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LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (1889-1951), one of the founders of analytic philosophy

According to Encyclopedia Britannica (1997), “Wittgenstein is the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.”

1. “To believe in God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Arthur Allen Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr, Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, New York, Free Press, 1988, 567).

2. At one time, Wittgenstein had begun each day by repeating the Lord’s prayer. Concerning this prayer, once he told his friend Maurice Drury:

“It is the most extraordinary prayer ever written. No one ever composed a prayer like it. But remember the Christian religion does not consist in saying a lot of prayers, in fact we are commanded just the opposite. If you and I are to live religious lives it must not just be that we talk a lot about religion, but that in some way our lives are different.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, editor – Rush Rhees, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1981, 109).

3. The diaries that Wittgenstein kept during the First World War (in which he was a volunteer) reveal that he often prayed, not that he should be spared from death, but that he should meet it without cowardice and without losing control of himself:

“How will I behave when it comes to shooting? I am not afraid of being shot but of not doing my duty properly. God give me strength! Amen! If it is all over with me now, may I die a good death, mindful of myself. May I never lose myself! Now I might have the opportunity to be a decent human being, because I am face to face with death. May the spirit enlighten me.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London, Routledge, 1993, 8-9).

4. To Drury he said: “It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London, Routledge, 1993, 20).

5. In 1929 Wittgenstein wrote: “If something is good it is also divine. In a strange way this sums up my ethics. Only the supernatural can express the Supernatural.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London, Routledge, 1993, 16).

6. Here is a comparison of the Gospels with Paul’s letters: “The spring which flows quietly and transparently through the Gospels seems to have foam on it in Paul’s Epistles. Or, that is how it seems to me. Perhaps it is just my own impurity which sees cloudiness in it; for why shouldn’t this impurity be able to pollute what is clear? But to me it’s as if I saw human passion here, something like pride or anger, which does not agree with the humility of the Gospels. As if there were here an emphasis on his own person, and even as a religious act, which is foreign to the Gospel. In the Gospels – so it seems to me – everything is less pretentious, humbler, simpler. There are huts; with Paul a church. There all men are equal and God himself is a man; with Paul there is already something like a hierarchy; honours and offices. That is, as it were, what my nose tells me.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London, Routledge, 1993, 16).

7. “WITTGENSTEIN: Drury, what is your favourite Gospel? DRURY: I don’t think I have ever asked myself that question. WITTGENSTEIN: Mine is St. Matthew’s. Matthew seems to me to contain everything. Now, I can’t understand the Fourth Gospel. When I read those long discourses, it seems to me as if a different person is speaking than in the synoptic Gospels. The only incident that reminds me of the others is the story of the woman taken in adultery. ... At one time I thought that the epistles of St. Paul were a different religion to that of the Gospels. But now I see clearly that I was wrong. It is one and the same religion in both the Gospels and the Epistles.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, editor – Rush Rhees, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1981, 177-178).

8. “The Christian religion is only for one who needs infinite help, therefore only for one who feels an infinite need. The whole planet cannot be in greater anguish than a single soul. The Christian faith – as I view it – is the refuge in this ultimate anguish. To whom it is given in this anguish to open his heart, instead of contracting it, accepts the means of salvation in his heart.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London, Routledge, 1993, 17).

9. “Christianity is indeed the only sure way to happiness.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Monk 1991, 122).

10. “Christianity is not a doctrine; I mean, not a theory about what has happened and will happen with the human soul, but a description of an actual occurrence in human life. For ‘consciousness of sin’ is an actual occurrence, and so are despair and salvation through faith.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London, Routledge, 1993, 16).

11. “Religious faith and superstition are entirely different. One of them springs from fear and is a kind of false science. The other is a trusting.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London, Routledge, 1993, 18).

12. Wittgenstein’s biographer and friend, Norman Malcolm wrote: “Wittgenstein’s mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling. I am inclined to think that he was more deeply religious than are many people who correctly regard themselves as religious believers.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London, Routledge, 1993, 21-22).

13. Two years before his death, Wittgenstein said to Drury:

“I have had a letter from an old friend in Austria, a priest. In it he says he hopes my work will go well, if it should be God’s will. Now that is all I want: if it should be God’s will. Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbuechlein, ‘To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby.’ That is what I would have liked to say about my work.” (Wittgenstein, as cited in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, editor – Rush Rhees, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1981, 181-182).

In their Article "Bridge between Science & Religion", Nadeem Haque & Mehran Banaei take "the route of intelligence, rather than that of chance" and suggest "that Qur’an can be used as a guide and motivator to dissolve the artificial boundary between the sacred and the profane, science and divinity, through a natural rapprochement based on the correlation between causality in nature and pristine revelation. Inevitably, such a rapprochement would further set the stage for transforming human thought towards a unitary understanding of the whole purpose of creation and man’s role within the vastness of cosmic order. In fact, anyone imbued with such an outlook would not be searching for a pristine revelation to act as a bridge between science and religion. That which is one, needs no bridge. Indeed, in this vein of reality, it can certainly be proclaimed that science is truly religion and religion truly science."

In his Essay entitled "Chance or Intelligence?", Nadeem Haque argues "that, if our answer to creation by chance is negative, there can only be a unique governing intelligence." He further suggest that this "vast singular intelligence must have created and developed all living and non-living things, as well as particles/energy and time itself."

In his Essay entitled "Did the Buddha Believe in God?", Nadeem Haque argues "that Buddha, contrary to being an atheist or a person who never answered or avoided answering the question of God’s existence, as some of the present day Buddhist sects and most Western and Eastern scholars portray, also believed in One God."

In their Essay entitled "Meaningless or Purposeful?", Nadeem Haque & Mehran Banaei "reflect as to whether there is a purpose behind the Big Bang, and ask such questions as: what role are we to play, if any, in the realm that has evolved afterwards? Did nature evolve from the Big Bang merely for subservience to Man?"

This issue also contain several poems written by Nadeem Haque under the title "The Magic of Existence."

Huping Hu & Maoxin Wu

November 28, 2011

JOHN RAY (1627-1705), founder of Modern Biology and Natural History

1. In his book The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), John Ray wrote: “There is no greater, at least no more palpable and convincing Argument of the Existence of a Deity, than the admirable Art and Wisdom that discovers itself in the Make and Constitution, the Order and Disposition, the Ends and Uses of all the Parts and Members of this stately Fabrick of Heaven and Earth.” (Ray 1717, Part I).

2. “There is for a free man no occupation more worth and delightful than to contemplate the beauteous works of nature and honor the infinite wisdom and goodness of God.” (Ray, as cited in Graves 1996, 66; see also Yahya 2002).

3. “We feed our Bodies; our Souls are also to be fed: The Food of the Soul is Knowledge, especially Knowledge in the Things of God, and the Things that concern its Eternal Peace and Happiness - the Doctrine of Christianity, the Word of God read and preached, 1 Pet. ii. 2. ‘As newborn Babes, desire the sincere Milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby’.” (Ray 1717, 399).

4. “The Life of a Christian is a continual Warfare, and we have potent and vigilant Enemies to encounter withal: the Devil, the World, and this corrupt Flesh we carry about with us.” (Ray 1717, 401).

5. “He that with his Christian Armour manfully fights against and repels the Temptations and Assaults of his Spiritual Enemies, he that keeps his Garments pure, and his Conscience void of Offence towards God and towards Man, shall enjoy perfect Peace here, and Assurance for ever.” (Ray 1717, 402).

Ray’s major theological works are A Persuasive to a Holy Life (1700) and the three Physico-Theological Discourses (1692).

ABDUS SALAM – NOBEL LAUREATE IN PHYSICS

Nobel Prize: Abdus Salam (1926-1996) was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in electroweak theory, which explains the unity of the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism; this theory is the latest stage in the effort to provide a unified description of the four fundamental forces of nature.

Nationality: Pakistani

Education: Ph.D. in mathematics and physics, Cambridge University, 1952

Occupation: Professor of Theoretical Physics at London University and Punjab University (Pakistan); Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (Italy) since 1964

1. Abdus Salam concludes his address ‘Poor as a Nation’ with the words: “Our society is inflicted with menaces like mountains. Try to remove them from your surroundings with patience. God will have mercy on you one day. Do not be afraid if your endeavours don’t bear fruit, but keep on doing your job and God will indeed bless your efforts.” (Salam 1990).

2. In an interview for the New Scientist (August 26, 1976) Abdus Salam says: “Every human being needs religion, as Jung has so firmly argued; this deeper religious feeling is one of the primary urges of mankind.” (Salam 1976).

3. In physics, Prof. Salam has mostly been involved with the problem of symmetries; he explains his interest in the following way:

“That may come from my Islamic heritage; for that is the way we consider the universe created by God, with ideas of beauty and symmetry and harmony, with regularity and without chaos.

We are trying to discover what the Lord thought; of course we miserably fail most of the time, but sometimes there is great satisfaction in seeing a little bit of the truth.” (Salam 1976; New Scientist).

4. In his article Science and Religion Prof. Salam wrote:

“Einstein was born into an Abrahamic faith; in his own view, he was deeply religious.

Now this sense of wonder leads most scientists to a Superior Being – der Alte, the Old One, as Einstein affectionately called the Deity – a Superior Intelligence, the Lord of all Creation and Natural Law.” (Salam, as cited in Lai and Kidwai 1989, 285).

KIM DAE-JUNG – NOBEL PEACE PRIZE LAUREATE

Nobel Prize: The President of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung (1924-2009) was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize for his struggle for democracy and human rights in South Korea (and in East Asia in general), and for his efforts to ensure peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular. Kim Dae-jung has been called the “Nelson Mandela of Asia”.

Nationality: South Korean

Education: Graduate certificate from Kyunghee University, Seoul; Ph.D. in Political Science from the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Moscow, 1992

Occupation: President of South Korea (1997-2003)

1. In his Nobel Lecture (Oslo, December 10, 2000; Les Prix Nobel 2000), Kim Dae-jung said:

“Allow me to say a few words on a personal note. Five times I faced near death at the hands of dictators, six years I spent in prison, and forty years I lived under house arrest or in exile and under constant surveillance. I could not have endured the hardship without the support of my people and the encouragement of fellow democrats around the world. The strength also came from deep personal beliefs.

I have lived, and continue to live, in the belief that God is always with me. I know this from experience. In August of 1973, while exiled in Japan, I was kidnapped from my hotel room in Tokyo by intelligence agents of the then military government of South Korea. The news of the incident startled the world. The agents took me to their boat at anchor along the seashore. They tied me up, blinded me, and stuffed my mouth. Just when they were about to throw me overboard, Jesus Christ appeared before me with such clarity. I clung to him and begged him to save me. At that very moment, an airplane came down from the sky to rescue me from the moment of death.” (Kim Dae-jung 2000).

2. In a letter to his son, written in prison (November 24, 1980) Kim Dae-jung wrote:

“Only the truly magnanimous and strong are capable of forgiving and loving. Let us persevere, then, praying always that God will help us to have the strength to love and forgive our enemies. Let us together, in this way, become the loving victors.” (Kim Dae-jung, Prison Writings, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987, 6).

3. In his Philadelphia Liberty Medal Acceptance Speech (July 4, 1999), Kim Dae-jung said:

“I have had a life-long pilgrimage toward freedom. Along the journey, certain forces have sustained me.

The first is the Christ that I believe in. He gave his life upon the Holy Cross for the rights of the oppressed people of Israel. He taught us how to be free in spirit.

He also told us to follow him bearing the cross as he had, if we willed to be his disciples. The cross was my training toward freedom.

I still remember the experience in 1980. I had been sentenced to death. I was waiting for execution day in the army prison. My wife and children came to visit me. We all prayed to God in tears. We cried together.

But no one in my family told me to compromise with the military dictatorship. They all encouraged me to keep my faith in God, and in freedom.” (Kim Dae-jung 1999).

4. “The future of mankind belongs to liberty. When we side with liberty, we are with God who implanted the love of liberty in all of us. When we side with liberty, we enhance our own dignity.” (Kim Dae-jung 1999).

5. In 1980 Kim Dae-jung wrote: “Love of God does not mean we must love Him first. Rather, He loved us first, creating the world and leaving it in our care, sending His only son to us to spread the gospel, and, finally, opening the way for us to deliver ourselves from sin through the crucifixion of His innocent son, Jesus. Through Jesus’ resurrection, God gave us hope for eternal life. God is with you at this very moment. He loves you, and He creates the good for you from all the right and wrong in your life when you genuinely believe in and obey Him.” (From a letter to his son, written in prison; see Kim Dae-jung, Prison Writings, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

6. In a letter to his children (January 29, 1981, Prison Writings) Kim Dae-jung wrote: “Every time I think of the days you have all spent in anguish and suffering, particularly when I think about Hong-il, who is still being held in prison, pain and anguish fill my heart. My love for all of you is strong. I have determined to be a good father, the father of a blissful family. And yet I have caused you great pain and torment. In deep remorse, I can only pray to Jesus every day that your trials will in the end lead to some good.” (Kim Dae-jung 1987, 20).

7. In his Address at a Joint Meeting of the United States Congress (June 10, 1998, Washington, D.C.) the President Kim Dae-jung said:

“In 1973, I was kidnapped in Tokyo and taken onto a ship.

Bound and gagged, I was about to be thrown overboard.

But, as only someone who has brushed up to death’s door can know, I saw Jesus Christ near me.

I prayed for my life.

And I truly believe God saved me.” (Kim Dae-jung 1998b).

RABINDRANATH TAGORE – NOBEL LAUREATE IN LITERATURE

Nobel Prize: Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) received the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.”

Nationality: Indian

Education: Privately educated in England and India (Bengali Academy)

Occupation: Poet, novelist, playwright, song composer and painter; founder of the Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, West Bengal (1924)

1. “In one salutation to Thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at Thy feet.

Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed showers let all my mind bend down at Thy door in one salutation to Thee.

Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single current and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to Thee.

Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to Thee.” (Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings), New York and London: The Macmillan Company, 1913).

2. “This is my prayer to Thee, my Lord – strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart.

Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.

Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.

Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might.

Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.

And give me the strength to surrender my strength to Thy will with love.” (Tagore 1913, Gitanjali).

3. “Day after day, O Lord of my life, shall I stand before Thee face to face. With folded hands, O Lord of all worlds, shall I stand before Thee face to face.

Under Thy great sky in solitude and silence, with humble heart shall I stand before Thee face to face.

In this laborious world of Thine, tumultuous with toil and with struggle, among hurrying crowds shall I stand before Thee face to face.

And when my work shall be done in this world, O King of kings, alone and speechless shall I stand before Thee face to face.” (Tagore 1913).

4. “Our love of God is accurately careful of its responsibilities. It is austere in its probity and it must have intellect for its ally. Since what it deals with is immense in value, it has to be cautious about the purity of its coins. Therefore, when our soul cries for the gift of immortality, its first prayer is, ‘Lead me from the unreal to truth.’ ” (Tagore, as cited in Chakravarty 1961, 281).

5. “Accept me, dear God, accept me for this while. Let those orphaned days that passed without You be forgotten.

Do not turn away Your face from my heart’s dark secrets, but burn them till they are alight with Your fire.” (From Tagore’s prayer “Accept Me”, as cited in Vetter 1997, 1).

“The self-expression of God is in the endless variety of creation; and our attitude toward the Infinite Being must also in its expression have a variety of individuality ceaseless and unending. Those sects which jealously build their boundaries with too rigid creeds excluding all spontaneous movement of the living spirit may hoard their theology but they kill religion.” (Tagore, as cited in Chakravarty 1961, 286).

6. “The rain has held back for days and days, my God, in my arid heart. The horizon is fiercely naked – not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud, not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.

Send Thy angry storm, dark with death, if it is Thy wish, and with lashes of lightning startle the sky from end to end.

But call back, my Lord, call back this pervading silent heat, still and keen and cruel, burning the heart with dire despair.

Let the cloud of grace bend low from above like the tearful look of the mother on the day of the father’s wrath.” (Tagore 1913).

“Time is endless in Thy hands, my Lord. There is none to count Thy minutes. Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait.” (Tagore 1913).

SIR WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657), founder of Modern Medicine

William Harvey founded modern physiology and embryology, and elucidated the complex nature of the heart’s functions and the circulation of the blood.

1. In his book Anatomical Exercises on the Generation of Animals (1651), William Harvey wrote:

“We acknowledge God, the Supreme and Omnipotent Creator, to be present in the production of all animals, and to point, as it were, with a finger to His existence in His works. Аll things are indeed contrived and ordered with singular providence, divine wisdom, and most admirable and incomprehensible skill. And to none can these attributes be referred save to the Almighty.” (Harvey, 1989, 443).

2. “The examination of the bodies of animals has always been my delight, and I have thought that we might thence not only obtain an insight into the lighter mysteries of nature, but there perceive a kind of image or reflection of the omnipotent Creator Himself.” (Harvey, as cited in Keynes 1966, 330).

HERMANN HESSE – NOBEL LAUREATE IN LITERATURE

Nobel Prize: Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) was granted the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his inspired writings, which while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and high qualities of style.”

Nationality: German; later Swiss citizen

Education: Educated at the Grammar School in Cannstadt and the Maulbronn Theological Seminary, Germany

Occupation: Novelist and poet

1. Hesse expressed his attitude towards God in a conversation with his friend Miguel Serrano:

“You should let yourself be carried away, like the clouds in the sky. You shouldn’t resist. God exists in your destiny just as much as he does in these mountains and in that lake. It is very difficult to understand this, because man is moving further and further away from Nature, and also from himself.” (Hesse, as cited in Miguel Serrano, C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships, 1966, 10).

2. “The fact that people think they have their life on loan from God and do not want to use it egotistically, but, on the contrary, they want to live it as service and sacrifice to God, this experience and legacy, the greatest one, from my childhood has had an extremely powerful influence on my life.” (Hesse 1972, 59).

3. “When you are close to Nature you can listen to the voice of God.” (Hesse, as cited in Serrano 1966, 10).

4. “Christianity, one not preached but lived, was the strongest of the powers that shaped and moulded me.” (Hesse, as cited in Gellner 1997, Vol. 1).

5. “If one does not take the verses of the New Testament as being commandments, but as expressions of an extraordinary awareness of the secrets of our soul, then the wisest word ever spoken is: ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ ” (Hesse, as cited in Gellner 1997, Vol. 1).

6. “For different people, there are different ways to God, to the center of the world. Yet the actual experience itself is always the same.” (Hesse, as cited in Gellner 1997, Vol. 1).

7. “The road to piety may be a different one for everyone. For me, it led through many blunders and great suffering, through a great deal of self-torment, through tremendous foolishness, jungles full of foolishness. I was a liberal spirit and knew that sanctimonious piety was an illness of the soul. I was an ascetic and drove nails into my flesh. I didn’t know that being religious meant health and cheerfulness.” (Hesse, as cited in Gellner 1997, Vol. 1).

SIR JOSEPH J. THOMSON (1856-1940), Nobel Laureate in Physics, discoverer of the electron, founder of atomic physics

1. J.J. Thomson’s inaugural presidential address to the British Association is published in the prominent scientific journal Nature (26 August 1909). Sir Joseph concludes his address with the words:

“As we conquer peak after peak we see in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not see our goal, we do not see the horizon; in the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and deepen the feeling, the truth of which is emphasized by every advance in science, that ‘Great are the Works of the Lord’.” (Thomson 1909, Nature, vol. 81, p. 257).

2. Sir Owen Richardson (Nobelist in Physics, 1928) described his teacher and friend J.J. Thomson thus: “He was sincerely religious, a churchman with a dislike for Anglo-Catholicism, a regular communicant, who every day knelt in private prayer, a habit known only to Lady Thomson until near the end of his life.” (Richardson 1970, “Sir Joseph J. Thomson”, in The Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, p. 862).

3. In his biographical article “J.J. Thomson, Anglican,” in the journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Raymond Seeger (NSF) points out: “As a Professor, J.J. Thomson did attend the Sunday evening college chapel service, and as Master, the morning service. He was a regular communicant in the Anglican Church. In addition, he showed an active interest in the Trinity Mission at Camberwell. With respect to his private devotional life, J.J. Thomson would invariably practice kneeling for daily prayer, and read his Bible before retiring each night. He truly was a practicing Christian!” (Seeger 1986, 132).

VOLTAIRE (1694-1778), French philosopher and historian, one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment

1. “Tonight I was in a meditative mood. I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I admired the immensity, the movements, the harmony of those infinite globes.

I admired still more the Intelligence which directs these vast forces. I said to myself: ‘One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; one must be stupid not to recognize the Author of it; one must be mad not to worship Him’.” (Voltaire, as cited in Redman 1963, 187).

2. “I die, adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies and detesting superstitions.” (Voltaire, as cited in Parton 1884, 577).

3. “All nature cries to us that He exists, that there is a Supreme Intelligence, a power immense, an order admirable, and all teaches us our dependence.” (Voltaire, as cited in Parton 1884, 554).

4. “I believe in God, not the God of the mystics and the theologians, but the God of nature, the great geometrician, the architect of the universe, the prime mover, unalterable, transcendental, everlasting.” (Voltaire, as cited in Cragg 1970, 237).