Zeus, Thor, Nietzsche and the BBC

Jim Al-Khalili lays out the history of Magnetism and Electricity in a very clear way on BBC 4‘s Open University Course. It’s wonderful the way you are whisked to all the laboratories where the pioneers worked and their experiments are demonstrated on the very equipment that they used. Yet why does Jim traduce the power of Zeus, Thor, and Old Jehovah to create lightning and assign its understanding to mere mortals clothed in the alb of science? Does he not fear their wrath? How can it even be possible for religious persons to pursue science and continue to hold to such beliefs? Baffling indeed, but yet they do.

Bettany Hughes on the BBC 4 Open University great minds program on Nietzsche found that God was dead because he said so. Transvaluation of all values particularly slave values and so forth. What might this mean for the Samaritan for instance? Leave him there, don’t waste valuable resources on a stranger. Bettany had to be reminded by another expert that Nietzsche did not score high on compassion. But it was his bad sister that made him sustenance for Nazis. Really? One doesn’t have to look very hard in his books to find their comfort food. Bettany who is a humanist likely takes the view that if N. was anti-Christian then he can’t be all bad. There was scarcely any critical examination of his ideas. This is the OU you know.

The other mystery is why Bettany wore the same clothes throughout her trips to London, Sils Marie etc? Is it the BBC as magic carpet? Those boots, Canadian lumberjack lace ups, were suitable for Nurenberg but wrong for Turin.