(no subject)

[pearwaldorf]

From Mimi Smartypants, a lovely speech by Natalie Angier (who I always feel bad about confusing with Naomi Wolfe) on raising her daughter as an atheist, and what that all means.

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one,” Einstein wrote. But rather than be billed as a “professional atheist,” Einstein added, “I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”

So, yes, of course, humility in the face of cosmic grandeur is always warranted; but let us not forget that Einstein sought to the very end of his long life to honor that grandeur by seeking to understand it, bit by bit, with his weak little intellect. How much better, in my view, is that approach, of humility crossed with an unslakable curiosity to delve the majesties of nature; over the sort of hooey humility that we benighted and defeated “liberals” are supposed to be mastering, that preached by the evangelical superstar John Stott, who, according to David Brooks, does not believe that “truth is something humans are working toward. Instead, Truth has been revealed.”