Saturday, January 26, 2002
"... don't ya know there ain't no devil there's just God when he's drunk" Tom Waits
Over the past few years I've been a part of many many email discussions on god and religion in general. I didn't really stop to think about it much before that and I was probably on the fence more or less an agnostic. Combining those discussions with my later in life interest in Astronomy have jolted me into atheism I would say. I've read more about Science, more about religion, more about others thoughts and beliefs on the subject. So how did I come down on the other side of the fence? Well, it's a long story that'll be drawn out here but let's start with a visual aid. Have a look HERE . Have a boo at the little red galaxy down there, it's estimated to be over 9 billion years away. Just stop and contemplate that for a few minutes and our place in the universe as human beings.
I can't decribe it any better than Richard Feynman so I'm just gonna quote him verbatim instead: "It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, to think of what it means without man - as it was for the great part of it's long history, as it is in the great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to see life as part of the universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is rarely described. It usually ends in laughter, delight in the futility of trying to understand. These scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that is all arranged simply as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems to be inadequate".
Richard Feynman was one of the 20th century's greatest physicists and greatest minds winning the Nobel prize in 1965. To learn more about Feynman I found a coupla decent sites.
Dalton's Interesting People
Feynman Online
Over the past few years I've been a part of many many email discussions on god and religion in general. I didn't really stop to think about it much before that and I was probably on the fence more or less an agnostic. Combining those discussions with my later in life interest in Astronomy have jolted me into atheism I would say. I've read more about Science, more about religion, more about others thoughts and beliefs on the subject. So how did I come down on the other side of the fence? Well, it's a long story that'll be drawn out here but let's start with a visual aid. Have a look HERE . Have a boo at the little red galaxy down there, it's estimated to be over 9 billion years away. Just stop and contemplate that for a few minutes and our place in the universe as human beings.
I can't decribe it any better than Richard Feynman so I'm just gonna quote him verbatim instead: "It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, to think of what it means without man - as it was for the great part of it's long history, as it is in the great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to see life as part of the universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is rarely described. It usually ends in laughter, delight in the futility of trying to understand. These scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that is all arranged simply as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems to be inadequate".
Richard Feynman was one of the 20th century's greatest physicists and greatest minds winning the Nobel prize in 1965. To learn more about Feynman I found a coupla decent sites.
Dalton's Interesting People
Feynman Online
