Fritz Haber is the reason Scientists should respect God / Religion

To go back to the original point, Haber is what you get when you have science with no moral compass. Even the army finds it scairy. I maintain that he has had a lasting negative effect on chemistry, and tho others may disagree I also blame him for 'dioxin chemistry' the use of 1000s of deadly compounds in the 50s, 60s ,70s, that did not have there toxicity properly examined. Its his sort of mindset that lead to that, even tho he was dead he was still very influencial.

Originally posted by e4chris
To go back to the original point, Haber is what you get when you have science with no moral compass. Even the army finds it scairy. I maintain that he has had a lasting negative effect on chemistry, and tho others may disagree I also blame him for 'dioxin chemistry' the use of 1000s of deadly compounds in the 50s, 60s ,70s, that did not have there toxicity p ...[text shortened]... Its his sort of mindset that lead to that, even tho he was dead he was still very influencial.

Haber is what you get when you have science with no moral compass.

You mean with no Christianity? HE WAS CHRISTIAN!
The Nazis were also Christian; so the Nazis is what you get when you have Christianity without a moral compass.
And why should a “moral compass” require a delusional blind faith that there is a god and, more specifically, the Christian god and, even more specifically, your particular Christian god? That is just rubbish.

I agree that the use of science should come with a moral compass -but a moral compass is NOT Christianity.
Morality comes from love, compassion, sympathy and a sense of fairness and NOT belief that there exists a god.

And what about all the murders in the religious wars?
God or gods exists for an excuse for mass murder of those with an arbitrarily academically and trivially different point of view from one's own.
Yep, great "moral compass" there!

I also blame him for 'dioxin chemistry' the use of 1000s of deadly compounds in the 50s, 60s ,70s, that did not have there toxicity properly examined.

the 50s, 60s ,70s, are well after his death so how could he be to blame for these compounds not haven their "toxicity properly examined”? -that makes no sense.
How could he possibly check for the toxicity of compounds made after his death? Was he supposed to come back from the dead to examine the toxicity of all these compounds? That would be demanding a lot! Explain....

I maintain that he has had a lasting negative effect on chemistry,

actually, it just happens to be more positive than negative -the Haber process has no doubt saved many millions from starvation and continues to do so today. Do you deny this?

P.S. That does not condone him for developing poisonous warfare gas.

Originally posted by e4chris
Discuss!




For me, If you read a book on him it will have you reaching for the bible so quick, if nothing else you could hit him on the head with it.

I think Dawkins and co are very wrong to try and rule our religion when you have scientists like Haber (the inventor of the glass landmine, invisble to x ray, amoung other things) about.

Your thoughts?

Seriously? Some of the stuff god did in the bible was terrible and on a global scale.He also made Haber and KNEW what he was going to do!!!!!

Originally posted by humy
[b That does not condone him for developing poisonous warfare gas.[/b]

Are we going to vilify every scientist who worked on weaponry?
Gunpowder, barbed wire, machine-guns?
Nuclear weapons?

Barnes Wallis and the bouncing bomb?
(Now outlawed under the Geneva Convention)

You really think it takes an evil scientist to create these things? If so you have
been reading too many comics and watching too many old Bond movies.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
Are we going to vilify every scientist who worked on weaponry?
Gunpowder, barbed wire, machine-guns?
Nuclear weapons?

Barnes Wallis and the bouncing bomb?
(Now outlawed under the Geneva Convention)

You really think it takes an evil scientist to create these things? If so you have
been reading too many comics and watching too many old Bond movies.

I first said:

(1) “the Haber process has no doubt saved many millions from starvation and continues to do so today. “

and then I said:

(2) “That does not condone him for developing poisonous warfare gas. “

-which I at least think is true because (1) does not 'condone' developing poisonous warfare gas -BUT neither does (1) condemn developing poisonous warfare gas.
I was not trying to vilify him but rather merely trying to make it clear to e4chris that I was NOT using the good a person does as an excuse to justify whatever e4chris perceives, rightly or wrongly, as the harm a person does.
Sorry for any confusion -perhaps I should have made this point earlier.

I do not vilify scientists JUST for working on weaponry -just for starters, one cannot ignore the context (such as the context which the bouncing bomb was made in).
And I DO recognize the huge gray area between good and evil -not everything is just black and white.

Originally posted by humy
I first said:
(1) “the Haber process has no doubt saved many millions from starvation and continues to do so today. “
and then I said:
(2) “That does not condone him for developing poisonous warfare gas. “
-which I at least think is true because (1) does not 'condone' developing poisonous warfare gas -BUT neither does (1) condemn developing DO recognize the huge gray area between good and evil -not everything is just black and white.

I agreed with everything you said up until that last sentence. I really dont
think that we can blame individual scientists for working on weaponry no matter
how hideous those weapons may be and my reply was aimed more at the e4chris. (although it doesnt look that way 😳 )

And as you pointed out the Haber-Bosch process continues to prevent
starvation around the world.

But also consider:
without Haber somebody else would have developed poisonous gas.

without Haber somebody else would have developed the Haber-Bosch process.

I do blame him for dioxin chemistry yes, he may not of invented it but he might as well. Haber was a master organic / industrial chemist, he took fairly simple chemistry and scaled it up. What your left with is a great big factory that's very costly to close. Since haber , dioxin being a prime example, ptfe, cfcs, carbon bromo fire retardents, it goes on and on and on, very toxic chemicals have been turned out by the ton and it takes years to close them some never do. Habers total indeference to toxicity, the fact he wanted it, rubbed of on industrial chemistry and it took about 40 years to put right. The chemical companies, cosmetics etc still fight vigorously against testing legislation. In the 60s you could get mdma on prescription and dioxin weed killer, any chemical they could sell they did back then...

re haber vs other weapon scientists, he does stand out, its depressing to go into detail but he does stand out. He was very keen on sadism, he saw it as a decoy, helping the maimed.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
I agreed with everything you said up until that last sentence. I really dont
think that we can blame individual scientists for working on weaponry no matter
how hideous those weapons may be and my reply was aimed more at the e4chris. (although it doesnt look that way 😳 )

Who can we blame for the American military machine?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Who can we blame for the American military machine?

-answer; the politicians. And the politicians are not normally the scientists -most are just not intelligent enough.

Originally posted by humy
-answer; the politicians. And the politicians are not normally the scientists -most are just not intelligent enough.

Why cant we also blame the voters? Many of them support the US arms industry either because they think it is economically beneficial or politically beneficial.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Why cant we also blame the voters? Many of them support the US arms industry either because they think it is economically beneficial or politically beneficial.

good point. Voters have a collective responsibility.
I think we have a similar situation here in the UK with voters supporting the government stupidly clinging on to their possession of nuclear weapons long after the cold war has ended. We might have once had a good political excuse to possess such weapons but not any more. And we are in absolutely no position to lecture to other countries about the wrongs of developing or having nuclear weapons for as long as we cling onto them so we should get rid of them.

I personally think that, despite the dodgy military history of the US, the only country that should be permitted to have any nuclear weapons should be the US so that it can act as the world peace keeper and there should be a global ban on all nuclear weapons except in the US -I just know many people will extremely strongly disagree with me on this point.

RE the american millitary machine, it blows things up like nothing else but thats not habers tactics... Going back to dioxin, toxins by the ton, I do blame him for that I think thats a legacy of his that is harder to see...

Its not really relevant to haber but a recent case highlights the kind of attitudes I'm on about. People got paranoid about buying parabens, enough for cosmetics companies to market 'paraben free' products, allegedly they can mimic eastrogen, there is a mix commonly used in cosmetics and one was recently found to be risky in that way. It got into the press and people stopped buying them. But.... they replace parabens with sodium benzoate, also used as a food preservative. I think this is a marketing trick that if people see a chemical they have seen in food (not saying all care but enough do) they think it must be ok. But sodium benzoate was pulled from soft drinks for being carcinogenic, it turns into benzene which is toxic in very low doses. I don't want to spread net rubbish i do buy shower gel with it in. But the cosmetics companies vigorously oppose attempts by the EU to test there chemicals for being carcinogenic... sodium benzoate could well be worse then paraben and they don't want any tests to find out...

Originally posted by e4chris
RE the american millitary machine, it blows things up like nothing else but thats not habers tactics... Going back to dioxin, toxins by the ton, I do blame him for that I think thats a legacy of his that is harder to see...

It so hard to see that I still don't see it. Can you explain it in language I can understand? What is the real issue you have with Habers tactics? Why are they different from other forms of mass killing such as bombs, guns or plain old starvation (historically the biggest killer by far).