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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We drove to Hancock Park today to meet with friends that we\u2019ve known since our days of living in Egypt.\u00a0 They\u2019re now living in the Los Angeles area, and the ones that we first knew when they were children now have (very lively) children of their own.\u00a0 We gawked at the La Brea Tar Pits<\/a>, of course, but spent most of our time in the adjacent George C. Page Museum (and then at a leisurely lunch with good conversation thereafter).\u00a0 I used to come to the Tar Pits on school field trips when I was a kid, and I\u2019ve visited them more times than I could ever begin to count.\u00a0 (Which, you must understand, has to have been an acutely painful experience for me, since, as I\u2019ve learned over the years from several critics online who don\u2019t know me, I\u2019m a young-earth creationist who believes that the world is only about six or seven thousand years old.)\u00a0 But the museum is a vast improvement over what was there when I was a schoolboy, and the exhibits in the museum are much improved even over what we saw when we were living in West Los Angeles and bringing our own kids to the Tar Pits.\u00a0 (And I loved the tee shirt on sale in the Museum\u2019s gift shop that reads \u201cWhat happens in the La Brea Tar Pits stays in the La Brea Tar Pits.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n After we bade our friends adieu, needing to occupy just a short bit of time, my wife and I decided to visit the Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery, which is hidden just off of Wilshire Boulevard in such a way that only those deliberately looking for it would ever know that it\u2019s there.\u00a0 Anyway, I\u2019m a history nut, and there are few things that are more interesting to me than people and their biographies.\u00a0 So historic cemeteries are fascinating to me, too.\u00a0 (I\u2019m still wanting to spend more time at the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia<\/a>.)\u00a0 And this particular tiny cemetery, Westwood Village Memorial Park, is absolutely rich with history of a certain kind \u2014 very different history, of course, from Arlington National Cemetery, where we spent several hours walking about last month \u2014 as you can readily see from the list of people who are interred there<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s an excellent place for reflection, too.\u00a0 For what has long been called memento mori<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 After all of the fame and the glory that many of the residents of the cemetery enjoyed during their lifetimes, did it really all just come down to this<\/em>?\u00a0 And the idea that Hugh Hefner is entombed right next to Marilyn Monroe?\u00a0 (He spent big money for the spot.<\/a>)\u00a0 It seems incredibly tacky to me.\u00a0 In the face of death, in a cemetery, Hefner\u2019s adolescent male-fantasy \u201cPlayboy philosophy\u201d seems irrelevant and, well, more than a little out of place.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m still going through old blog entries, culling notes from them for future writing purposes.\u00a0 Tonight, I drew out the following quotations, which are all basically on the subject of science and religion.\u00a0 I hope that you\u2019ll find them interesting:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Science and religion . . . are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there\u2019s a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don\u2019t agree. In fact, I\u2019d go so far as to say that if people in this so-called \u2018scientific age\u2019 knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they\u2019d find it easier to share my views.\u00a0 (<\/b>Sir John Polkinghorne, theoretical physicist, Anglican priest, and theologian)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Two quotations from Modern Physics and Ancient Faith<\/i>, by Stephen M. Barr, a cosmologist and theoretical particle physicist at the University of Delaware:<\/p>\n \u201cScience has given us new eyes that allow us to see down to the deeper roots of the world\u2019s structure, and there all we see is order and symmetry of pristine mathematical purity.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe universe looks far more orderly to us now than it did to the ancients who appealed to that order as proof of God\u2019s existence.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.\u201d\u00a0 (<\/b>Werner Heisenberg, 1932 Nobel Laureate in Physics)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., Princeton University astrophysicist and 1993 Nobel laureate for his work on binary pulsars<\/p>\n \u201cA scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world.\u201d\u00a0 <\/b>(Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., Princeton University astrophysicist and 1993 Nobel laureate for his work on binary pulsars)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis sense of wonder leads most scientists to a Superior Being \u2013 der Alte, the Old One, as Einstein affectionately called the Deity \u2013 a Superior Intelligence, the Lord of all Creation and Natural Law.\u201d\u00a0 (<\/b>Abdus Salam, 1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Two passages from the Anglo-American theoretical physicist Paul Davies, winner of the 2001 Kelvin Medal from the Institute of Physics and the 2002 Faraday Award from the Royal Society:<\/p>\n People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Proof is only applicable to very rarefied areas of philosophy and mathematics. . . . \u00a0For the most part we are driven to acting on good evidence, without the luxury of proof. \u00a0There is good evidence of the link between cause and effect. \u00a0There is good evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. \u00a0There is good reason to believe my mother loves me and is not just fattening me up for the moment when she will pop arsenic into my tea. \u00a0And there is good reason to believe in God. \u00a0Very good reason. \u00a0Not conclusive proof, but very good reason just the same. . . . \u00a0I believe it is much harder to reject the existence of a supreme being than accept it.\u00a0 <\/b>(<\/span>Rev. Canon Dr. Michael Green, of Oxford, in\u00a0Faith for the Non-religious<\/i>)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Posted from Los Angeles, California<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 We drove to Hancock Park today to meet with friends that we\u2019ve known since our days of living in Egypt.\u00a0 They\u2019re now living in the Los Angeles area, and the ones that we first knew when they were children now have (very lively) children of their own.\u00a0 We gawked at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27804,27128,27131,4291,19739,5550,23627,27774,5168,909,27816,12188,27795,27798,27789,20694,27807,27819,5346,27792,27813,27801,9227,2004,2746,27825,1230,743,3583,243,14447,27810,27822,3589,6381,27786],"class_list":["post-94044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abdus-salam","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-national-cemetery","tag-arthur-eddington","tag-barr","tag-california","tag-cemetery","tag-eddington","tag-evidence","tag-faith","tag-hancock-park","tag-heisenberg","tag-hollywood","tag-hollywood-cemetery","tag-hugh-hefner","tag-john-polkinghorne","tag-joseph-h-taylor","tag-la-brea","tag-los-angeles","tag-marilyn-monroe","tag-memento-mori","tag-michael-green","tag-oxford","tag-paul-davies","tag-polkinghorne","tag-rancho-la-brea","tag-reason","tag-religion","tag-richmond","tag-science","tag-stephen-barr","tag-stephen-h-barr","tag-tar-pits","tag-virginia","tag-werner-heisenberg","tag-westwood-village-memorial-park"],"yoast_head":"\n