Category Archives: Atheists Confronted

June 10, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 10) Postcard to Hugh Hefner in 2016 from Vegas

June 10, 2022 – 1:08 am

_____

Proverbs 10New Living Translation

The Proverbs of Solomon

10 The proverbs of Solomon:

A wise child^[a] brings joy to a father;
a foolish child brings grief to a mother.

²Tainted wealth has no lasting value,
but right living can save your life.

³The Lord will not let the godly go hungry,
but he refuses to satisfy the craving of the wicked.

⁴Lazy people are soon poor;
hard workers get rich.

⁵A wise youth harvests in the summer,
but one who sleeps during harvest is a disgrace.

⁶The godly are showered with blessings;
the words of the wicked conceal violent intentions.

⁷We have happy memories of the godly,
but the name of a wicked person rots away.

⁸The wise are glad to be instructed,
but babbling fools fall flat on their faces.

⁹People with integrity walk safely,
but those who follow crooked paths will be exposed.

¹⁰People who wink at wrong cause trouble,
but a bold reproof promotes peace.^[b]

¹¹The words of the godly are a life-giving fountain;
the words of the wicked conceal violent intentions.

¹²Hatred stirs up quarrels,
but love makes up for all offenses.

¹³Wise words come from the lips of people with understanding,
but those lacking sense will be beaten with a rod.

¹⁴Wise people treasure knowledge,
but the babbling of a fool invites disaster.

¹⁵The wealth of the rich is their fortress;
the poverty of the poor is their destruction.

¹⁶The earnings of the godly enhance their lives,
but evil people squander their money on sin.

¹⁷People who accept discipline are on the pathway to life,
but those who ignore correction will go astray.

¹⁸Hiding hatred makes you a liar;
slandering others makes you a fool.

¹⁹Too much talk leads to sin.
Be sensible and keep your mouth shut.

²⁰The words of the godly are like sterling silver;
the heart of a fool is worthless.

²¹The words of the godly encourage many,
but fools are destroyed by their lack of common sense.

²²The blessing of the Lord makes a person rich,
and he adds no sorrow with it.

²³Doing wrong is fun for a fool,
but living wisely brings pleasure to the sensible.

²⁴The fears of the wicked will be fulfilled;
the hopes of the godly will be granted.

²⁵When the storms of life come, the wicked are whirled away,
but the godly have a lasting foundation.

²⁶Lazy people irritate their employers,
like vinegar to the teeth or smoke in the eyes.

²⁷Fear of the Lord lengthens one’s life,
but the years of the wicked are cut short.

²⁸The hopes of the godly result in happiness,
but the expectations of the wicked come to nothing.

²⁹The way of the Lord is a stronghold to those with integrity,
but it destroys the wicked.

³⁰The godly will never be disturbed,
but the wicked will be removed from the land.

³¹The mouth of the godly person gives wise advice,
but the tongue that deceives will be cut off.

³²The lips of the godly speak helpful words,
but the mouth of the wicked speaks perverse words.

My favorite verse is verse 23: Doing wrong is fun for a fool,
but living wisely brings pleasure to the sensible.

Andy Stanley in his book THE NEW RULES FOR LOVE, SEX AND DATING wrote: When we ignore God’s relational purpose for sex…when we rip sex out of its divinely designed relational context…we hurt ourselves.

I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite cities!!!!

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, his son Marston Hefner, and his girlfriend, October 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Month Claire Sinclair, pose with a group of Playboy Playmates as they celebrate Hugh Hefner‘s 85th birthday and Marston Hefner’s 21st birthday at the Palms Casino Resort April 9, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Image result for hugh hefner las vegas

Image result for hope community church las vegas

Below is the postcard I sent:

Image result for postcards glorious vegas

___

8-28-16

Dear Hugh,

While in Las Vegas I always try to go to church and my favorite church is HOPE COMMUNITY CHURCH where I heard the message THE TALK:AN HONEST CONVERSATION ABOUT GOD’S DESIGN FOR SEX just last September. The pastor Vance Pittman is from Memphis where I grew up. You can google this message and listen to it yourself. I thought of you when Vance said:

How has the GREAT SEXUAL REVOLUTION OF THE 1960’s brought great transformation to our society? Why do so many even in our secular society look back to the 1950’s as the GOOD OLE DAYS! It is because of all the HURT, PAIN and SCARS since then. Proverbs 5:18-19 says:

¹⁸Let your fountain be blessed,
    and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
¹⁹    a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
    be intoxicated^[a] always in her love.

From Everette Hatcher, P.O.Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, PS: Jesus loves you Hugh and I do too! If your mother GRACE was here she would be telling the same thing too!!!!!

Image result for hope community church vance pitman

__________________

I wrote to Hefner in an earlier letter these words:

Don’t you see that Solomon was right when he observed life UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture and he then concluded in Ecclesiastes 2:11:

“All was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained UNDER THE SUN.”

Notice this phrase UNDER THE SUN since it appears about 30 times in Ecclesiastes. Francis Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Image result for king solomon

Hugh Hefner Hedonist: How Many Souls Did He Lead Astray?

September 28, 2017 Nathan Bickel4 Comments

Lord God only knows how many souls Hefner lead astray by his promotion of hedonism.

Pic source: slideshare.net/SammieGSmith/03-march-9-2014-proverbs-solomon-when-wisdom-was-not-enough-32359140

Sinful Solomon: “……..Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” [Ecclesiastes 12:13]

“…….Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment……” [Ecclesiastes 9:11]

The God / Man Holy Christ:“………For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?………” [Gospel of Mark 8:35-37]

“………Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself………” [Gospel of Matthew 22: 37-39]

Avoiding Emotional Adultery

As I began to delve once again into God’s Word, I recognized three steps I should have taken when faced with the temptation.

by Judy Starr

In her book, The Enticement of the Forbidden, Judy Starr tells about the intense attraction she felt toward another man during a mission trip in the Caribbean. She and her husband, Stottler, had begun the mission trip together, and she stayed on after he left because of other responsibilities. Her story here begins at the point when she returned home from the project.

My decision before God to remain faithful and return home came solely from my will, because my heart ached to stay with Eric. As I moved through the motions of boarding the plane home, numbness overtook my senses. Nothing seemed real.

The plane finally touched down in California. The grace of God, along with the counsel and prayers of others, had brought me home. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. As if moving through a haze, I staggered down the ramp to meet my husband. The weight of despondency dragged at every step. I had phoned Stottler, revealing part of the story, and I told him I was coming home. Now it was time to face him. By God’s grace there had been nothing physical between Eric and me, but emotional infidelity seemed equally as painful.

When we arrived at our house, Stottler and I sat tensely on the couch, my legs shaking with fear, anticipation, and exhaustion. Weary of the battle against God, I yearned for His fellowship again. I missed having a tender heart that could sense His leading. I also hurt over the anguish I had caused my sweet husband. But the healing of my relationships with God and Stottler was only possible if I began making right choices.

When we choose to sin, problems and sufferings will drag behind us like a ball and chain. The only way to break the chain is to deal with the root cause—confess the sin. So I told Stottler how I felt about Eric. I told him that I had seriously considered staying in the Caribbean. Then I asked for his forgiveness.

I am enormously blessed to have a godly husband. We cried together many times, and we began the process of rebuilding what I had so quickly torn down. Yet for a time, my emotions continued to bleed.

Addiction and withdrawal

Much like a drug addict in isolation, I experienced withdrawal symptoms from Eric. In many ways, an affair is similar to an alcohol or drug addiction. The process of breaking free brings intense feelings of pain, anxiety, and depression. For several months I longed to be with Eric, and a continual dull throb lodged in my heart. Life often seemed bleak, and the future uninviting.

Although I don’t remember having thoughts of suicide, they are not uncommon for people mired in affairs. A woman can’t imagine life without her lover, yet she also recognizes the grief she is causing her family. Suicide may seem the only way out. But time does heal wounds. As the days wore into months, my internal hemorrhaging slowed to a drip, then finally began to close.

It was a slow process back. I had constructed a brick wall between God, Stottler, and myself through one bad choice at a time. Now I needed to make good choices one at a time to tear down that wall. Although the process was painful, each day became a little easier—as long as I stayed away from Eric.

What I should have done

As I began to delve once again into God’s Word, the Lord clearly showed me three steps I should have taken when faced with the temptation toward Eric. These steps also apply to any woman who chooses to rebuild her marriage after making poor choices.

Step 1: Be honest with yourself. Looking back on my entire scenario in the Caribbean, I wondered if the romance with Eric was unavoidable. I alone was responsible for the preparations and daily operations of the boat project. Therefore, each day I had to work closely with a charming captain while being surrounded by an enticing, seductive setting. Was all the heartache avoidable? The answer: absolutely! I could have stopped myself before the infatuation ever began.

Through my disastrous choices, I learned a very important truth: Never underestimate the power of attraction! When attracted to a man, it’s easy to convince ourselves that the feelings could never really grow, so we try to rationalize them away.

Yet we can so quickly begin daydreaming about this attraction: I wonder where he is right now. I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. When can we talk again? Of course, this friendship is harmless. I would never want anything to happen—I just enjoy his company.

I had those thoughts. They are an open door to a roomful of deadly cobras. The enemy wants you to believe those little lies so that he can slowly ease you into the room. And once you’re in, you will be bitten. Playing with poison will ruin your life.

As we begin toying with an attraction, by necessity we hide our feelings and actions from our husband. The Lord says, “Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil” (Proverbs 12:20). Deceit always leads to further deceit as sin takes us further and further into danger. It’s so much easier to close the door and never step into the snake pit in the first place!

Step 2: Be honest with God. I believe that what made me the most vulnerable for my involvement with Eric was my lack of daily time in God’s presence. Nothing in my life has had the consistent power to transform me more than my daily times of reading the Bible and praying.

For several months previous to the Caribbean project, I had been ignoring God’s daily call to come away with Him for a time of refreshment and renewal. By the time I arrived on the boat and met the captain, I had a wall of poor choices blocking my sensitivity to the Lord. Because I had allowed my heart to become spiritually insensitive, I refused to bring my feelings toward Eric to the Lord. I refused to acknowledge His conviction, seek His perspective, and rely on His strength to resist my wandering emotions. It was a recipe for disaster.

I am convinced that the most critical element in protecting your marriage is your personal time alone with God. It is irreplaceable. There are no substitutes—not listening to Christian music or Christian radio, not going to church or attending Bible studies. Only as we spend regular one-on-one time in prayer with the Father and time reading His Word will we keep our heart sensitive to obeying His voice in the face of temptation.

Step 3: Be honest with your husband. Once Stottler and I were aboard the boat, it was only a matter of days before I knew a strong attraction existed between Eric and me. But I failed to use the protection that God had provided to help me lock the door on temptation—honesty with my husband.

As soon as I felt that excitement of attraction toward Eric, I should have told Stottler. Telling your husband is a marvelous way to dispel the mystery of a secret intrigue. As long as no one knows, you nurture that attraction, create romantic scenarios in your mind, and dream the fantasy. But as soon as you invite your husband into the fantasy bubble, it bursts. Its ugliness is exposed. And though revealing the temptation to your husband may feel uncomfortable at the time, doing so will save you both from incredible long-term heartache.

God gives our husbands to us as an umbrella of protection. Their prayers for us are God-ordained coverings of shelter. If I had told Stottler immediately upon sensing my attraction to Eric, my thoughts would have been exposed and Stottler could have prayed for me. His prayers and wisdom could have strengthened me to remain sensitive to God’s leading throughout my dealings with Eric. My accountability friends should have been told as well. Giving an account to others is a wonderful deterrent to disobedience.

I also should have determined never to be alone with Eric and sought Stottler’s accountability on this as well. When the need arose to work with Eric, my husband or one of the team members should have been included.

No secrets

Upon returning home to California, I developed a “No Secrets Policy” toward Stottler. What a relief it was to have the closet door opened and all the darkness exposed! My No Secrets Policy relates to any area of my marriage or my walk with God that will affect my relationship with Stottler. For example, feelings of attraction to another man, past moral indiscretions, impure fantasies, and a stagnant fellowship with the Lord can all create a wedge in a marriage if not dealt with immediately.

Honesty, however, is not an excuse for a lack of restraint in our words. The No Secrets Policy does not give me the right to say anything to my husband that pops into my head, especially on those days when I feel like spitting nails. Spewing every negative thought I may have toward Stottler in a moment of anger or physical depression is a sure way to drive a wedge into our relationship. Those moments require self-control.

Honesty protects both our husbands and us. It helps our husbands know our predisposition toward certain temptations so that they can help us face those challenges. By revealing to Stottler any current temptation I may be facing, he can help me to avoid further disasters. And if I continue pursuing the temptation, I will have to tell him. What a wonderful deterrent that is! It’s easier to just resist the temptation in the first place than to reveal my failure to my husband after the fact.

If establishing honesty in your marriage means exposing an affair from your past, proceed carefully. Make sure you have confessed your sin to the Lord and that your heart is broken over your wrongdoing. Then think through how to reveal this news, knowing that it will most likely elicit strong emotions.

When you reveal a previous or current indiscretion, your husband will very likely be upset. Therefore, you may want to talk with a pastor or a Christian counselor first to receive his wisdom on how to share a dark secret. If your husband has been known to be abusive, ask someone to accompany you. Although building a foundation of honesty may be frightening, keep in mind the words of Dr. Willard Harley: “As painful as it is to discover an affair, very few ever divorce because of it. In most cases, both spouses make adjustments that help avoid a repeat. But without the truth, there is little assurance that it will not happen again.”

FamilyLife is a donor-supported ministry offering practical and biblical resources and events to help you build a godly marriage and family.

Ecclesiastes 2 — The Quest For Meaning and the failed examples of Howard Hughes and Hugh Hefner

June 27, 2013 – 12:49 am

Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 162 A look at the BEATLES Breaking down the song ALL WE NEED IS LOVE Part C (Featured artist is Grace Slick)

May 4, 2017 – 1:40 am

Is Love All You Need? Jesus v. Lennon Posted on January 19, 2011 by Jovan Payes 0 On June 25, 1967, the Beatles participated in the first worldwide TV special called “Our World”. During this special, the Beatles introduced “All You Need is Love”; one of their most famous and recognizable songs. In it, John Lennon […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 158 THE BEATLES (breaking down the song WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?) Photographer Bob Gomel featured today!

April 6, 2017 – 12:25 am

___________________ Something happened to the Beatles in their journey through the 1960’s and although they started off wanting only to hold their girlfriend’s hand it later evolved into wanting to smash all previous sexual standards. The Beatles: Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? _______ Beatle Ringo Starr, and his girlfriend, later his wife, […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 142 Marvin Minsky Part G (Featured artist is Red Grooms)

December 15, 2016 – 7:18 am

__________ Marvin Minsky __ I was sorry recently to learn of the passing of one of the great scholars of our generation. I have written about Marvin Minsky several times before in this series and today I again look at a letter I wrote to him in the last couple of years. It is my […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 118 THE BEATLES (Why was Tony Curtis on cover of SGT PEP?) (Feature on artist Jeffrey Gibson )

June 30, 2016 – 5:35 am

Why was Tony Curtis on the cover of SGT PEPPERS? I have no idea but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that probably it was because he was in the smash hit SOME LIKE IT HOT. Above from the movie SOME LIKE IT HOT __ __ Jojo was a man who […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 101 BEATLES,(MANY CHRISTIANS ATTACKED THE BEATLES WHILE FRANCIS SCHAEFFER STUDIED THEIR MUSIC! Part B) Artist featured today is Cartoonist Gahan Wilson

March 3, 2016 – 12:21 am

__ Francis Schaeffer did not shy away from appreciating the Beatles. In fact, SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND album was his favorite and he listened to it over and over. I am a big fan of Francis Schaeffer but there are detractors that attack him because he did not have all the degrees that they […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

10 YEARS AGO ADRIAN ROGERS WENT TO GLORY BUT HIS SERMONS ARE STILL SHARING CHRIST LOVE TODAY!!!

November 16, 2015 – 9:33 am

On 11-15-05 Adrian Rogers passed over to glory and since it is the 10th anniversary of that day I wanted to celebrate his life in two ways. First, I wanted to pass on some of the material from Adrian Rogers’ sermons I have sent to prominent atheists over the last 20 years. Second, I wanted […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers | Tagged (Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996), Bette Chambers (1930-), Brian Charlesworth (1945-), Carl Sagan (1934-1996), Ernest Mayr (1904-2005), Francisco J. Ayala (1934-) Elliott Sober (1948-), George Wald (1906-1997), Gordon Stein (1941-1996), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), John Hospers (1918-2011), John J. Shea (1969-), Kevin Padian (1951-), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010), Mary Morain (1911-1999), Matt Cartmill (1943-), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), Michael A. Crawford (1938-), Michael Martin (1932-)., Milton Fingerman (1928-), Milton Friedman (1912-2006), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-), Renate Vambery (1916-2005), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), Sol Gordon (1923-2008), Warren Allen Smith (1921-) | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 65 THE BEATLES ( The 1960’s SEXUAL REVOLUTION was on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s!) (Featured artist is Pauline Boty)

June 25, 2015 – 7:04 am

Looking back on his life as a Beatle Paul said at a certain age you start to think “Wow, I have to get serious. I can’t just be a playboy all of my life.” It is true that the Beatles wrote a lot about girls!!!!!! The Beatles – I Want To Hold your Hand [HD] Although […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Diana Dors, Hugh Hefner, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich | Edit | Comments (0)

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Pausing to look at the life of Steven Weinberg who was one of my favorite authors!) Part 169 O My 9/30/18 letter to Dr. Weinberg discussing his quote on Religious liberals being farther from the truth in one sense than conservatives!

June 7, 2022 – 1:55 am

The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) – Sixty Symbols

—

Letter 9-30-18 Daniel 5 Machen

Francis Schaeffer

H. L. Mencken below

J.Gresham Machen below

Bertrand Russell

Belshazzar’s Feast is a painting by Rembrandt housed in the National Gallery, London.^[1]The painting is Rembrandt’s attempt to establish himself as a painter of large, baroque history paintings.^[2]^[3] The date of the painting is unknown, but most sources give a date between 1635 and 1638.^[4]^[1]

Image result for belshazzar's feast writing on the wall

823 × 408Images may be subject to copyright. Learn More

512 × 288Images may be subject to copyright. Learn More

September 30, 2018

Steven Weinberg
The University of Texas at Austin
Department of Physics
2515 Speedway Stop C1600
Austin, TX 78712-1192

Dear Dr. Weinberg,

In this letter I just want to do two things.

First, I agree with you that scientists are closer to conservative Christians in comparison to liberals because the liberals actually believe that something can be “true for you.” Christians like me believe that if the Bible said that Moses received the 10 commandments and did all those miracles that it historically happened. It reminds of a story that Francis Schaeffer once told:

H.L. Mencken died when I was a young man and I read some of the stuff he wrote and he came at just the point of the total collapse of the American consensus back in the 1930’s or a little before. H.L.Mencken was very destructive to the American consensus and he was way out. It is he who said the famous thing about Dr. J. Gresham Machen. Dr. Machen was the man who was fighting the battle for historic Christianity against the liberals in the big denominations and expressly the Presbyterian denomination and the liberals were trying to laugh Machen out of court. But H.L. Mencken said a remarkable thing, “Well, if you really want to be a Christian there is only one kind of Christian to be and that is the Machen kind.” This is wonderful. This is exactly where the battlefield is. When you take Christianity and chip away at it like the liberals wanted to do then you don’t have anything left. This is no halfway war. If you are going to be a Christian you have to be a biblical Christian. Machen and Mencken understood this and this is my position too.

Second, I wanted to give you an amazing piece of evidence that confirms some accuracy concerning the story of the “handwriting on the wall.” I know you like me have used that phrase many times in the past. It comes from Daniel chapter 5!

Lubos Motl’s recent posting about Steven Weinberg’s recent BBC interview [transcript] on the relation between religion and science mentioned the chapter about God in Weinberg’s book: Dreams of a Final Theory.

The following is from chapter 11, titled “What About God?”. In the middle of that chapter, Weinberg refers to the problem of religious “liberals”, as follows:

“Religious liberals are in one sense even farther in spirit from scientists than are fundamentalists and other religious conservatives.

“At least the conservatives, like the scientists, tell you that they believe in what they believe because it is true, rather than because it makes them good or happy.

“Many religious liberals today seem to think that different people can believe in different mutually exclusive things without any of them being wrong, as long as their beliefs ‘work for them’.

“This one believes in reincarnation, that one in heaven and hell; a third believes in the extinction of the soul at death, but no one can be said to be wrong as long as everyone gets a satisfying spiritual rush from what they believe.

“To borrow a phrase from Susan Sontag, we are surrounded by ‘piety without content’.

“It all reminds me of a story that is told about an experience of Bertrand Russell, when in 1918 he was committed to prison for his opposition to the war. Following prison routine, a jailer asked Russell his religion, and Russell said that he was an agnostic. The jailer looked puzzled for a moment, and then brightened, with the observation that ‘I guess it’s all right. We worship the same God, don’t we?’

Returning to the role of the religious conservatives, Weinberg later continues:

“Many of the great world religions teach that God demands a particular faith and form of worship. It should not be surprising that some of the people who take these teachings seriously should sincerely regard these divine commands as incomparably more important than any merely secular virtues like tolerance or compassion or reason.”

In the middle of Weinberg’s BBC interview we have the remarks by Weinberg:

“…I once wrote something [apparently referring to the above quote from his Dreams of a Final Theory] rather disparaging about ultra-liberal Christianity and that I found myself more … in some ways more akin to a fundamentalist because at least they haven’t forgotten what it [is] to believe something. And I got a copy of a fundamentalist newspaper from, I think from New Mexico that praised me! Because what they really … I think what their real concern was, was not odd atheist physicists, that wasn’t what they were worried about, what they were worried about was the liberal Christians. … I think they [the fundamentalists] just found a surprising ally in the battle that they really cared about – their battle with the liberal wing of Christianity.

——

It really comes down to the fact that the Bible is a book filled with historical facts (many that can investigated), and also it is filled with many prophecies (many in the Old Testament that have already been fulfilled). Let me give a you an amazing historical fact that has been verified. A couple of years ago I sent you the CD “Dust, Darwin and Disbelief,” by Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff. On that CD you will find this story below:

The Bible is affirmed through historical accuracy. Do you remember the story about the handwriting on the wall that is found in the fifth chapter of Daniel? Belshazzar hosted a feast with a thousand of his lords and ladies. Suddenly, a gruesome hand appeared out of nowhere and began to write on a wall. The king was disturbed and asked for someone to interpret the writing. Daniel was found and gave the interpretation. After the interpretation, “Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.” (Daniel 5:29). Basing their opinion on Babylonian records, the historians claim this never happened. According to the records, the last king of Babylon was not Belshazzar, but a man named Nabonidas. And so, they said, the Bible is in error. There wasn’t a record of a king named Belshazzar. Well, the spades of archeologists continued to do their work. In 1853, an inscription was found on a cornerstone of a temple built by Nabonidas, to the god Ur, which read: “May I, Nabonidas, king of Babylon, not sin against thee. And may reverence for thee dwell in the heart of Belshazzar, my first-born favorite son.” From other inscriptions, it was learned that Belshazzar and Nabonidas were co-regents. Nabonidas traveled while Belshazzar stayed home to run the kingdom. Now that we know that Belshazzar and Nabonidas were co-regents, it makes sense that Belshazzar would say that Daniel would be the third ruler. What a marvelous nugget of truth tucked away in the Word of God!

Francis Schaeffer rightly noted:

From the Bible’s viewpoint, all truth finally rests upon the fact that the infinite-personal God exists in contrast to His not existing. This means that God exists objectively. He exists whether or not people say He does. The Bible also teaches that God is personal.

Much of the Bible is in the sphere of normal existence and is observable. God communicated himself in language. This is not surprising for He was the creator of people who use language in communicating with other people.

In the Hebrew (and biblical) view, truth is grounded ultimately in the existence and character of God and what has been given us by God in creation and revelation. Because people are finite, reality cannot be exhausted by human reason.

It is within this Judeo-Christian view of truth that, by its own insistence, we must understand the Bible. Moses could appeal to real historical events as the basis for Israel’s confidence and obedience into the future. He could even pass down to subsequent generations physical reminders of what God had done, so that the people could see them and remember.

Thank you again for taking time to read this letter. It was been a thrill to get the chance to correspond with you!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221, United States

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the…

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) – Richard Dawkins

—-

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? (2010) | Full Movie | Michael Hordern

——

The Bill Moyers Interview – Steven Weinberg

How Should We Then Live (1977) | Full Movie | Francis Schaeffer | Edith …

Steven Weinberg Discussion (2/8) – Richard Dawkins

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!!

Steven Weinberg – Dreams of a Final Theory

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (3/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg, Author

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 6 | The Scientific Age

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (4/8) – Richard Dawkins

I am grieved to hear of the death of Dr. Steven Weinberg who I have been familiar with since reading about him in 1979 in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Dr. C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer. I have really enjoyed reading his books and DREAMS OF A FINAL REALITY and TO EXPLAIN THE WORLD were two of my favorite!

C. Everett Koop

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (5/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg 1933-2021

Posted on July 24, 2021 by woit

I heard this morning the news that Steven Weinberg passed away yesterday at the age of 88. He was arguably the dominant figure in theoretical particle physics during its period of great success from the late sixties to the early eighties. In particular, his 1967 work on unification of the weak and electromagnetic interactions was a huge breakthrough, and remains to this day at the center of the Standard Model, our best understanding of fundamental physics.

During the years 1975-79 when I was a student at Harvard, I believe the hallway where Weinberg, Glashow and Coleman had offices close together was the greatest concentration of the world’s major figures driving the field of particle theory, with Weinberg seen as the most prominent of the three. From what I recall, in a meeting one of the graduate students (Eddie Farhi?) referred to “Shelly, Sidney and Weinberg”, indicating the way Weinberg was a special case even in that group. I had the great fortune to attend not only Coleman’s QFT course, but also a course by Weinberg on the quantization of gauge theory.

Weinberg was the author of an influential text on general relativity, as well as a masterful three-volume set of textbooks on QFT. The second volume roughly corresponds to the course I took from him, and the third is about supersymmetry. While most QFT books cover the basics in much the same way, Weinberg’s first volume is a quite different, original and highly influential take on the subject. It’s not easy going, but the details are all there and his point of view is an important one. When you hear Nima Arkani-Hamed preaching about the right way to understand how QFT comes out uniquely as the only sensible way to combine special relativity and quantum mechanics, he’s often referring specifically to what you’ll find in that first volume.

Besides his technical work, Weinberg also did a huge amount of writing of the highest quality about physics and science in general for wider audiences. An early example is his 1977 The Search for Unity: Notes for a History of Quantum Field Theory (a copy is here). His 1992 Dreams of a Final Theory is perhaps the best statement anywhere of the goal of fundamental physical theory during the 20th century. His large collection of pieces written for the The New York Review of Books covers a wide variety of topics and all are well worth reading.

At the time of the 1984 “First Superstring Revolution”, Weinberg joined in and worked on string theory for a while, but after a few years turned to cosmology. In early 2002 he was one of several people I wrote to about the current state of string theory, and here’s what I heard back from him:

A couple years after that time, Weinberg’s 1987 “prediction” of the cosmological constant became the main argument for the string theory multiverse. This “prediction” was essentially the observation that if you have a theory in which all values of the cosmological constant are equally likely, and put this together with the “anthropic” constraint that only for some range will galaxy formation give what seem to be the conditions for life, then you expect a non-zero CC of very roughly the size later found. I’ve argued ad nauseam here that this can’t be used as a significant argument for string theory in its landscape incarnation. One way to see the problem is to notice that my own theory of the CC (which is that I have no idea what determines it, so any value is as likely as any other) is exactly equivalent to the string landscape theory of the CC (in which you don’t know either the measure on the space of possible vacua, or even what this space is, so you assume all CC equally likely). One place where Weinberg wrote about this issue is his essay Living in the Multiverse, which I wrote about here (the sad story of misinterpretation of a comment of mine there is told here).

Weinberg’s death yesterday, taking away from us the dominant figure of the period of particle theory’s greatest success is both a significant loss and marks the end of an era. His 2002 remark that “it’s a tough time” is even more true today.

Update: Scott Aaronson writes about Weinberg here, especially about getting to know him during the last part of his life.

Update: For Arkani-Hamed on Weinberg, see here.

Update: Glashow writes about Weinberg here.

This entry was posted in Obituaries. Bookmark the permalink.

18 Responses to Steven Weinberg 1933-2021

Alessandro Strumia says:

July 24, 2021 at 1:39 pm

Weinberg was the last of the physics giants who produced fundamental theories validated by experiments. After half a century his Standard Model still holds, so maybe now is the fist time in physics history without scientific giants.
Shantanu says:

July 24, 2021 at 1:59 pm

A tribute to him from one Astrophysics colleague who had recently joined UT Austin
https://twitter.com/MBKplus/status/1418972769509855236
Pingback: #Virasoro-Algebren und das Standardmodell [Mathlog] – BuradaBiliyorum.Com
Ricardo says:

July 24, 2021 at 4:08 pm

His last book “Foundations of Modern Physics came out a few months ago. From the preface:
“This book treats such a broad range of topics that it is impossible to go very far into any of them. Certainly its treatment of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, transport theory, nuclear physics, and quantum ﬁeld theory is no substitute for graduate-level courses on these topics, any one of which would occupy at least a whole year. This book presents what I think, in an ideal world, the ambitious physics student would already know when he or she enters graduate school. At least, it is what I wish that I had known when I entered graduate school.”
Does anybody have an opinion about how well he succeeded?
Wei Liu says:

July 24, 2021 at 8:51 pm

It is sad news that Weinberg is not with us anymore but I cannot agree with Alessandro Strumia that “Weinberg was the last of the physics giants who produced fundamental theories validated by experiments…so maybe now is the fi(r)st time in physics history without scientific giants.” Please be reminded that C. N. Yang and T. D. Lee still are healthily living.
Mark Weitzman says:

July 24, 2021 at 9:04 pm

@Ricardo: I wrote the following review on one of my piazza sites a few weeks ago. I am currently half way through the book, and I am enjoying the book, although I am familiar with most of the content already. As I indicated below it is more of a review book, than a teaching book.

Steven Weinberg had come out with a new book: Foundations of Modern Physics. I have read the first 2 chapters, and scanned the rest of the book – the book is a short 300 pages and the hardcover is about $40. The level of the book is intermediate to advanced undergraduate.

I often encounter online students who have taken several of the MIT physics MOOC’s but often feel that they either lack some background, or don’t see what they have learned (especially in the QM sequence) and how it will be applied. To many of these students my advice is usually to read the Feynman Lectures on physics, to get the big picture and for more background in QM prerequisite physics, and/or find a good textbook on modern physics.

When I was in college almost half a century ago, I remember using Leighton’s classic book Principles of Modern Physics 1959 (about 700 pages in length), and suggest students try and find a more recent book covering roughly the same material – I haven’t seen one, so let me know if you have. There seem to be many freshman/sophomore level books covering modern physics, but I don’t think these are sufficient.

Weinberg’s book is less of a textbook (while there are 25 problems at the end of the book, there are no exercises at the end of chapters, and no worked out examples). It is written in Weinberg style, few pictures or diagrams, unusual symbols ( for the atomic mass unit, usual notation is u), nice but sometimes terse arguments, and excellent content with interesting historical asides. The math level is low at the beginning (algebra – elementary calculus), and rises a little with the level of the material, but not nearly as difficult as his graduate level books.

There are seven chapters in the book:

Early Atomic Theory
Thermodynamics and Kinetic Theory
Early Quantum Theory
Relativity
Quantum Mechanics
Nuclear Physics
Quantum Field Theory
So the coverage is exactly what a student should be looking for in a modern physics book (perhaps astrophysics and cosmology are left out, because Weinberg just published a set of lectures on astrophysics, and has a whole book on Cosmology). The book seems more of a review or plug holes in background, and less of a teaching masterpiece.

I recommend that students looking for a book on this type of material take a look at the book and see if it is for them. I think students who are taking or have finished the MITx 8.04-8.06 sequence might find the book worthwhile as a review and also as filling out some material, and get a preview of quantum field theory as well.
Ralf Hofmann says:

July 25, 2021 at 2:51 am

Steven Weinberg – a great, highly creative physicist and wonderfully involved teacher of fundamental physics who shaped my own education in quantum field theory and cosmology during essential steps. I’ll miss him and his sober views very much.
Alessandro Strumia says:

July 25, 2021 at 5:29 am

Dear Wei, thank you, let me try to explain better. Historians like to choose a somehow arbitrary moment to symbolise a gradual change. If the change I mentioned will really happen, I expect they will choose this moment.
Thomas Larsson says:

July 25, 2021 at 10:45 am

Alessandro, Glashow is still around, isn’t he? So not quite the last. As a sophomore, I attended a talk by GSW when they were here in Stockholm to collect their Nobel prize, and I understood absolutely nothing.

Btw. I learned from Lubos that Miguel Virasoro has passed away as well.
Pingback: Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » Steven Weinberg (1933-2021): a personal view
Sebastian Thaler says:

July 25, 2021 at 6:01 pm

I was working at Cambridge University Press in 1995 when the first volume of his “Quantum Theory of Fields” was released. I recall speaking briefly with him on the phone about something trivial like distributing review copies, and picking up a copy of the book that had been delivered to our office. I read the first page and then put it back down—it was just a *bit* over my head…
Amitabh Lath says:

July 25, 2021 at 6:52 pm

My PhD thesis was a measurement of the Weinberg angle (sin^2\theta_W) using polarized electrons at the SLAC linear collider. Some people insisted the W stood for Weak but I always held it is W for Weinberg. I read and reread his paper A Model of Leptons many times until I could reproduce it at my defense. I wish all theory papers were as clear and understandable.
Severin Pappadeux says:

July 25, 2021 at 9:35 pm

Miguel Virasoro died the same day
Shantanu says:

July 25, 2021 at 10:46 pm

Amitabha: From what I understand the “Weinberg” angle was first introduced by Glashow.
Amitabh Lath says:

July 26, 2021 at 10:27 am

Shantanu, that is funny because I was told to call it Weak Mixing Angle (and not Weinberg angle) after I gave this talk at Harvard. Glashow was in the room but he was not the one who made that comment. I made the correction with a marker on my transparencies right there. This was a while ago, but I also vaguely remember some chatter about “well if this is right it means the higgs is light”. We were, and it was.
Shantanu says:

July 26, 2021 at 11:24 am

Amitabha: This is also mentioned on Peter’s blog https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=17
I have also heard this mentioned in many HEP seminars I attended as a grad student.
Robinson says:

July 27, 2021 at 2:41 am

Dreams of a Final Theory is available on Audible. It’s read by Weinberg himself. It’s written for a general audience, so even untutored but interested readers like me can understand it.
D R Lunsford says:

July 27, 2021 at 8:22 pm

That is sad news, but it was a long life well-lived. He was an authentic giant. His book on GR is still my favorite (tied with that of Fock) and I was lucky to learn the subject in detail mostly from that. Agree also about QTF II. I wish we had made more progress in his last years for him to enjoy and contribute to. RIP.

Francis Schaeffer : Reclaiming the World part 1, 2

The Atheism Tapes – Steven Weinberg [2/6]

—

The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer

—

Steven Weinberg – What Makes the Universe Fascinating?

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

_________________

Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:

______________

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:

Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky,Alan Dershowitz, Hubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross, Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Hermann Hauser, Roald Hoffmann, Bruce Hood, Herbert Huppert, Gareth Stedman Jones, Shelly Kagan, Stuart Kauffman, Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, Elizabeth Loftus, Alan Macfarlane, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow, Yujin Nagasawa, Douglas Osheroff, Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse, Robert M. Price, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Oliver Sacks, 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,

____________________________

In the 1st video below in the 50th clip in this series are 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)

_________________________________

Steven Weinberg: To Explain the World

Steven Weinberg

________

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 53 THE BEATLES (Part E, Stg. Pepper’s and John Lennon’s search in 1967 for truth was through drugs, money, laughter, etc & similar to King Solomon’s, LOTS OF PICTURES OF JOHN AND CYNTHIA) (Feature on artist Yoko Ono)

April 2, 2015 – 7:05 am

The John Lennon and the Beatles really were on a long search for meaning and fulfillment in their lives just like King Solomon did in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon looked into learning (1:12-18, 2:12-17), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-2, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). He fount that without God in the picture all […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 52 THE BEATLES (Part D, There is evidence that the Beatles may have been exposed to Francis Schaeffer!!!) (Feature on artist Anna Margaret Rose Freeman )

March 22, 2015 – 12:30 am

______________ George Harrison Swears & Insults Paul and Yoko Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Anna Margaret Rose Freeman, George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Ringo Starr, Stg. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am

The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA Uploaded on Nov 29, 2010 The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA. The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Raqib Shaw, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

March 12, 2015 – 12:16 am

__________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Peter Blake, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (1)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 49 THE BEATLES (Part A, The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s Cover) (Feature on artist Mika Tajima)

March 5, 2015 – 4:47 am

_______________ The Beatles documentary || A Long and Winding Road || Episode 5 (This video discusses Stg. Pepper’s creation I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Beatles, Mika Tajima | Edit |Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 48 “BLOW UP” by Michelangelo Antonioni makes Philosophic Statement (Feature on artist Nancy Holt)

February 26, 2015 – 4:57 am

_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ I have included the 27 minute episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” How Should […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Blow Up, David Hemmings,Michelangelo Antonioni, Nancy Holt, Sarah Miles., Vanessa Redgrave | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 47 Woody Allen and Professor Levy and the death of “Optimistic Humanism” from the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS Plus Charles Darwin’s comments too!!! (Feature on artist Rodney Graham)

February 19, 2015 – 5:33 am

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged alan alda, Anjelica Huston, mia farrow, Sam Waterston | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 46 Friedrich Nietzsche (Featured artist is Thomas Schütte)

February 12, 2015 – 5:00 am

____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: __________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche,H.G. Wells, jean paul sartre, Kai Nielsen, Richard Taylor, Richard Wurmbrand, Thomas Schütte | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 45 Woody Allen “Reason is Dead” (Feature on artists Allora & Calzadilla )

February 5, 2015 – 4:31 am

Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis Schaeffer […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged Allora & Calzadilla | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 44 The Book of Genesis (Featured artist is Trey McCarley )

January 29, 2015 – 5:01 am

___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Trey McCarley | Edit | Comments (0)

By Everette Hatcher III | Tagged .Alexander Vilenkin, Aaron Ciechanover, Alan Dershowitz, Alan Guth, Alan Macfarlane, Barry Supple, Bart Ehrman, Brian Greene, Bruce Hood, David J. Gross, Douglas Osheroff, Elizabeth Loftus, Frank Wilczek, Gareth Stedman Jones, Harry Kroto, Herbert Huppert, Herman Philipse, Hermann Hauser, Hubert Dreyfus, Ivar Giaever, J. L. Schellenberg, Jonathan Haidt, Lawrence Krauss, Lee Silver, Leonard Mlodinow, Leonard Susskind, Lewis Wolpert, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Marcus du Sautoy, Mark Balaguer, Marvin Minsky, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Noam Chomsky, Oliver Sacks, Patricia Churchland, Peter Millican, Peter Singer, Raymond Tallis, Rebecca Goldstein, Roald Hoffmann, Robert M. Price, Ronald de Sousa, Roy Glauber, Saul Perlmutter, Shelly Kagan, Simon Schaffer, Sir David Attenborough, Sir John Walker, Steven Weinberg, Stuart Kauffman, Susan Greenfield, Victor Stenger, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Yujin Nagasawa | Comments (0)

June 5, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 5) MY POSTCARD IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER

June 5, 2022 – 1:31 am

_____

5 Listen to me, my son! I know what I am saying; listen! ²Watch yourself, lest you be indiscreet and betray some vital information. ³For the lips of a prostitute^[a] are as sweet as honey, and smooth flattery is her stock-in-trade. ⁴But afterwards only a bitter conscience is left to you,^[b] sharp as a double-edged sword. ⁵She leads you down to death and hell. ⁶For she does not know the path to life. She staggers down a crooked trail and doesn’t even realize where it leads.

⁷Young men, listen to me, and never forget what I’m about to say: ⁸Run from her! Don’t go near her house, ⁹lest you fall to her temptation and lose your honor, and give the remainder of your life to the cruel and merciless;^[c] ¹⁰lest strangers obtain your wealth, and you become a slave of foreigners. ¹¹Lest afterwards you groan in anguish and in shame when syphilis^[d] consumes your body, ¹²and you say, “Oh, if only I had listened! If only I had not demanded my own way! ¹³Oh, why wouldn’t I take advice? Why was I so stupid? ¹⁴For now I must face public disgrace.”

¹⁵Drink from your own well, my son—be faithful and true to your wife. ¹⁶Why should you beget children with women of the street? ¹⁷Why share your children with those outside your home? ¹⁸Be happy, yes, rejoice in the wife of your youth. ¹⁹Let her breasts and tender embrace^[e] satisfy you. Let her love alone fill you with delight. ²⁰Why delight yourself with prostitutes, embracing what isn’t yours? ²¹For God is closely watching you, and he weighs carefully everything you do.

²²The wicked man is doomed by his own sins; they are ropes that catch and hold him. ²³He shall die because he will not listen to the truth; he has let himself be led away into incredible folly.

Image result for hugh hefner las vegas

Image result for hope community church las vegas

Below is the postcard I sent:

Image result for postcards glorious vegas

___

8-28-16

Dear Hugh,

From Everette Hatcher, P.O.Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, PS: Jesus loves you Hugh and I do too! If your mother GRACE was here she would be telling the same thing too!!!!!

Image result for hope community church vance pitman

__________________

I wrote to Hefner in an earlier letter these words:

Don’t you see that Solomon was right when he observed life UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture and he then concluded in Ecclesiastes 2:11:

“All was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained UNDER THE SUN.”

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Image result for king solomon

Hugh Hefner Hedonist: How Many Souls Did He Lead Astray?

September 28, 2017 Nathan Bickel4 Comments

Lord God only knows how many souls Hefner lead astray by his promotion of hedonism.

Pic source: slideshare.net/SammieGSmith/03-march-9-2014-proverbs-solomon-when-wisdom-was-not-enough-32359140

Sinful Solomon: “……..Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” [Ecclesiastes 12:13]

The God / Man Holy Christ:“………For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?………” [Gospel of Mark 8:35-37]

“………Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself………” [Gospel of Matthew 22: 37-39]

Avoiding Emotional Adultery

As I began to delve once again into God’s Word, I recognized three steps I should have taken when faced with the temptation.

by Judy Starr

I am enormously blessed to have a godly husband. We cried together many times, and we began the process of rebuilding what I had so quickly torn down. Yet for a time, my emotions continued to bleed.

Addiction and withdrawal

What I should have done

No secrets

FamilyLife is a donor-supported ministry offering practical and biblical resources and events to help you build a godly marriage and family.

Ecclesiastes 2 — The Quest For Meaning and the failed examples of Howard Hughes and Hugh Hefner

June 27, 2013 – 12:49 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 162 A look at the BEATLES Breaking down the song ALL WE NEED IS LOVE Part C (Featured artist is Grace Slick)

May 4, 2017 – 1:40 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 158 THE BEATLES (breaking down the song WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?) Photographer Bob Gomel featured today!

April 6, 2017 – 12:25 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 142 Marvin Minsky Part G (Featured artist is Red Grooms)

December 15, 2016 – 7:18 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 118 THE BEATLES (Why was Tony Curtis on cover of SGT PEP?) (Feature on artist Jeffrey Gibson )

June 30, 2016 – 5:35 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 101 BEATLES,(MANY CHRISTIANS ATTACKED THE BEATLES WHILE FRANCIS SCHAEFFER STUDIED THEIR MUSIC! Part B) Artist featured today is Cartoonist Gahan Wilson

March 3, 2016 – 12:21 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

10 YEARS AGO ADRIAN ROGERS WENT TO GLORY BUT HIS SERMONS ARE STILL SHARING CHRIST LOVE TODAY!!!

November 16, 2015 – 9:33 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 65 THE BEATLES ( The 1960’s SEXUAL REVOLUTION was on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s!) (Featured artist is Pauline Boty)

June 25, 2015 – 7:04 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Diana Dors, Hugh Hefner, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich | Edit | Comments (0)

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Pausing to look at the life of Steven Weinberg who was one of my favorite authors!) Part 169 N My 11/30/18 letter to Dr. Weinberg on his quote on the pointlessness of life quote!

May 31, 2022 – 1:50 am

The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) – Sixty Symbols

—

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the…

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) – Richard Dawkins

—-

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? (2010) | Full Movie | Michael Hordern

——

Letter 11-30-18 Weinberg Meaningless quote

—-

November 30, 2018

Steven Weinberg
The University of Texas at Austin
Department of Physics
2515 Speedway Stop C1600
Austin, TX 78712-1192

Dear Dr. Weinberg,

You may have noticed that I have taken time the 30th of each month the last few months to write you letters asking your views or reacting to views of yours that I have read in your books. Today I want to tackle your most quoted statement.

I am just doing three things in this letter.

First, we look at Francis Schaeffer’s discussion of your famous quote concerning the pointless universe.

Second, we will look at some of your own discussion of it from your book DREAMS OF A FINAL THEORY.

Third, I am going to give you a perspective from a Christian’s point of view why the universe has meaning.

Francis Schaeffer noted:

The Meaningless of All Things

An overwhelming number of modern thinkers agree that seeing the universe and man from a humanist base leads to meaninglessness, both for the universe and for man – not just mankind in general but for each of us as individuals. Professor Steven Weinberg of Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has written a book entitled The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (1976). Here he explains, as clearly as probably anyone has ever done, the modern materialistic view of the universe and its origin.
But when his explanation is finished and he is looking down at the earth from an airplane, as Weinberg writes, “It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe … [which] has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”86
When Weinberg says that the universe seems more “comprehensible,” he is, of course, referring to our greater understanding of the physical universe through the advance of science. But it is an understanding, notice, within, a materialistic framework, which considers the universe solely in terms of physics and chemistry – simply machinery. Here lies the irony. It is comprehension of a sort, but it is like giving a blind person sight, only to remove anything seeable. As we heard Woody Allen saying earlier, such a view of reality is “absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless.”
So, to the person who wants to be left alone without explanations for the big questions, we must say very gently, “Look at what you are left alone with.” This is not merely rhetoric. As the decades of this century have slipped by, more and more have said the same thing as Steven Weinberg and Woody Allen. It has become an obvious thing to say. The tremendous optimism of the nineteenth century, which stemmed from the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, has gradually ebbed away.
If everything “faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat,” all things are meaningless. This is the first problem, the first form of pollution. The second is just as bad.

____________________________________________

Rice Broocks in his book GOD’S NOT DEAD quoted the American philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig:

My claim is that if there is no God then meaning, value, and purpose are ultimately human illusions. They’re just in our heads. If atheism is true, then life is really objectively meaningless, valueless, and purposeless, despite our subjective beliefs to the contrary,” (William Lane Craig, ON GUARD: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision [Colorodo Springs: David C. Cook, 2010], 30).

Other reactions to Weinberg’s quote:

“I don’t believe the earth was created for people. It was a planet created by natural processes, and, as part of the further continuation of those natural processes, life and intelligent life appeared. In exactly the same way, I think the universe was created out of some natural process, and our appearance in it was a totally natural result of physical laws in our particular portion of it. Implicit in the question, I think, is that there’s some motive power that has a purpose beyond human existence. I don’t believe in that. So, I guess ultimately I agree with Weinberg that it’s completely pointless from a human perspective.”
— Sandra Faber (c.1990) of Lick Observatory; cited by Michio Kaku (2006) [6]

Below in this article Goldstein discusses some further reactions to your quote and then gives a Christian perspective on the meaning of life.

A portion of the article “The meaning of life” by Clifford Goldstein

Clifford Goldstein, MA, is director of the Adult Bible Study Guide, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
“I feel everything that ever happened to me, and I memorize it, but it’s all in vain.”
—Osip Mandelstam1
“We’ve been the Beatles, which was marvelous . . . but I think generally there was this feeling of ‘Yeah, well, it’s great to be famous, it’s great to be rich—but what’s it all for?’ ”
—Paul McCartney 2
In an oft-quoted sentence from his book, The First Three Minutes, Nobel Prize–winning physicist, Steven Weinberg wrote, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”3 Responding to the harsh blowback from the line, Weinberg, in another book, Dreams of a Final Theory,explained that his “rash” statement did not mean that science thought the universe was pointless but simply that “the universe itself suggests no point.”4
To begin with, others wondered what all the fuss was about. Harvard astronomer Margaret Geller, for instance, responded, “Why should it [the universe] have a point? What point? It’s just a physical system, what point is there? I’ve always been puzzled by that statement.”5
Enlightenment heirs
However uncomfortable Weinberg might have made people, he was simply taking the premises of an a priori materialism to their logical conclusion. We, in the West, are inheritors of the Enlightenment, which over time (with a strong dose of French influence) morphed into promoting a system that reduced all reality, all existence, to the natural world alone. As ministers, we must realize, too, that in this worldview, no place exists for any transcendence, much less a personal God like Yahweh. Though postmodernism, in its various incantations, has been a dialectical reaction to the cold harshness of a worldview that has turned everything into “just a physical system,” the twenty-first century West remains in the grip of the modernist mentality in which science and the scientific method remain, for many, the most reliable, if not the ultimate or even only, source of truth.
Cosmology, however, is not quite a zero-sum game—and whatever we have gained, or think we have gained through the modernist world, has been offset elsewhere, especially regarding what is most personal and important—the meaning of human life itself. Friederich Nietzsche, with his harsh atheism, because of his harsh atheism, could see what modernism would do to humanity’s sense of purpose and meaning. His famous (or infamous) “God is dead” quote was a warning about the void that the modern antimetaphysical worldview would leave inside the souls of humans. And that could easily include some of your own parishioners.
Eternity in our hearts
Contrast this, however, with Christianity, with the worldview it represents, which would have given Mitchell Heisman the meaning he so desperately sought but could not find in a godless cosmos filled with just “atoms and the void.”
Instead, Scripture posits the universe as the purposeful creation of a loving God (John 1:1–3; Heb. 1:2; 11:3), and humanity as thoughtfully created in His image (Gen. 1:26, 27), a radically different approach than the mindless massacre of Darwinian evolution. According to the Bible, this God created us, sustains us (Dan. 5:23; Heb. 1:3; Acts 17:28), and, most importantly, redeemed us through His own self-sacrifice in the Person of Jesus on the cross (Gal. 1:4; 1 Tim. 2:6).
Redemption is crucial because to be merely created by God, in and of itself, is not enough to give us meaning—not when we all face death, the insidious acid that eats away at every ultimate purpose. What can life mean when it—and everyone we know in it, everyone we have ever impacted, when every influence we ever had—will all vanish into oblivion, with no consciousness of any kind to remember that we ever existed?
Scripture says that God “set eternity in the man’s heart” (Eccles. 3:11); we, then, are not only capable of contemplating eternity but have been wired for it. Yet here is precisely where we painfully, even infinitely, fall short.
That is why, central to the Christian worldview, the teaching that the Lord, the Creator of all that was made (John 1:3), died for us so that we could have the promise of the eternity that He had set in our hearts. “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life” (John 6:54). “And I give unto them eternal life” (John 10:28). “Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting” (Luke 18:30). “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).
Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting” (1 Tim. 1:16).
The answer
What, then, could you, as a minister, say to Mitchell Heisman or anyone who asked, What is the purpose and meaning of life?
The purpose of our lives is to love God first and foremost, and then our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:37, 38), revealing to others and to the onlooking universe (1 Cor. 4:9; Eph. 3:10) the power and grace of a God who loved us so much that He bore in Himself the penalty for our sins (John 3:16; Isa. 53:4–6; 1 John 2:2) so we do not have to bear it ourselves. Thus, our lives are dedicated to His glory (1 Pet. 4:16; Rom. 15:6), which is made manifest by our willingness to serve others (1 John 3:16; Matt. 25:31–40), knowing that no good deed will go unrewarded (Matt. 10:42; Luke 6:35), that this existence is a “vapor” (James 4:14), and that through what Jesus has done for us we will live forever (John 17:3; Rom. 6:22; Matt. 19:29) in a new heaven and a new earth, one without any of the things that make us miserable here (Isa. 65:17; Rev. 21:1–4). And because we know the gospel as such good news (Isa. 52:7; Acts 20:24), the deepest purpose and meaning in life is found in bearing witness (Isa. 43:10; Heb. 12:1) to the infinite value of every human being, revealed in the infinite sacrifice made in their behalf (Rom. 5:8; 1 Pet. 1:19); and, therefore, through our testimony of our lives others can come to know the hope and promise of eternal life offered every human being (John 3:16; Rom. 10:11–13) in Jesus Christ.
That is what you could tell Mitchell Heisman (or anyone who asks) about the meaning of life.
Or, instead, there is always Steven Weinberg’s option. Though he argued that the universe itself is pointless, we can still, he said, “invent a point for our lives, including trying to understand the universe.” If, though, the universe is pointless—what is to understand? Why bother trying? One might even humbly ask, too, Is not seeking to “invent” a point for our lives by studying a pointless universe the kind of self-contradictory and, ultimately, futile endeavor that is so often at the root of human meaninglessness to begin with?
Pointedly so.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

——

Steven Weinberg (1977), in a book depicting the universe originating from a point (above left), aka big bang, argued, ironically, to the chagrin of many, that, according to the second law, the universe is “pointless”. [1]
In hmolscience, pointlessness, as contrasted with “pointfullness”, refers to the conjecture, originating predominately from Steven Weinberg (1977), that the universe, particularly from the atheism-based human view of things, is pointless or without points.

Weinberg
in 1977, American physicist Steven Weinberg, in his The First Three Minutes, firstly, dismissed the infinite oscillating model of the universe with recourse to heat death theory, then discussed in upgraded particle physics language, at the end of which he famously or infamously, depending on one’s point of view, concluded that the universe seems pointless: [1]

“Some cosmologists are philosophically attracted to the oscillating model of the, especially because, like the steady-state model, it nicely avoids the problem of Genesis. It does, however, face one severe theoretical difficulty. In each cycle the ratio of photons to nuclear particles (or, more precisely, the entropy per nuclear particle) is slightly increased by a kind of friction (known as ‘bulk viscosity’) as the universe expands and contracts. As far as we know, the universe would then start each new cycle with a new, slightly larger ratio of photons to nuclear particles. Right now this ratio is large, but not infinite, so it is hard to see how the universe could have previously experienced an infinite number of cycles.

However all these problems may be resolved, and whichever cosmological model proves correct, there is not much of comfort in any of this. It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, what human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. As I write this I happen to be in an airplane at 30,000 feet, flying over Wyoming en route home from San Francisco to Boston. Below, the earth looks very soft and comfortable—fluffy clouds here and there, snow turning pink as the sun sets, roads stretching straight across the country from one town to another. It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelming hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar earlier condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

This last “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless” statement quickly became Weinberg’s trademark philosophical credo statement, particularly among atheism and or science and religion publications. This view, to note, is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s 1937 second law based “meaninglessness” atheism philosophy. [2]

In 1992, Weinberg, in his Dreams of a Final Theory, chapter: “What About God?”, continued to discuss the repercussions of this pointlessness quote as follows: [3]

“In my 1977 book, The First Three Minutes, I was rash enough to remark that ‘the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless’. I did not mean that science teaches us that the universe is pointless, but rather that the universe itself has no point. I hastened to add that there were ways that we ourselves could invent a point for our lives, including trying to understand the universe. But the damage was done: that phrase has dogged me ever since.

Here again, Weinberg not only asserts that the universe that originates from a point (big bang) has no point, but also that in human existences there are no points, seems to assert that, according to modern science, “there is no point to life”, but that we can be secular scientists and “invent” points, e.g. trying to understand things.

Lightmann-Brawer | Poll
In circa 1990, Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer polled twenty-seven cosmologists and physicists on Weinberg’s pointlessness conjecture; Weinberg discusses this as follows:
Weinberg continues:

“Recently Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer published interviews with twenty-seven cosmologists and physicists, most of whom had been asked at the end of their interview what they thought of that remark. With various qualifications, ten of the interviewees agreed with men and thirteen did not, but of those thirteen three disagreed because they did not see why anyone would expect the universe to have a point.”

Some of the responses are as follows:

“Why should it have a point? What point? It’s just a physical system, what point is there? I’ve always been puzzled by that statement.”
— Margaret Geller (c.1990), Harvard astronomer; cited by Weinberg (1992)

“I’m willing to believe that we are flotsam and jetsam.”
— Jim Peebles (c.1990), Princeton astrophysicist; cited by Weinberg (1992)

“I don’t believe the earth was created for people. It was a planet created by natural processes, and, as part of the further continuation of those natural processes, life and intelligent life appeared. In exactly the same way, I think the universe was created out of some natural process, and our appearance in it was a totally natural result of physical laws in our particular portion of it. Implicit in the question, I think, is that there’s some motive power that has a purpose beyond human existence. I don’t believe in that. So, I guess ultimately I agree with Weinberg that it’s completely pointless from a human perspective.”
— Sandra Faber (c.1990) of Lick Observatory; cited by Michio Kaku (2006) [6]

Weinberg (1992) went on to state that Princeton astrophysicist Edwin Turner agreed with him, that his University of Texas colleague, astronomer Gerard de Vaucouleurs thought the remark was “nostalgic”, and that he sees himself unique among physicists for carrying about these types of science replacing religions intersections. By 2000, Weinberg’s pointless universe statement, according to The New York Times (“Physicist Ponders God, Truth and a Final Theory”, James Glanz), had become a “much-quoted aphorism”. (?)

Other
In 2001, Weinberg again re-stoked the fires of debate with the following statement about how he believes that “there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity” statement: [6]

“Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity, one way that we can find a purpose is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own.”

This again prompted further debate and objection, which Weinberg discusses further in his 2010 book Lake Views. [4]

See also
? Meaninglessness
? Purposeless

Quotes
The following are related quotes:

“Academic degree after degree has not removed the haunting specter of the pointlessness of existence in a random universe.”
— Ravi Zacharias (2008), The End of Reason [5]

“The science-religion controversy is rooted in talk of afterlife, soul, higher powers, muses, purpose, reason, objectivity, pointlessness, and randomness.”
— Robert Burton (2008), On Being Certain: Believing You are Right Even When You’re Wrong

References
1. Weinberg, Steven. (1977). The First Three Minutes: a Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (pointless, pg. 154). Basic Books.
2. Huxley, Aldous. (1937). Ends and Means: an Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals (meaninglessness, 4+ pgs; quote, pg. 270). Harper Collins.
3. Weinberg, Steven. (1992). Weinberg, Steven. (1992). Dreams of a Final Theory: the Scientist’s Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature (Dostoyevsky, pgs. 52-53; pointless, pgs. 255-56). Random House.
4. Weinberg, Steven. (2010). Lake Views (pg. 45). Harvard University Press.
5. Zacharias, Ravi. (2008). The End of Reason (pg. 17). Zondervan.
6. Kaku, Michio. (2006). Parallel Worlds (pg. 355). Knopf Doubleday

Letter 10-30-18

—-

XXXXXX

The Bill Moyers Interview – Steven Weinberg

How Should We Then Live (1977) | Full Movie | Francis Schaeffer | Edith …

Steven Weinberg Discussion (2/8) – Richard Dawkins

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!!

Steven Weinberg – Dreams of a Final Theory

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (3/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg, Author

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 6 | The Scientific Age

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (4/8) – Richard Dawkins

C. Everett Koop

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (5/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Francis Schaeffer : Reclaiming the World part 1, 2

The Atheism Tapes – Steven Weinberg [2/6]

—

The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer

—

Steven Weinberg, a noble revolutionary in physics, dies at 88

Science 2021-07-26 01:54:52

Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in revolutionary physics, dies at 88 His discoveries have deepened the understanding of forces fundamentals at play in the universe, and he brought the general public back to the dawn of his book “The First Three Minutes “. Steven Weinberg, a theoretical physicist who discovered that two of the forces in the universe are really the same, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and who contributed to lay the foundations for the development of the stand modelard, a theory that classifies all known elementary particles in the universe, making it one of the most important breakthroughs in physics in the 20th century, died in a hospital in Austin, Texas on Friday. He was 88 years old. His daughter, Dr Elizabeth Weinberg, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. Dr. Weinberg “s stature in physics would be hard to overestimate. In 2015, Dr. Brian Greene, theoretical physicist at Columbia University, invited Dr. Weinberg to be the first speaker at a new lecture series at the university called “On the Shoulders of Giants”. Introducing his guest, Dr Greene recounted how in the early 1980s he was working at IBM when he was invited to lecture at the University of Texas at Austin, where Dr Weinberg was a teacher. When he told his boss,John Cocke, a computer pioneer, that Dr Weinberg would be attending the conference, Dr Cocke warned him: “You must know that there are Nobel laureates and then there are Nobel Prize winners. ” Dr Weinberg was in the second category. Although he had the respect, almost awe of his colleagues for his scientific abilities and knowledge, he also possesses a rare ability among scientists to communicate and explain obscure scientific ideas to the public. He was a sought-after speaker and wrote several popular science books, including “The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe” (1977). The work for which Dr. Weinberg received the Nobel Prize had a transformative impact on physics, especially on the development of quan mechanics.tick, which tries to understand and explain what is happening in the subatomic world. There are four known forces in the universe: gravity ; electromagnetism; the strong force, which binds the nuclei of atoms together; and the weak force, which causes radioactive decay. The first two forces have been known for centuries, but the other two were only discovered during the first two decades of the 20th century. Over the following decades, physicists struggled to find a theory that would account for all forces, or what Einstein called a theory of everything. Although there have been some important discoveries, especially new particles with exotic names like quarks (the components of protons and neutrons in the nucleus) and leptons (which include electrons but also more esoteric particles called muons and taus), a teaorie or a unified model has remained elusive. . Image Dr. Weinberg in October 1979 at Harvard after learning he would receive the Nobel Prize in Physics. Credit … Associated press photo In 1967, Dr. Weinberg began to use what is called gauge theory to study interactions in weak forces, which had not yet been successfully explained. The gauge theory was developed in the 19th century by James Clerk Maxwell, a physicist British, in his founding work to explain electromagnetism. In the 1950s it was used by Robert Mills and Chen Ning Yang , a Chinese-American physicist, who later won the Nobel Prize, for understanding strong-force interactions. But the Dr. Weinberg”s application of the gauge theory to the weak force quickly ran into a problem. Electromagnetism is a force that acts at great distances, but the weak force acts only at very short distances – smaller than the nucleus of an atom. In electromagnetism, when two particles – say, electrons – collide, they exchange a neutral massless particle called a photon, also known as a gauge boson. If two particles collide due to the weak force, gauge theory requires – due to the short distances of the interaction – that the gauge bosons qui are exchanged to be massive and possibly electrically charged. Fortunately, several ars earlier, physicists had devised a way to generate the mass of the bosons of gauge called the Higgs mechanism. It was named in honor of Peter Higgs, a British physicist, and he predicted the existence of a previously unknown particle which is responsible for giving mass to other particles. The particle was named the Higgs boson, and its discovery in 2012 led Dr. Higgs and his colleague François Englert the 2013 Nobel Prize . Towards a unified theory Using this new idea, Dr Weinberg was able to create a model in which weak interactionsproduced massive boson particles, at least by atomic standards, in caliber. He called them W and Z bosons. His theory also predicted that in certain collisions – for example, between two electrically neutral particles like a neutron and a neutrino – a neutral current, as opposed to a charged current, would be created, indicating that there had been an exchange of a Z boson. Dr . Weinberg theorized that there was a connection between the photon and the W and Z bosons, suggesting that they were created by the same force. The conclusion was that at very high energy levels the electromagnetic and weak forces were the same. It was a step on the road to unified theory that physicists were looking for. Dr. Weinstein published his findings in 1967 in a groundbreaking article, “A Model of Leptons,” in the journal Physical Review Letters. The article is one of the most cited research papers in history. Working separately, Dr Abdus Salam, a Pakistani theorist l physicist, came to the same conclusions as Dr. Weinberg. Their model became known as the Weinberg-Salam theory. It was revolutionary, not only to propose the unification of electromagnetic and weak forces, but also to create a system of classification of masses and charges for all fundamental particles, thus forming the basis of the Standard Model, which includes all forces except gravity. The existence of the neutral current was confirmed experimentally in 1973, when it took another decade for the W and Z bosons to be verified , by Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer at the CERN supercollider in Switzerland near Geneva. This work has earned Dr Rubbia and Dr van der Meer the 1984 Nobel Prize . Image Dr. Weinberg, left, with Dr Sheldon Lee Glashow, spoke to reporters after learning they would share the 1979 Nobel Prize. Working separately, Dr Abdus Salam, a Pakistani theoretical physicist, also shared the prize. Credit … Associated press photo Dr. Weinberg, Dr Salam and Dr Sheldon Lee Glashow, a former classmate of Dr Weinberg who had solved a critical problem with the Weinberg-Salam model, were jointly awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. ” After learning that Dr. Weinberg had passed, John Carlos Baez, physicist theorist at the University of California, Riverside, wrote on Twitter: “For all the talk about unification, there are few examples. Newton unified terrestrial and celestial gravity – apples and planets. Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism. Weinberg, Glashow and Salam unified electromagnetism and weak force. ” Dr. Weinberg”s prodigious output went well beyond his contributions to the Standard Model. In the mid-1960s, after the discovery of cosmic background radiation, the thermal signature left by the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe, Dr. Weinberg began to study cosmology, leading to his book “Gravitation and Cosmologie “in 1972. Shortly after, he was invited to lecture on the subject at Harvard”s Undergraduate Science Center. During the talk, Dr Weinberg described how the universe evolved in the first three minutes after the Big Bang, when things had cooled down enough for atomic nuclei to bind together. He then commented : “After that, nothing interesting would happen in the history of the universe. ” Image Dr. Weinberg reached a wide readership with this 1977 book explaining the explosive evolution of the universe in its first three minutes. Comment it all started, explained The joke led to an ediauthor of books to hire Dr Weinberg to write “The First Three Minutes,” which gained wide readership and made cosmology a respectable field for physicists. In the book, he described the earth as “a tiny part of an extremely hostile universe ” and famously and grimly concluded: “The more comprehensible the universe seems, the more it also seems useless. ” He has written many other books, including one on the history of science, “To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science ” ( 2015), and three volumes totaling 1,500 pages, on quantum field theory, which merges classical physics, special relativity and quantum mechanics. The series is widely regarded as the definitive text on the subject. Dr. Willy Fischler, a theoretical physicist whom Dr. Weinberg recruited for the faculty of the University of Texas, Austin, in 1982,stated that perhaps Dr. Weinberg”s greatest work has been in the development of an efficient field theory, which provides a mathematical method for use in relatively low-energy experiments to detect the effects of higher particles. energy that cannot be seen or measured directly. Dr. Fischler called him the father of efficient field theory. Steven Weinberg was born in New York City on May 3, 1933, the only child by Frederick and Eva (Israel) Weinberg. His father was a court reporter, his mother a housewife. As he told the Nobel Institute in an interview in 2001, he first became interested in science when a cousin of the one who had received a chemistry kit passed it on to him. The cousin had decided to take up boxing instead. “Maybe he should have stayed in science, ” sa id Dr Weinberg. He went to Bronx High School of Science, where Sheldon Lee Glashow was among his classmates and friends. After graduating from Cornell University in 1954, he spent a year at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, which was later renamed Niels Bohr Institute, after the Nobel laureate. Dr Weinberg returned to the United States in 1955 to prepare for his doctorate. at the University of Princeton under Sam Treiman, a renowned theoretical physicist. Dr. Weinberg worked at Columbia University until 1959 and then at Columbia University. “University of California at Berkeley, until 1966, when he became a lecturer at Harvard and visiting professor at MIT until 1969. MIT then hired him, but he returned to Harvard in 1973 to become the Higgins professor of physics, succeeding Julian Schwinger, who had won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his contributions to theunderstanding of particle physics. Dr Weinberg has also been appointed Principal Scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which is also located in Cambridge, Mass., Along with Harvard and M.I.T. Dr. Weinberg married Louise Goldwasser in 1954; they had met while they were students at Cornell. In 1980, Ms. Weinberg joined the University of Texas, Austin, as a professor of law. Over the next two years, she and Dr Weinberg commuted between Cambridge and Dr Weinberg. p his work at Harvard. He joined his wife in Texas in 1982, becoming a professor of physics and astronomy, as he had been at Harvard. As part Upon his move, Dr. Weinberg was authorized to establish a high-level theoretical physics research group at the University of Texas and to recruit professors for it. He grew to include eight prof tenured professors and five assistant professors and is considered one of the leading physics research centers in the United States. Dr. Fischler, who continues to work with the theory group, sa id of Dr Weinberg: “He had a knack for looking at issues that matter, but not just what was important, but what got resolved. ” “There is no cosmic plane ” Dr. Weinberg, who never retired, continued to teach until the spring of this year. He has received numerous awards and honors in addition to the Nobel, including the National Medal of Science in 1991 and the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Science in 2004. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society in Great Brittany. Last year ila received a $ 3 million prize for his contributions to fundamental physics from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, founded by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sergey Brin of Google, and Jack Ma of Alibaba, among others. Besides his daughter, a doctor, he is survived by his wife and a granddaughter. Dr . Weinberg opposed religion, believing it undermined efforts to seek and uncover the truth. In “The First Three Minutes” he wrote: “Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion must be done and may ultimately be our greatest contribution to civilization.” In his interview with the Nobel Institute, h He was asked about his oft-quoted phrase near the end of “The First Three Minutes “- ” The more comprehensible the universe, the more it also seemst useless. ” ” What I meant by this statement is that there is no point to discover in nature itself; there is no cosmic plan for us, “he sa id. “We are not the actors in a drama that was written with us in the lead role. There are laws – we are discovering these laws – but they are impersonal, they are cold. ” He added: ” It is not an entirely happy view of human life. I think this is a tragic point of view, but it is nothing new to physicists. A tragic outlook on life has been expressed by so many poets – that we are here aimlessly, trying to identify something close to our hearts. ”

Steven Weinberg – What Makes the Universe Fascinating?

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

_________________

Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:

______________

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:

____________________________

In the 1st video below in the 50th clip in this series are 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)

_________________________________

Steven Weinberg: To Explain the World

Steven Weinberg

________

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 53 THE BEATLES (Part E, Stg. Pepper’s and John Lennon’s search in 1967 for truth was through drugs, money, laughter, etc & similar to King Solomon’s, LOTS OF PICTURES OF JOHN AND CYNTHIA) (Feature on artist Yoko Ono)

April 2, 2015 – 7:05 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 52 THE BEATLES (Part D, There is evidence that the Beatles may have been exposed to Francis Schaeffer!!!) (Feature on artist Anna Margaret Rose Freeman )

March 22, 2015 – 12:30 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Raqib Shaw, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

March 12, 2015 – 12:16 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Peter Blake, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (1)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 49 THE BEATLES (Part A, The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s Cover) (Feature on artist Mika Tajima)

March 5, 2015 – 4:47 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Beatles, Mika Tajima | Edit |Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 48 “BLOW UP” by Michelangelo Antonioni makes Philosophic Statement (Feature on artist Nancy Holt)

February 26, 2015 – 4:57 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Blow Up, David Hemmings,Michelangelo Antonioni, Nancy Holt, Sarah Miles., Vanessa Redgrave | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 47 Woody Allen and Professor Levy and the death of “Optimistic Humanism” from the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS Plus Charles Darwin’s comments too!!! (Feature on artist Rodney Graham)

February 19, 2015 – 5:33 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged alan alda, Anjelica Huston, mia farrow, Sam Waterston | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 46 Friedrich Nietzsche (Featured artist is Thomas Schütte)

February 12, 2015 – 5:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 45 Woody Allen “Reason is Dead” (Feature on artists Allora & Calzadilla )

February 5, 2015 – 4:31 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged Allora & Calzadilla | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 44 The Book of Genesis (Featured artist is Trey McCarley )

January 29, 2015 – 5:01 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Trey McCarley | Edit | Comments (0)

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Pausing to look at the life of Steven Weinberg who was one of my favorite authors!) Part 169 M My 3/17/18 letter to Dr. Weinberg on the book A LIFE DECODED by J. Craig Venter

May 24, 2022 – 1:35 am

The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) – Sixty Symbols

—

On May 15, 1984 Francis Schaeffer passed away and on May 15, 1994, the tenth anniversary, I wrote almost every living Nobel Prize winner (in Science categories) the following letter and I included a cassette tape. Today I have enclosed a CD copy of that audio cassette for you.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s I was a member of Bellevue Baptist in Memphis where Adrian Rogers was pastor and was a student at Evangelical Christian School (ECS) from the 5th grade to the 12th grade where I was introduced to the books and films of Francis Schaeffer. During this time I was amazed at how many prominent figures in the world found their way into the works of both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer and I wondered what it would be like if these individuals were exposed to the Bible and the gospel. Therefore, over 20 years ago I began sending the messages of Adrian Rogers and portions of the works of Francis Schaeffer to many of the secular figures that they mentioned in their works.

Thank you for your time. I know how busy you are and I want to thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher,

P.O. Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, United States, cell ph 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com

weinberg@physics.utexas.edu

To Professor Weinberg, From Everette Hatcher on March 17, 2018, I enjoyed this book on the life of Craig Venter & thought it would interest you too since it is filled with the names of scientists who you probably know

CRAIG VENTER, JOHN SULSTON, FRANCIS COLLINS, HAMILTON SMITH AND JEAN WEISSENBACH

Image result for john sulston craig venter

I recently enjoyed reading your books in the past and now I have read about several of your friends in the book A LIFE DECODED BY J. Craig Venter. Venter talks about those who were involved with the Wellcome Trust, the Sanger Centre, Celera Genomics and the National Institutes of Health because they all were involved in the Human Genome Project. Venter started off the book with a quote from someone you hold in high esteem.

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with
all his noble qualities . . . still bears in his bodily frame the indelible
stamp of his lowly origin.
—Charles Darwin

Did you know that Charles Darwin struggled his whole life attempting to get to a place where he was at peace with the idea that all this was a result of just time and chance, but he never was satisfied on that point.

Another person mentioned in that book is Ham Smith and I actually had the opportunity to correspond with him back in 1994 when I sent him a recorded message, and I have enclosed the letter Smith wrote back to me in 1994. Did you know that Ham Smith’s son is an evangelical? On the tenth anniversary of Francis Schaeffer’s passing, May 15, 1994, I sent out to several hundred prominent skeptics an evangelistic letter that told about Schaeffer’s life. This same letter included the audio recording entitled “Dust, Darwin, and Disbelief,” by Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff. That recording started off with the song DUST IN THE WIND by the group KANSAS for the simple reason that if we accept that we are the result of chance then all we are is DUST IN THE WIND.

Let start off by quoting Francis Schaeffer from his talk In the spring of 1968 which centered on the Autobiography of Charles Darwin:

Darwin in his autobiography Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters [abridged edition]. London: John Murray, and in his letters showed that all through his life he NEVER really came to a QUIETNESS concerning the possibility that chance really explained the situation of the biological world. You will find there is much material on this [from Darwin] extended over many many years that constantly he was wrestling with this problem. Darwin never came to a place of satisfaction.

Darwin, C. R. to Graham, William 3 July 1881:

Nevertheless you have EXPRESSED MY INWARD CONVICTION, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is NOT THE RESULT OF CHANCE.* But THEN with me the HORRID DOUBT ALWAYS ARISES whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Francis Schaeffer comments:

Can you feel this man? He is in real agony. You can feel the whole of modern man in this tension with Darwin. My mind can’t accept that ultimate of chance, that the universe is a result of chance. He has said 3 or 4 times now that he can’t accept that it all happened by chance and then he will write someone else and say something different. How does he say this (about the mind of a monkey) and then put forth this grand theory?… But how can he say you can’t think, you come from a monkey’s mind, and you can’t trust a monkey’s mind, and you can’t trust a monkey’s conviction, so how can you trust me? Trust me here, but not there is what Darwin is saying. In other words it is very selective.

Evidently Darwin was telling his friends that he was an agnostic and that he did not think that God had anything to do with it but it was all left to the hands of chance. Is that the way you are reading this?

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted. The world is not a result of blind chance, but we all were put here for a purpose by God. If you want to investigate the evidence concerning the accuracy of the Bible then I suggest you read Psalms 22 which was written about a thousand years before the crucifixion events it described. Furthermore, when King David wrote those words the practice of stoning was the primary way of executing someone in Israel.

Sincerely, Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221, United States

XXXXXXXXXXX

Image result for francis schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer above

Charles Darwin

Image result for adrian rogers

Adrian Rogers

Image result for hamilton smith

Hamilton Smith above, and Craig Venter with Smith below

Image result for Craig venter hamilton smith

May 31, 2018

Professor Steven Weinberg
The University of Texas at Austin
Department of Physics
2515 Speedway Stop C1600
Austin, TX 78712-1192
Office – (512) 471-4394
FAX – (512) 471-4888
email: weinberg@physics.utexas.edu
Notice: Messages will not be read unless the subject line gives the subject of the message in plain text. Attachments will not be opened unless the sender is known to Professor Weinberg.

Saw him on that show on May 26, 2017 (make sure letter is dated after that)

Neil deGrasse Tyson — Charlie Rose

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yes, and it’s not just gravity, but all the forces of nature. There is a philosophical idea, and it’s not unfounded. You go back 150 years, there was magnetism, there was electricity. And these were two forces we were playing with. And we said wait a minute, these are manifestations, different sides of the same coin, so we stapled the two words together and got electromagnetism. And then we found out that the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism were the same in the early universe. That got a Nobel Prize in 1978. In fact, two of the three Nobel laureates are graduates of my high school, the Bronx High School of Science. That school has eight Nobel laureates among its graduates, seven of which were in physics. So they found out that they merged as one. So we now call it the electroweak force. So now we have the electroweak force, the strong force, and gravity. And it’s been tough mixing gravity into these, and no one has done it successfully yet, but we got top people working on it.

New letters on Allan Standage, Fred Hoyle (11-14-16) and Max Planck

weinberg@physics.utexas.edu

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the…

—

Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in physics and Bulletin board member, dies at 88

By Susan D’Agostino, July 27, 2021

Physicist Steven Weinberg, January 28, 2008. Credit: Larry Murphy, The University of Texas at Austin. Used with permission.

“Whatever the final laws of nature may be, there is no reason to suppose that they are designed to make physicists happy,” renowned theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg once wrote. Despite this assessment, Weinberg, who passed away last week at the age of 88, appears to have been a physicist who lived a happy—or at least deeply meaningful—life.

Weinberg’s cousin gave him an old chemistry set that sparked his love of science from an early age. He was the first in his family to attend college and earned a bachelor’s degree at Cornell University and a doctorate in physics at Princeton. He was captivated by the question of whether the four known forces of nature—gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force (responsible for particle decay), and the strong force (responsible for binding fundamental particles of matter together)—were manifestations of a single force of the universe.

His curiosity led him to write a brief (three-page) article, “A Model of Leptons,” published in Physical Review Letters in 1967, that now ranks among the most cited research papers in history. In his paper, he predicted the behavior of particular subatomic particles and helped unify the electromagnetic and weak forces into what is now known as the electroweak force. The work provided a foundation for the Standard Model—a physics theory that describes how known elementary particles in the universe behave. Later, in 1979, together with Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam, he was recognized with a Nobel Prize.

Unusual for scientists of his stature, Weinberg worked to ensure that science was not only accessible but enthralling and entertaining to nonexperts. His 1977 book, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe, described the universe’s evolution within minutes of the Big Bang. “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of a tragedy,” he wrote. He is the author of hundreds of scholarly articles and numerous popular books. He held anyone who was curious about science, including nonexperts, in high regard. “You have to keep in mind that you are writing for people who are not mathematically trained but are just as smart as you are,” he said.

Weinberg also cultivated a longtime commitment to curbing nuclear proliferation, which was evident in his New York Review of Books op-eds, his service as a consultant to the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and his book, Glory and Terror: The Growing Nuclear Danger.

In 2009, Weinberg accepted the Bulletin’s invitation to join our Board of Sponsors, on which he served until his death. The Board of Sponsors was established by Albert Einstein and first chaired by Robert J. Oppenheimer. Board members, who are among the worlds’ most accomplished science and security leaders, are consulted on key issues, including setting the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock. Today, the board has 30 members, including 12 Nobel laureates.

Steven Weinberg offered unfailing support to the Bulletin, introducing us to new audiences and speaking out about the importance of nuclear issues for the general public,” Kennette Benedict, former executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, wrote. “With a quick wit and authoritative voice, he waded into controversial matters, engaging other experts and lay audiences alike without fear or favor. We will miss his lively intellect and generous spirit.”

Weinberg’s passing was announced by the University of Texas, where he worked as a physics and astronomy professor for nearly four decades. He is survived by his wife, Louise, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Weinberg.

“Although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama,” he once told PBS, “if the only drama we’re starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves.”

Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) – Richard Dawkins

—-

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? (2010) | Full Movie | Michael Hordern

——

The Bill Moyers Interview – Steven Weinberg

How Should We Then Live (1977) | Full Movie | Francis Schaeffer | Edith …

Steven Weinberg Discussion (2/8) – Richard Dawkins

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!!

Steven Weinberg – Dreams of a Final Theory

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (3/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg, Author

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 6 | The Scientific Age

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (4/8) – Richard Dawkins

C. Everett Koop

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (5/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Francis Schaeffer : Reclaiming the World part 1, 2

The Atheism Tapes – Steven Weinberg [2/6]

—

The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer

—

Steven Weinberg – What Makes the Universe Fascinating?

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

_________________

Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:

______________

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:

____________________________

In the 1st video below in the 50th clip in this series are 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)

_________________________________

Steven Weinberg: To Explain the World

Steven Weinberg

________

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 53 THE BEATLES (Part E, Stg. Pepper’s and John Lennon’s search in 1967 for truth was through drugs, money, laughter, etc & similar to King Solomon’s, LOTS OF PICTURES OF JOHN AND CYNTHIA) (Feature on artist Yoko Ono)

April 2, 2015 – 7:05 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 52 THE BEATLES (Part D, There is evidence that the Beatles may have been exposed to Francis Schaeffer!!!) (Feature on artist Anna Margaret Rose Freeman )

March 22, 2015 – 12:30 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Raqib Shaw, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

March 12, 2015 – 12:16 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Peter Blake, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (1)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 49 THE BEATLES (Part A, The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s Cover) (Feature on artist Mika Tajima)

March 5, 2015 – 4:47 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Beatles, Mika Tajima | Edit |Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 48 “BLOW UP” by Michelangelo Antonioni makes Philosophic Statement (Feature on artist Nancy Holt)

February 26, 2015 – 4:57 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Blow Up, David Hemmings,Michelangelo Antonioni, Nancy Holt, Sarah Miles., Vanessa Redgrave | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 47 Woody Allen and Professor Levy and the death of “Optimistic Humanism” from the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS Plus Charles Darwin’s comments too!!! (Feature on artist Rodney Graham)

February 19, 2015 – 5:33 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged alan alda, Anjelica Huston, mia farrow, Sam Waterston | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 46 Friedrich Nietzsche (Featured artist is Thomas Schütte)

February 12, 2015 – 5:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 45 Woody Allen “Reason is Dead” (Feature on artists Allora & Calzadilla )

February 5, 2015 – 4:31 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged Allora & Calzadilla | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 44 The Book of Genesis (Featured artist is Trey McCarley )

January 29, 2015 – 5:01 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Trey McCarley | Edit | Comments (0)

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Pausing to look at the life of Steven Weinberg who was one of my favorite authors!) Part 169 L My 1/29/17 letter on Bach to Dr. Weinberg

May 17, 2022 – 1:17 am

The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) – Sixty Symbols

—

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the…

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) – Richard Dawkins

—-

Letter dated 1-29-17 and mailed 1-29-17

Richard Dawkins & Daniel Dennett vs. Francis Collins & Benjamin Carson – Evolution Debate

__

Bach

Image result for bach

Francis Schaeffer

Image result for francis schaeffer

Image result for d. james kennedy what if jesus

Charles Darwin photograph by Herbert Rose Barraud, 1881

Image result for charles darwin last picture

Mark Henry, teaching pastor of Fellowship Bible Church

Image result for mark henry fellowship bible church

Isaac Newton

Image result for isaac newton

Louis Pasteur below

Image result for louis pasteur

Michael Faraday

Henri Fabre

Image result for Henri Fabre

Blaise Pascal

____

January 29, 2017

Professor Steven Weinberg, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Physics, 1 University Station C1600, Austin, TX 78712-0264

Dear Dr. Weinberg,

When I wrote you last I mentioned that I had just finished your book THE FIRST THREE MINUTES, and after the sermon I heard today at church I wanted to write you again because of some often quoted words of yours which follow:

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

You might wonder what our sermon had to do with what you said. The answer is that because of Christianity there has been an enormous amount of good done through the centuries since Christ left this earth and sent his Holy Spirit. Actually our teaching pastor Mark Henry of FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock, Arkansas, pointed out that the Holy Spirit has empowered many Christians over the centuries to empty their hearts of their own worldly desires and to serve God through their actions. That is why I also wrote Richard Dawkins about the same subject. Instead of repeating everything I said to Richard I will just include his letter.

The reason that I have taken the time to read your books is that I am an evangelical Christian and I have enjoyed developing relationships with skeptics and humanists over the years. Back in 1996 I took my two sons who were 8 and 10 yrs old back then to New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Delaware, and New Jersey and we had dinner one night with Herbert A. Tonne, who was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II. The Late Professor John George who has written books for Prometheus Press was my good friend during the last 10 years of his life. We often ate together and were constantly talking on the phone and writing letters to one another.

It is a funny story how I met Dr. George. As an evangelical Christian and a member of the Christian Coalition, I felt obliged to expose a misquote of John Adams’ I found in an article entitled “America’s Unchristian Beginnings” by the self-avowed atheist Dr. Steven Morris. However, what happened next changed my focus to the use of misquotes, unconfirmed quotes, and misleading attributions by the religious right.

In the process of attempting to correct Morris, I was guilty of using several misquotes myself. Professor John George of the University of Central Oklahoma political science department and coauthor (with Paul Boller Jr.) of the book THEY NEVER SAID IT! set me straight. George pointed out that George Washingtonnever said, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.“ I had cited page 18 of the 1927 edition of HALLEY’S BIBLE HANDBOOK. This quote was probably generated by a similar statement that appears in A LIFE OF WASHINGTON by James Paulding. Sadly, no one has been able to verify any of the quotes in Paulding’s book since no footnotes were offered.

After reading THEY NEVER SAID IT! I had a better understanding of how widespread the problem of misquotes is. Furthermore, I discovered that many of these had been used by the leaders of the religious right. I decided to confront some individuals concerning their misquotes. WallBuilders, the publisher of David Barton’s THE MYTH OF SEPARATION, responded by providing me with their “unconfirmed quote” list which contained a dozen quotes widely used by the religious right.

Sadly some of the top leaders of my own religious right have failed to take my encouragement to stop using these quotesand they have either claimed that their critics were biased skeptics who find the truth offensive or they defended their own method of research and claimed the secondary sources were adequate. Even though I have quoted extensively from D. James Kennedy’s book What if Jesus Had Never Been Born, Kennedy was one of the leaders who failed to remove his quotes even though I gave him evidence that they were UNCONFIRMED QUOTES.

By the way I also enjoyed your comments in the BBC program Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, cell ph 501-920-5733, P.O. Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, everettehatcher@gmail.com

___________________________________

1-29-17

Richard Dawkins c/o Richard Dawkins Foundation, 1012 14th Street NW, Suite 209
Washington, DC 20005

Dear Mr. Dawkins,

I know that you are good friends with Daniel Dennett and I have noticed how many times he quotes you in his books. He was kind enough to send me a very thoughtful response on January 12, 2017, and it just so happens that I am in the middle of reading his book DARWIN’S DANGEROUS IDEA. Of course, I have read several of your books such as The God Delusion, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, and Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science.

I also recently enjoyed watching both you and Dr. Dennett on Jonathan Miller’s BBC program Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief. Francis Schaeffer used to quote Jonathan Miller back in the 1960’s during his teachings at L ‘Abri.

In your book The God Delusion on page 111 you stated:

I once was the guest of the week on a British radio show called Desert Island Discs. You have to choose the eight records you would take with you if marooned on a desert island. Among my choices was ‘Mache dich mein Herze rein’ from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The interviewer was unable to understand how I could choose religious music without being religious. You might as well say, how can you enjoy Wuthering Heights when you know perfectly well that Cathy and Heathcliff never really existed?

But there is an additional point that I might have made, and which needs to be made whenever religion is given credit for, say, the Sistine Chapel or Raphael’s Annunciation. Even great artists have to earn a living, and they will take commissions where they are to be had. I have no reason to doubt that Raphael and Michelangelo were Christians – it was pretty much the only option in their time – but the fact is almost incidental. Its enormous wealth had made the Church the dominant patron of the arts. If history had worked out differently, and Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a ceiling for a giant Museum of Science, mightn’t he have produced something at least as inspirational as the Sistine Chapel? How sad that we shall never hear Beethoven’s Mesozoic Symphony, or Mozart’s opera The Expanding Universe.

I thought of that quote from you today when I was in church. Our teaching pastor Mark Henry of FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock, Arkansas, pointed out that the Holy Spirit has empowered many Christians over the centuries to empty their hearts of their own worldly desires and to serve God through their actions.

2 RESPONSES TO YOUR ASSERTION THAT AN EARLIER ACCEPTANCE OF EVOLUTION WOULD HAVE ENRICHED MUSIC AND THE ARTS.

First, we have the testimony of Charles Darwin himself concerning this.

Second, we have the actual result of what Christianity’s impact on the world was.

Let us take a quick look at your idea of Mozart’s opera THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE. When I read the book Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters, I also read a commentary on it by Francis Schaeffer and I wanted to both quote some of Charles Darwin’s own words to you and then include the comments of Francis Schaeffer on those words.

CHARLES DARWIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Addendum. Written May 1st, 1881 [the year before his death].

I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did…

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher æsthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Francis Schaeffer commented:

This is the old man Darwin writing at the end of his life. What he is saying here is the further he has gone on with his studies the more he has seen himself reduced to a machine as far as aesthetic things are concerned. I think this is crucial because as we go through this we find that his struggles and my sincere conviction is that he never came to the logical conclusion of his own position, but he nevertheless in the death of the higher qualities as he calls them, art, music, poetry, and so on, what he had happen to him was his own theory was producing this in his own self just as his theories a hundred years later have produced this in our culture. I don’t think you can hold the evolutionary position as he held it without becoming a machine. What has happened to Darwin personally is merely a forerunner to what occurred to the whole culture as it has fallen in this world of pure material, pure chance and later determinism. Here he is in a situation where his mannishness has suffered in the midst of his own position.

Let’s take a closer look at the music by Bach that you call your favorite.

NO LUTHER, NO BACH

NOVEMBER 18, 20127 COMMENTS

From Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live? (p. 92):

And this is why I love Bach.

IF JESUS WAS IN FACT A REAL MAN AND THE HOLY SPIRIT DID UPON HIS DISCIPLES THEN YOU WOULD EXPECT THE WORLD TO BE CHANGED.

___

What if Jesus Had Never Been Born

by D. James Kennedy

This book documents the positive impact Jesus Christ and the Christian Church has made on the world in nearly every conceivable area – morality, health, sex, hospitals, art, music, charity, economics, government, science, education and the founding of America. Some critics believe that all these advances would have happened sooner or later, but there is little evidence to support this other then hopeful conjecture. Despite excesses by self proclaimed Christians over the ages, the problems have not been due to Jesus’ teachings, rather the failure to follow those teachings. Even with imperfect people, Christianity has had a much more positive impact on the world than any other religion. This book is desperately needed to counter the constant attacks on the Christian faith.

We need to understand that the changes made by Christianity did not happen overnight. Many people – most couldn’t read or write – became Christian without examining or having the ability to examine current belief systems. At a time when books were only available to a select group of people – and then in limited number, it took decades for changes in morality to take hold of society as a whole.

It certainly is true that Christianity has had shortcomings. However, the sins of the Church were no worse then the pagan world. Christianity at its worst was far better then Paganism at its best. Whereas the pagan world could never advance morally, the shortcomings of the Christian church were an aberration that were corrected by itself over time.

Excerpts from the book:

“Jesus Christ, the greatest man who ever lived, has changed virtually every aspect of human life – and most people don’t know it.”

“Despite its humble origins, the Church has made more changes on earth for the good than any other movement or force in history. To get an overview of some of the positive contributions Christianity has made through the centuries, here are a few

highlights:

• Hospitals, which essentially began during the Middle Ages.

• Universities, which also began during the Middle Ages. In addition, most of the world’s greatest universities were started by Christians for Christian purposes.

• Literacy and education for the masses.

• Capitalism and free-enterprise.

• Representative government, particularly as it has been seen in the American experiment.

• The separation of political powers.

• Civil liberties.

• The abolition of slavery, both in antiquity and in more modern times.

• Modem science.

• The discovery of the New World by Columbus.

• The elevation of women.

• Benevolence and charity; the good Samaritan ethic.

• Higher standards of justice.

• The elevation of the common man.

• The condemnation of adultery, homosexuality, and other sexual perversions. This has helped to preserve the human race, and it has spared many from heartache.

• High regard for human life.

• The civilizing of many barbarian and primitive cultures.

• The codifying and setting to writing of many of the world’s languages.

• Greater development of art and music. The inspiration for the greatest works of art.

• The countless changed lives transformed from liabilities into assets to society because of the gospel.

• The eternal salvation of countless souls!

The last one mentioned, the salvation of souls, is the primary goal of the spread of Christianity. All the other benefits listed are basically just by-products of what Christianity has often brought when applied to daily living. When Jesus Christ took upon Himself the form of man, He imbued mankind with a dignity and inherent value that had never been dreamed of before. Whatever Jesus touched or whatever He did transformed that aspect of human life. Many people will read about the innumerable small incidents in the life of Christ while never dreaming that those casually mentioned “little” things were to transform the history of humankind.

Christ’s influence on the world is immeasurable. The purpose of this book is to glimpse what we can measure, to see those numerous areas of life where Christ’s influence can be concretely traced.

Not all have been happy about Jesus Christ’s coming into the world. Friederich Nietzsche, the nineteenth-century atheist philosopher who coined the phrase “God is dead,” likened Christianity to poison that has infected the whole world.

Nietzsche said that history is the battle between Rome (the pagans) and Israel (the Jews and the Christians); and he be-moaned the fact that Israel (through Christianity) was winning and that the cross “has by now triumphed over all other, nobler virtues.” In his book,The Antichrist, Nietzsche wrote:

I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruption; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.

Nietzsche held up as heroes a “herd of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters.” According to Nietzsche, and later Hitler, by whom or what were these Teutonic warriors corrupted? Answer: Christianity. “This splendid ruling stock was corrupted, first by the Catholic laudation of feminine virtues, secondly by the Puritan and plebeian ideals of the Reformation, and thirdly by intermarriage with inferior stock.” Had Jesus never come, wailed Nietzsche, we would never have had the corruption of “slave morals” into the human race. Many of the ideas of Nietzsche were put into practice by his philosophical disciple, Hitler, and about 16 million died as a result.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler blamed the Church for perpetuating the ideas and laws of the Jews. Hitler wanted to completely uproot Christianity once he had finished uprooting the Jews. In a private conversation “shortly after the National Socialists’ rise to power,” recorded by Herman Rauschning, Hitler said:

Historically speaking, the Christian religion is nothing but a Jewish sect…. After the destruction of Judaism, the extinction of Christian slave morals must follow logically… . I shall know the moment when to confront, for the sake of the German people and the world, their Asiatic slave morals with our picture of the free man, the godlike man…. It is not merely a question of Christianity and Judaism. We are fighting against the most ancient curse that humanity has brought upon itself. We are fighting against the perversion of our soundest instincts. Ah, the God of the deserts, that crazed, stupid, vengeful Asiatic despot with his powers to make laws! … That poison with which both Jews and Christians have spoiled and soiled the free, wonderful instincts of man and lowered them to the level of doglike fright.

Both Nietzsche and Hitler wished that Christ had never been born. Others share this sentiment. For example, Charles Lam Markmann, who wrote a favorable book on the history of the ACLU, entitled The Noblest Cry, said: “If the otherwise admirably civilized pagans of Greece and their Roman successors had had the wit to laugh Judaism into desuetude, the world would have been spared the 2000-year sickness of Christendom.”

… the point of this book is to say to Nietzsche, Freud, Hitler, Robert Ingersoll, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Madalyn Murray O’Hare, Phil Donahue, the ACLU, and other leading anti-Christians of the past and present, that the overwhelming impact of Christ’s life on Planet Earth has been positive, not negative.

What these people refuse to acknowledge is that civil liberties have been bequeathed by Christianity and not by atheism or humanism.

Prior to the coming of Christ, human life on this planet was exceedingly cheap. Life was expendable prior to Christianity’s influence. Even today, in parts of the world where the gospel of Christ or Christianity has not penetrated, life is exceedingly cheap. But Jesus Christ … gave mankind a new perspective on the value of human life. Furthermore, Christianity bridged the gap between the Jews – who first received the divine revelation that man was made in God’s image – and the pagans, who attributed little value to human life. Meanwhile, as we in the post-Christian West abandon our Judeo-Christian heritage, life is becoming cheap once again.

Children:

In the ancient world, child sacrifice was a common phenomenon. Only about half of the children born lived beyond the age of eight, in part because of widespread infanticide, with famine and illness also being factors. Infanticide was not only legal, it was applauded…it was commonly held in Rome that killing one’s own children could be an act of beauty.

But then Jesus came. Since that time, Christians have cherished life as sacred, even the life of the unborn. In ancient Rome, Christians saved many of these babies and brought them up in the faith. Abortion disappeared in the early church. Infanticide and abandonment disappeared. Foundling homes, orphanages, and nursery homes were started to house the children. These new practices, based on this higher view of life, helped to create a foundation in western civilization for an ethic of human life that persists to this day – although it is currently under severe attack. And it all goes back to Jesus Christ. If He had never been born, we would never have seen this change in the value of human life.

Women:

Prior to Christian influence, a woman’s life was also very cheap. In ancient cultures, the wife was the property of her husband. Prior to the Christian influences in India, widows were voluntarily or involuntarily burned on the husbands funeral pyres – a grisly practice known as suttee. Furthermore, infanticide – particularly for girls – was common in India, prior to the great missionary William Carey. These centuries-old practices, suttee and infanticide, were finally stopped only in the early nineteenth century…

In other areas of the globe where the gospel of Christ has not penetrated, the value of woman’s lives is cheap. How ironic that feminists today do not give any credit to Christ or Christianity.

Slavery:

Half of the population of the Roman Empire was slaves. Three fourths of the population of Athens was slaves. The life of a slave could be taken at the whim of the master. Over the centuries, Christianity abolished slavery, first in the ancient world and then later in the nineteenth century, largely through the efforts of the strong evangelical William Wilberforce. It didn’t happen over night, and certainly there have been dedicated Christians who were slaveowners. Nonetheless, the end of slavery, which has plagued mankind for thousands of years, has come primarily through the efforts of Christians.

“Once the gospel did spread, the seeds were sown for the eventual dissolution of slavery. Thus by reforming the heart, Christianity, in time, reformed the social order!

“Robert E. Lee, who freed the slaves he had inherited by marriage, once wrote that the War between the States was needless bloodshed in terms of ending slavery, for he believed the evil institution would have eventually withered away because of Christianity.”

Compassion and Mercy:

The world before Christianity was like the Russian tundra – quite cold and inhospitable. One scholar, Dr. Martineau, exhaustively searched through historical documents and concluded that antiquity has left no trace of any organized charitable effort. Disinterested benevolence was unknown. When Christ and the Bible became known, charity and benevolence flourished.

While poverty has always been a part of life on earth, the Church of Jesus Christ has done more – and often still does more – than any other institution in history to alleviate poverty. Furthermore, it has set the pattern for relief that is copied worldwide.

All charity points back to Jesus Christ, whether people recognize it or not.

Capitalism:

“If Jesus had never been born, it is unlikely that capitalism and the free enterprise system – which has brought unparalleled prosperity to billions of people – would ever have developed. In this chapter, I will trace the links between the Christian faith and the prosperity enjoyed in the West, particularly in the United States.”

Science:

“Hasn’t religion always been the enemy of science? No! Furthermore, many scholars agree that the scientific revolution that gained great momentum in the seventeenth century was birthed for the most part by Reformed Christianity.”

Here is a list of some of the outstanding bible-believing scientists who founded the following branches of science:

Antiseptic surgery, Joseph Lister

Bacteriology, Louis Pasteur

Calculus, Isaac Newton

Celestial Mechanics, Johannes kepler

Chemistry, Robert Boyle

Comparative Anatomy, Georges Cuvier

Computer Science, Charles Babbage

Dimensional Analysis, Lord Rayleigh

Dynamics, Isaac Newton

Electronics, John fleming

Electrodynamics, James Maxwell

Electromagnetics, Michael Faraday

Energetics, Lord kelvin

Entomology of Living Insects, Henri Fabre

Fluid Mechanics, George Stokes

Gas Dynamics, Robert Boyle

Genetics, Gregor mendel

Gynecology, James Simpson

Hydrostatics, Blaise Pascal

Natural History, John Ray

When Christian Morals are removed from society:
“During one of the darkest periods of World War II, after the collapse of France and before American involvement, Churchill wrote that the question in the minds of friends and foes was: ‘Will Britain surrender too?’ At that time he made a speech that contained this sentence: ‘I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization’ The great statesman recognized the link between Christianity and civility, in contrast with new-paganism and tyranny. Providentially, Christian civilization won. But where it has lost, all manner of terrors have been unleashed.”

“No century has been like ours in terms of man killing his fellow man. About 130 million . . . died because of atheistic ideology” – Hitler, Stalin and Mao of China. When a person denies the existence of God, you only have the material world. You’ve killed the spiritual world.

“The frightening thing about a humanist and atheistic state is that there is nothing beyond man to which one can make an appeal. The founders of this country said that men have been created equal and have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. We have an appeal beyond man, beyond the State, to God Himself, whereas in the humanist state there is nothing but man. The humanist state inevitably leads to tyranny and despotism. As Dostoevsky said, ‘If God is dead, then all things are permissible.’”

“With atheism there are no objective moral standards. This is not to say that all atheists are immoral people. In reality, there are many nice people who are atheists, but their niceness isborrowed capital from Christianity; it is not because of their atheism, but despite it.” If the atheist had been raised in an atheistic society, they would be very different people, while the Christian would be the same. The Christian who is unloving, is unloving despite of his professed Christianity, not because of it.

Historian Will Durant, who is a humanist, said in the February 1977 issue of the Humanist Magazine: There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

Boston College professor William Kilpatrick has written a book on the subject of morality in public schools. In Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong (1992) he writes: “Youngsters are forced to question values and virtues they’ve never acquired in the first place or upon which they have only a tenuous hold.”

“When you devalue God, you devalue human life. How could Hitler ruthlessly exterminate six million Jews and millions of other? How could the Communists kill and torture over a hundred million people? How could they do that to other human beings?”

“The answer you give to the question ‘What is a human being?’ will determine precisely what you can do to one.” “. . .when the restraining influence of Christianity is removed from a country or culture, unmitigated disaster will naturally follow.”

“One of our Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes said: ‘I see no reason for attributing to man a significant difference in kind from that which belongs to a grain of sand.’”

“And yet we sometimes hear the statement that ‘more people have been killed in the name of Christ than in any other name.’” This is simply a lie.

Where do we go from here?

Is secularism inevitable? From Harvard University to the YMCA, so many of the institutions we discussed in this book were started by Christians for Christian purposes, often at great sacrifice and expense; and then eventually they drifted away from their original [intent]. Is this trend unavoidable?

“Religion begat prosperity, but the daughter hath consumed the mother.” Cotton Mather made this observation toward the end of the seventeenth century after the Christianity of the Pilgrims and Puritans had begun to wane. They had only been in the New World for three or four generations, and they were already beginning to allow the prosperity they enjoyed to crowd out the cause of that prosperity; Christianity.

“Many of the good things we enjoy today grew out of the religion of Jesus Christ, but He is often denied the credit” The proof of this denial is in nearly every history book in public schools in America.

Source:

1. http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/farewell/sd106-21.pdf

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, cell ph 501-920-5733, P.O. Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, everettehatcher@gmail.com

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? (2010) | Full Movie | Michael Hordern

——

Nobel-winning physicist, UT professor Steven Weinberg dies at 88

NATIONAL NEWS

by: Russell Falcon

Posted: Jul 24, 2021 / 03:09 PM CDT / Updated: Jul 25, 2021 / 07:25 AM CDT

Steven Weinberg (Courtesy of UT Austin)

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The University of Texas at Austin lost one of its brightest minds Saturday, as Nobel Prize-winning physics and astronomy professor Steven Weinberg died at 88.

Weinberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 and the National Medal of Science in 1991, was one of the most decorated UT faculty members and is best known for his research on subatomic particles.

“The passing of Steven Weinberg is a loss for The University of Texas and for society. Professor Weinberg unlocked the mysteries of the universe for millions of people, enriching humanity’s concept of nature and our relationship to the world,” said UT president Jay Hartzell. “From his students to science enthusiasts, from astrophysicists to public decision makers, he made an enormous difference in our understanding. In short, he changed the world.”

The professor was born May 3, 1933 in New York and attended Cornell University for his undergraduate studies and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He previously taught at several high-profile schools including Columbia, Berkeley, M.I.T. and Harvard. He taught at UT since 1982.

Weinberg was the author of several academic papers and books, including “Foundations of Modern Physics,” which was released just this year. He was widely respected for his writing style, explaining in 2015 he found it important to not “write down to the public. You have to keep in mind that you’re writing for people who are not mathematically trained but are just as smart as you are.”

Back in 2016, Weinberg announced he would ban guns in his class after statewide “campus carry” became law in August of that year. At the time, Weinberg said he was willing to subject himself to a lawsuit over the issue.

This has never been heard in a federal court — certainly not the Supreme Court. The issue of whether the admission of guns in classrooms puts an undue burden on First Amendment rights,” Weinberg said. “I think it should be… We should allow the courts to decide this issue. And I am not so sure that they wouldn’t decide it in the way that we would find agreeable.”

Weinberg is survived by his wife, UT Austin law professor Louise Weinberg, and their daughter, Elizabeth.

The Bill Moyers Interview – Steven Weinberg

How Should We Then Live (1977) | Full Movie | Francis Schaeffer | Edith …

Steven Weinberg Discussion (2/8) – Richard Dawkins

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!!

Steven Weinberg – Dreams of a Final Theory

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (3/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg, Author

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 6 | The Scientific Age

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (4/8) – Richard Dawkins

C. Everett Koop

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (5/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Francis Schaeffer : Reclaiming the World part 1, 2

The Atheism Tapes – Steven Weinberg [2/6]

—

The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer

—

Steven Weinberg – What Makes the Universe Fascinating?

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

_________________

Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:

______________

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:

____________________________

In the 1st video below in the 50th clip in this series are 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)

_________________________________

Steven Weinberg: To Explain the World

Steven Weinberg

________

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 53 THE BEATLES (Part E, Stg. Pepper’s and John Lennon’s search in 1967 for truth was through drugs, money, laughter, etc & similar to King Solomon’s, LOTS OF PICTURES OF JOHN AND CYNTHIA) (Feature on artist Yoko Ono)

April 2, 2015 – 7:05 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 52 THE BEATLES (Part D, There is evidence that the Beatles may have been exposed to Francis Schaeffer!!!) (Feature on artist Anna Margaret Rose Freeman )

March 22, 2015 – 12:30 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Raqib Shaw, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

March 12, 2015 – 12:16 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Peter Blake, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (1)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 49 THE BEATLES (Part A, The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s Cover) (Feature on artist Mika Tajima)

March 5, 2015 – 4:47 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Beatles, Mika Tajima | Edit |Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 48 “BLOW UP” by Michelangelo Antonioni makes Philosophic Statement (Feature on artist Nancy Holt)

February 26, 2015 – 4:57 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Blow Up, David Hemmings,Michelangelo Antonioni, Nancy Holt, Sarah Miles., Vanessa Redgrave | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 47 Woody Allen and Professor Levy and the death of “Optimistic Humanism” from the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS Plus Charles Darwin’s comments too!!! (Feature on artist Rodney Graham)

February 19, 2015 – 5:33 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged alan alda, Anjelica Huston, mia farrow, Sam Waterston | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 46 Friedrich Nietzsche (Featured artist is Thomas Schütte)

February 12, 2015 – 5:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 45 Woody Allen “Reason is Dead” (Feature on artists Allora & Calzadilla )

February 5, 2015 – 4:31 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged Allora & Calzadilla | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 44 The Book of Genesis (Featured artist is Trey McCarley )

January 29, 2015 – 5:01 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Trey McCarley | Edit | Comments (0)

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Pausing to look at the life of Steven Weinberg who was one of my favorite authors!) Part 169 K My 11/14/16 letter to Dr. Weinberg on Fred Hoyle

May 10, 2022 – 1:13 am

The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) – Sixty Symbols

—

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

November 14, 2016

Professor Steven Weinberg, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Physics, 1 University Station C1600, Austin, TX 78712-0264

Dear Dr. Weinberg,

The last time I wrote you on September 4, 2016, I told you I was in the process of reading your book THE FIRST THREE MINUTES. Since then I have finished it and I must say that I found it very thought provoking. I haven’t given much thought to responding to it until today when I went to our LITTLE ROCK TOUCHDOWN CLUB meeting and heard both Mack Brown (former Texas Football Coach) and Mike Perrin (current Texas Athletic Director) speak today. You can watch the same program on You Tube by putting in the words “Little Rock Touchdown Club November 14th.”

One name in your book that comes up over and over is the name FRED HOYLE. I noticed at the beginning of your book you thank several people and you include Hoyle in that list:

I have also been

helped more than I can say in writing this book by the kind

advice of my colleagues in physics and astronomy. For taking

the trouble to read and comment on portions of the book, I

wish especially to thank” Ralph Alpher, Bernard Burke,

Robert Dicke, George Field, Gary Feinberg, William Fowler,

Robert Herman, Fred Hoyle, Jim Peebles, Arno Penzias, Bill

Press, Ed Purcell and Robert Wagoner.

____

As you know Creationists have been fond of quoting Fred Hoyle over the years too.

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe: “Life cannot have had a random beginning The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10 to the 20th) to the 2,000th = 10 to the 40,000th, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court. The enormous information content of even the simplest living systems cannot in our view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly. There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.” [Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (Aldine House, 33 Welbeck Street, London W1M 8LX: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981), p. 148, 24, 150, 30, 31 (emphasis added).]

I grew up in Memphis and my pastor at Bellevue Baptist was Adrian Rogers. ADRIAN ROGERS NOTED IN HIS SERMON “The Cradle that Rocked the World“:

Sir Fred Hoyle, at the British Academy of Science—a leading mathematician, a leading astronomer—shook up a lot of people in the scientific community, when he said this—listen: “We must now admit to ourselves that the probability of life arising by chance, by evolution, is the same probability as throwing six on a die 5 million consecutive times.” Now, get a die, and begin to throw it; and, if you can throw six, it’ll land on six 5 million times in a row—that’s the probability that life could arise by spontaneous generation. He went on to say—this is Sir Fred Hoyle: “Let us be scientifically honest with ourselves. The probability of having life arise to greater and greater complexity in organization by chance is the same probability of having a tornado tear through a junkyard and form a 747 on the other end.” What is this great scientist saying? That random and impersonal chance does not create complexity in design— that’s what he’s saying.

IF WE ARE LEFT WITH JUST THE MACHINE THEN WHAT IS THE FINAL CONCLUSION IF THERE WAS NO PERSONAL GOD THAT CREATED US? I sent you a CD that starts off with the song DUST IN THE WIND by Kerry Livgren of the group KANSAS which was a hit song in 1978 when it rose to #6 on the charts because so many people connected with the message of the song. It included these words, “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”

Kerry Livgren himself said that he wrote the song because he saw where man was without a personal God in the picture. Solomon pointed out in the Book of Ecclesiastes that those who believe that God doesn’t exist must accept three things. FIRST, death is the end and SECOND, chance and time are the only guiding forces in this life. FINALLY, power reigns in this life and the scales are never balanced. The Christian can face death and also confront the world knowing that it is not determined by chance and time alone and finally there is a judge who will balance the scales.

Both Kerry Livgren and the bass player Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgrenfirst tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on You Tube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. DAVE HOPE is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221, United States

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.,

XXXXXXXXXX

Adrian Rogers is pictured below and Francis Schaeffer above.

Watching the film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? in 1979 impacted my life greatly

Francis Schaeffer in the film WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?

Francis and Edith Schaeffer

_______

On May 15, 1994 on the 10th anniversary of the passing of Francis Schaeffer I sent a letter to Steven Weinberg and here is a portion of that letter below:

I have enclosed a cassette tape by Adrian Rogers and it includes a story about Charles Darwin‘s journey from the position of theistic evolution to agnosticism. Here are the four bridges that Adrian Rogers says evolutionists can’t cross in the CD “Four Bridges that the Evolutionist Cannot Cross.” 1. The Origin of Life and the law of biogenesis. 2. The Fixity of the Species. 3.The Second Law of Thermodynamics. 4. The Non-Physical Properties Found in Creation.

In the first 3 minutes of the cassette tape is the hit song “Dust in the Wind.” Below I have given you some key points Francis Schaeffer makes about the experiment that Solomon undertakes in the book of Ecclesiastes to find satisfaction by looking into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20).

Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”

Here the first 7 verses of Ecclesiastes followed by Schaeffer’s commentary on it:

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

Solomon is showing a high degree of comprehension of evaporation and the results of it. Seeing also in reality nothing changes. There is change but always in a set framework and that is cycle. You can relate this to the concepts of modern man. Ecclesiastes is the only pessimistic book in the Bible and that is because of the place where Solomon limits himself. He limits himself to the question of human life, life under the sun between birth and death and the answers this would give.

Solomon doesn’t place man outside of the cycle. Man doesn’t escape the cycle. Man is in the cycle. Birth and death and youth and old age.

There is no doubt in my mind that Solomon had the same experience in his life that I had as a younger man (at the age of 18 in 1930). I remember standing by the sea and the moon arose and it was copper and beauty. Then the moon did not look like a flat dish but a globe or a sphere since it was close to the horizon. One could feel the global shape of the earth too. Then it occurred to me that I could contemplate the interplay of the spheres and I was exalted because I thought I can look upon them with all their power, might, and size, but they could contempt nothing. Then came upon me a horror of great darkness because it suddenly occurred to me that although I could contemplate them and they could contemplate nothing yet they would continue to turn in ongoing cycles when I saw no more forever and I was crushed.

Let me show you some inescapable conclusions if you choose to live without God in the picture. Schaeffer noted that Solomon came to these same conclusions when he looked at life “under the sun.”

Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
Chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13 “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.”)
Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1; “Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed—
and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors— and they have no comforter.” 7:15 “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness. ).
Nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including knowledge (1:16-18), ladies and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and great building projects (2:4-6, 18-20).
There is no ultimate lasting meaning in life. (1:2)

By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture in the final chapter of the book in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, “ Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted. In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had and that “all was meaningless UNDER THE SUN,” and looking ABOVE THE SUN was the only option. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that.

Livgren wrote, “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”

Both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the…

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) – Richard Dawkins

—-

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? (2010) | Full Movie | Michael Hordern

——

Nobel Prize Winner Steven Weinberg Dies at 88; Here’s How He Made Scientific Contributions

Aubrey Clarke Jul 26, 2021 10:04 AM EDT

Professor Steven Weinberg – a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and astronomer – died on Friday at 88.

The cause of death has yet to be confirmed. However, he had been hospitalized for some time, according to the Washington Post.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Lëtzebuergesch: Am Kader vun der Commemoratioun vu 70 Joer Liberatioun vum KZ Auschwitz duerch d’Rout Arméi, huet de Steven Weinberg de 27. Januar 2015 am Auditorium Henri Beck aus sengem Buch «Deux voyageurs pour Breslau» virgelies. Den Auteur bei der Liesung.

Weinberg’s Achievement to Physics

Weinberg, born in 1933 in New York City to Jewish immigrants, had a distinguished academic career. His most notable achievement was a 1967 study on the interplay of electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force, two of the universe’s four fundamental forces that work together as a united electroweak force.

ADVERTISING

The research, titled “A Model of Leptons,” was published in the scholarly journal Physical Review Letters and was only three pages long. However, it has had a significant impact on physics since it is one of the most-cited publications in the field of high-energy physics.

The equation-heavy paper analyzed and speculated notions and qualities that were never seen before yet crucial to the field’s advancement. In later years, his predictions were confirmed, including the finding of the Higgs boson particle at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland in 2012.

He and fellow scientists Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contribution in 1979.

Weinberg was noted for attempting to make science more approachable, despite the intricacy of his work. Live Science said he guided readers through the first minutes of the universe’s existence in an easy-to-understand manner in his 1977 book The Initial Three Minutes: A Modern View of The Origin of The Universe.

Weinberg: A Science Advocate

Weinberg was well-known for more than his scientific achievements. Rather, he was a well-known activist who advocated for science. He’d testified before Congress, given lectures on the history and philosophy of science, and made headlines for opposing concealed carry in UT classrooms.

Weinberg, on the other hand, was a vocal supporter of Israel. This was highlighted in his essay “Zionism and Its Adversaries,” published in 1997.

He had also been a vocal opponent of antisemitism, which he saw as being exemplified by the boycott of Israel.

ALSO READ: Is a Wind-Powered Car Cruise Faster Than the Wind? YouTuber and Physicist Place $10,000 Bet; Who Will Win?

Jerusalem Post said Weinberg had canceled visits to UK institutions in the early 2000s due to UK anti-Israel boycotts. The physicist stated in a letter that he saw “a pervasive anti-Israel and antisemitic current in British opinion” as the basis for his withdrawal.

Weinberg Says There Is No Cosmic Plan

Dr. Weinberg, who never retired, taught until this year’s spring semester.

Aside from the Nobel Prize, he earned other honors and medals, including the National Medal of Science in 1991 and the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Science in 2004. In the United States, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in the United Kingdom, he was inducted into the Royal Society.

Last year, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, created by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sergey Brin of Google, and Jack Ma of Alibaba, awarded him a $3 million prize for his contributions to fundamental physics.

He is survived by his wife and a granddaughter, in addition to his daughter, a medical doctor.

He was asked about his often-quoted phrase near the end of “The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe” in his interview with the Nobel Institute: “The more that the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

“What I meant by that statement is that there is no point to be discovered in nature itself; there is no cosmic plan for us,” he said per The New York Times. “We are not actors in a drama that has been written with us playing the starring role. There are laws – we are discovering those laws – but they are impersonal, they are cold.”

He added: “It is not an entirely happy view of human life. I think it is a tragic view, but that is not new to physicists. A tragic view of life has been expressed by so many poets – that we are here without purpose, trying to identify something that we care about.”

The Bill Moyers Interview – Steven Weinberg

How Should We Then Live (1977) | Full Movie | Francis Schaeffer | Edith …

Steven Weinberg Discussion (2/8) – Richard Dawkins

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!!

Steven Weinberg – Dreams of a Final Theory

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (3/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg, Author

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 6 | The Scientific Age

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (4/8) – Richard Dawkins

C. Everett Koop

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (5/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Francis Schaeffer : Reclaiming the World part 1, 2

The Atheism Tapes – Steven Weinberg [2/6]

—

The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer

—

Steven Weinberg – What Makes the Universe Fascinating?

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

_________________

Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:

______________

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:

____________________________

In the 1st video below in the 50th clip in this series are 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)

_________________________________

Steven Weinberg: To Explain the World

Steven Weinberg

________

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 53 THE BEATLES (Part E, Stg. Pepper’s and John Lennon’s search in 1967 for truth was through drugs, money, laughter, etc & similar to King Solomon’s, LOTS OF PICTURES OF JOHN AND CYNTHIA) (Feature on artist Yoko Ono)

April 2, 2015 – 7:05 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 52 THE BEATLES (Part D, There is evidence that the Beatles may have been exposed to Francis Schaeffer!!!) (Feature on artist Anna Margaret Rose Freeman )

March 22, 2015 – 12:30 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Raqib Shaw, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

March 12, 2015 – 12:16 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Peter Blake, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (1)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 49 THE BEATLES (Part A, The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s Cover) (Feature on artist Mika Tajima)

March 5, 2015 – 4:47 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Beatles, Mika Tajima | Edit |Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 48 “BLOW UP” by Michelangelo Antonioni makes Philosophic Statement (Feature on artist Nancy Holt)

February 26, 2015 – 4:57 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Blow Up, David Hemmings,Michelangelo Antonioni, Nancy Holt, Sarah Miles., Vanessa Redgrave | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 47 Woody Allen and Professor Levy and the death of “Optimistic Humanism” from the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS Plus Charles Darwin’s comments too!!! (Feature on artist Rodney Graham)

February 19, 2015 – 5:33 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged alan alda, Anjelica Huston, mia farrow, Sam Waterston | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 46 Friedrich Nietzsche (Featured artist is Thomas Schütte)

February 12, 2015 – 5:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 45 Woody Allen “Reason is Dead” (Feature on artists Allora & Calzadilla )

February 5, 2015 – 4:31 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged Allora & Calzadilla | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 44 The Book of Genesis (Featured artist is Trey McCarley )

January 29, 2015 – 5:01 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Trey McCarley | Edit | Comments (0)

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Pausing to look at the life of Steven Weinberg who was one of my favorite authors!) Part 169 J My 9/4/16 letter on Dr. Semmelweis to Dr. Weinberg

May 3, 2022 – 1:10 am

The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) – Sixty Symbols

—

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the…

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) – Richard Dawkins

—-

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? (2010) | Full Movie | Michael Hordern

——

Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winner in 1979 in Physics

Image result for steven weinberg

Mark Henry, teaching pastor, Fellowship Bible Church, Little Rock, AR

Image result for mark henry fellowship bible church

______

President Carter with Adrian and Joyce Rogers in 1979 at the White House:

____

Adrian Rogers in the White House pictured with President Ronald Reagan below:

Image result for irving kristol son

Irving Kristol, front right, with other prominent figures at a discussion hosted by Time Magazine and CBS News at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (Jim Colburn / AFP/Getty Images)

[Full Size]

Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol share an umbrella in Rome in the mid-1950s. In
1965 the two founded The Public Interest, which they co-edited. In 1969 a special
issue of the magazine, devoted to an evaluation of student radicalism, was
published as Confrontation. Courtesy of Daniel Bell.

Image result for C. Everett Koop Francis Schaeffer whatever happened to the human race?

____

Image result for Ignaz Semmelweis

Ignaz Semmelweis

_____

Ignaz Semmelweis washing his hands in chlorinated lime water before operating.

__________________

September 4, 2016

Professor Steven Weinberg, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Physics, 1 University Station C1600, Austin, TX 78712-0264

Dear Dr. Weinberg,

Today I will include 6 pieces of evidence that indicates the Bible is true. I have been reading your book THE FIRST THREE MINUTES and I wanted to make a couple of observations about the book. As you know many of the world’s greatest scientists have been Jewish and it just so happened that today at Fellowship Bible Church, Little Rock, our teaching pastor Mark Henry read Genesis 12:1-3 which is about the nation of Israel:

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.²And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

HOW MUCH SICKNESS HAS BEEN AVOIDED IN THIS WORLD BECAUSE OF THE DISCOVERIES MADE BY JEWISH DOCTORS? Surely all the families of the earth have been blessed by the medical achievements of the Jewish doctors!!! That is the FIRST PIECE OF EVIDENCE!!!

Mark went on to say that God’s purpose in blessing His people was that the whole world might praise God. However, people are prone to detach God’s blessing in their lives from God’s purpose in their lives. Unfortunately, this has happened too.

No wonder THE FIRST THREE MINUTES ends with these words:

With the aid of a good deal of highly speculative theory,

we have been able to extrapolate the history of the universe

back in time to a moment of infinite density. BUT THIS LEAVES US UNSATISFIED. WE NATURALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT THERE WAS BEFORE THIS MOMENT.

Of course, this whole book was an effort to come up with an alternative to the Book of Genesis in the first place. I have always been intrigued with the Jewish People and I guess it started in 1976 with a two week trip to Israel led by my pastor Adrian Rogers. On that trip he made the following four points about the predictive power of the Bible:

First, the Old Testament predicted that the Jews would regather from all over the world and form a new reborn nation of Israel. (Isaiah 11:11-12, “And He will … gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”)

Second, it was also predicted that the nation of Israel would become a stumbling block to the whole world. (Zechariah 12:3)

Third, it was predicted that the Hebrew language would be used again as the Jews’ first language even though we know in 1948 that Hebrew at that time was a dead language! (Zeph 3:9; 2 Thess 2:3-4).

Fourth, it was predicted that the Jews would never again be removed from their land.(Amos 9:14-15)

I was fascinated to read a few years later these groundbreaking words by a famous columnist who happened to be a Jew. Irving Kristol in his article, “The Political Dilemma of American Jews,” COMMENTARY MAGAZINE, 7/1/84 , wrote:

The rise of the Moral Majority is another new feature of the American landscape that baffles Jews…One of the reasons—perhaps the main reason—they do not know what to do about it is the fact that the Moral Majority is strongly pro-Israel. Some Jews, enmeshed in the liberal time warp, refuse to take this mundane fact seriously. They are wrong... In short, is it not time for an agonizing reappraisal?

I later corresponded with Mr. Kristol and shared with him some of these same Old Testament Prophecies concerning the Jews returning to the promised land once again.

In a letter to me dated September 21, 1995 Irving Kristol wrote this comment, “I am leery of taking Biblical prophecies too literally. They always seem to get fulfilled, some way or other, whatever happens. They are inspiring, of course, which enough for me.”

I got to visit with Irving Kristol’s son Bill in a political meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas on July 18, 2014. I gave him copies of letters I had received from both his father and their family friendDaniel Bell. He was amazed. He read the letters on the spot and thanked me for them. I told him that Old Testament prophecies concerning Israel was the subject of the letters.

Let me leave you with one more piece of evidence. If the Bible is true then wouldn’t it be true in the area of history and science? Did you know that it took the the medical community thousands of years to catch up with what Moses said 3500 years ago? Let me show you what I mean. Here are the words of Moses:

“He who touches the dead body of anyone shall be unclean seven days. He shall purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean.”

I have enclosed an article on the life of the Jewish doctor Ignaz Semmelweis from the National Public Radio website as heard on the program MORNING ADDITION. It seems to confirm what Moses knew so long ago and this is the 6th piece of evidence in this letter today that indicates the Bible is true and it is a result of a specific scripture. Why not take a fresh look at the evidence for the historical accuracy of the Bible? It is there and there only you will find a truly satisfying answer to the beginning of the world.

I am not a scientist but I read Steven Weinberg’s book because my spiritual hero Francis Schaeffer read it and quoted it in his book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which he co-authored with C. Everett Koop:

An overwhelming number of modern thinkers agree that seeing the universe and man from a humanist base leads to meaninglessness, both for the universe and for man – not just mankind in general but for each of us as individuals. Professor Steven Weinberg of Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has written a book entitled The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (1976). Here he explains, as clearly as probably anyone has ever done, the modern materialistic view of the universe and its origin.
But when his explanation is finished and he is looking down at the earth from an airplane, as Weinberg writes, “It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe … [which] has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”86
When Weinberg says that the universe seems more “comprehensible,” he is, of course, referring to our greater understanding of the physical universe through the advance of science. But it is an understanding, notice, within, a materialistic framework, which considers the universe solely in terms of physics and chemistry – simply machinery. Here lies the irony. It is comprehension of a sort, but it is like giving a blind person sight, only to remove anything seeable. As we heard Woody Allen saying earlier, such a view of reality is “absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless.”
So, to the person who wants to be left alone without explanations for the big questions, we must say very gently,“Look at what you are left alone with.” This is not merely rhetoric. As the decades of this century have slipped by, more and more have said the same thing as Steven Weinberg and Woody Allen. It has become an obvious thing to say. The tremendous optimism of the nineteenth century, which stemmed from the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, has gradually ebbed away.
If everything “faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat,” all things are meaningless. This is the first problem, the first form of pollution. The second is just as bad.

Thanks again for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, P.O. Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, USA, cell ph 501-920-5733

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Doctor Who Championed Hand-Washing And Briefly Saved Lives

January 12, 20153:22 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

This is the story of a man whose ideas could have saved a lot of lives and spared countless numbers of women and newborns’ feverish and agonizing deaths.

You’ll notice I said “could have.”

The year was 1846, and our would-be hero was a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis.

Semmelweis was a man of his time, according to Justin Lessler, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

It was a time Lessler describes as “the start of the golden age of the physician scientist,” when physicians were expected to have scientific training.

So doctors like Semmelweis were no longer thinking of illness as an imbalance caused by bad air or evil spirits. They looked instead to anatomy. Autopsies became more common, and doctors got interested in numbers and collecting data.

The young Dr. Semmelweis was no exception. When he showed up for his new job in the maternity clinic at the General Hospital in Vienna, he started collecting some data of his own. Semmelweis wanted to figure out why so many women in maternity wards were dying frompuerperal fever — commonly known as childbed fever.

He studied two maternity wards in the hospital. One was staffed by all male doctors and medical students, and the other was staffed by female midwives. And he counted the number of deaths on each ward.

When Semmelweis crunched the numbers, he discovered that women in the clinic staffed by doctors and medical students died at a rate nearly five times higher than women in the midwives’ clinic.

But why?

Semmelweis went through the differences between the two wards and started ruling out ideas.

Right away he discovered a big difference between the two clinics.

In the midwives’ clinic, women gave birth on their sides. In the doctors’ clinic, women gave birth on their backs. So he had women in the doctors’ clinic give birth on their sides. The result, Lessler says, was “no effect.”

Then Semmelweis noticed that whenever someone on the ward died of childbed fever, a priest would walk slowly through the doctors’ clinic, past the women’s beds with an attendant ringing a bell. This time Semmelweis theorized that the priest and the bell ringing so terrified the women after birth that they developed a fever, got sick and died.

So Semmelweis had the priest change his route and ditch the bell. Lessler says, “It had no effect.”

By now, Semmelweis was frustrated. He took a leave from his hospital duties and traveled to Venice. He hoped the break and a good dose of art would clear his head.

When Semmelweis got back to the hospital, some sad but important news was waiting for him. One of his colleagues, a pathologist, had fallen ill and died. It was a common occurrence, according to Jacalyn Duffin, who teaches the history of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

“This often happened to the pathologists,” Duffin says. “There was nothing new about the way he died. He pricked his finger while doing an autopsy on someone who had died from childbed fever.” And then he got very sick himself and died.

Semmelweis studied the pathologist’s symptoms and realized the pathologist died from the same thing as the women he had autopsied. This was a revelation: Childbed fever wasn’t something only women in childbirth got sick from. It was something other people in the hospital could get sick from as well.

But it still didn’t answer Semmelweis’ original question: “Why were more women dying from childbed fever in the doctors’ clinic than in the midwives’ clinic?”

Duffin says the death of the pathologist offered him a clue.

“The big difference between the doctors’ ward and the midwives’ ward is that the doctors were doing autopsies and the midwives weren’t,” she says.

So Semmelweis hypothesized that there were cadaverous particles, little pieces of corpse, that students were getting on their hands from the cadavers they dissected. And when they delivered the babies, these particles would get inside the women who would develop the disease and die.

If Semmelweis’ hypothesis was correct, getting rid of those cadaverous particles should cut down on the death rate from childbed fever.

So he ordered his medical staff to start cleaning their hands and instruments not just with soap but with a chlorine solution. Chlorine, as we know today, is about the best disinfectant there is. Semmelweis didn’t know anything about germs. He chose the chlorine because he thought it would be the best way to get rid of any smell left behind by those little bits of corpse.

And when he imposed this, the rate of childbed fever fell dramatically.

What Semmelweis had discovered is something that still holds true today: Hand-washing is one of the most important tools in public health. It can keep kids from getting the flu, prevent the spread of disease and keep infections at bay.

You’d think everyone would be thrilled. Semmelweis had solved the problem! But they weren’t thrilled.

For one thing, doctors were upset because Semmelweis’ hypothesis made it look like they were the ones giving childbed fever to the women.

And Semmelweis was not very tactful. He publicly berated people who disagreed with him and made some influential enemies.

Eventually the doctors gave up the chlorine hand-washing, and Semmelweis — he lost his job.

Semmelweis kept trying to convince doctors in other parts of Europe to wash with chlorine, but no one would listen to him.

Even today, convincing health care providers to take hand-washing seriously is a challenge. Hundreds of thousands of hospital patients get infections each year, infections that can be deadly and hard to treat. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hand hygiene is one of the most important ways to prevent these infections.

Over the years, Semmelweis got angrier and eventually even strange. There’s been speculation he developed a mental condition brought on by possibly syphilis or even Alzheimer’s. And in 1865, when he was only 47 years old, Ignaz Semmelweis was committed to a mental asylum.

The sad end to the story is that Semmelweis was probably beaten in the asylum and eventually died of sepsis, a potentially fatal complication of an infection in the bloodstream — basically, it’s the same disease Semmelweis fought so hard to prevent in those women who died from childbed fever.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Bill Moyers Interview – Steven Weinberg

How Should We Then Live (1977) | Full Movie | Francis Schaeffer | Edith …

Steven Weinberg Discussion (2/8) – Richard Dawkins

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!!

The first three minutes: going backward to the beginning of time with Steven Weinberg (Part 1)

The great theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg passed away on July 23. This is our tribute.

<img class=”i-amphtml-blurry-placeholder” src=”data:;base64,

MARCELO GLEISER

Marcelo Gleiser is a professor of natural philosophy, physics, and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of the Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House and NSF, and was awarded the 2019 Templeton Prize. Gleiser has authored five books and is the co-founder of 13.8, where he writes about science and culture with physicist Adam Frank.

28 July, 2021

Credit: Billy Huynh via Unsplash

The recent passing of the great theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg brought back memories of how his book got me into the study of cosmology.
Going back in time, toward the cosmic infancy, is a spectacular effort that combines experimental and theoretical ingenuity. Modern cosmology is an experimental science.
The cosmic story is, ultimately, our own. Our roots reach down to the earliest moments after creation.

When I was a junior in college, my electromagnetism professor had an awesome idea. Apart from the usual homework and exams, we were to give a seminar to the class on a topic of our choosing. The idea was to gauge which area of physics we would be interested in following professionally.

Professor Gilson Carneiro knew I was interested in cosmology and suggested a book by Nobel Prize Laureate Steven Weinberg: The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. I still have my original copy in Portuguese, from 1979, that emanates a musty tropical smell, sitting on my bookshelf side-by-side with the American version, a Bantam edition from 1979.

Inspired by Steven Weinberg

Books can change lives. They can illuminate the path ahead. In my case, there is no question that Weinberg’s book blew my teenage mind. I decided, then and there, that I would become a cosmologist working on the physics of the early universe. The first three minutes of cosmic existence — what could be more exciting for a young physicist than trying to uncover the mystery of creation itself and the origin of the universe, matter, and stars? Weinberg quickly became my modern physics hero, the one I wanted to emulate professionally. Sadly, he passed away July 23^rd, leaving a huge void for a generation of physicists.

What excited my young imagination was that science could actually make sense of the very early universe, meaning that theories could be validated and ideas could be tested against real data. Cosmology, as a science, only really took off after Einstein published his paper on the shape of the universe in 1917, two years after his groundbreaking paper on the theory of general relativity, the one explaining how we can interpret gravity as the curvature of spacetime. Matter doesn’t “bend” time, but it affects how quickly it flows. (See last week’s essay on what happens when you fall into a black hole).

The Big Bang Theory

For most of the 20^th century, cosmology lived in the realm of theoretical speculation. One model proposed that the universe started from a small, hot, dense plasma billions of years ago and has been expanding ever since — the Big Bang model; another suggested that the cosmos stands still and that the changes astronomers see are mostly local — the steady state model.

Competing models are essential to science but so is data to help us discriminate among them. In the mid 1960s, a decisive discovery changed the game forever. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), a fossil from the early universe predicted to exist by George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, and Robert Herman in their Big Bang model. (Alpher and Herman published a lovely account of the history here.) The CMB is a bath of microwave photons that permeates the whole of space, a remnant from the epoch when the first hydrogen atoms were forged, some 400,000 years after the bang.

The existence of the CMB was the smoking gun confirming the Big Bang model. From that moment on, a series of spectacular observatories and detectors, both on land and in space, have extracted huge amounts of information from the properties of the CMB, a bit like paleontologists that excavate the remains of dinosaurs and dig for more bones to get details of a past long gone.

How far back can we go?

Confirming the general outline of the Big Bang model changed our cosmic view. The universe, like you and me, has a history, a past waiting to be explored. How far back in time could we dig? Was there some ultimate wall we cannot pass?

Because matter gets hot as it gets squeezed, going back in time meant looking at matter and radiation at higher and higher temperatures. There is a simple relation that connects the age of the universe and its temperature, measured in terms of the temperature of photons (the particles of visible light and other forms of invisible radiation). The fun thing is that matter breaks down as the temperature increases. So, going back in time means looking at matter at more and more primitive states of organization. After the CMB formed 400,000 years after the bang, there were hydrogen atoms. Before, there weren’t. The universe was filled with a primordial soup of particles: protons, neutrons, electrons, photons, and neutrinos, the ghostly particles that cross planets and people unscathed. Also, there were very light atomic nuclei, such as deuterium and tritium (both heavier cousins of hydrogen), helium, and lithium.

Cosmic alchemy

So, to study the universe after 400,000 years, we need to use atomic physics, at least until large clumps of matter aggregate due to gravity and start to collapse to form the first stars, a few millions of years after. What about earlier on? The cosmic history is broken down into chunks of time, each the realm of different kinds of physics. Before atoms form, all the way to about a second after the Big Bang, it’s nuclear physics time. That’s why Weinberg brilliantly titled his book The First Three Minutes. It is during the interval between one-hundredth of a second and three minutes that the light atomic nuclei (made of protons and neutrons) formed, a process called, with poetic flair, primordial nucleosynthesis. Protons collided with neutrons and, sometimes, stuck together due to the attractive strong nuclear force. Why did only a few light nuclei form then? Because the expansion of the universe made it hard for the particles to find each other.

What about the nuclei of heavier elements, like carbon, oxygen, calcium, gold? The answer is beautiful: all the elements of the periodic table after lithium were made and continue to be made in stars, the true cosmic alchemists. Hydrogen eventually becomes people if you wait long enough. At least in this universe.

In this article, we got all the way up to nucleosynthesis, the forging of the first atomic nuclei when the universe was a minute old. What about earlier on? How close to the beginning, to t = 0, can science get? Stay tuned, and we will continue next week.

Read Part 2: To the very beginning: going back in time with Steven Weinberg

To Steven Weinberg, with gratitude, for all that you taught us about the universe.

Steven Weinberg – Dreams of a Final Theory

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (3/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg, Author

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 6 | The Scientific Age

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (4/8) – Richard Dawkins

C. Everett Koop

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (5/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Francis Schaeffer : Reclaiming the World part 1, 2

The Atheism Tapes – Steven Weinberg [2/6]

—

The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer

—

Steven Weinberg – What Makes the Universe Fascinating?

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

_________________

Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:

______________

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:

____________________________

In the 1st video below in the 50th clip in this series are 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)

_________________________________

Steven Weinberg: To Explain the World

Steven Weinberg

________

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 53 THE BEATLES (Part E, Stg. Pepper’s and John Lennon’s search in 1967 for truth was through drugs, money, laughter, etc & similar to King Solomon’s, LOTS OF PICTURES OF JOHN AND CYNTHIA) (Feature on artist Yoko Ono)

April 2, 2015 – 7:05 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 52 THE BEATLES (Part D, There is evidence that the Beatles may have been exposed to Francis Schaeffer!!!) (Feature on artist Anna Margaret Rose Freeman )

March 22, 2015 – 12:30 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Raqib Shaw, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

March 12, 2015 – 12:16 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Peter Blake, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (1)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 49 THE BEATLES (Part A, The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s Cover) (Feature on artist Mika Tajima)

March 5, 2015 – 4:47 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Beatles, Mika Tajima | Edit |Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 48 “BLOW UP” by Michelangelo Antonioni makes Philosophic Statement (Feature on artist Nancy Holt)

February 26, 2015 – 4:57 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Blow Up, David Hemmings,Michelangelo Antonioni, Nancy Holt, Sarah Miles., Vanessa Redgrave | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 47 Woody Allen and Professor Levy and the death of “Optimistic Humanism” from the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS Plus Charles Darwin’s comments too!!! (Feature on artist Rodney Graham)

February 19, 2015 – 5:33 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged alan alda, Anjelica Huston, mia farrow, Sam Waterston | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 46 Friedrich Nietzsche (Featured artist is Thomas Schütte)

February 12, 2015 – 5:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 45 Woody Allen “Reason is Dead” (Feature on artists Allora & Calzadilla )

February 5, 2015 – 4:31 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged Allora & Calzadilla | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 44 The Book of Genesis (Featured artist is Trey McCarley )

January 29, 2015 – 5:01 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Trey McCarley | Edit | Comments (0)

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Pausing to look at the life of Steven Weinberg who was one of my favorite authors!) Part 169I On 4-14-16 in my letter to Dr Weinberg I asked about Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize winner from France and what he wrote in his book NECESSITY AND CHANCE that there is no way to tell the OUGHT from the IS. In other words, you live in a totally silent universe!!!

April 26, 2022 – 1:07 am

The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) – Sixty Symbols

—

Architect of the Standard Model dies at 88.

August 20, 2021 | By Daniel Garisto

Steven Weinberg, a theorist who unified two fundamental forces and shaped the way physicists and the public thought about the universe, died July 23 in Austin at 88.

Weinberg shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow for contributions to the theory that unified the weak and electromagnetic forces. He continued to win academic honors and awards for the next half century, including the 2020 Breakthrough Prize. In addition to his academic research, Weinberg wrote prolifically about science in popular books and publications such as the New York Review of Books. He was also a Fellow of APS.

“Steve was one of the last figures from this heroic era of particle physics that culminated in the development of the Standard Model,” said Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, where Weinberg was a professor for forty years.

If he achieved mythic status through physics, it was from humble beginnings. Steven Weinberg was born in New York City to Frederick and Eva Weinberg, a court stenographer and homemaker respectively. Weinberg’s interest in science was cultivated at the Bronx High School of Science, where he was—famously—classmates with Glashow, who would also go on to attend Cornell.

Steven Weinberg
Credit: Larry Murphy, University of Texas at Austin

Steven Weinberg

After Cornell, Weinberg married Louise Goldwasser, and the newlyweds spent a year in Copenhagen. He then went back to America and finished his PhD with Sam Treiman at Princeton on weak decays and renormalization, the mathematical technique for wrangling annoying infinities. Over the next decade, he bounced from Columbia to Berkeley before landing in Cambridge, MA, where he held appointments at MIT and Harvard.

In the early 1960s, Glashow and Salam attempted to unify electromagnetism and the weak force by proposing massive W and Z bosons as force carriers. But giving the W and Z mass made the theory nonrenormalizable. Weinberg took the idea of spontaneous symmetry breaking and in three brisk pages showed how the mechanism could lead the W and Z to appear massive at lower energies. One of the most impactful papers in particle physics, “A Model of Leptons” went mostly unnoticed: for two years after it was published in Physical Review Letters, it garnered only two citations.

“Why doesn’t anybody quote his paper between 1967 and 1970? The reason is nobody could do that calculation,” said Helen Quinn, a professor emerita at SLAC. Weinberg knew that his model was “probably renormalizable,” but it wasn’t until a 1970 paper by Gerard t’Hooft that the dam burst and citations flooded in. When Quinn and her coauthors did the first one-loop calculation for Weinberg’s theory, “he was so happy he invited us to sherry at his house,” she said.

As a theorist, Weinberg was not particularly focused on model building. “It is ironic that his Nobel Prize was for a specific model, because he was really interested in the general picture and not in the specific models, no matter how beautiful,” Howard Georgi, a Harvard physicist, wrote in an email to APS News.

“He told me why once: Models are almost always wrong. But if you have general arguments that follow from general principles, that has a chance of being correct in the long run,” said John Preskill, a physicist at Caltech and one of Weinberg’s students.

Quinn recalls an argument between Julian Schwinger and Weinberg during a student’s thesis defense. “Julian’s position was effectively that that theory is best which is flexible enough to accommodate all new data and be adapted to it,” she said. “Steve’s position was that that theory is best which is very well defined, and thus can be tested and ruled out.”

Some of Weinberg’s colleagues argue that his real seminal contribution to particle physics was not electroweak unification but articulating how to think about effective quantum field theories (EQFTs). Though EQFTs had been in use for decades, Weinberg’s insight was that physics lurking at much higher energies would appear in terms suppressed by heavy masses. This perspective shaped the hunt for unknown particles and “underlies almost everything we do from LHC physics to string theory to dark matter,” Georgi wrote.

Beyond particle physics, Weinberg also made contributions to astrophysics and cosmology, in particular by reintroducing the cosmological constant as a problem—prior to the discovery of dark energy—and working on matter-antimatter asymmetry in the early universe. He expounded on his view that the very small and very large were connected in The First Three Minutes, a popular science text, which both introduced the public to cosmic microwave background radiation for the first time and inspired a generation of practicing physicists to hone their cosmological queries.

In 1981, Weinberg followed his wife Louise to UT Austin, where she was already a professor at the law school. He established a theoretical physics department where his Tuesday pre-colloquium lunches became de rigeur. “The discussion was basically led by him,” said Willy Fischler, a theorist at UT Austin. “Often, it was about history, poetry, and literature.”

Despite his laurels and seniority, Weinberg continued teaching. This fall, he was set to teach a course on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. “I was amazed. I mean Steve is 88, and he’s going to teach a course that he has never taught,” said Fischler.

Colleagues noted Weinberg’s intensity and testified to his single-mindedness when attacking a physics problem. “He wasn’t going to come to your office and say, ‘How are you doing? How was your weekend?’ He wasn’t that kind of person,” said Sonia Paban, a theoretical physicist at UT Austin.

Weinberg was known for his solitary style, and he was frequently a sole author. When working from home, Weinberg kept a TV on his desk and enjoyed listening to old movies in the background to feel less isolated. But earlier in his career, Weinberg frequently collaborated with physicists like Quinn, Glashow, and Benjamin Lee.

When Quinn and Roberto Peccei published their approach to the strong CP problem, they did not predict an axion. “Weinberg actually called me up and asked me, ‘Did you notice that your theory has this property that there’s a pseudo-Goldstone boson?’ And I said, ‘Well, no, I didn’t. But you’re absolutely right. Obviously, it does.’ And he said, ‘Well, in that case, I’ll publish it myself.’” Quinn said. “So what he was doing was giving me the opportunity to be a co-author of the paper with the axion.”

Others also spoke to Weinberg’s sense of fairness. Paban recalls an incident when a visiting Nobel laureate dismissed a question by a student during a colloquium. “The speaker looked at [the student] and said, ‘I see you don’t understand’ and he proceeded,” she said. “Steve raised his hand and said, ‘I don’t understand that—and don’t give me that answer.’”

For Weinberg, the pursuit of understanding was not an idle matter. “Our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough,” he wrote in The First Three Minutes.

“Steve said, ‘I think we don’t take our theories seriously enough, because it’s so hard to believe that the squiggles that you make on a piece of paper are actually the way nature works.’” Preskill said. “In his case, and in a few spectacular examples, they were indeed.”

The author is a science writer based in Bellport, New York.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Harold J. Blackham (1903-2009)

Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984)

Jacques Monod (1910-1976), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1965)

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS was written and directed by Woody Allen

Judah has his mistress eliminated through his brother’s underworld connections

Anjelica Huston

April 14, 2016

Professor Steven Weinberg, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Physics, 1 University Station C1600, Austin, TX 78712-0264

Dear Dr. Weinberg,

Back on January 14, 2015 I posted the blog post RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Dr. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics, University of Texas, “[Science] It is corrosive of religious belief, and it’s a good thing too!”) and it has got a lot of hits lately. You can access it by googling the phrase “Steven Weinberg responding.”

I know that you are active in the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION so I thought this short letter may interest you.

H. J. Blackham was the founder of the BRITISH HUMANIST ASSOCIATION and he asserted:

“On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).

On John Ankerberg’s show in 1986 there was a debate between Dr. Paul Kurtz, and Dr. Norman Geisler and when part of the above quote was read, Dr. Kurtz responded:

I think you may be quoting Blackham out of context because I’ve heard Blackham speak, and read much of what he said, but Blackham has argued continuously that life is full of meaning;

With that in mind I wanted to ask you what does the AMERICAN or BRITISH HUMANIST ASSOCIATION have to offer in the area of meaning and values? Francis Schaeffer two months before he died said if he was talking to a gentleman he was sitting next to on an airplane about Christ he wouldn’t start off quoting Bible verses. Schaeffer asserted:

I would go back rather to their dilemma if they hold the modern worldview of the final reality only being energy, etc., I would start with that. I would begin as I stress in the book THE GOD WHO IS THERE about their own [humanist] prophets who really show where their view goes. For instance, Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize winner from France, in his book NECESSITY AND CHANCE said there is no way to tell the OUGHT from the IS. In other words, you live in a totally silent universe.

The men like Monod and Sartre or whoever the man might know that is his [humanist] prophet and they point out quite properly and conclusively what life is like, not just that there is no meaningfulness in life but everyone according to modern man is just living out some kind of game plan. It may be knocking 1/10th of a second off a downhill ski run or making one more million dollars. But all you are doing is making a game plan within the mix of a meaningless situation. WOODY ALLEN exploits this very strongly in his films. He really lives it. I feel for that man, and he has expressed it so thoroughly in ANNIE HALL and MANHATTAN and so on.

According to the Humanist worldview Jacques Monod the universe is silent about values and therefore his good friend Woody Allen demonstrated this very fact so well in his 1989 movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. In other words, if we can’t get our values from the Bible then the answer is MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!!!!

I CHALLENGE YOU TO TAKE 90 MINUTES AND WATCH THE MOVIE “CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS” AND THEN ANSWER THE QUESTION: “What reason is there that Judah should not have his mistress eliminated if there is no God and afterlife of judgment and rewards?”

King Solomon closed the Book of Ecclesiastes (Richard Dawkins’ favorite Book of the Bible) with these words, “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with^[d] every secret thing, whether good or evil.” With that in mind I have enclosed a short booklet called THIS WAS YOUR LIFE!

Thank you again for your time. I know how busy you are.

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the…

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) – Richard Dawkins

—-

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? (2010) | Full Movie | Michael Hordern

——

The Bill Moyers Interview – Steven Weinberg

How Should We Then Live (1977) | Full Movie | Francis Schaeffer | Edith …

Steven Weinberg Discussion (2/8) – Richard Dawkins

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!!

Steven Weinberg – Dreams of a Final Theory

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (3/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg, Author

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 6 | The Scientific Age

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (4/8) – Richard Dawkins

C. Everett Koop

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (5/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Francis Schaeffer : Reclaiming the World part 1, 2

The Atheism Tapes – Steven Weinberg [2/6]

—

The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer

—

Steven Weinberg – What Makes the Universe Fascinating?

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

_________________

Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:

______________

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:

____________________________

In the 1st video below in the 50th clip in this series are 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)

_________________________________

Steven Weinberg: To Explain the World

Steven Weinberg

________

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 53 THE BEATLES (Part E, Stg. Pepper’s and John Lennon’s search in 1967 for truth was through drugs, money, laughter, etc & similar to King Solomon’s, LOTS OF PICTURES OF JOHN AND CYNTHIA) (Feature on artist Yoko Ono)

April 2, 2015 – 7:05 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 52 THE BEATLES (Part D, There is evidence that the Beatles may have been exposed to Francis Schaeffer!!!) (Feature on artist Anna Margaret Rose Freeman )

March 22, 2015 – 12:30 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Raqib Shaw, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

March 12, 2015 – 12:16 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Peter Blake, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (1)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 49 THE BEATLES (Part A, The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s Cover) (Feature on artist Mika Tajima)

March 5, 2015 – 4:47 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Beatles, Mika Tajima | Edit |Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 48 “BLOW UP” by Michelangelo Antonioni makes Philosophic Statement (Feature on artist Nancy Holt)

February 26, 2015 – 4:57 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Blow Up, David Hemmings,Michelangelo Antonioni, Nancy Holt, Sarah Miles., Vanessa Redgrave | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 47 Woody Allen and Professor Levy and the death of “Optimistic Humanism” from the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS Plus Charles Darwin’s comments too!!! (Feature on artist Rodney Graham)

February 19, 2015 – 5:33 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged alan alda, Anjelica Huston, mia farrow, Sam Waterston | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 46 Friedrich Nietzsche (Featured artist is Thomas Schütte)

February 12, 2015 – 5:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 45 Woody Allen “Reason is Dead” (Feature on artists Allora & Calzadilla )

February 5, 2015 – 4:31 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged Allora & Calzadilla | Edit| Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 44 The Book of Genesis (Featured artist is Trey McCarley )

January 29, 2015 – 5:01 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Trey McCarley | Edit | Comments (0)

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (Pausing to look at the life of Steven Weinberg who was one of my favorite authors!) Part 169H In my Jan 5, 2016 letter to Dr. Weinberg I have enclosed two CD’s of Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) in 1968 taking the time to read the crucial parts of Michael Polanyi’s groundbreaking article, LIFE TRANSCENDING PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY, in the magazine CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING NEWS, August 21, 1967!

April 19, 2022 – 4:03 am

The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) – Sixty Symbols

—

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the…

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) – Richard Dawkins

—-

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? (2010) | Full Movie | Michael Hordern

——

January 5, 2016

Professor Steven Weinberg, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Physics, 1 University Station C1600, Austin, TX 78712-0264

Dear Dr. Weinberg,

Although I knew that many people knew John Polanyi since he won the Nobel Prize but little did I know that anyone would have known his father Michael Polanyi who died in 1976 but I have discovered there are those who knew him well.

DID YOU EVER HAVE A CHANCE TO HEAR HIM SPEAK OR ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH HIS WORK?

Actually he was born in Budapest in 1891 and graduated from the University of Budapest in 1913 as a doctor of medicine. From there, he went on to study chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Baden, Germany. and in 1915 he wrote a thesis in physical chemistry for his Ph.D. from the University of Budapest.

Dr. Polanyi taught at the University of Budapest in 1919 and, in 1920, began teaching at the Kaiser Wilheim Institute, Berlin. In 1929, he was appointed life member of the institute, but he resigned four years later (after being run out by HITLER’S THUGS IN BERLIN) to accept the chair of physical chemistry at Victoria University, Manchester, England. In 1948, he exchanged his chair in physical chemistry for one in social sciences at Manchester. In 1950, he began a series of visiting professorships and fellowships and he has taught at the universities of Aberdeen, Keele (Staffordshire), Oxford, California (Berkeley), Chicago, Duke, Stanford, Wesleyan (Middletown, Conn.), and Yale.

I thought this would be of interest to you so I have I have enclosed two CD’s of Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) in 1968 taking the time to read the crucial parts of Polanyi’s groundbreaking article, LIFE TRANSCENDING PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY, in the magazine CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING NEWS, August 21, 1967, and then Schaeffer comments on them. Polanyi’s arguments confront those of Francis Crick (1916-2004) and James D. Watson concerning the ramifications of the DNA discovery.

I have always been amazed at the ability of the Jewish people to dominate the sciences as they have. That impression was strengthened in 1976 when I visited Israel and realized how they were able to take a small piece of land in 1948 and make it such a thriving community that exports all over the whole world. Of course, I believe that Genesis 12 was inspired by God and it says:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Thanks again for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, P.O. Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, USA, cell ph 501-920-5733

______

John C. Polanyi, Michael Polanyi, and Eugene P. Wigner around 1934, on the lawn of the. Polanyi home in Didsbury Park, Manchester,

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Steven Weinberg died by Jerry Coyne

July 24, 2021 • 1:00 pm

Reader Rick informed me of this news, summarized in the piece below from Not Even Wrong (click on screenshot): Steven Weinberg, a physicist, writer, and popularizer of science, died yesterday at the age of 88. (In fact, his Wikipedia biography hasn’t yet been updated.) For his work on unifying two of the fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetism and the weak force in nuclei, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics along with Sheldon Glashow, and Abdus Salam.

I’ve read several of his books (he was an excellent writer), and of course all of us know his most famous bon mot: “”With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.” He was a diehard atheist.

Click on the screenshot to read more about him:

As the obituary above gives you the relevant information about his career, I’ll tell just one story about him. In October, 2012, we were both participants in the small “Moving Naturalism Forward” conference organized by physicist Sean Carroll in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I sat next to Steve during the two days of the meeting, and watched as he worked out physics equations on a notepad during the talks. When he left the room, and his notes, I asked him if I could have them. He said, “sure”, but I included them as lagniappe in the autographed version of WEIT that he signed and we put up for auction.

Here’s a photo I took of Weinberg and the hard-core materialist Alex Rosenberg at the meeting:

And here’s Weinberg’s signature (circled) in my book, which was illuminated by Kelly Houle and auctioned off for charity for more than $10,000. I’m not sure what that diagram shows, but I am sure that one reader will tell us.

Although I had lunch with Weinberg one day, and remember that it was fun, I can’t recall what we talked about. My Weinberg story is this. At the meeting, Dan Dennett and I gave dueling presentations about free will, with Dan claiming, of course, that we had a form of it—a compatibilist one—while I argued not only that we had no libertarian free will, but also criticized compatibilism. (This led to Dan haranguing me for the entire three-hour drive back on the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston, which wasn’t covered with snow.)

At any rate, at some point after my talk, Weinberg asked me something like this: “Are you telling me that at any given point in time when I’m making a choice, I could not have chosen otherwise?” I said “Yes.” And he said he didn’t believe that. I was a bit taken aback that an atheist, determinist physicist of the stature of Weinberg could still accept what seems like libertarian free will. But we never got to discuss it further.

We’ve lost another great one—not just a scientist, but a writer, scholar, historian of science, and nice guy.

The Bill Moyers Interview – Steven Weinberg

How Should We Then Live (1977) | Full Movie | Francis Schaeffer | Edith …

Steven Weinberg Discussion (2/8) – Richard Dawkins

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!!

Steven Weinberg – Dreams of a Final Theory

—

Steven Weinberg Discussion (3/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Steven Weinberg, Author

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 6 | The Scientific Age

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (4/8) – Richard Dawkins

C. Everett Koop

—-

Steven Weinberg Discussion (5/8) – Richard Dawkins

—

Francis Schaeffer : Reclaiming the World part 1, 2

The Atheism Tapes – Steven Weinberg [2/6]

—

The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer

—

Steven Weinberg – What Makes the Universe Fascinating?

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

_________________

Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:

______________

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:

____________________________

In the 1st video below in the 50th clip in this series are 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)

_________________________________

Steven Weinberg: To Explain the World

Steven Weinberg

________