Wait! What about Einstein?

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Was Einstein a narrow-minded lunatic who denied science?

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Type: Question • Score: 4 • Views: 2,993 • Replies: 28

[+3] - fresco - 12/14/2014No. Next.....?
[+3] - giujohn - 12/14/2014[size=150][b]Direct quotes from Einstein:[/b][/size] [b]I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own â�� a God, in...

@InkRune,

he was indeed crazy and a lunatic and sadistic to his wife., He was here to misdirect people so that 'science' became stalled for years and years.
THAT was his real 'job'

"science' can now only progressif relativity and quantum physics are out of the way!

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@InkRune,

No.

Next.....?

1 Reply

@fresco,

But he was religious! And, according to most posts here, religous people are narrow-minded lunatics who deny science...

Point is, less of the ad hominem. Lets just have intelligent debate, ok?

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@InkRune,

'Bout what?

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@InkRune,

I wasn't aware of any ad hominems except your own with respect to Einstein (= possibly a parody of Q's rubbish ?).

As for Einstein being "religious", opinions are divided about his unorthodox Spinoza-istic references to "God". That absolutist concept seems mainly to reflect his belief in an underlying "absolute reality" which had the property of "certainty", in opposition to the rival paradigm of probabilistic quantum mechanics. He obviously made significant contributions to "scientific progress" with his early contributions, and even his opposition to QM could be said to have provided a stimulus for its verification via experiments confirming Bell's equation.

There can be no debate about Einstein's contribution to science. A more interesting question about religiosity might be raised about another celebrated scientific figure, Heisenberg, who was at least was a regular church-goer.

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@fresco,

Quote:

There can be no debate about Einstein's contribution to science

You really have no idea what you are talking about,

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@InkRune,

Quote:

But he was religious!

He was so very religious that not a small number of religious leaders in the US after WW2 wished to have him thrown out of the nation for being such an open non-believer.

Anyone who used the word god for the underlining reality of the natural laws of the universe is hardly religious in any normal meaning of the word.

Oh, the FBI as in Hoover question if he was not in fact a godless Communist one of the reasons he was not allow to be involved or to have knowledge of the Manhattan project even those his letter to the president kicked it off.

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@InkRune,

Quote:

But he was religious!

It wasn't based on the "personal God" idea however. His God was impersonal, a lot like that of the apodictical existential pantheist

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@Quehoniaomath,

http://s26.postimg.org/ahaayob09/compbomb.jpg

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@dalehileman,

He surely did not believed in a personal god that could set aside the natural laws of the universe at whim.

So the question come down to, can you stated that a man who does not believe in a supernatural god/being that can operate outside of the natural laws, is religious.

1 Reply

@dalehileman,

i.e. Spinoza's "God".

Quote:

I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind

Einstein 1929

Quote:

Spinozism (also spelled Spinoza-ism or Spinozaism) is the monist philosophical system of Baruch Spinoza which defines "God" as a singular self-subsistent substance, with both matter and thought being attributes of such.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

So the question comes down to, can you state that a man who does not believe in a supernatural god/being that can operate outside of the natural laws, is religious

I can Bill but the next guy probably wouldn't

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@fresco,

Quote:

Spinozism....defines "God" as a singular self-subsistent substance, with both matter and thought being attributes of such.

Very close, thank you Fres, to the position of us apodictical existential pantheists; matter being Her body and its motion constituting Her thought

1 Reply

@dalehileman,

Einstin believed in a god, regardless the god, an therefore, was religious.

And as to the ad hominem, look no further than everywhere.

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@InkRune,

Quote:

Einstin believed in a god, regardless the god, an therefore, was religious.

Not in any normal meaning did Einstein was either a religious man or a believer in a god as a being of some type or other.

Sorry you can not claimed him as a believer as he was a scientist that found his truth only in the make up of the universe itself.

In fact if he was a believer it was a belief that there was no personal god that would or could change the laws of nature at whim.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

He did, in fact, believe in a god, and what do you mean by 'normal meaning?'

1 Reply

Direct quotes from Einstein:

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came—despite the fact that 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 by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression.

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups.”

1 Reply

@InkRune,

Quote:

He did, in fact, believe in a god, and what do you mean by 'normal meaning?'

A normal meaning is a god that have the power to change or ignore the laws of nature at whim and that is not in any way or in any manner what Einstein believe in. Nor some being that was outside the laws of nature.

He used the word god to stand for the laws of nature as a whole not some supernatural being of any type.

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@giujohn,

Thanks for the quotes and I love when someone try to claimed that Einstein was a believer in some supernatural being due to his used of the word god to stand for the makeup of the universe as a whole.

1 Reply

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