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comment by motherlover
motherlover  ·  4346 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Do physicists believe in God?

What I particularly like about this video is not the denial of God but that it illustrates that those of us who are more concerned with what is real and provable are no less capable of numinous feelings, no less enraptured by beauty and mystery, no less "human."

It reminds me of an anecdote by Dr. Feynman in which he was being admonished by an artist friend of his over the beauty of a flower. The artist claimed that he recognized the simple beauty of the flower, scientists destroyed the image by deconstructing everything to figure out how it works and why it exists. Feynman responded by saying that while the artist simply enjoyed the pretty colors and curvature of the petals, the scientist can see all the things that make up it's structure and how it relates to everything around it and the millions of years of existence that led to it and was awestruck by the beauty of the entire universe in one simple flower.

Or something like that. It's been years, so i'm paraphrasing.





theadvancedapes  ·  4346 days ago  ·  link  ·  

"I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." - Richard Feynman

motherlover  ·  4346 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, awesome. Thanks for posting.

StephenBuckley  ·  4346 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Really? None of them seemed to have any kind of numinous feelings to me. It doesn't make them less human, but even if they can appreciate beauty and mystery, none of them made me think, "This person has wondered about God seriously." I mean, ask a theologian about God, or a priest, and it's a passion.

Most of these people have thought about religion or the evidence for God. But none of them answered the actual question. Not "Do you think there's a guy in the sky who tells us where we go when we die and is nice?" but "Is there a first mover unmoved, and if not, then what?" If you have actually spent time thinking about God, this is not a yes or no question. This is a question about the ethos of your life. Do you live as though the universe has a center, and is it you?

motherlover  ·  4346 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The question was "Do you believe in God?", not "Give a thoughtful and will informed opinion on the nature of God and belief."

If they sounded like they haven't given the subject that much passionate thought or made the subject a major focus of their lives, it's because they haven't.

They're aware of it and they have each had varying degrees of involvement but their passions lie elsewhere. Why would they devote the kind of time and energy required to form the kind of philosophy you're speaking of on the subject of a God they don't believe in?