Richard A. Muller > Quotes

“THIS book is radioactive. And so are you. Unless you are dead, in which case we can tell how long ago you died by how much of your radioactivity is left. That’s what radiocarbon dating is—the measurement of the reduction of radioactivity of old bones to deduce the time of death. Alcohol is radioactive too—at least the kind we drink. Rubbing alcohol usually isn’t, unless it was made organically—that is, from wood. In fact, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tests wine, gin, whiskey, and vodka for radioactivity. A fifth of whiskey must emit at least 400 beta rays every minute or the drink is considered unfit for human consumption. Biofuels are radioactive. Fossil fuels are not. Of those killed by the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the best estimate is that fewer than 2% died of radiation-induced cancer. These statements are all true. They are not even disputed, at least by experts. Yet they surprise most people.”
― Richard A. Muller, Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines

“Many people also worry about microwave radiation from cell phones. Unlike X-rays, which are high-energy photons, microwaves are photons with extremely low energy. They deposit their energy in the form of heat; that’s what they do in microwave ovens. They do not break DNA molecules in the body (unless they actually burn and char the material), and therefore they pose no risk of causing cancer in the way that X-rays and other energetic radiation (even sunlight) can. The main danger is the heat. Much of the fear of microwaves undoubtedly comes from the fact that they share the name radiation with the other, far more dangerous forms, such as gamma radiation. The fear that some people have shown toward such cell phone radiation finds its origin not in physics, but in linguistics.”
― Richard A. Muller, Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines

“It is not reason that leads you to say that rights are self-evident, but empathy.”
― Richard A. Muller, Now: The Physics of Time

“Je pense, donc je suis.”
― Richard A. Muller, Now: The Physics of Time

“Alcohol is radioactive too—at least the kind we drink. Rubbing alcohol usually isn’t, unless it was made organically—that is, from wood. In fact, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tests wine, gin, whiskey, and vodka for radioactivity. A fifth of whiskey must emit at least 400 beta rays every minute or the drink is considered unfit for human consumption.”
― Richard A. Muller, Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines

“physics”
― Richard A. Muller, Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines

“Now get ready for a paradox: the dose of radiation needed to cause cancer has been measured to be approximately 2500 rem. That’s enough to kill someone within hours of radiation poisoning. Given one cancer dose of radiation, a person won’t live long enough to get cancer.”
― Richard A. Muller, Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines

“Chorazin?  Yes, there was a girl in Chorazin.”  My heart pounded.  “She was my last victim.   I told her that I would introduce her to mysteries of God that had been kept secret, to a ceremony in which she would anoint me, and I would anoint her, and she would feel the presence of the Lord, a thrill as the holy spirit of the Lord entered her body.  I was an angel of the Lord, I told her, and she would remember the time we spent together as if it were a dream.” I”
― Richard A. Muller, The Sins of Jesus: A Historical Account of a Human Jesus

“...sola Scriptura was never meant as a denial of the usefulness of the Christian tradition as a subordinate norm in theology and as a significant point of reference for doctrinal formulas and argumentation. The views of the Reformers developed out of a debate in the late medieval theology over the relation of Scripture and tradition, on the side of the debate viewing the two as coequal norms, the other side of the debate taking Scripture as the sole source of necessary doctrine, albeit as read in the church's interoperative tradition. The Reformers and the Protestant orthodox followed the latter understanding, defining Scripture as the absolute and therefore prior norm, but allowing the theological tradition, particularly the earlier tradition of the fathers and ecumenical councils, to have a derivative but important secondary role in doctrinal statements. They accepted the ancient tradition as a useful guide, allowing that the trinitarian and Christological statements of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon were expressions of biblical truth, and that the great teachers of the church provided valuable instruction in theology that always needed to be evaluated in the light of Scripture. At the same time, they rejected recent human traditions as problematic deviations from the biblical norm. What the Reformers and orthodox explicitly denied was coequality of Scripture and tradition and, in particular, the claim of unwritten traditions as normative for practice. We encounter, especially in the scholastic era of Protestantism, a profound interest in the patristic period and a critical but often substantive use of ideas and patterns enunciated by the medieval doctors.”
― Richard A. Muller

“One of the neglected resources of the orthodox ontology (and of the related principles of orthodox epistemology) is the dictum finitum non capax infiniti ('the finite cannot grasp the infinite'). Older Reformed theology mediated long and hard on the inability of finite man to reach, to understand, and to have communion with an infinite God—and, as a result, many of the distinctions found in the orthodox system relate to the way in which this chasm is overcome by the acts of God in history. The distinction between the decree and its execution, the historical line of the covenant, and the revelation of God in Christ all describe the saving initiative of an infinite God grasping the finite. A sophisticated modern scholasticism can well afford to recognize the inability of fallen man to raise his level of perception beyond the phenomenal. This, indeed, is the problem underlying many of the philosophical arguments leveled against theology in our time. But recognizing this rift between noumenal and phenomenal, recognizing also that any claim on our part to rise beyond the world of perception would smack of Pelagianism, we can nevertheless refuse to fall into the trap of Brunner’s neo-orthodox approach where not only man but also God must oblige the great epistemological rift. For the infinite God who graciously grasps the finite, who comes to the finite creature with saving revelation of himself in Christ, has shattered the Kantian barrier from his side.”
― Richard A. Muller