“…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might.
When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day… If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology.
The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased… I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim.
I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do… I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study.
…Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.
[Columbian Magazine interview]”
Thomas A. Edison
“I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do.”
That’s some potent stuff right there.
I remember going with my class in third or fourth grade to Menlo Park to see his laboratory and being awestruck at the sight of it. A place devoted completely to understanding the mechanics of the physical world and in the middle of it this little cot where he slept.
[img]http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/thomas-edisons-desk-and-sleeping-cot-in-his-lab-in-east-orange-picture-id517357376[/img]
“I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth …….”
But you believe it, not know it.
There is knowledge and there is belief, one in based on observable facts and the other on faith in something you don’t or cannot know.
What makes your belief any more valid than anyone else’s belief unless it has been proven empirically wrong? The results of a belief can be observed, but the basis of it cannot.
(an obviously rhetorical question since it can’t be asked directly of him)
I have a friend who was the caretaker of Edison’s assistant, Bob Halgrim. Bob was in his nineties when I met him, he had a house full of stuff Edison had given him, he showed me how a phonograph worked, things like that. Interesting guy. Edison and Henry Ford had their winter homes side by side on the Gulf in Ft. Myers, they made one compound out of them. Amazing how spartan they are by today’s standards. Halgrim died only about ten years ago, when you look at old, old black and whites of Edison, it almost doesn’t seem possible
People used to go to Florida so they could spend all winter outside.
Edison was not a scientist, he was a tinkerer(who bought the patents for the light bulb), which is why he wasted ten years trying to automate a mine in Utah. The far more brilliant and accomplished Tesla was a strong Deist….Edison also engaged in a dishonest slander campaign against alternating current, Tesla’s invention.
The conflict between Edison and Tesla is an entire topic in itself, something that I think was made into a movie once (the name of which I can’t remember).
In reality, they both laid the basis for the modern world, one (mostly) through theory and the other through practical applications that people could use.
We’d be the lesser had either of them not lived in America.
“We’d be the lesser had either of them not lived in America.”
Why? Their inventions/discoveries are in use globally.
They were developed here, the leader of innovation at the time, why do you think Tesla came to America in the first place?
I think many people need the pressure of the belief that someone up there will punish them if they do bad things. It is an indisputable fact that when all or even most people on earth do as they would have others do unto them, the world will be paradise for all of us. When society has generally abandoned the notion of an omnipotent being that punishes wrongdoers, the stupid idiots who can’t reason the Golden Rule to be true are the ones who keep us running in the ditch.
We do not teach DISCIPLINE in the schools these days. True discipline comes from within; the ability to treat another person with restraint and respect is not externally force-able. Young men and women are driven by hormones and desires, even more so than their elders; one night of wonderful passion and desire can lead to a twenty-year commitment, even if sensible precautions are taken and accidentally fail for some reason. Yes, there is abortion now; but one hears of mental and emotional damage even with that fallback.
We should be teaching discipline in the schools, the media and the literature / culture. An excess of discipline might lead to forgoing some pleasures; a deficiency of discipline can lead to disease, financial disaster and even death. Which serves humanity more? Which serves the individuals involved more?