RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Part 149ZZZZ Sir Bertrand Russell
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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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Harold W. Kroto (left) receives the Nobel Prize in chemistry from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm, in 1996.
Soren Andersson/AP
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I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:
Arif Ahmed, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky,Alan Dershowitz, Hubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Stephan Feuchtwang, David Friend, Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross, Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman, Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison, Hermann Hauser, Roald Hoffmann, Bruce Hood, Herbert Huppert, Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku, Stuart Kauffman, Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff, Elizabeth Loftus, Alan Macfarlane, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow, Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff, Jonathan Parry, Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse, Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg, Lee Silver, Peter Singer, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, Barry Supple, Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Neil deGrasse Tyson, .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and Lewis Wolpert,
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In the first video below in the 14th clip in this series are his words and I will be responding to them in the next few weeks since Sir Bertrand Russell is probably the most quoted skeptic of our time, unless it was someone like Carl Sagan or Antony Flew.
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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Quote from Bertrand Russell:
Q: Why are you not a Christian?
Russell: Because I see no evidence whatever for any of the Christian dogmas. I’ve examined all the stock arguments in favor of the existence of God, and none of them seem to me to be logically valid.
Q: Do you think there’s a practical reason for having a religious belief, for many people?
Russell: Well, there can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true. That’s quite… at least, I rule it out as impossible. Either the thing is true, or it isn’t. If it is true, you should believe it, and if it isn’t, you shouldn’t. And if you can’t find out whether it’s true or whether it isn’t, you should suspend judgment. But you can’t… it seems to me a fundamental dishonesty and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful, and not because you think it’s true._
Francis Schaeffer noted concerning the IMPLICIT FAITH of Bertrand Russell:
I was lecturing at the University of St. Andrews one night and someone put forth the question, “If Christianity is so clear and reasonable then why doesn’t Bertrand Russell then become a Christian? Is it because he hasn’t discovered theology?”
It wasn’t a matter of studying theology that was involved but rather that he had too much faith. I was surrounded by humanists and you could hear the gasps. Bertrand Russell and faith; Isn’t this the man of reason? I pointed out that this is a man of high orthodoxy who will hold his IMPLICIT FAITH on the basis of his presuppositions no matter how many times he has to zig and zag because it doesn’t conform to the facts.
You must understand what the term IMPLICIT FAITH means. In the old Roman Catholic Church when someone who became a Roman Catholic they had to promise implicit faith. That meant that you not only had to believe everything that Roman Catholic Church taught then but also everything it would teach in the future. It seems to me this is the kind of faith that these people have in the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system and they have accepted it no matter what it leads them into.
I think that these men are men of a high level of IMPLICIT FAITH in their own set of presuppositions. Paul said (in Romans Chapter One) they won’t carry it to it’s logical conclusion even though they hold a great deal of the truth and they have revolted and they have set up a series of universals in themselves which they won’t transgress no matter if they conform to the facts or not.
Here below is the Romans passage that Schaeffer is referring to and verse 19 refers to what Schaeffer calls “the mannishness of man” and verse 20 refers to Schaeffer’s other point which is “the universe and it’s form.”
Romans 1:18-20 Amplified Bible :
18 For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative. 19 For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them. 20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification].
We can actually see the two points makes playing themselves out in Bertrand Russell’s own life.
[From a letter dated August 11, 1918 to Miss Rinder when Russell was 46]
It is so with all who spend their lives in the quest of something elusive, and yet omnipresent, and at once subtle and infinite. One seeks it in music, and the sea, and sunsets; at times I have seemed very near it in crowds when I have been feeling strongly what they were feeling; one seeks it in love above all. But if one lets oneself imagine one has found it, some cruel irony is sure to come and show one that it is not really found.
The outcome is that one is a ghost, floating through the world without any real contact. Even when one feels nearest to other people, something in one seems obstinately to belong to God and to refuse to enter into any earthly communion—at least that is how I should express it if I thought there was a God. It is odd isn’t it? I care passionately for this world, and many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don’t believe there is. I am haunted—some ghost, from some extra-mundane region, seems always trying to tell me something that I am to repeat to the world, but I cannot understand the message.
There was evidence during Bertrand Russell’s own life that indicated that the Bible was true and could be trusted.
Here is some below:
TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnotes #97 and #98) written by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop
A common assumption among liberal scholars is that because the Gospels are theologically motivated writings–which they are–they cannot also be historically accurate. In other words, because Luke, say (when he wrote the Book of Luke and the Book of Acts), was convinced of the deity of Christ, this influenced his work to the point where it ceased to be reliable as a historical account. The assumption that a writing cannot be both historical and theological is false.
The experience of the famous classical archaeologist Sir William Ramsay illustrates this well. When he began his pioneer work of exploration in Asia Minor, he accepted the view then current among the Tubingen scholars of his day that the Book of Acts was written long after the events in Paul’s life and was therefore historically inaccurate. However, his travels and discoveries increasingly forced upon his mind a totally different picture, and he became convinced that Acts was minutely accurate in many details which could be checked.
Anyone interested in a 75 page book that goes in depth into Ramsay’s studies can take a look at the book entitled Sir William M. Ramsay:
Archaeologist and New Testament Scholar
A Survey of His Contribution to
the Study of the New Testament
Baker Studies in Biblical Archaeology
by
W. Ward Gasque
Foreword by F. F. Bruce
Here is the foreword
FOREWORDAlthough Sir William Ramsay’s life and mine overlapped by thirty years, and we belonged tothe same university, we never met. Seventeen years before I started my undergraduate careerin the University of Aberdeen, he had retired from the Chair of Humanity (Latin) there, andlived for the rest of his life in Edinburgh. Once, in my schoolboy days, I received indirectly apiece of advice from him―that I should beware of dissipating my intellectual energies, as thishad been the downfall of many promising young Scots. I have remembered his advice; I amnot so sure that I have followed it.Many of my teachers, at school and university, were pupils of Ramsay, products of theclassical discipline inculcated by him and his colleague John Harrower, Professor of Greek.(Harrower was inducted to the Greek Chair in the same year, 1886, as Ramsay becameprofessor of Humanity; but while Ramsay retired in 1911 at the then inordinately early age ofsixty, Harrower continued in the Greek Chair for forty-five years in all, until the infirmities ofold age compelled him to relinquish it). Of Ramsay and Harrower, two of their distinguishedpupils have written: No two men could be more unlike; undergraduate rumour had it, many years afterwards, that they were personally unacquainted. Yet, all unconsciously, they made an ideal combination―how effective many of us realized only long afterwards―and between them they built up a school of classical learning which had no equal, outside Oxford and Cambridge, in Britain. Ramsay’s contribution to the Aberdeen Classical School was the inspiration of a gifted maker of knowledge; Harrower’s was that of a great teacher. What either lacked the other was there to supply. When Ramsay translated di deaeque omnes as “all ye inhabitants of heaven, male and female,” we felt that it didn’t really matter, for we could have told him, as Grecians, how those things were clone. When Harrower, for he too was human, began to make Pericles’ Funeral Speech look like a Greek Version gone wrong, we kept our heads, for Ramsay had taught us how to handle a document.1Another of Ramsay’s pupils who has recently given some account of his performance as ateacher (the late Dr. Alexander Ross, until recently Associate Editor of The EvangelicalQuarterly) describes the occasion when Ramsay’s knighthood was announced.[p.8] The news of the conferring of this honour reached us one morning in November 1906 and that morning the Latin classroom was crowded, all the available sitting and standing space being occupied, most of those present having forsaken their proper classes for the occasion. When the professor entered, there was a burst of vociferous cheering, handkerchiefs and note books being waved wildly in the air. When the deafening noise had at last been stilled, he was invited to make a speech. According to a newspaper report which I have before me, he said: “Ladies’ and gentlemen (loud cheers), I am afraid I am detaining a large number of you from your classes (cries of ‘No, no,’ and ‘not at all’). I and glad to see that for once you seem to enjoy the atmosphere of the Humanity classroom (cheers and cries of ‘Oh, oh, Sir William’)―as I am afraid that on many occasions it has been a place of terror (loud cries of ‘No’)―a vale of tears, through which you had to pass on your pilgrimage through this University.” Later on, there was an allusion to the students who, by carving their names on1 W. M. Calder and J. Fraser, Aberdeen University Review, March 1934, pp. 104 f.
W. Ward Gasque, Sir William M. Ramsay: Archaeologist and New Testament Scholar. A Survey of HisContribution to the Study of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1966. pp.95. the desks, planned to leave “a memorial of their former presence on these benches for future generations to discover.” At this point a voice called out “excavations!”―a manifest reference to far more important excavations in Asia Minor.2Mr. Gasque’s study, however, is concerned with Ramsay’s contributions to New Testamentstudy. These were many-sided and valuable. He had received no biblical or theologicaltraining, but he acquired, by flint of his painstaking archaeological research coupled with hismastery of first-century literature, an unrivalled knowledge of the historical and geographicalbackground of the apostolic age, especially where Asia Minor was concerned, and he usedthat knowledge effectively to illuminate the New Testament. The nineteenth-century Ramsaywas a very great man; if even then he was inclined to overstate his case, at least he had a goodcase to overstate. The twentieth-century Ramsay suffered in his scholarly reputation becausehe allowed himself to be persuaded by Sir William Robertson Nicoll to don the mantle of apopular apologist. That Ramsay was no “fundamentalist” is evident to any careful reader ofthat section of St. Paul the Traveller which deals with the first five chapters of Acts, but thissection comes near the end of the book, and probably a large proportion of his devout readingpublic never got so far. It is no disgrace for a scholar to obtain a reputation as a defender ofthe faith, but when this reputation is gained by covering reams of paper with apologeticmaterial, spreading the factual content out as thin as possible to make it go farther, it is apt tobe gained at the expense of his reputation for pure scholarship. The twentieth-century Ramsaytended to be dismissed as unworthy of serious attention by many Neutestamentler who nevermade themselves acquainted with the solid achievements of the nineteenth-century Ramsay,which underlay his[p.9]more popular work of later years. Whatever may be thought of the superstructure, thefoundation was always sound, and even in his most ill-considered work one constantly comesacross flashes of insight and original contributions to knowledge which one would notwillingly have missed. A quarter of a century after his death the time is opportune for areassessment of his work, and I am glad to commend Mr. Gasque’s reassessment to readerswho have a concern for New Testament scholarship. F. F. Bruce2 A. Ross, Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, April 1962, p. 69.
F. F. Bruce
Bertrand Russell pictured above and Francis Schaeffer below:
Francis Schaeffer noted in his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? (p. 182 in Vol 5 of Complete Works) in the chapter The Breakdown in Philosophy and Science:
In his lecture at Acapulco, George Wald finished with only one final value. It was the same one with which English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was left. For Wald and Russell and for many other modern thinkers, the final value is the biological continuity of the human race. If this is the only final value, one is left wondering why this then has importance.
Now having traveled from the pride of man in the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment down to the present despair, we can understand where modern people are. They have no place for a personal God. But equally they have no place for man as man, or for love, or for freedom, or for significance. This brings a crucial problem. Beginning only from man himself, people affirm that man is only a machine. But those who hold this position cannot live like machines! If they could, there would have been no tensions in their intellectual position or in their lives. But even people who believe they are machines cannot live like machines, and thus they must “leap upstairs” against their reason and try to find something which gives meaning to life, even though to do so they have to deny their reason.
Francis Schaeffer in another place worded it like this:
The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there.
We all know deep down that God exists and even atheists have to grapple with that knowledge.
Solomon wisely noted in Ecclesiastes 3:11 “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” (Living Bible). No wonder Bertrand Russell wrote in his autobiography, “It is odd, isn’t it? I feel passionately for this world and many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don’t believe there is. I am haunted. Some ghosts, for some extra mundane regions, seem always trying to tell me something that I am to repeat to the world, but I cannot understand that message.”
Take a look at this 7th episode from Schaeffer’s series “HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? The Age of Nonreason”:
How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles
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Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible.
The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
You want some evidence that indicates that the Bible is true? Here is a good place to start and that is taking a closer look at the archaeology of the Old Testament times. 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.,
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THE MORAL ARGUMENT BERTRAND RUSSELL But aren’t you now saying in effect, I mean by God whatever is good or the sum total of what is good — the system of what is good, and, therefore, when a young man loves anything that is good he is loving God. Is that what you’re […]
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