<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.19046"></HEAD>
<BODY style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" id=role_body bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 rightMargin=7 topMargin=7><FONT id=role_document color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>From:
"Rich, Joel" <JRich@sibson.com><BR>><BR>Subject: [Avodah] Some thoughts
on a recent book "Knocking on Heaven's<BR> Door: How Physics and
Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and<BR> the Modern
World" by Lisa Randall<BR></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>>>I
sent the email below to the author after seeing her interviewed on TV (see
second review here: <A title=http://torahmusings.com/2011/10/audio-roundup-5/comment-page-1/#comment-42399 href="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</A>
. Am interested in any discussion, other than about my run on sentences
(be nice-it's still not yet hoshana rabbah :-))<BR>GT<BR>Joel
Rich<BR>=====================<BR>Dear Dr. Randall:<BR>I finished part one of
<STRONG>"Knocking on Heaven's Door</STRONG>," which I believe has the material
on religion that you referenced.</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px">
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><BR>I
wanted to put a few thoughts on paper, perhaps inarticulately, to give you
some sense of my reaction. ....</FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><BR>On
page 56, you discussed external (e.g. God) influences that would have to be
transmitted by a mechanism. [snip]</FONT></FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><BR>However, there are those rationalists who believe that
science and religion do not conflict
[snip]</FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px">
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>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?</FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><BR>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.<BR>[snip]</FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Keep
up the good work!<BR>Regards,<BR>Joel
Rich</FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>>>>>></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Keep up what good work? The work of famous atheist writers like
Hitchens and Dawkins?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>HOWEVER, it is a fool's mission to try to persuade someone like Lisa
Randall of this. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>You asked her, </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>"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?"</FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV></FONT></FONT></FONT>She is too arrogant and too enmeshed in the ideology
of "scientism" to even give a moment's consideration to such a
possibility.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I went to the hirhurim link you provided and from there to her
interview with Charlie Rose
<DIV><A href="http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/90">http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/90</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.<BR></DIV>
<DIV>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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> 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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT><BR><FONT color=#0000ff><STRONG>--Toby
Katz<BR>================</STRONG></FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>_____________________
<DIV> </DIV></FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px">
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><BR><BR><BR></FONT></FONT> </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></FONT></BODY></HTML>