I don't usually ask for help, but I am in a quandry....and for the life

[rasputin1952]

I cannot ind a a Nils DeGrasse Tyson dis, (Audio or print) od ans absolutely brilliant treartise In when physicists as opposed to theologians shoUld discuss "life after death".

If anyone could come up with a link to either the audio or print vesions, I would be eternally grateful.

Thanking you all in advance...:loveya:

[bananas]

1. Neil deGrasse Tyson?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson

[eShirl]

2. I think this video might be it?

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2006/11/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-richard-dawkins.html

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins
(by Laurence A. Moran)

This is the video clip that so many of my colleagues are excited about. They think Neil deGrasse Tyson has hit the nail on the head. They agree with him that Dawkins is being "insensitive" when he criticizes religion.

I'm not familiar with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Is he famous in America? Is he a good educator? Is he effective? Has he been going around the country giving lectures where he gently and kindly urges his audiences to question their religious beliefs? Has he been softly pleading with Americans to respect atheists? Has he been speaking out, quietly, against the Ted Haggards and Jerry Falwells of this world? Is his strategy working?

Richard Dawkins has done more in the past two months to stimulate a dialogue on religion than all the rest of us have done in five decades. The blogs are full of excitement about atheism and religion. Dawkins has been at dozens of universities, appeared on dozens of TV shows, and been featured in major articles in most newspapers. The debate made the cover of Time magazine. There have been several symposia like the one Tyson was invited to. There wouldn't even have been a symposium without Dawkins.

People all over North America are questioning religion. I've seen it on the streets in my own neighborhood and overheard discussions in the restaurants. All of a sudden, people are realizing there are atheists in their midst—and they're not so bad after all. Ask yourself this: how does the Dawkins' form of education compare with the efforts of people like Neil deGrasse Tysons?

[HamdenRice]

3. Bit of trivia -- I went to high school with Tyson

At the time he was just Neil Tyson. Interestingly, he was a jock -- I think it was gymnastics. But even the jocks at my high school (Bronx Science) were smart. We were friends -- not best friends, but within each other's circle. He was also a very bubbly, happy person who loved physics. (Not one gram of tortured adolescence visible in him.) Although it's the Bronx High School of Science, it was at the time way biased in favor of biology (the faculty were much better in that field), so the physics people were a little odd. Neil went on to study, I believe, astrophysics.

Except for the gray hair, he looks almost exactly the same as he did in high school!

For those who don't know who he is, he is the CEO of the Hayden Planetarium, probably second only to the Smithsonian as popular science education institutions. He is also ubiquitous on US TV as a popularizer of physics, cosmology and astronomy. The fact that he is African American hopefully will provide to the general public a counterbalance to the pre-existing image of science as basically all white males. On TV he has pretty much become the public face of physics and astronomy, along with Michiu Kaku.

It's interesting to think of his high school personality, because it fits much more with his role as a popularizer of science than as a laboratory scientist.