Letters to the Site
Amazing and mind jolting!
Daniel Gomez
Wow where do I start. You've answered the most important question I've ever had the need to know. Now any chance of answering the second most important? How do I know which religion is the right one to follow. Most have a belief in God, but their teachings all vary. I have read the Bible and it tells about there being only one true religion. Thanks for answering the main question. Bill Pettit
I would be interested in obtaining this book. Your site is incredible. Although I am an agnostic, I felt very compelled to continue reading through your site and seriously consider the arguments. Thanks again!
Nelson Alonso
Your 2001 material is brilliant. And I don't say this very often.
Thanks,
John D. Miller
Researcher London, England
I loved your website. I am extremely interested in reading your book, The Obvious Proof, as someone who decidedly turned away from religion as hypocrisy and a means to control large groups of people. I found your page extremely compelling and your argument has, once again, put that doubt in my mind. Please tell me how I may procure a copy the book. Travis Meacham
This site, quite frankly, is one of the most interesting things I have ever read, or pondered.
Farrell
Thank you for the fantastic site.
Daniel M.
I have yet to see a more intriguing, innovative, and informed presentation of factual reality and truth. Thank you so much. Loy D. Mershimer
I just felt compelled at giving a heartfelt "Thank-you" after reading the information contained in your site. You have put backbone and reality into ideas that I have always "known" but couldn't codify. It has always struck me as why others could not see God everywhere around them. You have given me precious insight into myself as well as putting me back into proper 'focus' as to my life. Thank-you. Lance Corbit
Dear Sirs, How much is the book? I read your article on the "Origin" website. Remarkable article. Nothing short of remarkable, for the lack of a better word. Steve
Dear Friends, I have discovered you through "Touchstone" magazine which was brought to my attention by syndicated columnist Charley Reese who writes for the Orlando Sentinel. There are no coincidences because the God of Nature is the God of History and involved in all of our lives. I have three things to say to you.
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! Whitt Wise
Your site has come along and launched me into a whole new perspective. I want to thank you again for stimulating and launching my mind into some higher levels of thought. Your site is fantastic.
Thanks, Bill Renner
Absolutely outstanding. I salute you!
E Marx
I'll recommend your site it's a "merveille".
Francois Cote
Thank you so much for posting your argument online, making it so available to so many people. It was wonderful to read. I have a feeling I'll make references to it many times for the rest of my life.
Thanks.
Danielle Ooten
Hi! I just discovered and read through your web site. FASCINATING!!! I can't get over it! Right now, I plan to study all that you have available on the site.
Thank you very much!
Looking forward,
Dov Gordon!
I found your website to be insightful and enticing. As I read each page I felt a compelling desire to read the next. MGB
I just completed reading your site, and found it to be an incredible insight, not just into the film, but also into general philosophy. I looked on the net for any information or discussions about the film, and stumbled upon your site, and it is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Tim Roper
Excellent site! This page has helped strengthen my faith. Where can I find a copy of the book?
Thanks.
Richard O. Griffin
Thank you very much for your 2001 presentation. It has explained some areas of my experience. Dropping a cherished belief suddenly opens your mind to so much else. It is more than suddenly becoming honest in your thinking. Thank you again. Can you please tell me how I can obtain a copy of the book?
Regards,
Bill Handley,
Melbourne, Australia.
Hello! I happened upon your site and was extremely impressed with it and the information on it. I have been questioning my faith in recent years because I couldn't accept what was taught to me simply on blind faith. I am a student of psychology and am very familiar with cognitive dissonance. I started a logical search for God, which is the same thing the 2001 principle deals with. The proof that is all around us is something I can trust and know is correct.
Logan
I started reading the info on your site and couldn't stop, it was all so great! I do have some further issues though, specifically dealing with God's involvement with humans and the human soul. Would the author(s) of the site or someone knowledgeable about the subject be willing to discuss some of it with me? Thank you very much! Kent Golden Letter from lead engineer at NASA Hubble Telescope who wrote us that the site was the first step in his becoming a B'al T'shuva: I heard back from Prof. Michael Behe. He visited the 2001 Principle web site and really enjoyed it. I'll continue pursuing dialogue with him. His email to me was warm. In addition he referred me to his book "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution." He said his book "dovetails nicely" to what the 2001web site is doing.
Thinking and meditating on what I read in the two web sites changed how I view the concept of design. It's terribly exciting. I feel at times how the character in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions must have felt. I stop and think of my own body, that I was planned by Intelligence, it creates such an excitement in me (and a sense of awe and fear). This has helped in my desire for "leaps of mind," and I cannot wait to read more on Kabbalah and Science. It also gives me more appreciation for the protective mechanism of cognitive dissonance. It's quite the safety valve from scary ideas and concepts.
My involvement with the Hubble Space Telescope started in 1992 before the First Servicing Mission (FSM)... We designed, built and tested a new computer, a coprocessor (using an Intel 386 processor), that would piggyback on top of the failing computer and provide the additional memory. My title was lead engineer which combined technical development of the new technology with management of the design, manufacturing and test program.
Working FSM was thrilling. Although HST was designed for this, servicing of this magnitude had never been attempted. Success was uncertain. Then in December 1993 the First Servicing Mission was performed, and it was a huge success. I felt like I was part of space history.
During the Second Servicing Mission (SSM) which was completed this past February, I was lead engineer for a new data recorder (a Solid State Recorder (SSR)) which uses microchips to record scientific and engineering data...
Having a stronger connection with Hashem influenced how I perceived SSM. Most notably during the night when the SSR was installed. Quickly after the astronauts installed the recorder, the SSR team performed our check-out test. It was a test we ran numerous times on the ground, yet this moment (with everything riding on its working properly and our having extremely limited capability to troubleshoot an in-orbit anomaly) was terribly exciting. Well, it checked-out fine and after all the hand-shakes and camaraderie, I went outside into the night (around 4am) to be alone. I looked up at the stars and was filled with awe knowing that the space shuttle with the Hubble was up there and that we just performed a coordinated task with people in space. It felt on one hand empowering that this is what humankind is capable of. On the other hand realizing the distance of the stars, the magnitude of the universe, that what humankind can do is so very limited...
In another correspondence from the same engineer: Last week I shared the 2001 website with a very close friend of mine. M. and I were talking and the conversation headed toward the spiritual. He asked about the Torah codes, I filled him in and showed him the "Official Torah Codes Website." Then off to the year 2001 we went. As we went through each page, I read the text aloud (reading aloud is such power way of experiencing the text for the reader and the listener). M. loved it...
Until a little more than two years ago, he was agnostic.... Last month M. experienced a professional failure, basically his spacecraft re-orbited and burned up in the atmosphere. He worked extremely hard on that project for four years. He experienced loss, trauma... As M. expressed to me, The 2001 Principle profoundly effected him. What a wonderful feeling it is helping someone to feel closer with Hashem.
Letter from: John Gay, Webmaster Origins Website
Your site is special. Let me tell you why. My background is creative advertising. Whenever me or my friends/colleagues hit on something that was really good--a good idea--there was always one quality it had: the "why-didn't-anyone-think-of-that-before?" factor. The 2001 Principle is a great idea in that same vein. It's the kind of thing that smacks you in the face with its simplicity, brilliance and obviousness. It is pure, crystalline. The perfect concept/idea. In advertising, a rare feat. You step back and say, "Of course, it's so obvious, it's so simple, why didn't I think of it before?"
Our sites (Leadership U. and Origins) together average about 1 million hits per month. We get a lot of traffic. Most of our traffic is college students and college professors. Hopefully, "The 2001 Principle" will get some great publicity over the next few weeks on our site. After featuring it on Leadership U, I would like to feature it on our Origins site. Then I'd like to make it a permanent "fixture" on our Origins site.
As someone in the "business" of trying to give evidence to the existence of God, I've seen a lot of good apologetics for theism and intelligent design. This site, its concept, however, was one of the best I have seen. Using "2001: A Space Odyssey" is genius. Very good presentation. Very well written.
John Gay
Dear Sir Thanks for this. Your site was amazing, inspirational and uplifting. I would like to know how I print it for an Old Uncle of mine who lives in the UK and is a scientist, astronomer, medical doctor, artist and gentleman. Your prompt and helpful reply will be much appreciated and we shall hopefully be performing a good deed ["mitzvah"]. Kind regards. Sincerely Ezra Hirschman
Letter from Creative Services Director for the Santa Fe Times: Though I am still in the process of integrating it, I found it to be one of the most intelligent, entertaining, artistically moving and well done web sites I've seen. Emmett F. Wallace
Bravo! Excellent, well done, insightful, accessible, intriguing, delightful, persuasive, engaging, succinct, thoughtful, and too many more positive adjectives to list. K. Cow
Brilliantly conceived and developed. The LINKS are frosting on the cake. MORE frosting, MORE cake, PLEASE. AJ M
Letter from Director of Focus Radio:
Dear friends I have recently visited your "2001 Principle" web site, and think it is a terrific piece of work. I'd like to include links to it on our site (www.focus.org.uk). I think we are trying to do something similar to you, but you are doing it better than we are(!) With best wishes David Couchman
Letter from Prof. Behe, Professor of Biology at Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA:
I visited the 2001 site and enjoyed it a lot. I think you are quite right - design in the universe and in life is easily recognized, but seems not to register with many people because it doesn't fit their conceptual categories.
By the way, I've written a book which expands on the ideas in the [2001] site. It's called "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" and was published last year by Free Press. It's gotten a fair amount of attention - reviewed by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Nature, and more. You might enjoy reading it; it dovetails nicely with what you guys are doing. As a matter of fact, I even talk a bit about "2001: A Space Odyssey," using the obelisk as an example of universally- acknowledged design.
Best wishes.
Michael J. Behe
(Zvi Inbal: "I've read 'Darwin's Black Box' and I have found it to be A MUST! The author is one of the most gifted authors I've read on science." Zvi Inbal is co-founder of Arachim Seminars, Israel, and a professional scientist.)
To begin, I loved this "web" presentation. I teach communication and organizational behavior in a Business School, and have found many things to incorporate into my classes: especially your examples of cognitive dissonance. Again, a wonderful site, interpretation, and presentation.
Charles P. Bretan
Northwood University West Palm Beach, Fl.
Gentleman: Your 2001 website is both moving and intriguing. I am placing a link on our site (www.discovery.org/crsc) to yours.
Some recent books you might find of interest: Mere Creation edited by William Dembski (InterVarsity Press, 1998) and The Design Inference by William Dembski (Cambridge University Press, 1998). The latter book especially establishes the formal criteria for inferring design, which you have illustrated so nicely in your exposition of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Best regards,
Jay Richards
Senior Fellow & Director of Program Development Center for the Renewal
of Science & Culture
Greetings I enjoyed your website very much - an interesting and pointed slant on the general topic of origins and design. I am writing because I would like to get in touch with Gerald Schroeder by email and I am hoping -based on your website - that you might be able to pass this along to him. I have read his books and find that they have some of the most brilliant points of insight among these sorts of books. To let you know a little about myself - I am a professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the division of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology. However, I went to Seminary before getting my Ph.D. at Stanford and I have always had an interest in this area. Anyway, I was interested in getting in touch with him, sharing some ideas and the possibility of some collaborative effort. If you can pass this along I would appreciate it. Thanks very much. Martin Poenie Associate Professor Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology University of Texas, Austin, TX
I request permission to put a link to your web site on my home page at Baker University, Baldwin City, KS. I am the chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department. The link would appear on my faculty home page in a section called "Religion Links." My home page is listed under "Faculty Home Pages" on Baker's College of Arts and Sciences web site. The purpose of posting the link to your site is for use by my students and by people interested in religion who may visit my home page.
George Wiley,
Professor of Religion, Baker University
Excerpts from an online review of "The Obvious Proof: A Presentation of the Classic Proof of Universal Design," the book upon which the website is based. The review is by John James Reilly, prominent author and book reviewer. Mr. Reilly is an attorney in New Jersey. He authored a series of law and business books (The Equal Credit Opportunity Manual, The Fair Credit Reporting Manual, Federal Banking Laws, The Law of Electronic Fund Transfer Systems, and The Law of Financial Privacy). Mr. Reilly is Reviews Editor for Culture Wars, and contributes frequently to The New Oxford Review, First Things, and Fidelity Magazine. He does reviews of business websites online for the Dow Jones Business Information Service.
The following is excerpted from his review of "The Obvious Proof":
Is there such a thing as an honest atheist? Maybe not, according to Gershon Robinson and Mordechai Steinman (both of whom are writers, the latter with a physics degree). This short book tries to turn the intellectual tables by interpreting atheism as a species of willful irrationality. The thesis of "The Obvious Proof" is that the scientific evidence for intelligent design in nature is at least as great as the evidence that would normally persuade us that something is artificial. The authors' benchmark for common sense in this matter is the black obelisk buried beneath the surface of the Moon in the film "2001," which audiences around the world immediately intuited to be a product of intelligence. (This argument is set out more briefly at the website The 2001 Principle, where you can also order the book.) The authors present a useful summary of several popular treatments of the Anthropic Principle in cosmology and the extraterrestrial "seeding theory" of the origin of life on Earth... The authors assume that Design is such an obvious explanation for order in nature that the reluctance of certain scientists to accept it can have only a psychological explanation.
The explanation that the authors favor is the Gestalt psychology principle of "cognitive dissonance," which causes people to reject empirical information that does not fit into their mental categories. The authors sometimes seem to equate intellectual cognitive dissonance with Freudian repression. (Perhaps the distinction may not be hard and fast. In any case, a more purely Freudian explanation for atheism was developed a few years ago by the psychologist Paul Vitz.) What the authors are talking about here is not a failure of the imagination among scientists, which is what cognitive dissonance normally implies in a scientific context. Rather, they seek to define the reasons for the emotional reluctance found among at least some scientists to accept the theistic implications of empirical research.
The five emotional grounds the authors present for this reluctance are rather intriguing. Three are things you might expect: the desire for complete moral autonomy, outraged intellectual pride faced with the unknowable, and mere intellectual habit. One of the others, however, is the ontological anxiety that might occur should you accept that you are a product of another will. It's an interesting point: a meaningless universe is less threatening than an arbitrary one. The most engaging reason for atheism, though, is almost a kind of shyness. If God exists, then He must have abandoned us, since otherwise He would not be so enigmatic. Do you really want someone to exist who probably does not like you?
"The Obvious Proof" could be taken as a commentary on Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman's commentary on Maimonides' commentary on the beginning of the Decalogue. Maimonides concluded from the words "I am G-d, your Lord, Who took you out of the land of Egypt," that there is an actual duty under Jewish Law to believe in God. Such a commandment is reasonable, according to Rabbi Wasserman, because the existence of God should be obvious even to a boy by the time of his Bar Mitzvah. Those who deny the evidence for God, according to this view, do so because they have intellectual or emotional "investments" in a non-theistic universe.
It is certainly true that some scientists have a psychological ax to grind on the question of the existence of God. (My suspicion is that a disproportionate number of these people write popular science for just this reason.) It is probably also true that the perception of design in nature is a matter of intuitive common sense.
From a feature on The 2001 Principle site in a prominent online philosophy magazine run by a professor of philosophy, Professor Frederic Giobacci of Kirkland College, Michigan: The Internet continues to demonstrate its usefulness as a creative medium for philosophy with the appearance of "The 2001 Principle" (http://www.2001principle.com).
A self-described "intellectual odyssey," the site is partly a study and a celebration of the 1967 Stanley Kubrick movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the novel by Arthur C. Clarke on which it is based; and partly an interactive presentation of a classic philosophical argument for the existence of God, the "argument from design."
All students of philosophy sooner or later encounter the "classic" arguments propounded for the existence of God, among them the so-called teleological argument, often referred to as the "argument from design." The argument, which is based on the order and design of the cosmos and upon its apparent purposiveness, may be summarized as follows: the universe, from the smallest subatomic particles to the vast clusters of numberless galaxies, represents a complexity of design which can only be the product of a designing intelligence.
To cause us to arrive at this conclusion, the "The 2001 Principle" site takes its visitors through an appreciative hypertext summary and analysis of Kubrick's movie which culminates in an interpretation of the events of its famously enigmatic climax. Along the way, it draws upon for supporting evidence everything from the theory of cognitive dissonance and its relationship to scientific progress; to evolutionary theory; to examples of design in nature; to the "anthropic principle" (the idea that "the universe was brought into existence intentionally for the sake of producing mankind"); to Sir Fred Hoyle's confident assertion:
"...a commonsense interpretation of the facts suggest that a superintendent has monkeyed with the physics as well as the chemistry and the biology. I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars."
At the conclusion of its metaphysical tour, the site presents the argument of Frederick Ferre: "Despite all evasions, the ultimate agency of intelligence stares one in the face" (Frederick Ferre, Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion, Scribner's, 1967, p.161).
Take this hypertext tour and find out for yourself why the "argument from design" has persuaded thinkers for centuries. Whether metaphysics is your interest, or merely Kubrick and Clarke's celebrated cinematic collaboration, you'll find "The 2001 Principle" to be an intriguing stop on your philosophical Web rounds.