Steven Weinberg
February 29, 2004 by Bill
Dr. Steven Weinberg is one of the true, authentic, Renaissance men of our time. He has been called the “Einstein” of our day. He won the Nobel Prize for uniting the electro-magnetic and the weak nuclear forces into a single force. He is a founding director of the Jerusalem Winter School of Theoretical Physics; is on the Council of Scholars, the Library of Congress; he holds honorary doctoral degrees from major universities all over the world. He taught at MIT and Harvard. Nobody since Loren Eiseley and Lewis Thomas has written so beautifully turning science into poetry.
He recently was awarded the Lewis Thomas prize, given to the scholar who “best embodies the scientist as poet.”
He prefaced his acceptance speech by saying…”what a joy to be at a meeting that doesn’t start with an invocation.” He went on to say that”the great passion of his life, with science, is to free human beings from the superstition of religion” and he continued:
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Science should be taught ignoring religion. One of the social functions of science is to free humans from superstition.”
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The torpid, mindless mass
February 22, 2004 by Bill
The question for today is at the heart of the problem we face as a nation. It is exactly the same question that was requested for my lectures at the University of Alabama Conference Center several years ago. I was asked to explore Carl Jung’s question: “Why are so many millions willing and eager to turn their lives over to outside authorities?”
Why are so many today, without thinking, willing to turn their mind/brain…soul/spirit…over to outside individuals, institutions, authorities and ideologies? Whether it be to Osama bin Laden or whether it be to Christian, Muslim and Jewish authorities of dogma, or whether it be to Republican or Democratic dogma…or whatever the outside authority or institution might be that is telling you what to think, what to believe and how to live your life.
Carl Jung put it this way in his essays: “It is a delusion when the Christian churches try to rope the individual into some social organization and reduce him or her to a condition of diminished responsibility, instead of raising him or her out of the torpid, mindless mass and making it clear that he, or she, is the one important factor. Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man, or woman, who is as well organized in his/her individuality as the mass itself.”
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Amor and Eros: A celebration
February 15, 2004 by Bill
Valentine week is here with a celebration of eros and amor. I am writing this on one of those days so breathtaking, with sky and breeze, flowers and sun, doves and quail, that surely the earth must stand in amazement at its own beauty.
The biblical Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) raptured over love on such a day. “O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth! For your love is better than wine. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time for singing has come, and the voice of the dove is heard in our land. O queenly maiden! Your thighs are like jewels and your breasts like two fawns. O loved one, delectable maiden, I will give you my love…”
This Old Testament book is the only literature in the entire bible where Eros and Amor are celebrated and praised. To me, this omission is one of the great failures of biblical literature.
The word “Eros” and the expression of it, with Amor, are not to be found in the entire New Testament. And yet Eros and Amor have been the source of more enormous creativity, genuine joy, personal enrichment, and spiritual visions than any other emotion in the human species.
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