ATHEISTS ONLY

"I'm not religious"...or my version of it, "I'm not into religion" both work for me.

Of course, often I am just itching for someone not to take the hint...so I smile when I say it.

I can handle myself.

Einstein used to get on peoples' nerves. He once famously said that "God does not play dice." According to the American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr responded, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do."

That's a more reliable exchange, and much more entertaining.

When Einstein said "God does not play dice" it was during his debate about Quantum Physics with Neil Bohr. He was objecting in particular to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.

Einstein lost this argument.

I wonder what Einstein would think about what we think about what he might have thought about the possibility of god(s)



No I don't

I wonder why.

I suspect it would not have much mattered to him.

I like Einstein's take as presented by Frank. Very inspiring. Indeed a result of narrow minded materialism is a loss of spirituality and transcendance, an amputation of the mind. One can be "non-religious" and still aspire to something greater than oneself, and be in awe with the universe and the mysteries it contains.

My materialism includes the universe a wider minded sort.

Lots of religious propaganda portrays Hitler as an atheist and Einstein as religious. If authentic, Hingehead's quotes would have been relevant to the legitimate purpose of rebutting such propaganda.

And apparently, lots of atheist propaganda presents Hitler as religious and Einstein as atheist...

I didn't get that.

Would you care to elucidate how a quote of hitler is drags in godwins law?

I once mentioned that I wanted to talk about materialism, and never got around to it since I'd have to gather and write up my thoughts on it.
I have my own use of the word, which has nothing to do with the matter of people being materialistic, that quite derogatory word, a word also oft having to do with philosophy.

I don't consider myself spiritual in the way most people mean. For example, I've a friend who thinks of the mountains as spiritual places. I'm happy thinking of them as mountains, with all their attributes. I observe that the beliefs of native americans are spiritual in their understandings of the sun and moon and earth. Mine are not, mine are that they are material.

In the common sense of the word, I do like finely wrought things, though I don't have to have them as my own - ceramics, paintings, espresso makers, nice linens. I also like old ratty things, that others would throw out, from my old blue jeans, to a cracked cup that still holds fluid.
But more in my sense of material, I like the beauty of the environment: the nature of nature, in all its glory, even its violence, the way things work together, like the human body does with its Krebs Cycle, and how systems work, with a kind of coherence. I like the nature of the petroglyphs behind the highway near my housing area, I like the roadrunner bird romping through a sandy yard on my own street, the quails traipsing between the trees. together.

I consider spirituality as such as other people's woo woo, and my view of the word materialism as a search for beauty. Beauty, as a kind of fit. By saying other people's woo woo, I don't mean that as mocking, just that I'm not interested in what I take as projections.

I am interested in matters of the mind and heart, but I don't consider that spirituality. I consider it living.

A tangent, yes, but a riposte to your (and most people's) use of the word materialism.

Hitler was a Roman Catholic and Einstein was at least an agnostic. The difference between atheist propaganda and religious propaganda is that atheists can make their points without doctoring their quotes.

The irony is that in this case, the atheists failed at that.

What do you mean by that?


Hinge's quote WAS doctored to misrepresent Einstein's view, as Frank as shown.

Hitler was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic faith. He never left the church; the church never excommunicated him. And there are occasional sentences in his papers that suggest he believed in god.


I didn't say this never happens with atheists. I said it doesn't have to happen.

Thanks, and that was not a tangent. I use the term "narrow minded materialism" precisely because there can be other forms, not narrow minded. You presented a take that seems very close to my take, and also to Einstein's inasmuch as he did not believe in a personnal god but was still in awe with the beauty of the universe, aka "hearing the music of the spheres".

What i mean ny "narrow minded materialism" is reductionism, ie the idea that anything in nature can be reduced to a bunch of particles interacting with one another. In this view, human thoughts and minds are just a product of a biological machine called the brain; life is just the result of haphazard chemistry; and chemical reactions themselves are only the manifestation of elementary physics at the atomic and sub-atomic levels.

So it's about meaningless atomic particles RULING (determining entirely) what happens at higher levels of organisation. Thus in this reductionist view, the universe is not beautiful in any way, it's just a bunch of particles shaking and moving; a human being is worth exactly as much as a letuce; itself worth exactly as much as some rock or another. And therefore there's no reason to respect life and human life.

I believe this view is an illusion. In my mind, each level of organisation is more than the sum of its parts, and thus cannot be REDUCED to a lower level of organisation. As a result, life is more worthy of admiration and respect than rocks, and human lives worthier than letuces', because they can produce things such as thoughts, music, poetry or science.

Nods, except that I hold rocks and lettuces as beauty (not that you don't) as they also 'fit', have importance. Not that I don't appreciate human lives/thinking and so on. Hard for me to describe what I mean by fit. I used to use it in art conversations, a way of describing how a piece can work as a whole.. almost sing.

The church did say, mit brennender Sorge, that nazism was incompatible with catholicism, and the majority view among historians is that Hitler was only pretending to respect christianity for political reasons. He would never have been elected otherwise.


Likewise, believers can make their point without doctoring quotes. Perfect symmetry.