Friday, June 1, 2007 at 2:02am
Now I am become Death
Column: Interesting Times
E.L. Doctorow's 2006 book "Creationists: Selected Essays: 1993-2006" begins with commentary on Genesis and ends with Einstein and the Bomb.
How smart, how scary is that? One would expect nothing less from Doctorow, who was named for Edgar Allen Poe.
One way to understand what the Bible says about the world — an example according to Doctorow — "If you know the people of the world speak many languages, that is the ending, the story of the Tower of Babel gets you there." If you know there is an H-bomb, what gets you there?
"Dear Sir," wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt on Aug. 2, 1939. "Some recent work ... leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy. ... It may become possible to set up nuclear chain reaction. ... Extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. ... I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium."
America made the A-bomb out of fear of the A-bomb.
"Now I am become Death: the destroyer of worlds." Robert Oppenheimer spoke the quote from the Bhagavad Gita after the first atomic explosion at White Sands, N.M.
Doctorow says: "But the ways of death in war are innumerable. The ethics of warfare are reconfigured to its changing technology. By 1945 there was no longer a viable distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Perhaps 51 million human beings were killed in the worldwide war that raged from 1939 to 1945. Bombed, firebombed, strafed, mined, suffocated, gassed, incinerated, frozen, mutilated, starved, beheaded, hanged, buried alive, and dissolved in a luminous flash. Certainly more than half of them died as civilians. Twenty years before another great war in Europe had killed its generation of young men, the fieldpieces drawn by horses. ... "
Journalist Max Blumenthal recently reported on The Raw Story website: "President George W. Bush met privately with Focus on the Family founder and Chairman James Dobson and approximately a dozen Christian right leaders last week to rally support for his policies on Iraq, Iran and the so-called 'war on terror.' ...
"Dobson went on to enumerate a series of meetings convened by Christian right leaders in Washington to discuss the supposedly existential threat to the United States from a nuclear Iran.
"'I heard about this danger [from Iran] not only at the White House but from other pro-family leaders that I met during that week in Washington," he said. "Many people in a position to know are talking about the possibility of losing a city to nuclear or biological or chemical attack. And if we can lose one, we can lose 10. If we can lose 10, we can lose a hundred,' he added, 'especially if North Korea and Russia and China pile on.'"
The H-bomb. A runaway, Doctorow says. "It does not require a plane or a submarine or an intercontinental missile to deliver it. Wherever the enemy is, wherever he is, we need only set it off where we are. Behind a barn somewhere. In the backyard," says Doctorow toward the end of his collection of essays. "The H bomb has no known limits."
Doctorow concludes: "A nuclear explosion will become a scriptural text."
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen.
How smart, how scary is that? One would expect nothing less from Doctorow, who was named for Edgar Allen Poe.
One way to understand what the Bible says about the world — an example according to Doctorow — "If you know the people of the world speak many languages, that is the ending, the story of the Tower of Babel gets you there." If you know there is an H-bomb, what gets you there?
"Dear Sir," wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt on Aug. 2, 1939. "Some recent work ... leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy. ... It may become possible to set up nuclear chain reaction. ... Extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. ... I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium."
America made the A-bomb out of fear of the A-bomb.
"Now I am become Death: the destroyer of worlds." Robert Oppenheimer spoke the quote from the Bhagavad Gita after the first atomic explosion at White Sands, N.M.
Doctorow says: "But the ways of death in war are innumerable. The ethics of warfare are reconfigured to its changing technology. By 1945 there was no longer a viable distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Perhaps 51 million human beings were killed in the worldwide war that raged from 1939 to 1945. Bombed, firebombed, strafed, mined, suffocated, gassed, incinerated, frozen, mutilated, starved, beheaded, hanged, buried alive, and dissolved in a luminous flash. Certainly more than half of them died as civilians. Twenty years before another great war in Europe had killed its generation of young men, the fieldpieces drawn by horses. ... "
Journalist Max Blumenthal recently reported on The Raw Story website: "President George W. Bush met privately with Focus on the Family founder and Chairman James Dobson and approximately a dozen Christian right leaders last week to rally support for his policies on Iraq, Iran and the so-called 'war on terror.' ...
"Dobson went on to enumerate a series of meetings convened by Christian right leaders in Washington to discuss the supposedly existential threat to the United States from a nuclear Iran.
"'I heard about this danger [from Iran] not only at the White House but from other pro-family leaders that I met during that week in Washington," he said. "Many people in a position to know are talking about the possibility of losing a city to nuclear or biological or chemical attack. And if we can lose one, we can lose 10. If we can lose 10, we can lose a hundred,' he added, 'especially if North Korea and Russia and China pile on.'"
The H-bomb. A runaway, Doctorow says. "It does not require a plane or a submarine or an intercontinental missile to deliver it. Wherever the enemy is, wherever he is, we need only set it off where we are. Behind a barn somewhere. In the backyard," says Doctorow toward the end of his collection of essays. "The H bomb has no known limits."
Doctorow concludes: "A nuclear explosion will become a scriptural text."
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen.