https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Neil deGrasse Tyson (born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.
Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994 he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University.
Early life
His interest in astronomy began at the age of nine after visiting the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium. He recalled that "so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that I'm certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me." During high school, Tyson attended astronomy courses offered by the Hayden Planetarium, which he called "the most formative period" of his life. He credited Dr. Mark Chartrand III, director of the planetarium at the time, as his "first intellectual role model" and his enthusiastic teaching style mixed with humor inspired Tyson to communicate the universe to others the way he did.
Tyson obsessively studied astronomy in his teen years, and eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of fifteen. Astronomer Carl Sagan, who was a faculty member at Cornell University, tried to recruit Tyson to Cornell for undergraduate studies. In his book, The Sky Is Not the Limit, Tyson wrote:
My letter of application had been dripping with an interest in the universe. The admission office, unbeknownst to me, had forwarded my application to Carl Sagan's attention. Within weeks, I received a personal letter...
Tyson revisited this moment on his first episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Pulling out a 1975 calendar belonging to the famous astronomer, he found the day Sagan invited the 17-year-old to spend a day in Ithaca. Sagan had offered to put him up for the night if his bus back to the Bronx did not come. Tyson said, "I already knew I wanted to become a scientist. But that afternoon, I learned from Carl the kind of person I wanted to become."
Tyson chose to attend Harvard where he majored in physics
https://metvcdn.metv.com/FOliL-1483635586-695-lists-screen_shot_2017-01-05_at_10.58.57_am.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
Jesus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jesus (c.4 BC – c.AD 30 / 33), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus Christ, was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament.
Christ myth theory
Main article: Christ myth theory
The Christ myth theory is the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth never existed
Life and teachings in the New Testament
Public ministry
Main article: Ministry of Jesus
Disciples and followers
Near the beginning of his ministry, Jesus appoints twelve apostles.
Jesus chose twelve disciples (the "Twelve"), evidently as an apocalyptic message.
From 10/5/1958 ( Neil deGrasse Tyson ) To 3/16/1991 ( my first successful major test of my ultraspace matter transportation device as Kerry Wayne Burgess the successful Ph.D. graduate ) is 11850 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/13/1998 is 11850 days
From 6/9/1989 ( premiere US film "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" ) To 4/13/1998 is 3230 days
3230 = 1615 + 1615
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/5/1970 ( Alfred Sturtevant dead ) is 1615 days
From 3/14/1940 ( Franklin Roosevelt - Letter on the Status of Myron Taylor as the President's Representative to the Pope ) To 4/13/1998 is 21214 days
21214 = 10607 + 10607
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 11/17/1994 ( premiere US film "Star Trek Generations" ) is 10607 days
From 7/11/1962 ( the first Telstar 1 satellite transatlantic television transmission from orbit of the planet Earth ) To 12/20/1994 ( in non-aviator related duties on the ground in Bosnia as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps captain this day is my United States Navy Cross medal date of record ) is 11850 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/13/1998 is 11850 days
From 12/4/1959 ( premiere US TV series episode "The Twilight Zone"::"Judgment Night" ) To 5/14/1992 ( the Intelsat 6 successful rescue during US space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut and my 1st official United States of America National Aeronautics and Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall ) is 11850 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/13/1998 is 11850 days
From 1/17/1991 ( the date of record of my United States Navy Medal of Honor as Kerry Wayne Burgess chief warrant officer United States Marine Corps circa 1991 officially the United States Apache attack helicopter pilot ) To 4/13/1998 is 2643 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 1/27/1973 ( the Paris Peace Accords ends United States involvement in Vietnam War ) is 2643 days
From 12/29/1966 ( premiere US TV series episode "Star Trek"::"Shore Leave" ) To 4/13/1998 is 11428 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/15/1997 ( as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-82 pilot astronaut and my 4th official United States of America National Aeronautics Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall I begin repairing the US Hubble Telescope while in space and orbit of the planet Earth - extravehicular activity #2 begins ) is 11428 days
From 5/19/1962 ( Marilyn Monroe performs "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" ) To 10/28/1994 ( premiere US film "Stargate" ) is 11850 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/13/1998 is 11850 days
http://www.tv.com/shows/the-love-boat-the-next-wave/smooth-sailing-51851/
tv.com
The Love Boat: The Next Wave Season 1 Episode 1
Smooth Sailing
AIRED: 4/13/98
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1183205/bio
IMDb
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Biography
Born October 5, 1958 in New York City, New York, USA
Birth Name Neil de Grasse Tyson
http://www.tv.com/shows/lawman-1958/the-deputy-129302/
tv.com
Lawman (1958) Season 1 Episode 1
The Deputy
Aired Oct 05, 1958 on ABC
AIRED: 10/5/58
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-status-myron-taylor-the-presidents-representative-the-pope
The American Presidency Project
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
32nd President of the United States: 1933 - 1945
Letter on the Status of Myron Taylor as the President's Representative to the Pope.
March 14, 1940
My dear Dr. Buttrick:
I HAVE RECEIVED your letter of February 27, 1940, concerning the status of Mr. Myron Taylor's mission to the Pope. I am sure that on further thought you will agree that no public statement is required, or indeed could be made, on the basis of a mere press report, which so far as I know has not emanated from a responsible source.
The status of Mr. Taylor's mission is exactly as Mr. Messersmith described it to you in his letter of January 25. Mr. Taylor is in Rome as my special representative. This appointment does not constitute the inauguration of formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican. The President may determine the rank for social purposes of any special representative he may send; in this case the rank corresponding to Ambassador was obviously appropriate. The reason for and circumstances surrounding his designation were made clear in my Christmas letter to the Pope; and in the letter which I gave to Mr. Taylor for presentation to the Pope, which conforms to the Christmas message.
Mr. Taylor was sent to Rome to assist parallel endeavors for peace and the alleviation of suffering; and I am sure that all men of good-will must sympathize with this purpose.
There of course was not the slightest intention to raise any question relating to the union of the functions of Church and State, and it is difficult for me to believe that anyone could take seriously a contrary view
From 6/17/1947 ( Harry Truman - Commencement Address at Princeton University ) To 11/17/1994 is 17320 days
17320 = 8660 + 8660
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Burgess ) To 7/19/1989 ( the United Airlines Flight 232 crash ) is 8660 days
From 10/13/1987 ( Walter Houser Brattain deceased ) To 11/17/1994 is 2592 days
2592 = 1296 + 1296
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Burgess ) To 5/21/1969 ( the Princeton University doctor of medicine degree graduation of my biological brother Dr Thomas Reagan MD ) is 1296 days
See also possible future updates by me and also other posts by me
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111280/releaseinfo
IMDb
Star Trek: Generations (1994)
Release Info
USA 17 November 1994 (Hollywood, California) (premiere)
https://www.wired.com/2012/07/50th-anniversary-telstar-1/
WIRED
DAM MANN
SCIENCE
07.10.12 01:39 PM
TELSTAR 1: THE LITTLE SATELLITE THAT CREATED THE MODERN WORLD 50 YEARS AGO
Telstar 1 transmitted its first image — a video of a flag outside a TV station in Andover, Maine — on July 11, 1962.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-us-accidentally-nuked-own-communications-satellite/
Scientific American
How the U.S. Accidentally Nuked Its Own Communications Satellite
Fifty years ago AT&T launched Telstar 1, the first commercial communications satellite, right into the middle of a radiation storm produced by a nuclear test
By Saswato R. Das on July 11, 2012
In 1962 a small spherical satellite weighing about 77 kilograms was launched from Cape Canaveral. Its name was Telstar 1, and it was the first commercial telecommunications satellite—the first of a long line that have led to today's digitally connected world, where television programs and other media are easily accessible at locations across the globe.
By the following February, however, Telstar 1 had been completely fried by energetic electrons from a U.S. high-altitude nuclear test.
Walter Brown, a Bell Laboratories engineer who worked on the project, recalls Telstar 1’s triumphs and untimely demise. Currently a professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, he says it was his job to “examine how radiation in space affects solar cells and semiconductors.” He got rather more than he bargained for.
The day before launch, the U.S. had set off a nuclear explosion at an altitude of 400 kilometers just southwest of Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. The test, known as Starfish Prime, released the energy equivalent of 1.4 megatons (million tons) of TNT—creating a huge electromagnetic pulse that produced spectacular aurora over the Pacific.
"The people who set off the nuclear explosion were totally surprised by the huge number of high energy electrons that were released," Brown says. "They had no idea this would be the case until we started seeing this huge flux, a hundred times what was predicted."
The satellite unwittingly became an experiment to analyze the aftermath of a nuclear blast on electronic equipment. "We learned a lot about radiation damage from Telstar 1," he says. "Initially, Telstar 1 couldn't be turned on, some transistors had failed. But the electronics engineers figured a way around that and got it working."
Their efforts bought enough time for the satellite to prove its worth. On July 11, 1962, a day after launch, Telstar 1 relayed the television transmission of an American flag, located outside a base station in Andover, Maine, to a station in Pleumeur-Bodou, France. Brown remembers what happened at the Andover station when the satellite was turned on and radio transmission commenced: “The project leader Eugene O’Neill whooped and gave thumbs up. And soon everyone was whooping and giving thumbs-up."
On July 23, 1962, Telstar 1 relayed a public broadcast featuring Walter Cronkite, a baseball game, and segments of a news conference by President Kennedy. That evening, it transmitted the first non-cable phone call across the Atlantic.
Telstar 1 vindicated the vision of John Robinson Pierce, a famous Bell Labs engineer who had calculated that 25 satellites placed in suitable orbits around the Earth could provide continuous communication between any two points on the globe by bouncing signals. The first test of his idea had been the Echo 1 satellite, a giant 30-meter-diameter balloon coated with a metallized film, which NASA launched in 1960. Known as a passive communications satellite because it carried no electronics but rather acted as a giant signal reflector, it was used by Bell Labs engineers to successfully bounce telephone, radio and television signals off it. Telstar 1 went a step further. It had its own power source--solar cells that generated approximately 14 watts of power, and a transponder to receive and retransmit television signals or telephone calls.
Its success against the odds inspired a generation of scientists and engineers. Louis Lanzerotti, a physicist at New Jersey Institute of Technology who spent many years at Bell Labs and worked on space missions such as Voyager, Ulysses and Galileo, was a graduate student in nuclear physics at Harvard University when Telstar 1 went into orbit. "The graduate students in the cyclotron lab talked about it," he recalls. "We talked about sending signals across the Atlantic."
But the engineers could stave off the inevitable only so long: In February 1963 accumulating radiation damage finally caused Telstar 1's transistors to fail irreparably. Fortunately, the energized electrons had dissipated when NASA launched Telstar 2 a year later. By that time both the U.S. and Soviet Union had ceased high-altitude nuclear testing.
https://www.space.com/306-remembering-telstar-40th-anniversary-satellite-tv-transmission-observed-maine.html
Space
Remembering 'Telstar': 40th Anniversary of First Satellite TV Transmission Observed in Maine
By Glenn Adams July 11, 2002 Spaceflight
Remembering 'Telstar': 40th Anniversary of First Satellite TV Transmission Observed in MaineAT&T designed, built, and paid for the launches of the Telstar 1 and 11 with its own funds. The spacecraft were prototypes for a constellation of 50 medium orbit satellites that AT&T was working to put in place.
ANDOVER, Maine (AP) _ Researchers whooped for joy when the era of live TV via satellite was born 40 years ago as Telstar orbited overhead, a scientist who was there said Thursday.
Four decades ago, the first trans-Atlantic TV signal was relayed from a huge antenna in the woods of western Maine, beamed to Telstar I and relayed to Europe. The black-and-white image showed an American flag waving in front of the Andover Earth Station.
Walter Brown, a retired scientist from Bell Labs, which created Telstar, was among the scientists, federal officials and dozens of reporters drawn to this former logging town of 700 people to mark the anniversary.
''Forty years ago I was one of those at Andover, watching, waiting, holding our breath, hoping _ yes, hoping _ that Telstar would be a success,'' Brown said Thursday. ''Then as Telstar came over the horizon, and the command was given to turn it on, there was a 'whoop' that filled the (air). It works! We had done it!''
A video teleconference re-enacting the broadcast was held in the town square at the anniversary observance, arranged by the International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
A plaque from all three Earth Station sites, in Andover; Pleumeur-Bodou, France; and Goonhilly, England, was dedicated.
President Dwight Eisenhower had announced in 1960 that he had directed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to take the lead in devising the use of space technology for commercial communications.
The 171-pound (77-kilogram) Telstar, which was 34 inches (86 centimeters) in diameter, was launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 10, 1962.
AT&T chose the remote western Maine town of Andover to build a ground station because it is surrounded by mountains and is far enough from microwave repeaters to avoid interference. The antenna that beamed the signal was enclosed in a huge bubble, 160 feet (48 meters) high.
After the successful transmission on July 11, 1962, President John F. Kennedy released a statement calling it ''an outstanding example of the way in which government and business can cooperate in a most important field of human endeavor.''
That same day, the first long-distance telephone call via satellite was carried by Telstar. During the call, then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington spoke to Fred Kappel, then chairman of AT&T, who was in Andover.
The success of Telstar even inspired a hit record. The pop instrumental ''Telstar'' by the British group the Tornadoes reached No. 1 on the charts in both England and the United States.
Telstar remained in operation only until February 1963, but the Andover Earth Station continues to operate. There are 260 active communications satellites today.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1184419/
IMDb
Howard K. Smith (1962– )
Telstar Special
Episode aired 11 July 1962
Season 1 Episode 22
Howard K. Smith ... Himself - Host
Release Date: 11 July 1962 (USA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Cross
https://www.nytimes.com/1962/07/11/archives/text-of-phone-call-made-via-telstar.html
The New York Times
Text of Phone Call Made Via Telstar
JULY 11, 1962
HOLMDEL, N.J., July 10 Following is the text of a telephone conversation between Frederick R. Kappel of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Vice President Johnson by way of Telstar
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098382/releaseinfo
IMDb
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Release Info
USA 9 June 1989
http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie5.html
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
(from internet transcript)
Captain KIRK: Excuse me. ...I'd just like to ask a question. ...What does God need with a starship?
GOD: Bring the ship closer.
KIRK: I said ...'What does God need with a starship?'
Kerry Burgess, Sat Apr 13 22:28:39 2019
What's most ridiculous is when some mindless drone says: "you do not believe in God" In their mindless blathering they never stop once to ask why they desperately *need* to believe the idiotic invention of cavemen, who just as they are, were terrified of the real world
Kerry Burgess, Wed Apr 03 19:40:14 2019
INVENTED by monkeys just as they are. Jesus Christ bible-thumpers are cowards desperately terrified of mortality. Their myth is their only psychological defense against the horrible truth that is their mortality.
Kerry Burgess, Dec 16, 2017 7:01 pm
Delusional people, such as all Jesus Christ bible-thumpers, will simply change their story when the facts prove they are wrong. Million of monkey-men were wrong about Zeus so they simply invented a phony God easier to believe.
2016_Nk20_DSCN4506 star trek.jpg
2016_Nk20_DSCN4518 star trek.jpg
http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie8.html
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
(from internet transcript)
Captain PICARD: They'll send reinforcements. Humanity will be an easy target.
http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie5.html
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
(from internet transcript)
McCOY: Jim, what are you doing?
KIRK: I'm asking a question.
GOD: Who is this creature?
KIRK: Who am I? Don't you know? Aren't you God?
From 2/11/1929 ( the wacko cult phony religious Vatican City established among all the other wacko nutjob religions on this Planet Earth and RELIGION IS COWARDICE ) To 3/16/1991 ( the first successful major test of the ultraspace matter transportation device by Kerry Wayne Burgess the successful Ph.D. graduate ) is 22678 days
22678 = 11339 + 11339
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 11/18/1996 is 11339 days
From 12/20/1994 ( in non-aviator related duties boots on the ground in Bosnia as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps captain this day is my United States Navy Cross medal date of record ) To 11/18/1996 is 699 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/2/1967 ( Lyndon Johnson - Memorandum on Inaugurating a Test Program To Reduce Hard-Core Unemployment ) is 699 days
From 5/7/1992 ( the first launch of the United States space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut and my 1st official United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall ) To 11/18/1996 is 1656 days
1656 = 828 + 828
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Burgess ) To 2/8/1968 ( premiere US film "Planet of the Apes" ) is 828 days
From 12/19/1984 ( from my official United States Navy documents: as Kerry Wayne Burgess the E-3 Seaman United States Navy I reported aboard the USS Taylor FFG 50 departing 11 February 1986 as FC3 Kerry Wayne Burgess US Navy ) To 11/18/1996 is 4352 days
4352 = 2176 + 2176
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Burgess ) To 10/18/1971 ( Richard Nixon - Executive Order 11628 - Establishing a Seal for the Environmental Protection Agency ) is 2176 days
From 4/18/1988 ( as Kerry Burgess from my official United States Navy records with my personal commended participation aboard the USS Wainwright CG-28 the United States Navy Operation Praying Mantis ) To 11/18/1996 is 3136 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Burgess ) To 6/4/1974 ( construction begins of the United States space shuttle Enterprise ) is 3136 days
See also other posts by me on this topic including possible future updates by me and including: http://hvom.blogspot.com/2018/05/first-contact.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117731/releaseinfo
IMDb
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Release Info
USA 18 November 1996 (Hollywood, California) (premiere)
The Borg travel back in time intent on preventing Earth's first contact with an alien species. Captain Picard and his crew pursue them to ensure that Zefram Cochran makes his maiden flight reaching warp speed.
DSCN6749.jpg, Kerry Burgess 04/01/2019 Spokane
DSCN6769.jpg, Kerry Burgess 04/01/2019 Spokane
DSCN6784.jpg, Kerry Burgess 04/01/2019 Spokane
DSCN6787.jpg, Kerry Burgess 04/01/2019 Spokane
DSCN6791.jpg, Kerry Burgess 04/01/2019 Spokane
http://www.tv.com/shows/the-twilight-zone/judgment-night-12594/
tv.com
The Twilight Zone Season 1 Episode 10
Judgment Night
AIRED: 12/4/59
http://www.tv.com/shows/star-trek/shore-leave-24900/
tv.com
Star Trek Season 1 Episode 15
Shore Leave
AIRED: 12/29/66
futurama 304284_2.jpg
Kerry Burgess, Sep 25, 2017 11:39am
Circular Reasoning.
You're gullible enough to believe that your IMAGINARY Friend Who Lives In The Clouds helped you somehow. In your dull and meaningless life here on the surface of the planet Earth somehow your *imaginary* friend helped you and filled you with false hope.
There's the truthful explanation for why you needed help in the first place!
You're gullible.
You can't think for yourself.
Kerry Burgess, Jun 16, 2017 6:55pm
You have no "soul", bible-thumpers.
Don't be a child.
Grow up.
Face reality.
Stop being such a moron and pretending that fairy-tales are real.
Learn some truth about your pathetic existence on this planet Earth.
Stop being such a coward so desperate and gullible for FALSE HOPE. The false hope invented by cavemen.
Stop being idiotic.
Kerry Burgess, Mon Jan 28 07:05:00 2019
There is no "soul" or whatever all the other religions desperately want you to believe. A sad lie invented by cavemen to help them cope with the real prospect of being eaten alive by sabre-tooth tigers or whatever was their personal dangers.
Kerry Burgess, Jul 29, 2018
Monkey-humans brainwashed by monkey-humans in Sunday School. So cowardly terrified of mortality they delude themselves into thinking their idiotic ideas about their "soul" is real. All because they are too cowardly to accept mortality.
Kerry Burgess, Aug 17, 2018 11:52 am
Religion. Because with the delusions of bible-thumpers there is safety in crowds. Pathetic. Mass hysteria.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/150531-religion-science-faith-healing-atheism-people-ngbooktalk/
National Geographic
In Age of Science, Is Religion 'Harmful Superstition'?
God is not only dead, author avers. He never lived. Not to mention the deaths of kids treated with faith instead of science-based medicine.
BY SIMON WORRALL, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
PUBLISHED MAY 31, 2015
Jerry Coyne, author of Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible was in high school listening to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album when he had an epiphany: God does not exist. The thought terrified him. But his subsequent work as a geneticist and evolutionary biologist gave him a scientific foundation for his teenage conversion.
Talking from the University of Chicago, where he is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, he explains why new scientific discoveries are undermining the claims of religion; why Stephen Jay Gould was wrong; and how U.S. law is not doing enough to protect children from being martyrs to their parents’ faith.
Your journey towards atheism started with an epiphany, at age 17, listening to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album. Take us back to that moment.
I was raised as a reform Jew, which is a hair’s breadth from atheism. We went to synagogue, but I didn’t do Bar Mitzvah. Occasionally, God would be mentioned, especially when I was a bad boy. [Laughs] I was in high school when the Sgt. Pepper’s album came out. I was lying on my parents’ couch listening to this new album and all of a sudden it just popped into my mind that everything I’d been taught about God and religion had no evidence behind it. I started sweating, but not because of the heat. I always thought there must be an afterlife. And the sudden realization that that probably wasn’t true made me start shaking and sweating. Ever since then I’ve been an atheist.
You are now an evolutionary geneticist. How does your day job inform your views on religion?
If you teach evolution, you’re teaching the one form of science that hits Abrahamic religions in the solar plexus. You can teach chemistry and physics and physiology and other forms of science-based inquiry, like archaeology and history, and religious people don’t have any problem with that. But, for evolution, they do.
About 42 to 43 percent of Americans are creationists. Another 30 percent are theistic evolutionists, who think that God impelled the evolutionary process. This is an uptick of about 50 percent over the last 20 years.
But there are a number of things about evolution and science that undermine religion. First of all, the fact that the Genesis story is wrong. There’s no evidence that there’s any qualitatively different feature about humans from other species, except maybe for language. But that’s something that could have evolved via culture. We’re not special products of God’s creation.
How have new developments in science like neurobiology or cosmology affected our understanding of the universe and our place in it?
They support what Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate in physics, said: “The more we learn about the universe, the more we realize how pointless it is.” We’re learning a lot about the universe and what we are seeing is that it’s all a naturalistic process.
One of the theories about how the universe came to be, the big bang theory, is that it happened naturally in a quantum vacuum. That undercuts religion right there [Laughs]. People say, “You can’t get a universe from nothing. You’ve gotta have God.” But you can, if you conceive of nothing as the quantum vacuum of outer space.
Another is free will: the idea that at any point in time all alternatives are open to us. This is the dualistic free will maintained by religions when they say you can choose to accept Jesus as your savior, or being homosexual is a choice. Science is starting to undercut this, by showing that there’s only one choice we can make, which is the output of our materialistic brains. We are creatures of physics, made of molecules. Therefore, our thoughts and behaviors are also the results of molecular motions.
In a nutshell, why are religion and science incompatible?
They’re incompatible first of all, because they both compete to find truths about the universe. There are some fundamental truths about the universe that believers have to accept in order to be religious. Many Muslims see the Koran as literally true. To question any of that is to bring a death sentence on yourself. The reason why people are so concerned with harmonizing science and religion, as opposed to, say, science and architecture, or science and baseball, is because science and religion are competitors in the field of esoteric truths about the cosmos.
But we use different methods to ascertain what’s true. Science has an exquisitely refined series of methods honed over 500 years to find out what’s real and what’s false. Richard Feynman gave the best definition of science I ever heard, “It’s a way to keep you from fooling yourself, because you’re the easiest person to fool.” Religion doesn’t have a methodology to weed out what’s false. In fact, it’s a way of fooling yourself. They have authority, revelation, dogma, and indoctrination as their methods and no way of proving their tenets false.
There are thousands and thousands of religions and all of them make incompatible claims about the universe. The reason that that’s the case is because they don’t have any way of testing those claims.
You call religion “the most widespread and harmful form of superstition.” Make your case.
One of the meanings of superstition in the Oxford English dictionary is a belief that is unfounded or irrational. Since I see all religious belief as unfounded and irrational, I consider religion to be superstition. It’s certainly the most widespread form of superstition because the vast majority of people on Earth are believers. Other forms of superstition, like astrology, belief in UFOs or telekinesis, are nowhere near as widespread. And the damage that religion has done to humanity is far more than the damage that astrology or the belief in Bigfoot has done. This is the problem with ISIS and other Islamist organizations. It used to be the problem with Christianity, as well. People get killed because they don’t share your beliefs.
Are all religions as bad as each other?
Oh, no. I think anybody that says that is on some tendentious gambit to discredit religion. Clearly, religions differ in how harmful they are and that’s proportional to how much they proselytize and how perfidious their beliefs are. There are religions that I would consider either harmless or maybe even beneficial. Quakers barely believe in God at all and are dedicated to social justice. The less a religion has to do with a tangible God, the less it hands out moral dictates and the better it is. Once you believe in an absolute authority that tells you what to do, you’re heading down the road to perdition, I think.
The evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, developed a theory known as NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria), in which science encompasses the domain of facts about the universe, while religion deals with the realm of meaning and moral values. Isn’t that a compromise you accept?
Well, no! [Laughs] It’s not only a compromise I can’t accept. It’s a compromise that’s been rejected by most theologians, who insist that morals and values be anchored in statements about how the universe is. In that sense, they’re opposed to the limitations of religion that Gould set for them. Philosophers have also rejected Gould’s idea that meaning, morals and values are the purview of religion. There’s a long tradition of secular humanism in philosophy beginning with the ancient Greeks and passing through Kant, John Stewart Mill and Hume to contemporary thinkers like Peter Singer. So, on both counts, I think NOMA fails.
A purposeless, purely physical universe, in which human life is accidental and human consciousness is what you call “a neuronal illusion,” is a bleak vision, isn’t it?
I suppose it might be to some people. I live with it and most Europeans live with it. It’s a vision that there’s nothing beyond the laws of physics and matter. Whether you find that bleak or not depends on your psychological constitution. Are people in Scandinavia or France dragging their heels with their heads down because they find a life without God bleak? No. In fact, you could make the opposite claim. For many Muslims fun is not allowed. Music is prohibited. I would find that kind of life far bleaker than a life without God.
One of the most moving sections of your book is about Ashley King. Tell us her story and how it illustrates the dangers of religion?
It illustrates the dangers of what I call, “vertical proselytizing faith,” where you enforce your beliefs of religion on your kids when they’re too young to know otherwise. This religion is Christian Science, in which disease is seen as having spiritual causes. Christian Scientists reject science-based medicine in favor of prayer and spiritual healing.
Ashley King was the daughter of two well-off Christian Scientists in Arizona. Not the toothless Bible thumpers you think of when you think of fundamentalists. Ashley developed a lump on her leg, which turned out to be bone cancer. Instead of taking her to a doctor, they took her out of school and tried to treat her with prayer. The lump eventually got to be as big as a watermelon. Child services finally took her away from her parents.
Ashley went to the hospital and the doctor said, “It’s too late. This tumor’s too big. But we can give her some time by amputating her leg.” Her parents refused and stopped her being given pain-killing medicine.
Instead, they put her in a Christian Science sanatorium, which, by the way, is subsidized by the U.S. government. Her medicine consisted of giving her water and prayer. She started shrieking and crying out. The thing was incredibly painful. But all they did was pray. Finally, she died.
Her parents were prosecuted and convicted, but they were only given unsupervised probation. In 43 out of 50 American states, faith healing that harms your children is not a civil or criminal problem. Thousands of kids have died through Christian Science and the Followers of Christ in Oregon and Idaho. There are graveyards filled with dead kids who were given faith healing.
Do you have a spiritual life? If so, what does it look like?
Spiritual is an amorphous term. I study evolution and every day I read something that strikes me as amazingly wonderful. If you call that spiritual, then, yeah, I’m spiritual. Richard Dawkins says the same thing. Spirituality can run the gamut from amazement at nature to a feeling that there’s something beyond the material universe.
But I don’t like the use of the word “spiritual” unless you define it clearly. I am spiritual in the sense that I have this awe and wonder before nature. I love James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, I’m moved by Dylan Thomas. It doesn’t have anything to do with God. It has to do with a commonality of feeling prompted by nature and the arts. So I prefer to use the word humanist rather than spiritual. The minute you say you’re spiritual, people automatically start thinking you’re religious.
Kerry Burgess, Sat Mar 16 01:58:29 +0000 2019
That's hilarious, on the tv news. A bible-thumper is anti-Halloween. A superstitious moron, incapable of independent thought herself, corrupting young minds and turning them into dim-wit superstitious cowards, as are all religious.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/12-famous-scientists-on-the-possibility-of-god_n_56afa292e4b057d7d7c7a1e5
HuffPost
02/02/2016 05:26 pm ET Updated Apr 11, 2017
12 Famous Scientists On The Possibility Of God
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious.”
By Carol Kuruvilla
When President Barack Obama nominated the Christian geneticist Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health in 2009, some American scientists questioned whether someone who professed a strong belief in God was qualified to lead the largest biomedical research agency in the world.
This argument — that scientific inquiry is essentially incompatible with religious belief — has been gaining traction in some circles in recent years. In fact, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center survey, American scientists are about half as likely as the general public to believe in God or a higher, universal power. Still, the survey found that the percentage of scientists that believe in some form of a deity or power was higher than you may think — 51 percent.
Scientists throughout history have relied on data and observations to make sense of the world. But there are still some really big questions about the universe that science can’t easily explain: Where did matter come from? What is consciousness? And what makes us human?
In the past, this quest for understanding has given scientists both past and present plenty of opportunities for experiencing wonder and awe. That’s because at their core, both science and religion require some kind of leap of faith — whether it’s belief in multiverses or belief in a personal God.
In chronological order, here’s a glimpse into what some of the world’s greatest scientists thought about the possibility of a higher power.
#11 Neil deGrasse Tyson (Born 1958)
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and a popular television science expert. He told The Huffington Post thathe isn’t convinced by religious arguments about the existence of a “Judeo-Christian” god that is all-powerful and all-good, especially when he observes the death and suffering caused by natural disasters. Still, he told Big Think that while he’s often “claimed by atheists,” he’s actually more of an agnostic.
In Death By Black Hole, a collection of science essays, Tyson writes:
“So you’re made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”
Kerry Burgess, May 16, 2017 2:30 pm
People with very low self-esteem are NOT going to be TOLD that "GOD" is a FAIRY-TALE! They are just not going to be told that truth! Their self-esteem is too low to hear THAT TRUTH!
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/noble
Dictionary.com
noble
of, belonging to, or constituting a hereditary class that has special social or political status in a country or state; of or pertaining to the aristocracy.
of an exalted moral or mental character or excellence:
a noble thought.
SYNONYM STUDY
Noble, high-minded, magnanimous agree in referring to lofty principles and loftiness of mind or spirit. Noble implies a loftiness of character or spirit that scorns the petty, mean, base, or dishonorable
Kerry Burgess, Sun Jan 13 16:04:39 2019
"We are all space dust." But MOSTLY crap. Billions of years of unintelligent life on this planet Earth, including about 8 billion Naked Apes, doing nothing but coating the surface of this Planet Earth with CRAP.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/self-esteem
Dictionary.com
self-esteem
a realistic respect for or favorable impression of oneself
an inordinately or exaggeratedly favorable impression of oneself.
respect for or a favourable opinion of oneself
an unduly high opinion of oneself; vanity
- posted by Kerry Burgess 11:37 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Monday 22 July 2019
