Originally posted by kaminsky
I think the main question is emotional detachment (again) , Oppenheimer could arguably be excused from being a monster because he admitted the horror of the bomb and felt guilt, if Haber was detached from the results of his work then he was a monster. Terms like God and Religion are meaningless unless specifically defined.
Yes I think he was a monster.
Immagine an evil Sheldon, from the big bang theory, what would / could he do? I was thinking of having a lighter hearted ethics thread on it.
I think your point about detachment is true, same kind of detatchment that caused the credit crunch to my mind, to a banker thats a graph not a person.
Re Richard Dawkins, I think he's an interesting character, this is my crude criticism of him; You had Darwin, who not his fault but that led to Eugenics, You had Nietzsche with god is dead / super humans . And the 2 contributed to a very ugly form of fascism, tho probably neither intended it. I think Dawkins plays devils advocate, but I wouldn't want him to win.