VALUES
By What Measure?
“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.” ~ Bertrand Russell
That’s quite a statement Bertrand Russell asserts. On one level it reveals a value system that is common among many intellectuals. Intelligence has high value.
But in the Gospels, there are other values of importance. Being good, for example. Or being compassionate. Or being wise. There are so many educated fools that the very expression “educated fool” has become a byword.
I remember listening to a mean-spirited diatribe by Andy Rooney on Imus in the Morning in which he chastened Mel Gibson for his film Passion of the Christ a few years back. Rooney essentially dissed Gibson and the film because “the smartest man of the last century, Bertrand Russell” was an atheist.
So there you have it. What do we do, then? Give everyone I.Q. tests to determine who gets to declare what we should all believe? It’s nonsense. Newton was a smart man, and a Christian.
Sir Isaac Newton has been near universally ranked amongst the greatest mathematicians of all time. Of Newton, Einstein said, “Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort.”
