An interesting aspect of the legacy of Einstein and the view of him as an important and trustable person is that people tend to want to claim him as having been on their side in various issues, particularly regarding the existence of a divine being or lack thereof.
"God does not play dice with the universe" and other quotes are trotted out as proof of his belief in religion, usually by people who haven't delved into what he actually said or the context in which he said it.
So people on both sides of the dice thing will find an Einstein letter that was recently auctioned to be of interest.
Here are a few of his words that should put the debate to rest:
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
And so that is that. Now back to your regularly scheduled misquotes of Darwin...
May 16 2008, 5:28 pm
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Xooxer
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Yeah, survival of the fittest topic! XD
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I'm sure the religious thumpers will still find some way to twist it.
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." Here, he's obviously talking about the 'word' God, not God Himself, so it proves nothing. - they might say. Or, Of course the stories in the Bible are childish. We're the children of God! And so on and on and on and on.... | |
Yea, it's been known for a long, long time that he was a pantheist and believed in Spinoza's god, which is nothing like the Judeo-Christian personal God.
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going to try to keep the stupid down, but you really have to take this with a grain of salt. it's hypocritical to analyze a person's religious views based on a single letter. kind of like "trotting out quotes as proof of his belief in religion" and taking it out of context? the man was, by his own definition, religious. just because he didn't believe in "God" doesn't mean that he didn't believe in something god-like.
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Jesus created this Earth with nothing more than a rib and a bag of pop-rocks.
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just because he didn't believe in "God" doesn't mean that he didn't believe in something god-like.
Hey, just like me...I am a strong believe in the "God of the gaps"... | |
Spinoza's "God" is not even really a god. It's just existence as we know it. If I were to call the universe "God", I'd be conforming to Spinoza's religion. To call it "God" is to attach meaning intended to help Christians understand it, I figure; it is simply the cruel, totally unthinking universe as we know it.
To abstract the concept, it's the worship of science and the acceptance of both weal and woe as being naturally acceptable. I personally prefer a less rigid approach to my belief in science, which is why I'm not a scientist. ;-) | |
Jtgibson wrote:
I personally prefer a less rigid approach to my belief in science, which is why I'm not a scientist. ;-) If you truly believe in the scientific method, then by definition you are not rigid in your beliefs (though you might be rigid in adhering to the scientific method). | |
Propaganda wrote:
going to try to keep the stupid down, but you really have to take this with a grain of salt. Einstein explicitly specified that he believed in Spinoza's god which, as Jt pointed out, isn't really a god at all. | |
Stephen Hawking says a few things like that in his Brief History of Time (reference to god as a term for the universe and all its complex systems as a whole).
Honestly I find it ever so slightly annoying when they do use God in that way- anyone (any atheist) with half a brain can tell it's a metaphor, but we still end up having to deal with stupid claims/questions from people who don't get it. | |