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 | | From: | Dave Scull | | Subject: | Re: Einstein | | Date: | Tue, 26 Oct 2004 19:46:58 -0500 |
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 | Einstein on God (from The Atheism Web):
I 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.
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the
firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this
ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the
rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of
natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with
natural events could never be refuted [italics his], in the real sense, by
science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which
scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of
religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is
to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of
necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must
have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up
that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the
hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of
those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an
incomparably more worthy task...
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.
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to
be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
"john howell" wrote in message
news:10bl8f5rm5gaee@corp.supernews.com...
> If you would read a couple of Biographys on Einstein, you would know
> that he was proudly an Agnostic vergin on Atheism, He did not believe in
> any
> afterlife or rewards or punishments once you were dead. St John the
> Atheist
> "Craig Haggart, SSRL Accelerator Ops Group"
> wrote in message
> news:EM8aekzz8vGw@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu...
> > Marianne Ono (marianne.ono@utoronto.ca) asked:
> >
> > > Taken all together, do [Einstein's] beliefs make [him] an
> > > atheist? Or a pantheist? Or an unconventional theist?
> >
> > "Pantheist" fits quite well, although one could probably make an
> > argument for fitting him under the rubric of Deism.
> >
> > > I am quite certain that if *I* made a reference in this
> > > newsgroup to belief in a "superior spirit" or "God", I'd be
> > > labelled a theist and shot down in a heartbeat. Why is
> > > Einstein not subject to the same criticism?
> >
> > Compassionate allowance for his hair disaster, maybe? :)
> >
> > Seriously, my guess is: Some people tend to treat Einstein as a
> > special case because he's so often invoked by theists, as in
> > "Hey, atheist poopooheads, Einstein believed in God -- so, what,
> > you think you're SMARTER THAN EINSTEIN?" He's the "reference
> > human" for those who want to link their cause with someone smart.
> >
> > However, I can assure you that some of us would definitely not
> > hesitate to shoot Albert down if he were to post "superior
> > spirit" mumbo jumbo to this newsgroup. Being a genius in one
> > field doesn't make you a genius in all fields.
> >
> > --
> > -Craig Haggart
> > haggart@slac.stanford.edu
> > Sunnyvale, California
> >
>
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