Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] predicting the future

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 1 May 2006, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:

> Mike Miller wrote:
>
> > Einstein was an atheist, but all his talk about God is pretty clear 
> > evidence that he felt some pressure to conform.
>
> That Einstein believed in some kind of God - I find it hard to believe 
> that this was because of any pressure to comform.

Are you saying that Einstein believed in God?  I don't think he did. I 
just extracted the stuff below from an email I sent to someone on another 
list last year.  The words offset with "> " in the margin are his words, 
not mine nor Stephen's.

Mike


Einstein was an atheist:

http://jeromekahn123.tripod.com/thinkersonreligion/id8.html
http://www.skeptic.com/archives50.html

   "Thus I came--despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious
   (Jewish) parents--to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt
   ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books
   I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible
   could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of]
   freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally
   being deceived...Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of
   this experience, a skeptical attitude...which has never left me..."
   --Albert Einstein

But if Einstein felt uncomfortable making public statements favorable to 
atheism, how do you think Newton or Pascal would have felt?  I don't know 
what motivated them.  You did not think of Newton as being limited by his 
religious beliefs, but didn't he spend quite a bit of his time pondering 
questions about the nature of God?  That could only have interfered with 
this scientific work because it is certainly not related to his religion. 
Newton also suffered from some sort of mental illness and may have been 
even more religious during that episode.  Altogether, religion was a 
harmful force slowing his progress.

Pascal's famous contribution to theism (his 'wager') is a complete bust, 
but it seems like everyone loves it.  What if their is a God, and he 
banishes to hell anyone who 'believes' in him because they want to get 
into heaven?  So much for Pascal's wager.  Too bad that he wasted his time 
with that.

It seems that E.O. Wilson was a "provisional deist," and not a theist - or 
at least that is what I'm seeing on the internet:

   http://www.google.com/search?q=%22e.o.+wilson%22+deist

   I think being an atheist is to claim knowledge you cannot have.  And to
   say you're agnostic is to arrogantly dismiss the whole thing by saying
   that it's unknowable.  But a provisional deist is someone like myself
   who leaves it open.  You see, evolutionary biology leaves very little
   room for a theistic God.  I'd like it to be otherwise. Nothing would
   delight me more than to have real proof of a transcendental plane.

I see the appeal of deism - one can essentially deny the importance of God 
without making any real claims or offending the hostile, self-righteous 
religious authoritiarians.  It's funny that we have created so many terms 
to quibble over.  I believe there are no gods.  Let's say that 10,000 gods 
have been posited over the millenia (I'm sure there were more than that) 
and you believe in just one of them.  Here's a list:

http://www.pantheon.org/areas/all/articles.html

That means that we agree on the non-existence of 99.99% of those gods and 
that you are 99.99% an atheist.  Or would that be 99.99% agnostic because 
you would not claim that Loki, God of Fire, does not exist, only that you 
can not know the answer?  I think we know why people created gods and I 
think we know why they persist in their beliefs, no matter how bizarre. 
It is fair, I think, to conclude that the gods (all 100%) do not exist.


> Inasmuch as openmindedness is often lauded as a paramount scientific 
> principle, and one which I have often valued in your prior posts, I find 
> this sort of rigid polemic surprising.  Descartes said it well, I think, 
> Mike:  "de omnibus dubitandum est". Everything is to be questioned 
> (doubted).

I am a skeptic, but some things are not worth considering (Loki, God of 
Fire; Pan, God of shephards; Jesus, son of monotheistic or tripartite God; 
Aditinggi, Indonesian god of the volcano).  Descartes is famous for his 
fallacious proof of the existence of God (usually covered in Philosophy 
101).


> I believe a person can put this principle into play as a rigorous 
> scientific thinker investigating the natural world - playing strictly by 
> the rules of methodological naturalism - and still entertain hopeful 
> metaphysical notions consistent with at least some (so-called) "ancient 
> mystical traditions".  It's ultimately an empirical question . . .

I suppose the time spent on the maintenance of "hopeful metaphysical 
notions" won't stop you from getting your scientific work done.  It could 
be like having a hobby.

Mike

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