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Harry Kroto pictured below:
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On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:
…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
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Massimo Pigliucci
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| Born | January 16, 1964 Monrovia, Liberia |
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| School | Scientific skepticism, secular humanism, Stoicism |
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Main interests
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Philosophy of science Philosophy of pseudoscience Relationship between science and religion Demarcation problem |
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Massimo Pigliucci (Italian pronunciation: [ˈmassimo piʎˈʎuttʃi]; born January 16, 1964)[1] is Professor of Philosophy at CUNY–City College,[2] formerly co-host of the Rationally Speaking Podcast,[3] and formerly the editor in chief for the online magazine Scientia Salon.[4] He is an outspoken critic of pseudoscience[5][6] and creationism,[7] and an advocate for secularism[8], science education[9] and modern Stoicism.
Biography[edit]
Pigliucci was born in Monrovia, Liberia and raised in Rome, Italy.[1] He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrara, Italy, a PhD in biology from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in philosophy of science from the University of Tennessee.[10] He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[1]
Pigliucci was formerly a professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University. He explored phenotypic plasticity, genotype-environment interactions, natural selection, and the constraints imposed on natural selection by the genetic and developmental makeup of organisms.[11] In 1997, while working at the University of Tennessee, Pigliucci received the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize,[12] awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution[1] to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding young evolutionary biologist. As a philosopher, Pigliucci is interested in the structure and foundations of evolutionary theory, the relationship between science and philosophy, and the relationship between science and religion.[10] He is a proponent of the extended evolutionary synthesis.[13]
Pigliucci writes regularly for Skeptical Inquirer on topics such as climate change denial, intelligent design, pseudoscience, and philosophy.[14] He has also written for Philosophy Now and maintains a blog called “Rationally Speaking”.[15] He has debated “deniers of evolution” (young-earth creationists and intelligent design proponents), including young earth creationists Duane Gish and Kent Hovind and intelligent design proponents William Dembski and Jonathan Wells, on many occasions.[16][17][18][19]
Michael Shermer, Julia Galef and Massimo Pigliucci record live at NECSS 2013
Critical thinking and scepticism[edit]
While Pigliucci is an atheist himself,[20] he does not believe that science necessarily demands atheism because of two distinctions: the distinction between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism, and the distinction between value judgements and matters of fact. He believes that many scientists and science educators fail to appreciate these differences.[9] Pigliucci has criticized New Atheist writers for embracing what he considers to be scientism (although he largely excludes philosopher Daniel Dennett from this charge).[21] In a discussion of his book Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life, Pigliucci told Skepticality podcast host Derek Colanduno, “Aristotle was the first ancient thinker to really take seriously the idea that you need both empirical facts, you need an evidence-based approach to the world and you need to be able to reflect on the meaning of those facts… If you want answers to moral questions then you don’t ask the neurobiologist, you don’t ask the evolutionary biologist, you ask the philosopher.”[22]
Pigliucci describes the mission of skeptics, referencing Carl Sagan‘s Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark saying “What skeptics are about is to keep that candle lit and spread it as much as possible”.[23] Pigliucci serves on the board of NYC Skeptics and on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America.[8]
In 2001, he debated William Lane Craig over the existence of God.[24]
Massimo Pigliucci criticised the newspaper article by Pope Francis entitled, “An open dialogue with non-believers”. Pigliucci viewed the article as a monologue rather than a dialogue and, in a response personally addressed to Pope Francis, wrote that the Pope only offered non-believers “a reaffirmation of entirely unsubstantiated fantasies about God and his Son…followed by a confusion between the concept of love and truth, the whole peppered by a significant amount of historical revisionism and downright denial of the ugliest facets of your Church (and you will notice that I haven’t even brought up the pedophilia stuff!).”[25]
Rationally Speaking[edit]
In August 2000 Massimo started with a monthly internet column called Rationally Speaking. In August 2005, the column became a blog,[26] where he wrote posts until March 2014.[27] Since 1 February 2010, he co-hosted the bi-weekly Rationally Speaking podcast together with Julia Galef, whom he first met at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, held in September 2009.[28] The podcast is produced by the New York City Skeptics. He left the podcast in 2015 to pursue other interests.[29] In 2010, Neil DeGrasse Tyson explained on the show his justification for spending large amounts of government money on space programs. He eventually printed the transcript of his performance as a guest on the show in his book Space Chronicles as a full chapter covering eight pages.[30] Another episode in which Tyson explained his position on the label “atheism” received attention on NPR.[31]
- 1964 births
- Living people
- Critics of alternative medicine
- Critics of parapsychology
- Evolutionary biologists
- Italian geneticists
- University of Ferrara alumni
- Italian philosophers
- Italian biologists
- Italian atheists
- Italian humanists
- Italian skeptics
- Atheist philosophers
- Atheism activists
- Lehman College faculty
- State University of New York at Stony Brook faculty
- University of Connecticut alumni
- University of Tennessee alumni
- People from Monrovia
- Fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
- Writers from Rome
His comments can be found on the 2nd video and the 57th clip in this series. Below the videos you will find his words.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
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From Everette Hatcher, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, P.O. Box 23416, Little Rock , AR 72221
Dear Professor MASSIMO PIGLICUCCI,
I have really enjoyed watching your debate with William Lane Craig on You Tube and your discussion with Daniel Dennett on the limits of science. I have had the pleasure of both corresponding with Professor Dennett and reading his book DARWIN’S DANGEROUS IDEA earlier this year.
I noticed that you graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Although I have never personally been a Tennessee fan, I was told by my grandfather that a cousin of his was a kicker for the Vols. My grandfather grew up in Franklin, Tennessee with his brothers and sister. They used to get up at 2 am on Saturdays and travel to Knoxville by 1pm for the kickoff. My grandfather attended the University of Tennessee in 1921-23 until his money ran out. My grandfather told me he was relatives with Buck Hatcher who was a star player for the Vols.
Sure enough Buck Hatcher did play for the Vols and he kicked a 53 yard field goal on Nov 13, 1920 to set a record. Later my grandfather’s brother Mack had the “Mack Hatcher Memorial Highway” named after him. He was a Gideon and often helped those who needed help in his Williamson County. (A Gideon is one who gives out Bibles). He stood six foot eleven and his sister Sara Lou was six foot four.
In the You Tube series RENOWNED ACADEMICS SPEAKING ABOUT GOD I found the following quote from you:
Reason of course can be defined in a variety of ways, but these are pretty good approximations. Cause is a explanation or justification for an event. You have a reason to believe. There was a reason I got up from my and went to the refrigerator and got a beer because I was THIRSTY. That is a REASON.
The Power of the mind to think, understand and form judgments by the course of logic is what we are talking about in this context. This is opposed of course to FAITH, which is the COMPLETE trust or confidence in someone or something. Notice the emphasis on COMPLETE for some belief in God or doctrine of religion based on SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION rather than truth. That is the interesting premise here. SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION, what the heck is SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION? How do people spiritually apprehend things? I can talk about how people LOGICALLY or RATIONALLY think about things, but it is hard to get my mind wrapped around the idea of spiritual apprehension. I suspect because there is no such thing as spiritual apprehension.
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Let me respond with to your assertion that faith is totally opposed to logic with these writings below by Francis Schaeffer:
What is Faith?
What is faith? Faith is often characterized as blind belief just because we want it to be true. It’s sometimes thought to be belief in spite of evidence to the contrary. But is that really what Biblical faith is like or is it a strawman argument that’s easily knocked down to make a point errantly?
Francis Schaeffer presents this story about faith:
Suppose we are climbing in the Alps and are very high on the bare rock, and suddenly the fog rolls in. The guide turns to us and says that the ice is forming and that there is no hope; before morning we will all freeze to death here on the shoulder of the mountain. Simply to keep warm the guide keeps us moving in the dense fog further out on the shoulder until none of us have any idea where we are. After an hour or so, someone says to the guide, “Suppose I dropped and hit a ledge ten feet down in the fog. What would happen then?” The guide would say that you might make it until the morning and thus live. So, with absolutely no knowledge or any reason tosupport his action, one of the group hangs and drops into the fog. This would be one kind of faith, a leap of faith.
Suppose, however, after we have worked out on the shoulder in the midst of the fog and the growing ice on the rock, we had stopped and we heard a voice which said, “You cannot see me, but I know exactly where you are from your voices. I am on another ridge. I have lived in these mountains, man and boy, for over sixty years and I know every foot of them. I assure you that ten feet below you there is a ledge. If you hang and drop, you can make it through the night and I will get you in the morning.
I would not hang and drop at once, but would ask questions to try to ascertain if the man knew what he was talking about and it he was not my enemy. In the Alps, for example, I would ask him his name. If the name he gave me was the name of a family from that part of the mountains, it would count a great deal to me. In the Swiss Alps there are certain family names that indicate mountain families of that area. In my desperate situation, even though time would be running out, I would ask him what to me would be the adequate and sufficient questions, and when I became convinced by his answers, then I would hang and drop.
Schaeffer’s story captures the idea that faith is not blind. It is based on reason, logic, information, but lives in a situation where a gap exists. Faith bridges the gap by trusting in someone or something in a better position than yourself. In this story, faith was put in the knowledge of the man who grew up in the Alps. It was a rational, tested faith based on questioning the man’s knowledge, but it was still faith because the ledge below couldn’t be seen, touched or definitively known. This idea that faith is well informed and not irrational is the first point to keep in mind.
The second point is about the object of faith. When you walk across ice, your trust is put in the ice to hold your weight. Ice is the object of your faith. If your trust is misplaced, you’ll quickly be wet, cold and in significant danger. It wouldn’t have mattered whether you have a little faith in the ice or trust it fully. The strength of the object of faith is what counts. It the story it was the knowledge of the guide in the fog.
Christian faith captures both of these ideas. First, God provides evidence of Himself in creation, in prophecy, in archeology, in Scripture’s consistency across 40+ authors and in the life of Jesus. He doesn’t leave us without witness or guidance. Second, He then requires us to make Jesus the object of our faith. Jesus’ sinless life, substitutionary death and bodily resurrection are what matter. As Paul said, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead our faith is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:17). Putting trust in the Creator of the universe rather than our own feeble attempts to be good doesn’t seem like much of a stretch when you look at the history of mankind’s failures an our own individual struggles. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God and must put our faith in Jesus’ work to wash our sin away so we can enter God’s presence.
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The answer to finding out more about God is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted. Please consider taking time to read Isaiah chapter 53 and if you have any interest then watch the You Tube clip “The Biography of the King” by Adrian Rogers which discusses that chapter in depth.
Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology.,
Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.
TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?)
In the previous chapter we saw that the Bible gives us the explanation for the existence of the universe and its form and for the mannishness of man. Or, to reverse this, we came to see that the universe and its form and the mannishness of man are a testimony to the truth of the Bible. In this chapter we will consider a third testimony: the Bible’s openness to verification by historical study.
Christianity involves history. To say only that is already to have said something remarkable, because it separates the Judeo-Christian world-view from almost all other religious thought. It is rooted in history.
The Bible tells us how God communicated with man in history. For example, God revealed Himself to Abraham at a point in time and at a particular geographical place. He did likewise with Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel and so on. The implications of this are extremely important to us. Because the truth God communicated in the Bible is so tied up with the flow of human events, it is possible by historical study to confirm some of the historical details.
It is remarkable that this possibility exists. Compare the information we have from other continents of that period. We know comparatively little about what happened in Africa or South America or China or Russia or even Europe. We see beautiful remains of temples and burial places, cult figures, utensils, and so forth, but there is not much actual “history” that can be reconstructed, at least not much when compared to that which is possible in the Middle East.
When we look at the material which has been discovered from the Nile to the Euphrates that derives from the 2500-year span before Christ, we are in a completely different situation from that in regard to South America or Asia. The kings of Egypt and Assyria built thousands of monuments commemorating their victories and recounting their different exploits. Whole libraries have been discovered from places like Nuzu and Mari and most recently at Elba, which give hundreds of thousands of texts relating to the historical details of their time. It is within this geographical area that the Bible is set. So it is possible to find material which bears upon what the Bible tells us.
The Bible purports to give us information on history. Is the history accurate? The more we understand about the Middle East between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 100, the more confident we can be that the information in the Bible is reliable, even when it speaks about the simple things of time and place.
(This material below is under footnote #94)
The site of the biblical city called Lachish is about thirty miles southwest of Jerusalem. This city is referred to on a number of occasions in the Old Testament. Imagine a busy city with high walls surrounding it, and a gate in front that is the only entrance to the city. We know so much about Lachish from archaeological studies that a reconstruction of the whole city has been made in detail. This can be seen at the British Museum in the Lachish Room in the Assyrian section.
There is also a picture made by artists in the eighth century before Christ, the Lachish Relief, which was discovered in the city of Nineveh in the ancient Assyria. In this picture we can see the Jewish inhabitants of Lachish surrendering to Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. The details in the picture and the Assyrian writing on it give the Assyrian side of what the Bible tells us in Second Kings:
2 Kings 18:13-16
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
13 Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. 14 Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong. Withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear.” So the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 Hezekiah gave him all the silver which was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. 16 At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the doorposts which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
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We should notice two things about this. First, this is a real-life situation–a real siege of a real city with real people on both sides of the war–and it happened at a particular date in history, near the turn of the eighth century B.C. Second, the two accounts of this incident in 701 B.C. (the account from the Bible and the Assyrian account from Nineveh) do not contradict, but rather confirm each other. The history of Lachish itself is not so important for us, but some of its smaller historical details.
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The Assyrian king Sennacherib sits on his luxurious chair on a low mound. There is a tent behind him. His commander-in-chief stands before him (in a very close proximity) and greets him after conquering the city of Lachish. Assyrian soldiers (the king’s bodyguards) wear their exquisite military uniform and carry their weapons. Prisoners from Lachish are being reviewed and presented to the king. One prostrates and another two kneel; they seem to ask for mercy. Most likely, they were later beheaded. The king obviously had been watching the battle and its victorious aftermath. Neo-Assyrian Period, 700-692 BCE. From Nineveh (modern-day Mosul Governorate, Iraq), panels 11-13, Room XXXVI of the southwest palace; the heartland of the Assyrian Empire.The British Museum, London. Photo © Osama S. M. Amin.
Related posts:
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 40 Timothy Leary (Featured artist is Margaret Keane)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 35 Robert M. Pirsig (Feature on artist Kerry James Marshall)
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The Daily Hatch 