[Avodah] Some thoughts on a recent book "Knocking on Heaven's Door"

[T613K at aol.com]

From:  "Rich, Joel" <JRich at sibson.com>
>
Subject: [Avodah] Some thoughts  on a recent book "Knocking on Heaven's
Door: How Physics and  Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and
the Modern  World" by Lisa Randall


>>I  sent the email below to the author after seeing her interviewed on TV 
(see  second review here: 
_http://torahmusings.com/2011/10/audio-roundup-5/comment-page-1/#comment-42399_ 
(http://torahmusings.com/2011/10/audio-roundup-5/comment-page-1/#comment-42399)   . Am interested in any discussion, other 
than about my run on sentences  (be nice-it's still not yet hoshana rabbah 
:-))
GT
Joel  Rich
=====================
Dear Dr. Randall:
I finished part one of  "Knocking on Heaven's Door," which I believe has 
the material  on religion that you referenced.

 


I  wanted to put a few thoughts on paper, perhaps inarticulately, to give 
you  some sense of my reaction. ....


On  page 56, you discussed external (e.g. God) influences that would have 
to be  transmitted by a mechanism. [snip]
However, there are those rationalists who believe that  science and 
religion do not conflict  [snip]

 


Why couldn't the creator of the universe  create the universe in such a way 
that the scientific rules you study are  the rules the creator embedded in 
the universe?
 


I'd also point out that Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik understood  Genesis 1:28 
("and subdue it") as a religious requirement to harness the  forces of nature 
for the betterment of all  mankind.
[snip]

Keep  up the good work!
Regards,
Joel  Rich

 
>>>>>
 
Keep up what good work?  The work of famous atheist writers like  Hitchens 
and Dawkins?
 
The Torah (in itself, and as mediated through Judaism's daughter religions) 
 underlies all of modern science.  Without the Bible, there would never 
have  been western civilization, there would never have been an idea of a 
knowable  universe with predictable rules and so on.  In a way, what  you quote  
in the name of RYBS highlights this fact.  The Torah pointed humanity  on 
the road to modern scientific discovery.
 
HOWEVER, it is a fool's mission to try to persuade someone like Lisa  
Randall of this.  
 
You asked her, 

"Why couldn't the creator of the universe  create the universe in such a 
way that the scientific rules you study are the  rules the creator embedded in 
the universe?"

She is too arrogant and too enmeshed in the ideology  of "scientism" to 
even give a moment's consideration to such a  possibility. 

I went to the hirhurim link you provided and from there to her  interview 
with Charlie Rose    
_http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/90_ 
(http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/90) 
 
She is unquestionably a genius in her field -- physics.  In the  interview 
she talks about particle physics and cosmology, fascinating  stuff.  She's 
also an excellent writer and popularizer, a professor who is  well-liked by 
her students and an attractive media personality.
 
All of that leads her to imagine that she has some kind of special  
knowledge and insight into fields in which she is in fact entirely ignorant:  
theology, politics, history, economics, and scientific fields other than  
physics.  Her authority as a Harvard physicist and writer gives her  standing to 
babble on about things she literally knows nothing about.
 
In the Oct 3 issue of TIME magazine she has a full page article which is  
enough to tell you that any book she has written about the interface between  
science and religion is not worth reading.  She imagines that science has  
somehow proven that there is no G-d.  She's like that famous 19th century  
French scientist Laplace, who, when asked by Napoleon why his book about the  
universe contained no mention of G-d, replied, "I have no need of that  
hypothesis."
 
In her article she makes fun of one of the current Republican presidential  
candidates because he prayed for rain when his state faced a terrible 
series of  wildfires.  She says snidely that by praying, "he is displaying the 
danger  of replacing rational approaches with religion."  In other words, in 
her  book, if you pray, you are not rational and you are anti-science.  I 
don't  care if you are a Democrat or a Republican, but can any Orthodox Jew 
maintain  that a person who prays is not rational -- and ipso facto unworthy of 
holding  public office?
 
She talks about those who believe in divine creation (even if they  also 
believe in evolution and "billions of years") as if such a belief is  
synonymous with a war on science, and then she also makes such accusations  against 
anyone who would cast doubt on the current liberal avodah zarah of  global 
warming.  But she is not a paleontologist or an archaeologist, she  is not a 
climatologist, she knows no more about these subjects than the average  
well-read layman.  Whence comes her certainty that the world could not have  had 
a Creator?  Not from anything she has studied in science.  It's  her BELIEF 
system.  In fact in that Charlie Rose interview, she laughingly  admits 
(about her own field of expertise, particle physics) that there is a lot  that 
scientists still don't know and a lot of  "fudging" -- her word.
 
She concludes her TIME article by saying that in matters of public policy  
--"in the economy, in the environment, in our health and well-being" -- 
rational  thought and science are needed more than ever.   And adds that "the  
Obama Administration has made basic science a focal point after years of  
antiscientific policies by the Bush Administration."  Avodah is not the  place 
to show that this is the exact OPPOSITE of the truth, but this should be  
enough for an intelligent and well-informed person to know that this Lisa  
Randall is just one of that "herd of independent thinkers" in the Ivy League  
that William F. Buckley derided  -- the people who all think and talk  
exactly alike and pride themselves on their intellectual independence.
 
Anyone who is religious and who tries to engage her in correspondence is  
only going to elicit from her a condescending, patronizing smirk.  This is  
the woman who said, “The scientists I know don't believe in an  afterlife but 
there actually are religious scientists….which I always find  very 
confusing.”
 
She is very interesting when she talks about the scientific work she  does 
and totally stupid and useless when she talks about religion.  You  have to 
distinguish between genuine science -- the arena of mathematics,  
observation and experiment -- and "scientism" -- the religion that exalts man  and 
denies G-d, assuming a mantle of unearned authority because of the prestige  in 
which genuine scientists are rightly held.

Quoting Rav Soloveitchik to such a person will not increase the prestige of 
 Torah in her eyes, but will cause him to be denigrated in her  eyes, just 
another religious crank.  Just another rabbi she never  heard of.  She 
doesn't need rabbis.  She is just so, so  smart.  
 
 We religious Jews do not need to be overly impressed and we certainly  
don't need to be intimidated.  There are religious Jews who, unlike Lisa  
Randall, actually know science AND Torah.   Oh and political science  and history 
and economics, too.
 
 
Anything this woman has to say about religion is not worth the grass she  
tramples under her feet as she strides across Harvard Yard in all her  
pompous arrogance and ignorance.


 

--Toby  Katz
================




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