “L”, he now champions something called “M-theory” to explain how the universe popped into existence. I respect Hawking as a reputable physicist. But I can tell you this: What is lamentably lacking in every one of these discussions is that coruscating spirit of skepticism which a Christopher Hitchens or a Richard Dawkins would bring to religious claims, and then lapses absurdly when it comes to naturalistic and scientific claims about the cosmos.

Surely, we should have the sophistication to wonder at any asseveration of the form that the universe just blasted itself into existence following the laws of M-theory — a theory no one can understand, whose mathematical formulism hasn’t been completed, which has never once been tested in any laboratory on the face of the earth…

Finally, the fact that the earth, our home, is a small part of the physical universe does not mean it is not the center of the universe. That is a non sequitur. After all, no one would argue, least of all Mr. Hitchens, that the doctrine that home is where the heart lies is rendered false by distance. We should be very careful about making these claims. I agree that the universe is very big; there are lots of galaxies and amazing things. And there is certainly some biological continuity between humans and the animals that came before us. But as for the central religious claim that this particular place is blessed and important, that’s different. No doctrine about physical size rebuts it…

And as to why should a secular Jew open his mouth to questions pertaining to the Christian religion? It’s a big tent. I’m presuming I would be welcomed.

__________

An excerpt from Berlinski’s 2010 debate with Christopher Hitchens. Berlinski’s erudition reaches almost comical heights in this debate, which is, in my opinion, one of the more compelling Hitch ever did. I like the whole thing, but you can watch the pulled section below.

Continue onward:

  • C.S. Lewis: how to spot a truly humble person
  • “For me, it’s a part of being human”: Updike justifies his Christianity
  • A slight change of pace: Hitchens reflects and his mother

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Einstein, Newton, Sagan: Science As Child’s Play

31 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Science

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

A Brief History of Time, Albert Einstein, biology, Carl Sagan, chemistry, Childhood, Children, cosmology, curiosity, Einstein, Einstein and Religion, Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology., Faith, Isaac Newton, John Milton, Max Jammer, Memoirs of Isaac Newton, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Paradise Regained, physics, religion, science, scientific method, Sir David Brewster, Stephen Hawking

Albert Einstein

“We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things.”

Albert Einstein, in a quotation pulled from the first chapter of Max Jammer’s excellent Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology.*

“The modesty of Sir Isaac Newton… arose from the depth and extent of his knowledge, which showed him what a small portion of nature he had been able to examine… a short time before his death he uttered this memorable sentiment:

‘I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'”

Isaac Newton, as quoted by Sir David Brewster in volume II of his Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton.**

“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world… Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.”

Carl Sagan, writing in the introduction to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

__________

Neil deGrasse Tyson: I’m often asked by parents what advice can I give them to help get kids interested in science? And I have only one bit of advice: get out of their way. Kids are born curious. Period. I don’t care about your economic background. I don’t care what town you’re born in, what city, what country. If you’re a child, you are curious about your environment. You’re overturning rocks. You’re plucking leaves off of trees and petals off of flowers, looking inside, and you’re doing things that create disorder in the lives of the adults around you.  

And so then so what do adults do? They say, “Don’t pluck the petals off the flowers. I just spent money on that. Don’t play with the egg. It might break. Don’t….”  Everything is a don’t. We spend the first year teaching them to walk and talk and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.

So you get out of their way. And you know what you do? You put things in their midst that help them explore. Help ‘em explore. Why don’t you get a pair of binoculars, just leave it there one day? Watch ‘em pick it up. And watch ‘em look around. They’ll do all kinds of things with it.

For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon, and the moon wasn’t just bigger, it was better. There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive.”

* I’ve hosted the PDF of the first chapter of Jammer’s book. For some context, however, the quote cited above occurs on page 48. Jammer follows it with the following clarification of Einstein’s theology:

“…Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue in New York cabled Einstein, ‘Do you believe in God? Stop. Prepaid reply fifty words.’ Einstein replied, ‘I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.’ Rabbi Goldstein commented that this reply

‘very clearly disproves . . . the charge of atheism made against Einstein. In fact, quite the reverse is true. Spinoza, who is called “the God-intoxicated man” and who saw God manifest in all of nature, certainly could not be called an atheist. . . . Einstein’s theory, if carried out to its logical conclusions would bring mankind a scientific formula for monotheism. He does away with all thought of dualism or pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism.'”

** Could Newton have possibly read John Milton’s Paradise Regained, which was published in 1671, when the former would have been twenty-nine?

In Book Four of the poem, Lines 327 to 330 read:

Deep verst in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,
And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge;
As Children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Today’s Top Pages

  • Einstein's Daily Routine
    Einstein's Daily Routine
  • Martin Luther King on Conquering Self-Centeredness
    Martin Luther King on Conquering Self-Centeredness
  • Sam Harris: Why I Decided to Have Children
    Sam Harris: Why I Decided to Have Children
  • The Mountaintop: Martin Luther King's Final Speech
    The Mountaintop: Martin Luther King's Final Speech
  • "Going" by Philip Larkin
    "Going" by Philip Larkin

Enter your email address to follow The Bully Pulpit - you'll receive notifications of new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Recent Posts

  • The Other Side of Feynman
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald on Succeeding Early in Life
  • The Man Who Most Believed in Himself
  • What ’60s Colleges Did Right
  • Dostoyevsky’s Example of a Good Kid

Archives

  • April 2018 (2)
  • March 2018 (2)
  • February 2018 (3)
  • January 2018 (3)
  • December 2017 (1)
  • November 2017 (3)
  • October 2017 (2)
  • September 2017 (2)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • July 2017 (2)
  • June 2017 (2)
  • May 2017 (2)
  • April 2017 (2)
  • March 2017 (1)
  • February 2017 (1)
  • January 2017 (1)
  • December 2016 (2)
  • November 2016 (1)
  • October 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • June 2016 (2)
  • May 2016 (1)
  • April 2016 (1)
  • March 2016 (2)
  • February 2016 (1)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (4)
  • November 2015 (8)
  • October 2015 (7)
  • September 2015 (11)
  • August 2015 (10)
  • July 2015 (7)
  • June 2015 (12)
  • May 2015 (7)
  • April 2015 (17)
  • March 2015 (23)
  • February 2015 (17)
  • January 2015 (22)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (17)
  • October 2014 (13)
  • September 2014 (9)
  • August 2014 (2)
  • July 2014 (1)
  • June 2014 (20)
  • May 2014 (17)
  • April 2014 (24)
  • March 2014 (19)
  • February 2014 (12)
  • January 2014 (21)
  • December 2013 (13)
  • November 2013 (15)
  • October 2013 (9)
  • September 2013 (10)
  • August 2013 (17)
  • July 2013 (28)
  • June 2013 (28)
  • May 2013 (23)
  • April 2013 (22)
  • March 2013 (12)
  • February 2013 (21)
  • January 2013 (21)
  • December 2012 (9)
  • November 2012 (18)
  • October 2012 (22)
  • September 2012 (28)

Categories

  • Biography (51)
  • Current Events (47)
  • Debate (7)
  • Essay (10)
  • Film (10)
  • Freedom (40)
  • History (122)
  • Humor (15)
  • Interview (71)
  • Journalism (16)
  • Literature (82)
  • Music (1)
  • Original (1)
  • Personal (3)
  • Philosophy (87)
  • Photography (4)
  • Poetry (114)
  • Political Philosophy (41)
  • Politics (108)
  • Psychology (35)
  • Religion (74)
  • Science (27)
  • Speeches (52)
  • Sports (12)
  • War (57)
  • Writing (11)

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: