Religous debates and questions [2]

Wait, why does Napoleon speak with a cheesy, thick, mock-french accent, while Laplace speaks English with no trace of an accent at all?   

It seems historically questionable, I'm thinking. I wonder about the source of this story.....  

{{This is exactly why I've learned to be suspicious of storytellers!}}

Because Laplace only has one short sentence to deliver, with no words obviously ripe for Frenchification. But there, I just fixed it for you.

The version I presented has been happily passed through the ages, though the true story likely doesn't paint the relationship between god and the universe quite so broadly.

Newton was able to calculate the orbits of the Sun and single planet precisely, and the motion is stable.  But he was unable to manage the many body problem presented by the Solar system.  It seemed likely that little gravitational nudges between planets would unbalance the system and it would go chaotic.  Hence Newton noted that perhaps God would have to intervene from time to time to keep the system stable.

Laplace was able to show that the solar system was in fact stable (or at least it was very close to a stable solution).  So rather than ruling out the existence of God, Laplace simply noted that for this particular task God was not needed.  He was an atheist nonetheless, but in all probability during this famous exchange he confined himself more carefully to when God would not be needed.

We now know that the Solar system is capable of chaotic motion, especially in the asteroids, but the concepts of chaos didn't begin to seep into mathematics until the 19th century, and the larger planets are currently close enough to stable that Laplace was basically correct.

That makes more sense.

You say that Laplace was an atheist, but that often meant something different at the turn of the 19th century that we think of now. Do you know if he ever expressed an opinion on the origins of the universe?

Don't know. I only know there's a mention of his shocking a dinner party by his atheistic viewpoints.

Found a discussion on Wikipedia:

A frequently cited but apocryphal interaction between Laplace and Napoleon purportedly concerns the existence of God. A typical version is provided by Rouse Ball:[8]

   Laplace went in state to Napoleon to present a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. ("I had no need of that hypothesis.") Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, Ah! c'est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses. ("Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.")

In 1884, however, the astronomer Hervé Faye[54][55] affirmed that this account of Laplace's exchange with Napoleon presented a "strangely transformed" (étrangement transformée) or garbled version of what had actually happened. It was not God that Laplace had treated as a hypothesis, but merely his intervention at a determinate point:

   In fact Laplace never said that. Here, I believe, is what truly happened. Newton, believing that the secular perturbations which he had sketched out in his theory would in the long run end up destroying the solar system, says somewhere that God was obliged to intervene from time to time to remedy the evil and somehow keep the system working properly. This, however, was a pure supposition suggested to Newton by an incomplete view of the conditions of the stability of our little world. Science was not yet advanced enough at that time to bring these conditions into full view. But Laplace, who had discovered them by a deep analysis, would have replied to the First Consul that Newton had wrongly invoked the intervention of God to adjust from time to time the machine of the world (la machine du monde) and that he, Laplace, had no need of such an assumption. It was not God, therefore, that Laplace treated as a hypothesis, but his intervention in a certain place.

Laplace's younger colleague, the astronomer François Arago, who gave his eulogy before the French Academy in 1827,[56] told Faye that the garbled version of Laplace's interaction with Napoleon was already in circulation towards the end of Laplace's life. Faye writes:[54][55]

   I have it on the authority of M. Arago that Laplace, warned shortly before his death that that anecdote was about to be published in a biographical collection, had requested him [Arago] to demand its deletion by the publisher. It was necessary to either explain or delete it, and the second way was the easiest. But, unfortunately, it was neither deleted nor explained.

The Swiss-American historian of mathematics Florian Cajori appears to have been unaware of Faye's research, but in 1893 he came to a similar conclusion.[57] Stephen Hawking said in 1999,[40] "I don't think that Laplace was claiming that God does not exist. It's just that he doesn't intervene, to break the laws of Science."

The only eyewitness account of Laplace's interaction with Napoleon is an entry in the diary of the British astronomer Sir William Herschel. Since this makes no mention of Laplace saying, "I had no need of that hypothesis," Daniel Johnson[58] argues that "Laplace never used the words attributed to him." Arago's testimony, however, appears to imply that he did, only not in reference to the existence of God.
Views on God

Born a Catholic, Laplace appears for most of his life to have veered between deism (presumably his considered position, since it is the only one found in his writings) and atheism.

Faye thought that Laplace "did not profess atheism",[54] but Napoleon, on Saint Helena, told General Gaspard Gourgaud, "I often asked Laplace what he thought of God. He owned that he was an atheist."[59] Roger Hahn, in his biography of Laplace, mentions a dinner party at which "the geologist Jean-Étienne Guettard was staggered by Laplace's bold denunciation of the existence of God". It appeared to Guettard that Laplace's atheism "was supported by a thoroughgoing materialism".[60] But the chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas, who knew Laplace well in the 1820s, wrote that Laplace "gave materialists their specious arguments, without sharing their convictions".[61][62]

Hahn states: "Nowhere in his writings, either public or private, does Laplace deny God's existence."[63] Expressions occur in his private letters that appear inconsistent with atheism.[3] On 17 June 1809, for instance, he wrote to his son, "Je prie Dieu qu'il veille sur tes jours. Aie-Le toujours présent à ta pensée, ainsi que ton pére et ta mére ."[55][64] Ian S. Glass, quoting Herschel's account of the celebrated exchange with Napoleon, writes that Laplace was "evidently a deist like Herschel".[65]

In Exposition du système du monde, Laplace quotes Newton's assertion that "the wondrous disposition of the Sun, the planets and the comets, can only be the work of an all-powerful and intelligent Being".[66] This, says Laplace, is a "thought in which he [Newton] would be even more confirmed, if he had known what we have shown, namely that the conditions of the arrangement of the planets and their satellites are precisely those which ensure its stability".[67] By showing that the "remarkable" arrangement of the planets could be entirely explained by the laws of motion, Laplace had eliminated the need for the "supreme intelligence" to intervene, as Newton had "made" it do.[68] Laplace cites with approval Leibniz's criticism of Newton's invocation of divine intervention to restore order to the solar system: "This is to have very narrow ideas about the wisdom and the power of God."[69] He evidently shared Leibniz's astonishment at Newton's belief "that God has made his machine so badly that unless he affects it by some extraordinary means, the watch will very soon cease to go".[70]

In a group of manuscripts, preserved in relative secrecy in a black envelope in the library of the Académie des sciences and published for the first time by Hahn, Laplace mounted a deist critique of Christianity. It is, he writes, the "first and most infallible of principles ... to reject miraculous facts as untrue".[71] As for the doctrine of transubstantiation, it "offends at the same time reason, experience, the testimony of all our senses, the eternal laws of nature, and the sublime ideas that we ought to form of the Supreme Being". It is the sheerest absurdity to suppose that "the sovereign lawgiver of the universe would suspend the laws that he has established, and which he seems to have maintained invariably".[72]

In old age, Laplace remained curious about the question of God[73] and frequently discussed Christianity with the Swiss astronomer Jean-Frédéric-Théodore Maurice.[74] He told Maurice that "Christianity is quite a beautiful thing" and praised its civilizing influence. Maurice thought that the basis of Laplace's beliefs was, little by little, being modified, but that he held fast to his conviction that the invariability of the laws of nature did not permit of supernatural events.[73] After Laplace's death, Poisson told Maurice, "You know that I do not share your [religious] opinions, but my conscience forces me to recount something that will surely please you." When Poisson had complimented Laplace about his "brilliant discoveries", the dying man had fixed him with a pensive look and replied, "Ah! we chase after phantoms [chimères]."[75] These were his last words, interpreted by Maurice as a realization of the ultimate "vanity" of earthly pursuits.[76] Laplace received the last rites from the curé of the Missions Étrangères (in whose parish he was to be buried)[62] and the curé of Arcueil.[76]

However, according to his biographer, Roger Hahn, since it is "not credible" that Laplace "had a proper Catholic end", the "last rights" (sic) were ineffective and he "remained a skeptic" to the very end of his life.[77] Laplace in his last years has been described as an agnostic.

 

I love that one.

This is prehistoric morality and we shouldn't need a god to outlaw delusions or their infestation.

I thought this was an interesting comment on a previous topic; "but anything shown up by the light will be illuminated, and anything illuminated is itself a light". I think it says something about lightness perception; even a black surface will appear white when illuminated in isolation.

(And although there is a valid argument to make regarding the (wanting) purpose of such a gigantic universe, other than perhaps declaring the glory of its cause, someone really should point out the elegance of a self generating universe and carbon based ecosystem--including its congruence with sentient beings, all from a few basic physical laws.. and space-time itself being a construct. http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia ).

A man stands there, impersonating Jesus,   with his arms outstretched, a plank of wood up his back, He says to his friend, " think I nailed it "

 

A Roman centurion has Jesus on the cross and reaches in his pocket for the nails, but finds the wrong tool. "Crap, I'm screwed."

  Not sure I caught all the national permutations through the first few millennia.

From the thread on reddit.

Early man

Canaanite

Egyptian

Assyrian

Israelite

Babylonian

Macedonian/Greek (Alexander the Great)

Greek/Macedonian (Alexander's generals)

Ptolemaic

Seleucid

Hebrew Priest

Maccabee

Roman

Byzantine

Arab Caliph

Crusader

Mamluk of Egypt

Ottoman Turk

Arab

British

Palestinian

European (Jew/Zionist)

PLO/Hamas/Hezbollah

State of Israel

Guerrilla/Fredom fighter/Terrorist

Death

http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/23cqpi/this_land_is_mine/

That was pretty well done. I don't want to call it "funny" because it's a serious topic, but ... yeah.

Yeah very nicely put together and conceived.

 

That sounds like an accurate description of (this) Jesus.

He doesnt look very jewish to me   

He's the King of the Juice(d up guys).