His close association with active communists, and a post-cold war revelation (a code name for a spy that was in all probability a reference to Oppenheimer?) lead me to believe that he was leaking information to the soviets. Dr. Shermer’s love affair with Oppies brainpower may have caused him to overlook serious problems with the man’s patriotism.

I’m not aware of any evidence to support this.

“I changed my mind about an important historical question: did the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bring World War Two to an end? Until this year I used to say, perhaps. Now, because of new facts, I say no. This question is important, because the myth of the nuclear bombs bringing the war to an end is widely believed.”

The theory is that Japan surrendered because the Soviets invaded Manchuria.

My two cents. Nuclear weapons have no inherent moral properties. Their invention was inevitable at the time Oppenheimer was involved, so the U.S. seems morally justified in developing them ahead of its enemies, the Nazis. Using the weapon against the Japanese is projected to have saved approximately 1 million U.S. soldiers lives, so that seems to have a solid moral basis. Remember, the Japanese leadership knew they were facing inevitable defeat and had the option to surrender in light of this knowledge. The fact that they didn’t surrender after the first bombing tells volumes about the moral failings of Japans leadership at the time. One could further argue that the development of a superior nuclear arsenal by the U.S. led to a long period of relative peace in the world compared to the one hundred years that led up to the nuclear age.

Oppenheimer seems to have had idealistic, pacifistic views of the world which don’t comport with the current organization of the world. Ethicists can quite easily make a moral case for war, and having the appropriate weapons to defend oneself or to eliminate an enemy in a just war seems to again be a valid moral choice. Those who can’t countenance this line of reasoning simply do not understand the geo-political realities of the world we live in. Whether this willful ignorance of the realties we face is in itself moral I’ll leave to you all to consider.

And how ironic that so many intellectuals who are perhaps capable of great humanitarian ideals don’t see the obvious: Humanity is no more adept at calculus and theoretical physics than it is at altruism and peaceful co-existence.