ISAAC ASIMOV AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT HOW TO

Asimov, above, at 333), he reportedly once said, “I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.” From 1985 to his death in 1992, Asimov served as the president of the American Humanist Association.īest known for his science fiction and fantasy writings, Asimov authored or edited about 200 works of fiction, including a smattering of mysteries. Philosophically Asimov considered himself a rationalist and an atheist. At the same time, Isaac Asimov never changed his name as did others to hide his Jewishness, always acknowledged that he was Jewish and seems to have absorbed some Jewish values if not Jewish practices or sense of peoplehood.

Asimov: A Memoir (Doubleday 1994) at 12.) Not surprisingly, throughout his adult life, Asimov was strictly non-observant with respect to any known religious practice. As he related in his third autobiography (no misprint), however, his parents never made “any effort” to teach any religion to him, even to have him participate in a bar mitzvah ceremony. Born into an orthodox Jewish family in Russia, he came to America in 1923 as a young child. Isaac Asimov, the renowned 20 th century writer, had a rather cramped view of religion.

If Abraham saw Judaism as a religion of time, Isaac did not. at 8.) Recognizing that a different sensitivity is involved in creating holiness in time, rather than space, he urged that we cultivate that sensitivity in order to achieve the goal of being, rather than having.

ISAAC ASIMOV AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT HOW TO

Judaism, according to Heschel, “teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.” ( Id. The result of the conquest of space is “technical civilization.” But, Heschel argued, “(l)ife goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.” For Heschel, time, not space, “is the heart of existence.” ( See Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (Farrar, Straus and Young 1951) at 3.) Abraham Joshua Heschel, the renowned 20 th century philosopher, understood that gaining “control of the world of space” is one of the main tasks of humankind.

Isaac asimov and then there was light