Who would think that Stephen Hawking could ever explain things in ways children could grasp? I’d think this is a great idea that NewScientist reports on–put science into children’s books. As a science challenged adult, I’d love to have more science put into words I might be able to understand.
One question and answer in the interview made me sad:
What kind of books did your father read to you when you were small?
LH: The other day, Dad suddenly quoted from the Bible and we were all taken aback because it was so unexpected. We were discussing the slogan on a tin of golden syrup, asking why it said “out of the strong came forth sweetness”. Dad said it came from the Bible, and gave us the correct chapter and verse. He said that his father used to read him stories from the Bible when he was young. I said “I’m glad you read us Paddington Bear instead.”
Nothing against Paddington, but it’s too bad Lucy didn’t get both Paddington and the Bible.
And then Stephen answers another question with:
Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion. The one remaining area that religion can still lay a claim to is the origin of the universe, but even here science is making progress, and should soon provide a definitive answer to how the universe began.
I think he has different questions that some of us have. I always thought the big question was, “What is my purpose in life?” Science will never answer that. Only a creator can tell you what you’ve been created for.
I’d heard about this book and I’m looking forward to reading it through. I agree with you that Hawking should have read the Bible to his Lucy as well as Paddington Bear. Poor Lucy. she doesn’t know what she has missed.
My best and favorite class in college was Literature of Socialism, taught be a confirmed Marxist – not exactly an Christian apologist. One day, as unexpectedly as Hawking’s quote from the Bible for Lucy, the prof asked us who had ever read the bible. There were two of us.
He went on to ask us how we expected to understand western literature if we had no knowledge of the Bible? He very strongly insisted that it was the most important literature we would encounter. He was quite adamant.
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I am such a flop at understanding scientific stuff. I love to look at the sunset–I don’t care how it’s made. But I do like to be told about science in a way I can understand because it’s really awesome, this universe we live in. So I’m hoping this book will be a good one.
It really is too bad that kids aren’t taught the Bible anymore, if for no other reason than that it has shaped human history. It used to be that even nonChristians knew a lot about the Bible. I don’t know if that made for a better world or not, but I think it made the critics less caustic. I have a hard time when people criticize a book they’ve not read.
I remember L’Engle always going on about how the two greatest shapers of Western Literature were the KJ Bible and William Shakespeare. She read the Psalms through every month, just for their literary value. Knowledge of the Bible adds so much to reading literature … just last night, I was reading Ruth Sawyer’s Year of Jubilo (the title itself a reference to the Israelites’ year of Jubilee), and someone mentioned being Lucinda’s “shield and buckler” … which is from Psalm 91. Unfortunately, knowledge of the Bible does not add much to the reading of newer literature, because the authors are not being taught that it was/is such a shaper of great fiction. A shame … the Bible’s absence sears a hole in the scope of an author’s language, plot, and expression.
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