Transcription
Foreign, well, in 2014, uh, you did an interview and they asked you, uh, "What do you think about God?" And you said, "I remain unconvinced by any claims anyone has ever made about the existence or the power of a Divine Force operating in the universe." Right?
Yeah, I would have said something like that for sure. Right. And, you know, since, by the way, by the way, just to be clear, yeah, uh, what's probably missing from your extracted quote is the setup for that, which would be, "Is there a particular God you have in mind that you want me to comment on?" Huh?
Okay, I missed that. Because, yeah, you, if you go to it, if you go to, you go online and in a Google search you type "God," "God's worshiped by humans," there's a tally of all the gods ever worshiped by humans in the history of civilization, and it just goes screen after screen after screen after screen. So when you say, "Do you believe in God?" is there, is it, which God is it? Is it Zeus? Is it Poseidon? Is it the, the Jewish God? Is it the Christian God? Because the Jewish God from the Old Testament is filled with wrath, okay? All right. And, and smoting and smiting and whatever the, the past tense verb is. And so to, and the New Testament, that God is kinder. All right. Nicer. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you look at all of this and say, "Is that the God you want me to comment on?" Or is there some other God? Typically, it's the Judeo-Christian blend. There, in that context, I would say, in my studies of the universe, I, I value evidence, and I don't see evidence for any kind of, um, active intelligence or power over anything. Yeah. But if you had it, ever, then show it to me. I'm all in.
Well, I mean, you said you don't like to be labeled an atheist, more agnostic. Yeah. And the definition of agnostic is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God. That's, I, agnostic comes closer to what I am than atheist does. Yeah. But all that rest of that baggage that agnostic carries is, is off the edges for me. Okay. So the reason why I disavowed the atheist title is very simple. The most visible atheists today do things and think things that I don't do. Such as, oh, um, they're quick to use CE and BCE when referencing dates on the calendar. Okay. CE, Common Era. BCE, Before. They have eschewed the, the, uh, BC and AD. Good. That makes a religious reference. I totally celebrate AD and BC because the calendar that we currently use, the Gregorian calendar, what came out under Pope Gregory, who figured out that the leap day system of ancient Rome doesn't work, you have to adjust that. And so they adjusted it and corrected the calendar. A whole lot of astronomical analysis, right? Because there's no zeros in the Roman Calendar. Zero was not invented yet. Yeah. Exactly. So that's not the only reason. Uh, yes, because Roman numerals, you cannot represent zero with Roman numerals. Interestingly, how have you ever thought of that? Yeah. There's no zero there. So, so it's not just that zero got invented afterwards, it's that the relationship between the day of the year and where Earth is in its orbit was more precisely defined, or rather where the sun is in its orbit around Earth. We were still largely, among many, we were geocentric at the time. But it doesn't matter if you're accounting for time frames. Point is, if they put in the hard work, I'm going to respect that and I'm not going to sweep that under the rug. My favorite musical on Broadway, which I saw in real time because that's how old I am, it was Jesus Christ Superstar. I love it. I listen to that every Easter and then some. Okay. I'm, I, I love culture as a binding force of civilization. They're atheist Jews. Aren't in atheist Jews who still celebrate a Passover Seder? I'm an atheist Jew. Atheist Jew, right? You still leave the empty seat for, for Elijah and unlock the door. By the way, if someone did walk through the door, you'd probably shoot him. Okay. But that seems to be what you can do these days. But you, you're not literally thinking that's going to happen. So there's a cultural exercise that you go through. So, so there's, so there's that. Also, I don't chase people down when they speak of their religious allegiances. I might ask them about it, but I'm not going to challenge them. I, I value the diversity of people's spiritual expression in this country where it is protected, and in the world, not every place where it continues to be protected, where it was ever protected. So I once said in my Facebook post, I had a friend going up on the shuttle to fix the Hubble telescope, one of the servicing missions, and I said, uh, "My friend is going up, fix the Hubble. Great. Um, Godspeed, STS-1." I forgot the number. STS is how they numbered the shuttle missions, but I've got the specific number. I said, "Godspeed." What did someone say right after that? "Godspeed? I thought you were an atheist." Here's my point. If my behavior triggers people to say, "I thought you were an atheist," then I'm not an atheist. Because words in the dictionary, words were not defined by the dictionary. They're described in a manner that reflects how words come into use. But otherwise, we'd still be speaking like Chaucer. So, so atheists today comes with expectations of what you're going to say and do. And since I don't fulfill that, we need another word for me. I don't know. And agnostic was like, agnostic, maybe that. Yeah. And, yeah, I think I'm probably more agnostic as well. Listen, I have Christian people in my family, and I totally respect their point of view. You know, I'll say words like "God willing," and people like, "I thought you didn't believe in God." That's my point. Yeah. It's a whole, it's a whole kind of cluster [ __ ] of of ideas, you know.
Oh, by the way, if you, by the way, as a scientist, if you're religious and you say something that is patently objectively false, I will tell you. I'm not going to respect your views if they're objectively false. As I owe that to your intellect to explain to you what is objectively true in the face of what you think is true, want to be true, or wish for for what is true. So when you say, "The Christian," I respect it. I don't respect. That's, that's not the operative word for me. Um, I, I respect your freedom to think whatever you want. But if you're going to make a decision based on something that's objectively false that emanates from your belief system, no matter what it is, I'm obliga, as an educator, I say, you know, that's not going to work, or here's why it's not going to work. You're advising someone else who doesn't know better, and that's not in their best interest. Yeah. I'm going to say that.