I read the book by Craig Venter called LIFE AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT: FROM THE DOUBLE HELIX TO THE DAWN OF DIGITAL LIFE and in that book  on page 146 Venter wrote, “The future of biological research will be based to a great extent on the combination of computer science and synthetic biology.  We can get a fascinating view of this future from a series of contests that culminate in a remarkable event that takes place each year in Cambridge, Massachusetts–A gathering of brilliant young minds that gives me great hope for the future.  The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition invites high school and college students and entrepreneurs to shuffle a standard set of DNA subroutines into something new in a competition for a trophy…”

This statement of Dr. Venter assumes that EDUCATION IS THE ANSWER!!!

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. Theodore Roosevelt

Humanity’s problem  is  not a lack of education but a moral problem.

Adrian Rogers:

Did you know that all atheists are not atheists because of intellectual problems? They’re atheists because of moral problems. You say, “But I know some brilliant people who are atheists.” Well, that may be so, but I know some brilliant people who are not. You say, “I know some foolish people who believe in God.” Well, I know everyone who doesn’t believe in God is foolish.

Later in the letter to Dr. Venter I expose the problems with OPTIMISTIC HUMANISM.

___________

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

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky,Alan Dershowitz, Hubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Stephan Feuchtwang, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Hermann Hauser, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff,  Jonathan Parry,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

Craig Venter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Craig Venter
Venter in 2007
Born	John Craig Venter October 14, 1946 (age 68) Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Institutions	State University of New York at Buffalo National Institutes of Health J. Craig Venter Institute
Alma mater	University of California, San Diego
Known for	DNA Human genome Metagenomics Synthetic genomics Shotgun approach to genome sequencing
Notable awards	Gairdner Award (2002) Nierenberg Prize (2007) Kistler Prize (2008) ENI award (2008) Medal of Science (2008) Dickson Prize (2011)
Website J. Craig Venter Institute

John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biochemist, geneticist, and entrepreneur. He is known for being one of the first to sequence the human genome^[1] and the first to transfect a cell with a synthetic genome.^[2][3] Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), and is now working at JCVI to create synthetic biological organisms. He was listed on Time magazine’s 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman listed Craig Venter at 14th in the list of “The World’s 50 Most Influential Figures 2010”.^[4] He is a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival‘s Advisory Board.^[5]

Early life and education[edit]

Venter was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of Elizabeth and John Venter.^[6] In his youth, he did not take his education seriously, preferring to spend his time on the water in boats or surfing.^[7] According to his biography, A Life Decoded, he was said to never be a terribly engaged student, having Cs and Ds on his eighth-grade report cards.^[8] He graduated from Mills High School in Millbrae, California.

Although he was against the Vietnam War,^[9] Venter was drafted and enlisted in the United States Navy where he worked in the intensive-care ward of a field hospital.^[10] While in Vietnam, he attempted suicide by swimming out to sea, but changed his mind more than a mile out.^[11] Being confronted with wounded, maimed, and dying [marines] on a daily basis instilled in him a desire to study medicine^[12] — although he later switched to biomedical research.

Venter began his college education at a community college, College of San Mateo in California, and later transferred to the University of California, San Diego, where he studied under biochemist Nathan O. Kaplan. He received a BS in biochemistry in 1972, and a PhD in physiology and pharmacology in 1975, both from UCSD.^[13] He married former PhD candidate Barbara Rae.^[14][15][16] After working as an associate professor, and later as full professor, at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he joined the National Institutes of Health in 1984.

In Buffalo, he divorced Dr. Rae-Venter and married his student, Claire M. Fraser,^[15] remaining married to her until 2005.^[17] In late 2008 he married Heather Kowalski.^[18] They live in La Jolla outside San Diego, California where Venter gut-renovated a $6 million home.^[18]

Venter is an atheist.^[19]

Venter himself recognized his own ADHD behavior in his adolescence, and later found ADHD-linked genes in his own DNA.^[20]

In  the third video below in the 142nd clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

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)

_________________________________

Below is the letter I wrote to respond to his quote:

February 23. 2015

Dr. J. Craig Venter, c/o The J. Craig Venter Institute,

Dear Dr. Venter,

I just finished reading the online addition of the book 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. There are several points that Charles Darwin makes in this book that were very wise, honest, logical, shocking and some that were not so wise. The Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer once said of Darwin’s writings, “Darwin in his autobiography 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.”

A while back on the show 60 MINUTES I saw an interview of you with this exchange:

KROFT: “You know, I’ve asked two or three times, ‘Do you think you’re playing God?’ I mean, do you believe in God?”

VENTER: “No. I believe the universe is far more wonderful than just assuming it was made by some higher power. I think the fact that these cells are software-driven machines and that software is DNA and that truly the secret of life is writing software, is pretty miraculous. Just seeing that process in the simplest forms that we’re just witnessing is pretty stunning.”

You asserted that a world without God is “far more wonderful” than a world with a personal God who created it all and gave us the Bible. This is what I call evolutionary optimistic humanism and even in the 19th century Charles Darwin in his autobiography was touting the same product you are today!!!!

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. I have also enclosed a CD with two messages from Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff concerning Darwinism.

The passages which here follow are extracts, somewhat abbreviated, from a part of CHARLES DARWIN’S Autobiography, written in 1876, in which my father gives the history of his religious views:—

“Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is,”

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER COMMENTED:

Now you have now the birth of Julian Huxley’s evolutionary optimistic humanism already stated by Darwin. Darwin now has a theory that man is going to be better. If you had lived at 1860 or 1890 and you said to Darwin, “By 1970 will man be better?” He certainly would have the hope that man would be better as Julian Huxley does today. Of course, I wonder what he would say if he lived in our day and saw what has been made of his own views in the direction of (the mass murder) Richard Speck (and deterministic thinking of today’s philosophers). I wonder what he would say. So you have the factor, already the dilemma in Darwin that I pointed out in Julian Huxley and that is evolutionary optimistic humanism rests always on tomorrow. You never have an argument from the present or the past for evolutionary optimistic humanism.

You can have evolutionary nihilism on the basis of the present and the past. Every time you have someone bringing in evolutionary optimistic humanism it is always based on what is going to be produced tomorrow. When is it coming? The years pass and is it coming? Arthur Koestler doesn’t think it is coming. He sees lots of problems here and puts forth for another solution.

DR. VENTER I NOTICED ON YOUR WEBSITE THAT YOU ARE FOUNDER OF CEO OF Human Longevity Inc (HLI), a San Diego-based genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy, high performance human life span. Evidently you are concerned today like Darwin was in the 19th century not only about the length of one’s life but also about the longevity of the human race.

In Darwin’s 1876 Autobiography he noted:

“…it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.”

Francis Schaeffer commented:

Here you feel Marcel Proust and the dust of death is on everything today because the dust of death is on everything tomorrow. Here you have the dilemma of Nevil Shute’s ON THE BEACH. If it is true that all we have left is biological continuity and increased biological complexity, which is all we have left in Darwinism here, or with many of the modern philosophers, then you can’t stand Shute’s ON THE BEACH. Maybe tomorrow at noon human life may be wiped out. Darwin already feels the tension, because if human life is going to be wiped out tomorrow, what is it worth today? Darwin can’t stand the thought of death of all men. Charlie Chaplin when he heard there was no life on Mars said, “I’m lonely.”

You think of the Swedish Opera (ANIARA) that is pictured inside a spaceship. There was a group of men and women going into outer space and they had come to another planet and the singing inside the spaceship was normal opera music. Suddenly there was a big explosion and the world had blown up and these were the last people left, the only conscious people left, and the last scene is the spaceship is off course and it will never land, but will just sail out into outer space and that is the end of the plot. They say when it was shown in Stockholm the first time, the tough Swedes with all their modern  mannishness, came out (after the opera was over) with hardly a word said, just complete silence.

Darwin already with his own position says he CAN’T STAND IT!! You can say, “Why can’t you stand it?” We would say to Darwin, “You were not made for this kind of thing. Man was made in the image of God. Your CAN’T- STAND- IT- NESS is screaming at you that your position is wrong. Why can’t you listen to yourself?”

You find all he is left here is biological continuity, and thus his feeling as well as his reason now is against his own theory, yet he holds it against the conclusions of his reason. Reason doesn’t make it hard to be a Christian. Darwin shows us the other way. He is holding his position against his reason.

____________

These words of Darwin ring in my ear, “…it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress…” . Schaeffer rightly noted, “Maybe tomorrow at noon human life may be wiped out. Darwin already feels the tension, because if human life is going to be wiped out tomorrow, what is it worth today? Darwin can’t stand the thought of death of all men.” IN OTHER WORDS ALL WE ARE IS DUST IN THE WIND.  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.”

You can hear DAVE HOPE and Kerry Livgren’s stories from this youtube link:

(part 1 ten minutes)

(part 2 ten minutes)

Kansas – Dust in the Wind (Official Video)

________

Related posts:

__

___

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

Nick Gathergood, David-Birkett, 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:

Arif Ahmed, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky,Alan Dershowitz, Hubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Stephan Feuchtwang, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Hermann Hauser, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff,  Jonathan Parry,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (ⁱ/ˈstiːvən ˈhɔːkɪŋ/; born 8 January 1942) is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.^[16][17] His scientific works include a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set forth a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.^[18][19]

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009 and has achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; his book A Brief History of Time appeared on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Hawking has a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as motor neurone disease in the UK, that has gradually paralysed him over the decades.^[20][21] He now communicates using a single cheek muscle attached to a speech-generating device. Hawking married twice and has three children.

Stephen Hawking
Hawking at NASA, 1980s
Born	Stephen William Hawking 8 January 1942 (age 74) Oxford, England
Residence	United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Fields	General relativity Quantum gravity
Institutions	Caius College, Cambridge California Institute of Technology Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Alma mater	University College, Oxford (BA, 1962) Trinity Hall, Cambridge (PhD, 1965)
Thesis	Properties of Expanding Universes (1965[1])
Doctoral advisor	Dennis Sciama[2]
Other academic advisors	Robert Berman[3]
Doctoral students	Bruce Allen[2][4] Raphael Bousso[2][5] Bernard Carr[2][6] Fay Dowker[2][7] Christophe Galfard[8] Gary Gibbons[2][9] Thomas Hertog[2][10] Raymond Laflamme[2][11] Don Page[2][12] Malcolm Perry[2][13] Wu Zhongchao[2][14]
Known for	Hawking radiation Penrose–Hawking theorems A Brief History of Time (1988)
Spouse	Jane Hawking (m. 1965; div. 1995) Elaine Mason (m. 1995; div. 2006)
Children	Robert (b. 1967) Lucy (b. 1970) Timothy (b. 1979)
Website hawking.org.uk

Categories:

• Stephen Hawking
• 1942 births
• Living people
• Academics of the University of Cambridge
• Albert Einstein Medal recipients
• Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
• Alumni of University College, Oxford
• Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
• Cosmologists
• English astronomers
• English atheists
• English memoirists
• English people with disabilities
• English physicists
• English science writers
• Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
• Lucasian Professors of Mathematics
• Maxwell Medal and Prize recipients
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• Members of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
• Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
• Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Mental calculators
• People educated at St Albans High School for Girls
• People educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire
• People from Oxford
• People from St Albans
• People with motor neurone disease
• People with tetraplegia
• Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
• Project Steve
• Recipients of the Copley Medal
• Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

In  the first video below in the 15th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

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)

_________________________________

Below is a letter I sent to Dr. Hawking and my response to his quote.

February 29, 2016

Dr. Stephen Hawking,

Cambridge

Dear Dr. Hawking,

In an earlier letter I told you how much I enjoyed the fine movie THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. I really got some great insights into your life from that movie and it renewed my interest in your books and also You Tube clips.

In the popular You Tube video “Renowned Academics Speaking About God” you made the following statement:

“M-Theory doesn’t disprove God, but it does make him unnecessary. It predicts that the universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing without the need for a creator.” –Stephen Hawking, Cambridge theoretical physicist

Let me first respond with a portion of the article, “Why Stephen Hawking is Wrong About God Not Creating the Universe,”
by Rich Deem

So, Stephen Hawking wants us to believe that a nebulous set of theories, which cannot be confirmed through observational data, absolutely establishes that an infinite number of diverse universes exist, having been created from laws of physics that just happen to allow this. John Horgan, a fellow atheist, says that the popularity of M-theory is the result of “stubborn refusal of enthusiasts to abandon their faith.”(Cosmic Clowning: Stephen Hawking’s “new” theory of everything is the same old CRAP by John Horgan (Scientific American). ibid. “For more than two decades string theory has been the most popular candidate for the unified theory that Hawking envisioned 30 years ago. Yet this popularity stems not from the theory’s actual merits but rather from the lack of decent alternatives and the stubborn refusal of enthusiasts to abandon their faith.” )   Is it not more likely that a super-intelligent, powerful Being invented the laws of physics that produced the universe? Skeptics always ask, “Who created God?” Maybe they already have the answer to that question—Nothing! After all, they seem to think that nothing is a powerful force for creating things!

As a scientist you emphasis the need to have things confirmed through observational data. Have you taken time to really look at the historical claims of the Bible and if they are really accurate or not?

Let me respond further with the words of Francis Schaeffer from his book HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT (the chapter is entitled, “Is Propositional Revelation Nonsense?”

________

Related posts:

__

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

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky,Alan Dershowitz, Hubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Stephan Feuchtwang, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Hermann Hauser, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff,  Jonathan Parry,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

Dian Fossey below who was one of his students:

Robert Hinde

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 Jane Goodall was also one of students

Robert Aubrey Hinde
Born	26 October 1923 (age 92) Norwich, England
Nationality	United Kingdom
Fields	Zoology
Institutions	University of Cambridge
Alma mater	University of Cambridge University of Oxford
Notable awards	Frink Medal (1991) Royal Medal (1996)

Robert Aubrey Hinde CBE FRS FBA /haɪnd/ (born 26 October 1923 in Norwich, England) is a British zoologist, the Emeritus Royal Society ResearchProfessor of Zoology at the University of Cambridge.^[1]

Hinde was the master of St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1989-94.^[2] He is the chair of British Pugwash. He studies “the application of biological and psychological data to understanding the bases of religion and ethics” and “eliminating the causes of war”.^[3]

Hinde was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge and at Balliol College, Oxford.

He is a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Publications[edit]

• Animal behaviour: a synthesis of ethology and comparative psychology. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970. ISBN 0-07028-927-1
• Biological Bases of Human Social Behaviour (1974).^[4]
• . “Can Nonhuman Primates Help Us Understand Human Behavior?”. In Smuts, B.B., Cheney, D.L., Seyfarth, R.M., Wrangham, R.W., Struhsaker, T.T. (eds). Primate Societies. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. pp. 413–420. ISBN 0-226-76715-9.
• Cooperation and prosocial behaviour (Ed. with Jo Groebel). Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-521-39110-5
• The institution of war (Ed.). New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. ISBN 0-312-06611-2
• Relationships: a dialectical perspective. Hove, East Sussex: Psychological Press, 1997. ISBN 0-86377-706-6
• Why gods persist: a scientific approach to religion. London: Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0-415-20825-4
• Why good is good: the sources of morality. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-27752-3
• War, no more: eliminating conflict in the nuclear age (Ed. with Joseph Rotblat). London: Pluto Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7453-2192-5
• Van der Horst FCP; Van der Veer R; Van IJzendoorn MH (2007). “John Bowlby and ethology: An annotated interview with Robert Hinde”. Attachment & Human Development 9 (4): 321–335.doi:10.1080/14616730601149809. ISSN 1469-2988. PMID 17852051. Retrieved 2007-11-30. Cite uses deprecated parameter |coauthors= (help)#

External links[edit]

• Robert Hinde interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 7 and 20 November 2007 (film)
• Listen to an oral history interview with Robert Hinde – a life story interview recorded for An Oral History of British Science at the British Library

Academic offices
Preceded by Francis Harry Hinsley	Master of St John’s College, Cambridge 1989–1994	Succeeded by Peter Goddard

Authority control WorldCat Identities VIAF: 108276619 LCCN: n50034957 ISNI: 0000 0001 0931 029X GND: 119026619 SUDOC: 067026141 BNF: cb11907545w (data)

This article about a British zoologist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Categories:

• Living people
• British zoologists
• Alumni of St John’s College, Cambridge
• Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• Fellows of the British Academy
• Royal Medal winners
• 1923 births
• Masters of St John’s College, Cambridge
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• British zoologist stubs

In  the second video below in the 99th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

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)

Interview of Robert Hinde – 2007 – part 1

Interview of Robert Hinde – 2007 – part 2

Interview of Robert Hinde – 2007 – part 3

• Department of Zoology

Below is a letter in which I respond to the quote from Dr. Hinde:

April 13, 2016

Professor Robert Hinde, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom,

Dear Dr. Hinde,

I have been simply amazed at the people over the years you have been associated with. Students such as Pat Bateson, Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. Also you were around such famous people as  Bill Thorpe, Danny Lehrman and Jay Rosenblatt, Gabriel Horn, Danny Lehrman and Jay Rosenblatt, and Frank Beach. And I was stunned that you got to write a paper with Ernst Mayr. I also had the honor of corresponding with him back in 1995. 

Thank you for taking the time to give an interview to  Dr. Alan MacFarlane. Dr. MacFarlane’s series of interviews have been so intriguing and yours was one of the best.

In the You Tube video “A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2),” you asserted: 

Later interest in religion was not influenced by work with YMCA at that time; called up and sent to Southern Rhodesia to train as a pilot; went on to flying training school and flew tiger moths; group of us were selected for Coastal Command and sent down to George in South Africa to train as a navigator; came home on a troop ship via South America; took months and months despite being on a fairly fast troop ship without an escort, having to keep watch for submarines; I was then a mild sceptical Christian but the man I was on lookout duty with was a passionate atheist; talked for weeks and weeks and when we got to England, he was a Christian and I was an agnostic;

If you are an agnostic/atheist and a humanist then what do you have to  say about the negative view that many humanists have about the ultimate meaningless of life?

I know that you are active in the  BRITISH 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;

Harold J. Blackham (1903-2009)

With that in mind I wanted to ask you what  does the 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. 

Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984)

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

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 Allendemonstrated 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?”

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS was written and directed by Woody Allen

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

Anjelica Huston

__

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!

In light of your work with monkeys I thought you would be interested in this article below:

Greg Koukl takes on Evolutionist Robert Wright and Monkey Morality in the article, “Monkey Morality: Can Evolution Explain Ethics? :”

Why Be a Good Boy Tomorrow?

This observation uncovers the most serious objection to the idea that evolution is adequate to explain morality.  There is one question that can never be answered by any evolutionary assessment of ethics.  The question is this:  Why ought I be moral tomorrow?

One of the distinctives of morality is its “oughtness,” its moral incumbency.  Assessments of mere behavior, however, are descriptive only.  Since morality is essentially prescriptive–telling what should be the case, as opposed to what is the case–and since all evolutionary assessments of moral behavior are descriptive, then evolution cannot account for the most important thing that needs to be explained:  morality’s “oughtness.”

The question that really needs to be answered is:  “Why shouldn’t the chimp (or a human, for that matter) be selfish?”  The evolutionary answer might be that when we’re selfish, we hurt the group.  That answer, though, presumes another moral value:  We ought to be concerned about the welfare of the group.  Why should that concern us?  Answer:  If the group doesn’t survive, then the species doesn’t survive.  But why should I care about the survival of the species?

Here’s the problem.  All of these responses meant to explain morality ultimately depend on some prior moral notion to hold them together.  It’s going to be hard to explain, on an evolutionary view of things why I should not be selfish, or steal, or rape, or even kill tomorrow without smuggling morality into the answer.

The evolutionary explanation disembowels morality, reducing it to mere descriptions of conduct.  The best the Darwinist explanation can do–if it succeeds at all–is explain past behavior.  It cannot inform future behavior.  The essence of morality, though, is not description, but prescription.

Evolution may be an explanation for the existence of conduct we choose to call moral, but it gives no explanation why I should obey any moral rules in the future.  If one countered that we have a moral obligation to evolve, then the game would be up, because if we have moral obligations prior to evolution, then evolution itself can’t be their source.

Evolutionists are Wrong about Ethics

Darwinists opt for an evolutionary explanation for morality without sufficient justification.  In order to make their naturalistic explanation work, “morality” must reside in the genes.  “Good,” beneficial tendencies can then be chosen by natural selection.  Nature, through the mechanics of genetic chemistry, cultivates behaviors we call morality.

This creates two problems.  First, evolution doesn’t explain what it’s meant to explain.  It can only account for preprogrammed behavior, which doesn’t qualify as morality.  Moral choices, by their nature, are made by free agents, not dictated by internal mechanics.

Secondly, the Darwinist explanation reduces morality to mere descriptions of behavior.  The morality that evolution needs to account for, however, entails much more than conduct.  Minimally, it involves motive and intent as well.  Both are non-physical elements which can’t, even in principle, evolve in a Darwinian sense.

Further, this assessment of morality, being descriptive only, ignores the most fundamental moral question of all:  Why should I be moral tomorrow?  Evolution cannot answer that question.  It can only attempt to describe why humans acted in a certain way in the past.  Morality dictates what future behavior ought to be.

Evolution does not explain morality.  Bongo is not a bad chimp, he’s just a chimp.  No moral rules apply to him.  Eat the banana, Bongo.

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, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

PS: Dr. Hinde you say that you are sure that Christianity is not true but have you investigated adequately? If  someone is truly interested in investigating the Old Testament Scriptures then all they have to do is google some of the following posts I have featured and click on these links and the evidence is there showing that Christ is the Messiah predicted in the Old Testament. Here are some of my past posts on this subject, My correspondence with Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol about the rebirth of Israel!!!!, My personal visit with Bill Kristol on 7-18-14 in Hot Springs, Arkansas!!!!, Simon Schama’s lack of faith in Old Testament Prophecy, Who are the good guys: Hamas or Israel?, “A Jewish Doctor Speaks Out: Why I Believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah” written by Dr. Jack Sternberg (author of the book CHRISTIANITY: THE JEWISH ROOTS), and  Jesus Christ in the Old Testament by Adrian Rogers,

Interview of Robert Hinde – 2007 – part 1

_________________________________

________

Related posts:

__