1083 ratings | 23 reviews
avg rating: 4.23

(since October 07)

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Robert G. Brown

author profile

born

March 29, 1955

gender

male

place of birth

United States

website

http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb

genre

Science Fiction & Fantasy, Poetry, Science

influences

Heinlein, Rand, Zelazny, Farmer, Brin, Forward, Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, E.E. Smith, Tolkein, Chant, Barth, W. B. Yeats, Tennyson, Shelley, TSE, Poe, Lovecraft, Derleth, and others too numerous to mention.

about this author

edit data

My real biography is way too long and complex for a few hundred words, so this is the reader's digest version. I've lived in Skaneateles, New York, New Delhi, India, West Springfield, Virginia, and for 34 years now in Durham, NC where I teach physics at Duke. I'm married (to Susan F. Isbey MD) and have three boys. We live with three dogs, one cat, and sundry transient animals of all classes.

In addition to doing physics, math, statistics, computing, predictive modelling, and geekstuff like that, I write. A lot. Daily.

I write magazine columns and articles, usually in the field of computing. I've written lots of "learned papers" in physics, mostly published in Physical Review. I've written two books of poetry (much of ...more

books by Robert G. Brown

combine editions
avg rating: 3.86 | 7 ratings | 1 distinct work

The Book of Lilith (Paperback)
by Robert G. Brown (goodreads author!)
avg rating 3.86 — 7 ratings — published 2007

my rating:

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, perform a search.

rgb's writing

The Book of Lilith (Literature & Fiction)

1 chapters — updated 01/25/2008 08:32PM

description: Lilith was the first woman to be given a soul by God, and her purpose is to give all the rest of Creation a soul by means of her love, beginning with Adam. Adam has a job too -- to create the rules that define sin and bring about a world governed by reason and law. Unfortunately, Adam insists on being on top whenever they have sex, which leads to problems... Alternately funny, serious, and thought provoking, The Book of Lilith is just plain fun to read! Visit The Book of Lilith Website at: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Lilith/Lilith.php to find reviews, previews, links, and much more!

rgb is currently reading

	11/14 rgb is currently reading: The Witches of Eileanan (Paperback) by Kate Forsyth bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
	see all 1 comments
	10/14 rgb is currently reading: Pattern Recognition (Paperback) by William Gibson bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
	read in October, 2007 add a comment

rgb's recent updates (rss)

August 24

rgb gave

to:
The Gate to Women's Country (Paperback)
by Sheri S. Tepper

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rgb gave

to:
Kushiel's Dart (Kushiel's Legacy, Book 1)
by Jacqueline Carey

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rgb gave

to:
Kushiel's Chosen (Kushiel's Legacy, Book 2)
by Jacqueline Carey

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rgb gave

to:
Kushiel's Dart (Kushiel's Legacy, Book 1)
by Jacqueline Carey

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rgb gave

to:
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Hardcover)
by Douglas R. Hofstadter

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July 15

rgb gave

to:
The Golden Compass (Kompas Emas) (His Dark Materials, Buku 1)
by Philip Pullman

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June 16

rgb made a comment in the group Faith and Spirituality—Secular Sermons topic:

rgb wrote: "Tommy, I've been thinking for some time about how to communicate with you the fallacy in the way you...more "

June 15

rgb made a comment in the group Faith and Spirituality—Enough Already With Evolution!! topic:

rgb wrote: "Now that is not to say that there is the occasional discrimination against non-muslim but t...more Now that is not to say that there is the occasional discrimination against non-muslim but the same could be said about the discrimination that christians have against homosexuals or for that matter anyone who is completely different. (seriously if you don't believe me when was the last time you invited a homosexual couple over for dinner with your friends? Or have you ever spent time in a coffee shop fellowshiping with muslims?)

Not so long ago for either one, for me, but I'm not a Christian (or a Muslim). If it came right down to it, I am a monadic deist and hence agree more with Islam than Christianity, but I reject all theistic scripture and think Muhammed (like Jesus) was just a man. A man who had some good ideas and who made some terrible mistakes (in both cases). A man whose bad ideas where enshrined with the good, rewritten a dozen times to serve the purposes of those who sought the power and certainty of an organized religion that gave them both, transformed into "the word of God" and hence an instrument that causes men to stop thinking and behave like fools as they suspend their good sense and natural compassion in favor of easily twisted words they don't have to think about, only obey.

The wonderful thing is that (as you note) so many people who assert that they are "Christian" or "Muslim" or "Hindu" or "Atheistic" or whatever you like, if you sit with them and break bread away from the priests and politicians and police that would enforce a faith as a means of control and a means to power, are pretty much the same and more often than not good people.

And why not? They are born and raised to respect one another and a concept of "good" that is not so different, once one leaves the name of God and the forty seven rules for living that His Holy Scripture insists are essential to salvation and worship. Love your neighbor (or at least try not to hate him). Help your neighbor (or at least try not to hurt him). Leave your neighbor alone if he isn't hating and hurting you, in the hope that he'll leave you alone to be different where you differ. Beyond that it is make a living, care for your loved ones, marryings and buryings, coping with illness and sadness and embracing joy and love.

Truthfully, I think that at this point our only hope of human "salvation" is to abandon scriptural theistic religion altogether in favor of secular humanistic religion -- religion that can be anywhere on the spectrum from total atheism to total deism, but religion that respects the human freedom to choose where on this spectrum one belongs. Believe whatever you wish, but don't seek to foist your beliefs on me. When it comes to making laws, make laws that all humans agree on regardless of their religion, their gender or sexual orientation, and avoid EVER making laws requiring or prohibiting a particular religious view (or a religious view at all). Accept what science tells us about the world as truth, and put aside the silly mythologies written by ignorant tribesmen to explain things they could not otherwise understand.

In this sort of world, a Muslim is nothing more than a friend that cannot have lunch with you certain times of year not because they don't like you but because it is Ramadan. A Jew is a friend who throws great parties for some of life's passages, and who may or may not be tricky to cook for should they come over for dinner (aluminum foil and glass, not that tricky). A Christian is somebody who might want to say grace before everybody digs in, which is a harmless way to think of God, or the wonder of the Universe, or whether or not your taxes are up to date a few times a day. An atheist is somebody who might internally roll their eyes just a bit when their theistic friends are doing these strange things, but who are far too polite to impose their easygoing ways on others who want to make life relatively hard on themselves.

Any one of them can be a friend that would keep an eye on your kids in an emergency, a friend who would bring over food and stay to comfort you when a loved one dies, a friend who turns to you for help and trusts you in the same way in time of need. A neighbor. Perhaps someone you learn to love and cherish not because of what they believe but because of who they are and what you share.

This world will never happen as long as everyone insists not only that their own personal beliefs are "right", but that everybody else's are wrong. It will never happen when people presume the right to choose for others and enforce a system of beliefs on others that are not supported by logic, reason and evidence, especially when those beliefs come with a political agenda, a religion enforced with the sword and sanction of secular authority. Loving your neighbor is just great, but more important still is to leave your neighbor alone to believe as they wish, even if it diametrically opposes your own beliefs. Go ahead and hate their "sin" all you like, but don't pass laws to make their sin a crime! And respect their right to privacy -- a Muslim in a Christian country or a Christian in a Muslim country has a right to live without anyone trying to "convert" them or convince them that they are sinning if they do or don't pray five times a day facing Mecca, that their homosexuality is a sin, that their failure to believe that Jesus died, rose on the third day, and went to sit on the right hand of the father etc is a sin.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but if you insist on trying to convince them that it is, force them to live as if it is, harass them, nag them, threaten them, jail them, coerce them, even kill them if they fail to accept YOUR beliefs as being "truth", then you doom us all to a world filled with strife and hatred, war and dissension, and all the unbearable sins and horrors that attend this sort of conflict historically.

The golden rule is great, but the negative golden rule is greater. Do not do unto your neighbors what you would have your neighbors not do unto you. If you want heterosexual marriages not to be banned, leave homosexual marriages alone as well. If you want police to stay out of your bedroom, don't send them into the bedroom of others. If you don't want to be dragged into the street and forced to worship Allah according to one or the other of the prescriptions for doing so, don't try to force others to accept Jesus as Lord. If you don't want to see earnest looking Muslims knocking on your door one day passing out copies of the Koran and telling you how wicked it is to eat pork, stop knocking on their doors and handing them copies of the New Testament and telling them that they'll burn in hell if they don't accept Jesus as Lord.

rgb...less "

rgb made a comment in the group Atheists and Skeptics—What are Atheism and Agnosticism? topic:

rgb wrote: "Dear Wendy,

Thanks. It does seem like there is a higher level conversation that could happen, sure...more Dear Wendy,

Thanks. It does seem like there is a higher level conversation that could happen, sure. I also agree that perhaps it is better suited to SF -- there people don't seem to be as narrow minded either way. They are, um, less "religious" in their view;-) They are also more willing to suspend ((dis)belief) for the purpose of reading a story and maybe just enjoying it for whatever it says and taking from it whatever they wish instead of trying to prove the unprovable (again, either way).

The probability of us being here, alive and aware, in this particular Universe, at this instant in time, experiencing time bound to entropic flow in a space-time with no directional arrow to either one, is either a number that lives so close to zero that their kids are good friends and they lunch at the same clubs or it is unity. In one sense it is unity -- a self-demonstrating fact. In another, it is zero plain and simple -- a point picked from a continuum of unbounded complexity and dimensionality.

The fact is and will remain that the Universe is not logically necessary, and yet it is. We can intellectually understand that our entire existences are quite literally a weaving of worldlines of all of the particles that make us up (and their informational content). The blur of atoms that make us up are born in a complex plasma that expands and condenses into atoms that wander around in a diffuse cloud, form in time the heart of a star that explodes. The explosion fuses many of the atoms into new elements, elements that eventual condense into a new star and some nearby blobs, one of which cools and forms an environment with the right contituents for complex chemistry.

Wait a few billion years and here we are -- or view it relativistically and there is no before or after or now, only the whole four dimensional volume, no birth or death, only being. Our particular threads were (in some sense) spun out of the particle worldlines that make up the Universe as a single thing. You can play the tape backwards and all the laws of physics work out the same, solutions to boundary value problems in four dimensions.

In relativistic time there is no story, there is only a book, and it is a book that was never written and never goes away (and that may be but a single book on a very, very large bookshelf). In entropic time only can one be aware, can birth and death and "change" occur.

In all of this there are many questions. We seek many causes, but cause lives in time, and from a larger perspective there is no "time", only dimensions with a matric where events occur, where worldlines live. We can describe the lines, understand the dimensions, create mathematical maps that seem to correspond in their properties to the properties we observe as we live experiencing time those same maps tell us is an illusion, an artifact of entropy, a very peculiar self-organizing fractal imaging of the whole (like a tiny little mandelbrot set buried in an obscure corner of the whole thing). But the map is fundamentally incapable of answering the BIG why questions. Or for that matter, by inheritance, the little ones.

Believe or disbelieve as you will. Believe if you wish that you have no beliefs, only certainties. Believe that you are as important as your unitary existence -- the probability one of ongoing observation -- makes you, or as unimportant as the teensy volume of space-time your unlikely thread out of all possible space-time volumes and threads that could have ever been instead makes you -- the zero probability of the point hit on an infinite dartboard by an infinitely sharp point. Both the unity and the zero are pretty amazing, IMO, either way.

rgb...less "

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Constant Reader — 896 members — last activity 3 minutes ago
An open forum for friendly discussion of books and anything to do with reading, movies and art.

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This is a place to give feedback about Goodreads. Feature ideas, bugs, or any other suggestion for improvement. The Goodreads staff monitors this gr...more

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This is a group meant for the discussion of atheism and skepticism and the books associated with both. Recommending books arguing for or against relig...more

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No pretensions: just poetry.

Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to re...more

SciFi and Fantasy Book Club — 768 members — last activity 2 hours, 22 min ago
September Book: Dune by Frank Herbert

Discussion Leader: Alex Rowe

THEME SELECTION: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Discussion Leader: Michael

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rgb's friend comments

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from Daniel

10/17/2007 02:40PM

I'm not going to argue with Robert over Memetic Evolution, but I guess I've already started to argue with him over my latest book. Let's see who wins this one!
What we both agree on is giving FREE e-books to the public in repayment for what the public has given us.

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