A couple of months ago, I decided I’d keep track along the way of individuals in our generation who claim to be prophets. I happened upon a surprising claim this week from an Astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson. While he did not claim to be a prophet of God in the fashion that many religious people do, I was intrigued that he claims to have been “called by the Universe”.
Here is the excerpt you will find in the embedded YouTube video at roughly 00:00:45 – 00:01:17:
“I wanted to become an astrophysicist not because I chose it; in a way, the Universe chose me. …. I was called by the Universe. I had no choice in the matter.” (See it in the video below.)
I find this interesting because the scientist is most likely waxing metaphoric, as if to say that “It was as if the Universe were calling to me.” If this is how humans tend to think about their own experiences—even those we might assume to be highly-trained thinkers such as Tyson—then is it any wonder that average citizens tend to wax imaginary about their “callings” from God? Is it any wonder that so very many people fancy themselves to have a “relationship with God” even though they know full well that there is nothing typical about that “relationship”? That is, they talk to God but God doesn’t talk back. They ask for things and often don’t get anything that can even be imagined to be a response from God. They cannot make a phone call to reach him as they do with their other relationships, and he doesn’t reply to email. Yet even so, they imagine a “relationship” with him just the same. And here we have the famous Astrophysicist engaging in something of the same general sort, it seems.
How interesting. Yet he does it in the name of “science”, as he looks down on those who do it in the name of “religion”.
If the Universe can call an astrophysicist and a table can give Wayne Dyer the words for a book, perhaps the preachers claiming prophecy ought at least to be recognized as belonging to a larger group of humans doing the same general thing—-however unreal those claims may be.
I, for one, would prefer that we all be honest and rational, not making any claim that we cannot demonstrate as true.
