Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist - The F.S.A.

Now that my current car has a CD player, I've been borrowing audio CDs to listen to on my drive to work. The most recent audio CD I listened to and really enjoyed was Richard Feynman's What Do You Care What Other People Think. It's a sort of sequel to his previous semi-autobiographical book: Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman (which I haven't read, but plan to in the near future). I did however, really enjoyed listening to the book. I was familiar with Richard Feynman as a larger than life character but this series of autobiographical anecdotes were a very pleasant insight into the real person. While the book contained a hodge-podge of stories, the two main centerpieces are the tragic tale of his first love and his involvement with the investigation of the 1986 Challenger Explosion.

One of the smaller stories interpersed in the book, was how Feynman became an atheist. This interested me quite a bit (obviously). He was brought up in a secular-ish Jewish household and when he was growing up he went to Sunday school (or the Jewish equivalent, he calls it Sunday school in the book). He had a scientific mind even then (which he credits to the influence of his father growing up) and he was constantly trying to reconcile the miracle stories he heard with reality, because he assumed that all the stories were true. For example, he heard the story about Moses seeing a bush that was shaking but there was no wind. One day he saw a tree branch that appeared to be moving vigourously but there was only a very slight wind. Aha, he said to himself, the wind is hitting the branch at just the right angle so that it vibrates at it's reasonant frequency. Basically, the branch appeared without wind again, but now he had a scientific explanation for what Moses thought was a miracle. However, he was unable to reconcile all the stories he was being and this frustrated him.

In one particular class, a rabbi was recalling the story of a young woman who was being tortured during the Inquisition. The climax of this story was that just before she died she thought to herself, "blah, blah, blah" (he literally says blah, blah, blah in the book). This piqued young Feynman's curiosity, how on earth did they know what this woman was thinking before she died. After Sunday school, he approached the Rabbi and asked him how they could have known. The Rabbi said, "Oh, it's just a story, it's suppose to teach a lesson about being Jewish [something like that]". This shocked Feynman, and he started crying! He was so upset, because no one told him that they could just be made-up stories; he thought they were all true, and he had no reason to belive otherwise. This ultimately lead him down the path to atheism.

It was fascinating to listen to this story. Here was a young man trying his best to reconcile the physical world with the miraculous stories of the Torah. I could feel that he felt betrayed by the authority figures who pretended to know more than they really did. I wonder how many other people became atheists from a similar experience?

The one qualm I had with the book was that it seemingly bounced back and forth between different anecdotes, but over time I got felt that it depicted Feynman's personality well. So while it took some getting use to, having completed the book, I have a better appreciation for why it was done that way.

I highly recommend people pick up a copy, it's a very entertaining and insightful read on a curious character. Here's to you Mr. Feynman.