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The folks at Symphony of Science who did the Carl Sagan video "A Glorious Dawn", featuring Stephen Hawking have created another video. The song isn't as catchy, but its great to hear these scientist talking about their passion for the universe.
Some might say this kind of talk sounds like the reverence some have for religion. It does, only it has one huge advantage. It's based on the real world.
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Comments
it's funny that in the forum you posted "was moses stoned" (tripping) and here we have evidence that scientists, at least the most creative and communicative ones, are trippers.
i know sagen was a pothead. and if sagen and fayneman and the others here never got good and dosed i'll eat my hat.
no reason to deny "religious" feelings to scientests. they don't have to call it that. but there's also no reason to deny that amazonian headhunters, long before the enlightenment, and with no knowledge of "science" had these same revelations from drinking stewed tree bark, etc.
I'm SO GLAD that this finally made it to 1gm. This went around our office a few weeks ago and I've played it nearly every day since. I even feed my 2 year old to it. It's just a lovely thing, and a very nice way to be in Awe of that which created us.
no reason to deny ...
There's a very good reason to deny that these are "religious" feelings. We don't call it that because is is manifestly NOT religious. It is manifestly NOT about faith. It manifestly rejects faith as a basis of knowledge. Perhaps I will grant that these scientists are expressing feelings of reverence - but the reverence is earned because - as Norm put it - science yields knowledge that is based in reality and is paid for with effort and ultimately, just enough humility to accept that you're wrong when in fact you're wrong. By calling this "religious", you're claiming for religion respect that not only has it not earned, but also obscuring the fact that it has, more often than not in modern history, vehemently opposed.
Very much agree. It may be a similar feeling but about a very different topic.
It just highlights how useless some conceived notion of a god really is.
Also arrived at through a very different process.
make that
... history, for what is has vehemently opposed.
so, you wouldn't want to credit those venal religious people with anything approaching the righteous reverence- honestly earned in battle with reality- experienced by the true scientist. who is, by virtue of the simple honesty in his wide-eyed yet incredulous wrestling with the true empirical facts, a better man than his religious fellow traveler.
bravo.
i didn't realize i was trying to lavish undeserved respect on religious people by suggesting they shared feelings of awe with scientists. i'll try to be more careful in the future.
(that really was a nice piece of self-righteous polemic, though. you get the first jb award.)
wWell said, Tim. Most definitely not religious. If anything these communicators show the evident joy in the hard-scrabble striving of science. A real communion with the inifite, not some "farcical aquatic ceremony", as a Michael Palin character once put it. Look for Feynmann's childlike wonder, his pure giddy glee, in the face of a pope or any other major religious figure. You on't find it, all smoke and mirrors and gaudy feathers.
Heh, heh ... I shall put it above my fireplace and treasure it always ... of course it doesn't measure up to the best of your rants, but I try.
I just think religious people, when practicing religion, are wrestling with avoiding/i> reality - and no, I don't respect that. But hey, they don't need my respect anyway, not when they have God's love and the promise of life everlasting - right?
By the way, I never said you were "lavish[ing] undeserved respect on religious people by suggesting they shared feelings of awe with scientists." In case I was unclear, what I meant to say was that you were lavishing undeserved respect on religious people by calling the (atheistic) scientists' sense of awe "religious". As for whether I'm being self righteous when by implying that science has been effective in its "wide-eyed yet incredulous wrestling with the true empirical facts" - if you want to get into a pissing contest about whether science or religion deserves more respect for the way each deals with reality - I'm up for that.
respect, in the way you're talking about it, seems to be a big concern for atheists and muslims. it's not a big concern for me. i don't care if anyone respects me- just so long as they treat me good.
so yes, this is about definitions. the kind of respect you're talking about- some kind of emotional reverence- can, with the addition of 4 dollars and 70 cents, buy you a latte.
Jonathan, Tim was not objecting to your use of the word reverence or awe. But rather your use of the word "religious".
The point I was making in my post and that Tim was making was that this is easily mistaken for religious reverence, but there is no religion.
These aren't people worshiping at the alter of science, they are just experience the same kind of awe, from a non supernatural source.
It is all in the definition of what "religious" means to you. For many of us we can't think of something as religious with out the Faith and magical thinking that goes along with religion. My guess is that those aspects are de-emphasized for Jewish folks.
these videos are really hokey. makes me want to crucify my computer.
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