On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:
…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
_________________
Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto:
______________
I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:
Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky,Alan Dershowitz, Hubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross, Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Hermann Hauser, Roald Hoffmann, Bruce Hood, Herbert Huppert, Gareth Stedman Jones, Shelly Kagan, Stuart Kauffman, Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, Elizabeth Loftus, Alan Macfarlane, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow, Yujin Nagasawa, Douglas Osheroff, Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse, Robert M. Price, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Oliver Sacks, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg, Lee Silver, Peter Singer, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, Barry Supple, Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Neil deGrasse Tyson, .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and Lewis Wolpert,
____________________________
Richard Friend
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Friend
Friend in Finland in 2010
Born
Richard Henry Friend
18 January 1953 (age 61)[1]
London[2]
Fields
Optoelectronics
Polymer Light-Emitting Diodes
Thin-Film Field-Effect Transistors
Time-resolved optical spectroscopy
Photovoltaics
Institutions
Eight19 Ltd
Cavendish Laboratory
University of Cambridge
Cambridge Display Technology (CDT)
Plastic Logic
St John’s College, Cambridge
National University of Singapore[citation needed]
Alma mater
Trinity College, Cambridge[1]
University of Paris-Sud[2]
Thesis
Transport properties and lattice instabilities in one and two dimensional metals (1979)
Doctoral advisor
Abraham David “Abe” Yoffe[3]
Denis Jérome[2]
Known for
Plastic electronics
OLED
Organic field-effect transistor
Notable awards
Kt (2003)
FRS (1993)
FREng[4] (2002)
FIET
FInstP
Millennium Technology Prize
Rumford Medal (1998)
Spouse
Carol Anne Maxwell (née Beales)[1]
Website
www.phy.cam.ac.uk/directory/friendr
www.oe.phy.cam.ac.uk/people/oestaff/rhf10.htm
Sir Richard Henry Friend (born 18 January 1953) FRS FREng[5] is Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge and Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. Friend’s research concerns the physics and engineering of carbon-based semiconductors.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]
Contents
[hide]
1 Education
2 Research
3 Awards and honours
4 Personal life
5 References
Education[edit]
Friend was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge,[1] gaining a PhD in 1979.[22]
Research[edit]
Friend’s research has been applied to development of polymer field effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, photovoltaic diodes, optically pumped lasing and directly printed polymer transistors. He pioneered the study of organic polymers and the electronic properties of molecular semiconductors. He is also one of the principal investigators in the new Cambridge-based Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) onnanotechnology and co-founder of Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Plastic Logic. Friend has over 600 publications[6][18] and more than 20 patents.[citation needed] Friend’s research has been used to develop flat panel displays and future screens that can be rolled and transported.
Awards and honours[edit]
In March 2003 Friend won the IEE’s Faraday Medal. He was knighted for “services to physics” in the 2003 Birthday Honours.
In 2010, Friend was elected as one of the three laureates of Millennium Technology Prize for the development of plastic electronics.[23]
In 2011 he was awarded the Harvey Prize of the Technion in Israel.[24] He is a fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow[25] of the Royal Academy of Engineering[26] in 2002.
In the second video below in the 59th clip in this series are his words and my response is below them.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
Quote from Dr. Friend:
Science and superstition, you can never reconcile them. If you believe that the truth lies in strange scrolls dug up from somewhere or another written by someone then there is no logical counter to that.
Below is this letter I respond to the quote above.
April 3, 2015
Sir Richard Friend, c/o Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Dear Dr. Friend,
Let me start off by saying that this is not the first time that I have written you. Earlier I shared several letters of correspondence I had with Carl Sagan, and Antony Flew. Both men were strong believers in evolution as you are today. Instead of talking to you about their views today I wanted to discuss the views of you and Charles Darwin.
As an secular academic your studies tells you that there is no afterlife and we all evolved through time and chance. Then why do people like John Lennon search their whole lives for a lasting meaning and purpose for their lives? I read this week the words of Cynthia Lennon who passed away this week and she said John was on a constant search. Francis Schaeffer talked about the views of the Beatles and Charles Darwin a lot and since you have taken an interest in music and science I thought you would be interested in these thoughts of Schaeffer. I NOTICED IN YOUR INTERVIEW WITH ALAN MACFARLANE THAT YOU ARE A FOLLOWER OF JAZZ. My good friend Sean Michel (who appeared on American Idol in 2007) told me about his uncle who passed away in 1985, Joseph T. “Pee Wee” Spitelera who played with Al Hirt’s band in New Orleans for about 40 years. If you do a You Tube search for “Dinah Shore Al Hirt” then it will bring up a 24 minute video entitled “Al Hirt on the Dinah Shore Chevy Show 1960,” and at the 4 1/2 minute mark Pee Wee Spirtelera takes off on a Clarinet solo that is out of this world. Also if you type in “Al Hirt Johnny Cash Show” then you will see a 4 min and 21 sec video entitled “Al Hirt on the Johnny Cash Show,” and at the 1 min mark Pee Wee goes crazy there in the Clarinet on the Dec 16, 1970 Johnny Cash Show.
_______-
Below is a picture of Pee Wee and he has several other fine songs on You Tube too such as “Blue Clarinet” which would be perfect for a Woody Allen Movie.
_____________
NOT MANY PEOPLE HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE PICTURE ON THE COVER OF SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND IS THE BEATLES’ GRAVE SITE. In the article Philosophy and its Effect on Society, Robert A. Sungenis (who was a personal friend of Schaeffer) tells us:
On the front cover are all the famous “Lonely Hearts” of the world who also could not find answers to life with reason and rationality, resorting to the existential leap into the dark…They are all viewing the burial scene of the Beatles, which, in the framework we are using here, represents the passing of idealistic innocence and the failure to find a rational answer and meaning to life, an answer to love, purpose, significance and morals. They instead were leaping into the irrational, whether it was by drugs, the occult, suicide, or the bizarre.
William Lane Craig observed that BERTRAND RUSSELL wrote that we must build our lives upon “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” and also that Francis Schaeffer noted:
Modern man resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap, because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God.
Charles Darwin had a very interesting reaction late in his life to the possibility that we live in an absurd universe and that was he blamed science for causing him to lose his aesthetic tastes and I read that in his biography ( Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters.). I am going to quote some of Charles Darwin’s own words and then include the comments of Francis Schaeffer on those words. I have also enclosed a CD with two messages from Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff concerning Darwinism.
RECENTLY I READ THIS QUOTE ATTRIBUTED TO YOU:
Science and superstition, you can never reconcile them. If you believe that the truth lies in strange scrolls dug up from somewhere or another written by someone then there is no logical counter to that.
What kind of evidence would it take today to convince you that God exists and the Bible is true? I submit to you that Biblical Archaeology is a field that has advanced tremendously in the last few decades and I propose you look in that area. Did you know that Charles Darwin was looking for evidence that confirmed the Bible’s accuracy back in the 19th century and this is one of the exact areas that he mentioned.
Darwin wrote in his Autobiography in 1876:
“But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels.
Francis Schaeffer commented:
This is very sad. He lies on his bunk and the Beagle tosses and turns and he makes daydreams, and his dreams and hopes are that someone would find in Pompeii or some place like this, an old manuscript by a distinguished Roman that would put his stamp of authority on it, which would be able to show that Christ existed. This is undoubtedly what he is talking about. Darwin gave up this hope with great difficulty. I think he didn’t want to come to the position where his accepted presuppositions were driving him. He didn’t want to give it up, just as an older man he understood where it would lead and “man can do his duty.” Instinctively this of brains understood where this whole thing was going to eventually go…
SINCE CHARLES DARWIN’S DEATH WE NOW HAVE LOTS OF HISTORICAL RECORDS AND MUCH EVIDENCE FROM THE FIELD OF ARCHAEOLOGY THAT SHOW THE BIBLE IS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE.
Just like Darwin you need to ask yourself this same question but you will be doing it almost a century and a half later: Is the Bible historically accurate and have I taken the time to examine the evidence? Obviously Darwin was hoping that archaeology would provide some hope for the accuracy of the Bible. Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject and if you like you could just google these subjects: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology.,
CHARLES DARWIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Addendum. Written May 1st, 1881 [the year before his death].
“I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did….My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive….The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”
Francis Schaeffer commented:
This is the old man Darwin writing at the end of his life. What he is saying here is the further he has gone on with his studies the more he has seen himself reduced to a machine as far as aesthetic things are concerned. I think this is crucial because as we go through this we find that his struggles and my sincere conviction is that he never came to the logical conclusion of his own position, but he nevertheless in the death of the higher qualities as he calls them, art, music, poetry, and so on, what he had happen to him was his own theory was producing this in his own self just as his theories a hundred years later have produced this in our culture.
Unlike Darwin many people today still hang on to their love of music and the arts. Schaeffer points in his book The God Who Is There, pages 68-69, “The very ‘mannishness’ of man refuses to live in the logic of the position to which his humanism and rationalism have brought him. To say that I am only a machine is one thing; to live consistently as if this were true is quite another…Every truly modern man is forced to accept some sort of leap in theory or practice, because the pressure of his own humanity demands it. He can say what he will concerning what he himself is; but no matter what he says he is, he is still a man.”
Francis A. Schaeffer later asserted, “We cannot deal with people like human beings, we cannot deal with them on the high level of true humanity, unless we really know their origin-who they are. God tells man who he is. God tells us that He created man in His image. So man is something wonderful.” ( Escape from Reason: A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought )
The Beatles tried to escape from reason by turning to drugs. In the book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?, Schaeffer observed, “This emphasis on hallucinogenic drugs brought with it many rock groups–for example, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix. Most of their work was from 1965-1968. The Beatles’ SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEART S CLUB BAND (1967) also fits here. This disc is a total unity, not just an isolated series of individual songs, and for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. As a whole, this music was the vehicle to carry the drug culture and the mentality which went with it across frontiers which were almost impassible by other means of communication.”
SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEART S CLUB BAND not only dealt with drugs but also with death. In the TELEGRAPH in Nicky Browne’s obit it was noted that “Paul McCartney told interviewers that he took LSD for the first time with Tara Browne.” Wikipedia records, “The Honourable Tara Browne (4 March 1945 – 18 December 1966) was a young London socialite and heir to the Guinness fortune and was the son of Dominick Browne, 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, a member of the House of Lords since 1927 who later became famous for having served in that house longer than any other peer…According to some sources, Tara was the inspiration for the Beatles song “A Day in the Life“. He sat in on the making of the Beatles record ‘Revolver’.
On 17 January 1967 John Lennon, a friend of Browne’s, was composing music at his piano whilst idly reading London’s Daily Mail and happened upon the news of the coroner’s verdict into Browne’s death. He worked the story into the song “A Day in the Life“, later released on the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The second verse features the following lines:
He blew his mind out in a car, He didn’t notice that the lights had changed, A crowd of people stood and stared, They’d seen his face before, Nobody was really sure, If he was from the House of Lords.
According to Lennon, in his 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, “I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash.”
A side note about Tara Browne is that in Paris his social circle was the likes of Samuel Beckett, Salvador Dali, and Jean Cocteau. Samuel Beckett had a lot to say on this issue of man’s significance as William Lane Craig has noted, “If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? It might be said that his life was important because it influenced others or affected the course of history. Twentieth-century man came to understand this. Read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. During this entire play two men carry on trivial conversation while waiting for a third man to arrive, who never does. Our lives are like that, Beckett is saying; we just kill time waiting—for what, we don’t know. In a tragic portrayal of man, Beckett wrote another play in which the curtain opens revealing a stage littered with junk. For thirty long seconds, the audience sits and stares in silence at that junk. Then the curtain closes. That’s all.”
DESPITE THE FACT THAT YOU BELIEVE THERE IS NO LASTING PURPOSE TO OUR LIVES THAT TRANSCENDS THIS LIFE WHY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE KEEP LOOKING FOR IT? I wonder if you were interested in the Beatles back the 1960’s? I heard on the CBS radio news on 4-1-15 at 11 am that Cynthia Lennon had died at age 75 and an audio clip from the below interview given on the program “60 Minutes” was played and this is what was said between Cynthia and Mike Wallace:
MW: He said that he changed, and you didn’t. And that that is what eventually led to the breakup.
CL: [Nods] I think we both changed. But I did not want to go down the road that John was going.
MW: Which road?
CL: WHICH WAS THE ROAD OF “ENLIGHTENMENT” AS FAR AS DRUGS WAS CONCERNED. John was in a more trapped situation than I was.
Later in this interview:
MW: And LSD was his road to self-discovery?
CL: That was the beginning. HE WAS ALWAYS SEARCHING. JOHN ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE TRUTH, AN IDEAL, A DREAM. And I suppose once he’d got hooked on that situation and the mental state, he thought he’d found something new in life that nobody else had.
____________
No truer words were ever spoken. John in 1967 when the album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was about to come out was in the middle of some big changes in his life. He was searching for meaning in life in what I call the 6 big L words just like King Solomon did in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20).
ECCLESIASTES 1:16-18 LEARNING
16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to knowmadness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
ECCLESIASTES 2:1-3, 8, 10, 11 LAUGHTER (v. 2), LIQUOR (v. 3), LUXURIES (v. 8), and LADIES (v. 8, “many concubines”)
v. 1 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.[i] 2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” 3 I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.
v. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines,[j] the delight of the sons of man. v 10-11 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
ECCLESIASTES 2:4-6, 18-20 LABOR
4 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun,
YOU CAN SEE JOHN LENNON’S EFFORTS IN THESE SAME AREAS OF HIS LIFE TOO. In the first part of his career he put almost all of his time into his music (his labor), and when he achieved fame and fortune (luxuries) he turned to laughter (the movie Hard Days Night demonstrated this well), and then to drugs (Solomon only had liquor to turn to since LSD had not been invented yet). Next when he was unsatisfied with his first marriage he married another woman and then in 1974 actually left Yoko and lived in LA getting drunk continually and having sex with many woman (ladies).
Finally Cynthia and Yoko noted something else about John’s journey:
CL: HE BECAME LESS INTERESTED IN THE ORIGINAL DREAM OF BECOMING FAMOUS AND BECOMING WEALTHY, and that didn’t matter to him anymore. He had that, he had it all….
MW: He seemed to be always searching, whether it was drugs — a lot of them — or vegetarianism, or the Maharishi.
YO: I know, HE WAS ALWAYS SEARCHING. WE WERE ALWAYS SEARCHING. Together we went through macrobiotic, we went through vegetarian. And, um…we went…we went into all sorts, actually. Primal therapy.
_______
John also tried searching into learning about religions and other things that may bring him a meaning in life, but he never found it. (Actually I found Steve Turner’s article “John Lennon’s Born-Again Phase,” very enlightening. Turner noted that Lennon “enjoyed watching some of America’s best-known evangelists—Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, Jim Bakker, and Oral Roberts. In 1972 he had written a desperate letter to Roberts confessing his dependence on drugs and his fear of facing up to ‘the problems of life.’ ” Sadly, after a short period of investigating Christianity Lennon turned back into a strong critic of Christianity.) NONE OF THESE 6 “L” WORDS CAN BRING SATISFACTION IN LIFE IF GOD IS NOT IN THE PICTURE.
Francis Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
If you are an atheist then you have a naturalistic materialistic worldview, and this short book of Ecclesiastes should interest you because the wisest man who ever lived in the position of King of Israel came to THREE CONCLUSIONS that will affect you.
FIRST, chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13)
These two verses below take the 3 elements mentioned in a naturalistic materialistic worldview (time, chance and matter) and so that is all the unbeliever can find “under the sun” without God in the picture. You will notice that these are the three elements that evolutionists point to also.
Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 is following: I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.
SECOND, Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
THIRD, Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1, 8:15)
Ecclesiastes 4:1-2: “Next I turned my attention to all the outrageous violence that takes place on this planet—the tears of the victims, no one to comfort them; the iron grip of oppressors, no one to rescue the victims from them.” Ecclesiastes 8:14; “ Here’s something that happens all the time and makes no sense at all: Good people get what’s coming to the wicked, and bad people get what’s coming to the good. I tell you, this makes no sense. It’s smoke.”
Solomon had all the resources in the world and he found himself searching for meaning in life and trying to come up with answers concerning the afterlife. However, it seems every door he tries to open is locked. Today men try to find satisfaction in learning, liquor, ladies, luxuries, laughter, and labor and that is exactly what Solomon tried to do too. None of those were able to “fill the God-sized vacuum in his heart” (quote from famous mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal). You have to wait to the last chapter in Ecclesiastes to find what Solomon’s final conclusion is.
In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an un