Name a few people that changed your world.

While Suzy and I are debating how great Jack Kerouac and Charlie Parker were, I thought maybe the rest of you could chime in with your own list of your favorite characters, and what made them great to you. I know the obvious is usually someone in your own family, that’s okay, but try to add someone that you think changed the whole world. And say a few things about them...

I'll start! I'm not necessarily going to put mine in any kind of order. I'll just mention them as they come to the top of my mind. Kinda' like the academy awards of my favorite people. These are the people that made me what I am today, for the most part.

Albert Einstein: I know, you guys are tired of hearing about Einstein, but he was one of the first people that ever made me wonder about the things around me. I first remember hearing about Einstein as a small child; even then he was revered as one of the world’s smartest men. I often wondered that, if I studied hard, could I become as smart as Einstein? That statement alone should tip you off that Einstein was much more intelligent than me.

I’ve read a lot of things about Einstein through the years. He always had my admiration. He caused me to wonder about time travel, and would it really be possible to travel back and forth through time. After reading Einstein’s theories about changing time, I came to an understanding that to change time would be so enormously complicated that it would never be practical, as in Jules Vern’s Time machine, where you just set the clock shaped dial, and went to what ever year and day that you wanted to travel to. So Einstein brought me the disappointment of knowing that I wasn’t going to go forward or back in time. Even if I could, I would not get any younger or older with-in my own personnel time frame. Dang!

Einstein so well understood the world around him that he was able to understand how to manufacture an atomic bomb. Building an atomic weapon is hard enough when you already know how to do it, but to just pull it out of your head is pretty amazing. Most people could understand the physics of an atomic weapon if it was drawn out on paper for them, including me. Einstein personally warned President Roosevelt that the Germans were very near to having an atomic bomb back in 1939. Roosevelt launched the “Manhattan Project” to develop our own nuclear weapon, but we didn’t use it on Germany, we used it to stop the war with Japan.

As some of you know, I always wondered about “God” and at what level is God real. I always looked to very smart people for guidance. Einstein was reluctant to speak out against God, possibly because of the vast amount of people that believe in a God, and the fact that most people believe that we were “made in God’s image”. His reluctance to speak out about his disbelief in God prompted many people to put words in his mouth, as indeed we still see today. Many people claim that Einstein believed in God. I think it best to simply quote him:

"The word ‘God’ is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish”

Repeated attempts by the press to present Albert Einstein as a religious man provoked the following statement:
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”—Albert Einstein.

Isaac Asimov was also one of my Heroes. As a young man I read everything that I could possibly get my hands on. I’ve always loved machinery, and building things. One of the first things that I noticed about machines is that they are always consistent. If you turn the wheel to the left, the machine goes to the left. ALWAYS! It’s not like arguing with my wife, the only thing consistent there is that I always LOSE.

It has been said that Isaac Asimov invented the word robot. The word was actually a Czech word for artificial man or slave. Asimov gave it it's modern meaning that we all recognize; a mechanical-man that follows our instructions. Asimov was a brilliant man that was one of the most prolific Science Fiction writers of all time. I've read every book that he ever wrote many years ago, and it is time to start over. If you don't know who Asimov was, but want to read one of his books, read "I Robot" it was the book that put the word "Robot" into the English Language.
There was no room for doubt about how Asimov felt about God:
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.”

I like Robert A. Heinlein. Who wrote "Farnham’s Freehold". I have posted about him before. He was very important in forming some of my thoughts. "Farnhams Freehold" was about the nuclear apocalypse, and life after.

Heinlein was an outspoken atheist, Quote:
“The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.” Robert A. Heinlein

Way up on my list of men that I admire is Arthur C. Clark. Clark described the position in the sky where satellites would remain in geosynchronous orbit indefinitely. Many of the satellites that relay television and other communication signals are positioned in the “Clarks Belt”. Named after him for his intelligent thought on the subject. His calculations of it’s position were exactly right. He also wrote "2001, A Space Odyssey". It was made into the worlds most boring science fiction film. Read the book, forget the film, too artsy.
His feelings on religion follow much the same as all of my other heroes. But he like to remark about religion facetiously, leaving one to wonder how he really felt about the presence of God. One of his quotes was:

"Religion" is ultimately somewhat complicated. He said, "Any path to knowledge is a path to God—or Reality, whichever word one prefers to use".
But he also said:
"One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion."
On his death bed he said:
"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral."

Just to prove that I am not completely without religious heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King is also one of my heroes. Not for his religious work, but his work for civil rights, and the betterment of mankind.

My two favorite song writers are Kris Kristopherson and Hoyt Axton. I’m not sure about their belief in God.

Any thoughts of your own?