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Mike Miller wrote:
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
I did a google on "Einstein God" and came up with this:
http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/reflections_volume_1/torrance.htm
Heck, it even mentions Spinoza (in my original message I said that
Einstein believed in Spinoza's God). I even found this quote from
Einstein on another web site:
âI believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony
of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions
of human beings.â
While it is without doubt that Einstein rejected any notion of God as I
understand him, nevertheless it is also clear that Einstein had a
religiousity that you, Mike, don't have at all.
If you read these quotes:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_einstein.html
it becomes very clear that Einstein didn't do or say *anything* because
of peer pressure.
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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