Einstein’s God

 

Einstein’s God

By Krista Tippett

 

Setting the scene:

At any cocktail party where the subject of science-v-religion comes up, it starts from the premise that there actually is a rivalry.  No doubt in the 20^th century, backed by our public schools, cemented in the Supreme Court cases highlighted in 1948 McCollum-v- Board of Education ruling, science prevailed.   The collective conscious of our modern generations leans heavily towards science.  Come the year of our lord 2000 the scales tilts back.  Was that argument really about funding?  Lost is the mere fact that the premier scientists over time never meant for this schism to exist.  Specifically, Darwin!!!   

In 2020 the year of the great pandemic in a politically charged society, one is rebuked for not listening to the voice of science.  A voice that zooms in on the species called CoV-2 whose sole desire is to survive on this earth.  Sounds like Darwin???  But then where is the legal argument for the Covid species to live????  There is a fittest species is there not?  Consensus at that party holds that science prevails until an illuminated chap quips anecdotally its God’s will to be culling the herd.  “let old people die as 95% of medical is spent in the last five years of life;” as he/they all sip their beverage and laugh it off behind their masks. 

If there is any wisdom in the Old Testament, it’s not hard to find a history of ‘plagues’ that brings a society to a higher level of religious consciousness in fear of death.  Plagues that mysteriously ran their course evolved to plagues resolved through the intervention of man’s science; the will to turn and fight the intruder on our species.  This is my introduction to Krista Tippett’s book Einstein’s God. 

The book itself:

Tippett argues contrary to casual dinner party banter, science and God sit together on the throne of the mind our great scientists and philosophers.  Her book provides ten chapters, poetically akin to ten commandments, illustrates through interviews with prolific gatekeepers of science the harmony with religion present in their work.  While the scientists’ pursuit was a phenomenon of nature, explained through math and logic to a conclusion, their ‘Will’ came from faith in the unknown.  Today let’s call it the universe as an agreed upon proxy for God.  What was not known on the embarkment of their quest was the answer.  Faith nourished them in their quest.  Faith and hope, hallmarks of religion, stand in the dark periphery leaving their breakthroughs in the light.  Oddly enough a dynamic where science being the louder voice that causes religion to be undervalued to the extent that today’s Western world seeks to ban it from State run schools.

Let’s take a closer look at the landmarks of Tippett’s book, her overarching themes and how they tie together.  It starts with the title and her recognition of Einstein’s reverence for the beauty of nature and thought.  Who would band Nature and Thought one train of thought… Tippett.  In this modern world where thought is a feature of the data processing brain, who would look in to the biology of spirit of the nether world….Tippett.  Who in today’s world would tie the brains thinking to the heart as Tippet does in her discourse Mehmet Oz.  I could tease you through the book but that would be a dis-service to all her work.  So I’ll take a moment in her chapter on Darwin.

It seems Darwin’s survival of the fittest and his Origin of Species planted in the minds of legislators and educators…but rather men endeavor the endless progress or proficiency in both leaves todays populist voice trampling over not only religion but Darwin as well.  Tippett takes the reader down a different path in thinking…one that may on the surface be logical but comes from the heart of Darwin’s being. At its core Darwin writes:

               “let no man think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, …but rather let men progress or proficience in both”.  Darwin is humbled by the laws of nature.  Darwin did not challenge the idea of God as the source of all being.  But he did reject the idea of a God minutely implicated in every flaw, injustice, or catastrophe.

My views:

On the heals of what is written above, I will ally with Tippett.  Her book is spot on in drawing out the true Darwin.  Making my/our case, I bring East of Eden, by John Steinbeck.  It was very popular in the same generation as McCollum-v- Board of Education.  Why?  From that book was a theme that comes from the Jewish faith Timshel… Thou Mayest.  God gave one species the ability of complex thought and more importantly the ability to CHOOSE!  Tippett’s book illuminates the voice of scientist, who rely on faith in that very point.  Her book will cause you to take a second and deeper look at your own thinking.  Read it. 

Hurricane - Bob Dylan

 In 1975 Racism was roaring in an era without live video and social medial  We had to count on movements and fund raisers.  The news papers focused on Dylan and his his band and less on the tragic  black man falsely accused.    His fundraiser raised a mere $100,000 for Hurricane's defense.   He never played it again at concerts because it was too long  for his majority white audiences and NOT ENTERTAINING at concerts.  White people were not interested then.  

This year of 2020 saw the George Floyd, not a boxing prize fighter but a common criminal with a dubious past raises over $6M.  He was surely a victim of police brutality.  There is a lot to the story, Today white people cringe to be accused of white privilege.  To all those with lp albums, pull out your Dylan vinyl, dust it off and set down the needle.  Its a great beat in classic Dylan style.  Below are the words, in case they never set in on you then;   what's different?  As yourself a few questions:

1. What is white privilege?

2.  Is it a matter of timing, measured by events not ticks on a clock?

3,  Have we evolved?

4.  Is BLM making a difference?

5.  Are black people at large making a difference?  

6.  Is there a collection of other social injustice movements coming to a peak?

7.  Are black people at large behaving like the citizens they want to be treated like (Rebecca Solnit), Whose Story is This)?

8.  In Solint's book Hope in the Dark about activism, is BLM now on center stage and in the light working for the greater good?

9.  Visit On Being  On Being with Krista Tippett - The On Being Project  Listen to Krista Tippetts' recent interviews ask yourself: is your thinking from the heart changing?

10.  Anything else?

Hurricane

[Verse 1]

Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out, “My God, they killed them all!”

[Hook]
Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

[Verse 2]
Three bodies lyin' there
Does Patty see
And another man named Bello
Moving around mysteriously
“I didn’t do it,” he says
And he throws up his hands
“I was only robbin' the register
I hope you understand

[Verse 3]
I saw them leaving,” he says, and he stops
“One of us had better call up the cops”
And so Patty calls the cops
And they arrive on the scene
With their red lights flashin'
In the hot New Jersey night

[Verse 4]
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin' around
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down

[Verse 5]
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Paterson that’s just the way things go
If you’re black
You might as well not show up on the street
Unless you want to draw the heat

[Verse 6]
Alfred Bello had a partner and he had a rap for the cops
Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out prowling around
He said, “I saw two men running out
They looked like middleweights
They jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates”

[Verse 7]
And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head
Cop said, “Wait a minute, boys, this one’s not dead”
So they took him to the infirmary
And though this man could hardly see
They told him that he could identify the guilty men

[Verse 8]
Four in the morning and they haul Rubin in
They take him to the hospital and they brought him upstairs
The wounded man looks up through his one dying eye
Says, “Why did you bring him in here for?
He ain't the guy!”

[Hook]
Here’s the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

[Verse 9]
Four months later, the ghettos are in flame
Rubin’s in South America, fighting for his name
While Arthur Dexter Bradley’s still in the robbery game
And the cops are putting the screws to him
Lookin' for somebody to blame

[Verse 10]
“Remember that murder that happened in a bar?”
“Remember you said you saw the getaway car?”
“You think you’d like to play ball with the law?”
“Think it might-a been that fighter that you saw
Running that night?”
“Don’t forget that you are white”

[Verse 11]
Arthur Dexter Bradley said, “I’m really not sure”
The cops said, “A poor boy like you could use a break
We got you for the motel job
And we’re talking to your friend Bello
Now you don’t want to have to go back to jail
Be a nice fellow

[Verse 12]
You’ll be doing society a favor
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin' braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder
On him
He ain’t no Gentleman Jim”

[Verse 13]
Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
"It’s my work", he’d say, "and I do it for pay
And when it’s over I’d just as soon go on my way"

[Verse 14]
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a horse along a trail
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man
Into a mouse

[Verse 15]
All of Rubin’s cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus
He never had a chance
The judge made Rubin’s witnesses
Drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched
He was a revolutionary bum

[Verse 16]
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The D.A. said he was the one
Who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed

[Verse 17]
Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder “one,”
Guess who testified?
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride

[Verse 18]
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed
To live in a land
Where justice is a game

[Verse 19]
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink Martinis
And watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha
In a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell

[Outro]
Yes that’s the story of the Hurricane
But it won’t be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he’s done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

Zara Yacob - Rationality of the Human Heart

 

Zara Yacob

Rationality of the Human Heart

By Teodros Kiros

 

This book, while using Zara Yacob as the prime mover in Ethiopian modern philosophy, makes an argument that thought comes in the form of prayer from the heart.  Kiros begins with a contrast of Yacob (1399 – 1468) and Descartes (1598 – 1650) demonstrating mind-body philosophy.  One hundred years apart in time yet they have much in common yet contrast on this fundamental point:

Zara Yacob wrote: The soul is endowed with an intelligence … God created us intelligent so that we meditate (pray) on his greatness.

Rene Descartes wrote:  thus there remains only the idea of God. I must consider whether there is anything in this idea that would not have originated from me.

The departure exists in who/what is at the center.  Descartes finds it to be man, “I think therefore I am” making man’s outer world man made.  Yacob finds God at the center of intelligence and therefore not man made.  Yacob looks at man-made as the protagonist of customs and tradition of which he despises.  According to Yacob all thought requires an inquiry through prayer to God.  It is God’s answer that bring upon each man his own intelligence for which to navigate the outer world. 

Rationality for Zara Yacob is an activity of the human heart blessed by moral intelligence that is given to all human beings, should they choose to make use of this extraordinary gift.  Having a gift and actually using it are of course two different things, but for those who would like to do the morally right thing, the heart is ready to help them perform the important task of performing in a morally worthy manner.  Such individuals do not have to go beyond consulting their heart when they agonize over their decisions, over their choices and over their dreams of seeking to be exceptional human beings.

Zara Yacob was the first of philosophers to reconfigure rationality, by reordering the relationship between the brain and the heart.  The brain for him is a processing machine and nothing more than that.  The heart is the home of thought.  The brain’s function is not the production of thought, as the rationality of Descartes assumed.  The production of thought is an activity of the heart.  However, the heart does not do this alone.  The task is too overwhelming for the heart.  There is another power which aids the heart to perform this function.  Through meditative prayer the transcendent responds to the hearts desire to communicate and defend the truth.  The heart desires, and the force inside it, discloses during intense moments of searching (Hassa) and meditating (Hatata).  The thinking heart pressured by the pangs of existence, responding to injustices in the world, cries out for help, and realizing its contingency, and the transcendent responds with generous action.

In my interpretation and blue-collar comment:  the brain is a data processer and the heart (desire) is the AI modern computer science is all excited about.  I am old enough to remember the transcendental meditation craze of the 1970’s.  Society at large lost our way once again and went back to books, the web, and science breakthroughs.  What is intelligence if it does not have a moral conscience.  I will leave you with that to think about as you decide to pick up this book and read it.  Perhaps we can discuss what is at the heart of the matter.

 

I googled  “heart home of thought” and got a hit:  The Human Heart Has a Mind of Its Own, Scientists Find - Learning Mind (learning-mind.com).  Krista Tippett, author of Einstein’s God would be happy.