Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988)
Scientist, genius, agnostic and freedom-lover.

A very fundamental part of my soul is to doubt and to ask. And when you doubt and ask it gets a little harder to believe.

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and in many things I don’t know anything about such as whether it means anything to ask, why are we here? And what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit if I can’t figure it out then I go to something else.

But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t have to. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things. By being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.

Possibly.

It doesn’t frighten me.

9 thoughts on “Richard Feynman”

  1. I find his position weak.
    Peter doubted Christ enough to deny knowing him, Despite having walked upon water with him. For some people There is never enough evidence to make a stand.
    He is testifying to his own ‘Lost’ condition. Of course there is room for doubt in even the most certain of beliefs…the truth is the Sun may not rise tomorrow.
    This guy is not presenting a position…. he’s definitively promoting *No Comment*… Its almost a refusal to think… a refusal to make a stand… a spineless lack of conviction… and he expects us to be deceived into mistaking his spinelessness… for bravery.
    Bravery is weighing all things and giving some one position ‘the benefit of the doubt’, not simply waving your hands in the air and saying ‘I have no position’.
    And the Christian ought to spot the subtlety of the Devil here… as he is in fact repeating Satans very first words to Mankind. The seeds of doubt which brought Man to ruin and separation from God… “Yea hath God said? “
    This guy is putting himself in opposition to the whole Bible and attempting to undermine Faith… in particular he seeks to undermine Bible believing Faith! “Its too provincial”…talk about piss weak arguement! He is not objective. he is not Impartial. he is squarely opposing himself to Christianity.

    “And Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness”
    “Without faith it is impossible to please God”.

    How does a Finite Being ever expect to have a loving relationship with the infinite being without faith? Does he expect to understand the totality of God before he will believe?
    That’s absurd.
    This is merely a Sophists excuse for not giving the Bible its due.

  2. Blar Blar Science…. Blar blar.
    Man has been called ‘The worshipping Animal’… That Man questions why he exists displays the reality that he is religious by nature. This guy does not bother to ask himself why he is concerned with descovering ‘The truth’. Infact he hides this Nature of Mankind under the mundane title of ‘Scientific investigation’. LameO!… He discounts ‘Mystisism’… by blind faith! he clings to Materialist Pseudo science… by blind faith! That he claims to be a pure doubter (agnostic) is bollocks! Hes as religious as everyone else! He has faith in Atheism… says I. It is laughable that he ‘refuses to be disillusioned’ with the absurdity of expecting science to answer all our questions! He obviously is fixated with ‘scientific’ explanations…. as long as they dont include Design, and Moral obligation.

  3. You can approach the question of the truthfulness of the Bible from two directions. Either by trying to prove the Bible is true, or by trying to prove it is wrong.
    I was once a hardcore atheist whom assumed all the common things atheists asume and could not contemplate the Idea of a God.
    Yet circumstances arrived whereby I felt obliged to at least listen to what a small group of Christians had to say… out of courtesy. How could that be dangerous?
    It was an absolute surprise that they were able to explode a great deal of the assumptions that underpinned my Atheism, esp the Case for Evolution, and to demonstrate that Not all Christians were whackos. It continued to be surprising that when I went about testing and checking the things they asserted, that I found that they held good. After a period of time… I remember the moment… that all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and the Bible made more sense to me than Atheist Materialism.

    *Since that day… I have spent 25 years in the honest quest to prove the Bible wrong… yet in all cases giving it the benefit of the doubt.*

    And it is via this method that systematically I have found all Atheist arguments against the Bible are full of holes… and atheism is unable to disprove the validity of the scriptures. It is via this method… of investigating every Atheist attempt to discredit the Bible, and finding them vacuous that My faith in the scriptures has grown from strength to strength. Today I have absolutely no fear of any atheist argument which claims to be able to discredit the scriptures. I relish the challenge of putting the scriptures to the test… because experience has proven that The Bible can withstand every cannon ball fired at it by ‘Doubters’. Sometimes it has taken me several years to weave my way through the eye of the needle, yet the joy of finding the answer to very tuff challenges is extremely rewarding. I bow before God and say Amen, and recommit myself to the service of the gospel.
    This is my testimony as to how a modern man can Walk trough the modern world with his eyes open and be a Bible believer.
    I testify that by this method , the fruit is a Bible believing Faith. The Bible stands sure like a rock.

    Most modern people have been deceived into taking the opposite approach to faith by accepting atheist lines of reasoning as valid, and automatically give the benefit of any doubt to unbelief, then I am not surprised that the end result will be Agnosticism.
    This is a method that chooses blindness… And those whom function this way (Like this dude) will never grasp the validity of the scriptures, but will remain lost in the darkness.

  4. Why Richard do you think this guy is a Genius?

    One reason is that he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics.

  5. He’s no fraud, Tim.

    Try contrasting Feynman’s agnosticism with (e.g.) Rand’s atheism, instead of contrasting his agnosticism with your theism! I believe then you’ll see him in a more favourable light. 🙂

    Here’s some more Feynman. (Remarks at a Caltech YMCA lunch forum, 2 May 1956.)

    Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure — the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it — the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics — the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual — the humility of the spirit.

    These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But logic is not all; one needs one’s heart to follow an idea. If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to? Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God — more, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts? So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other? Is this unavoidable? How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?

  6. Tim, agnosticism – intellectual agnosticism – is a virtue.

    Arrogant know-it-alls stir up discord, but wise men and women listen to each other’s counsel. (Proverbs 13:10)

    Feynman equates “the scientific spirit of adventure” with “the humility of the intellect”. He adopts “the attitude that all is uncertain.” He is the polar opposite of an arrogant know-it-all.

    For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

    Ignorance is part of the human condition. And Feynman makes a point of acknowledging this: “We are not so smart. We are dumb. We are ignorant.”

  7. Hang on Richard, There is a big difference between admitting we have much to learn, from refusing to have a position on God…. (and then in actuality clearly siding with materialism and pig headedly maintaining science is the only valid method of knowing…which is why I say his claim to agnosticism is bogus).
    The Proverb says to listen… but in listening you are not told to abandon your belief in God!
    Feynman is not putting forward the philosophy which gave birth to Modern science, but denying it. Modern Science was built upon faith not doubt!
    Faith That the Universe is Ordered rationally as a consequence of being the handiwork of a Rational creator, and faith that God has given us the powers of reason to apprehend what he has made. Science being the quest to understand the divine order. That’s the true historical premises which underpinned the Birth of Modern science with everyone whom contributed being Theists, eg, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Boyle, Von Linnaeus, Mendel,etc…
    Thus he is refuted.

    Your quote from Corinthians is actually referring to the spiritual ‘Gift of knowledge’…. which was a supernatural wisdom… that has since passed away with the completion of the scriptures… Now we have the scriptures we read the truth ‘Face to face’… and pay no heed to Prophets etc.
    Thus that scripture is actually opposed to Feynman because it promotes Divine Revelation as a Legitimate… in fact the ultimate source of Knowledge.

    It is also Interesting how a Man who writes about ‘The uncertainty of values’ can say those positive things about Christianity (in your earlier quote).
    Again ‘Uncertainty in values’ is a Materialist delemma… a refusal to admit that Christian values are morally binding… simply because of the refusal to accept Divine Revelation as a legitimate source of Knowledge.
    Accepting the Scriptures as Divine truth is not to abandon reason in favor of superstition.
    The Higher Reason is that If there is a God, it is perfectly reasonable to expect him to have communicated to Man whatever knowledge about himself he deems important, and the scriptures may be tested (eg That Animals procreate Kind after their kind, and do not morph from germ into fish into lizard into mammal into primate into man).

    That he seeks to cling to the morality/values of the Bible yet toss out God just goes to show that he knows Atheism/,materialism is Amoral and that such things as Right and wrong, Rights etc cannot be derived from Atheist materialism, which renders all such values as at best culturally relative… and all too human conventions, that have no real obligation… That ultimately in the atheist world Murder and charity are equally meaningless.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *