"Christian values in America are under attack, these days"??

[Human_Action]

Very well said. Bravo.

[magellan01]

@Voyager

If your implication is that he didn’t believe in any personal god, I can’t do anything but agree. But it seems to be the believers in a western God who distort his words. I’m not aware of Hindus or Taoists doing such. I wonder if he even thought about Eastern gods - such things were not as popular in the west in 1955 and before as they are now, except for a few people.

The error that I most often see, and not just with Einstein, comes from atheists. They often use the disproof of someone’s belief in the western “God” to imply that the person has an atheistic outlook. I’ve seen it done more than once with Einstein, Hawking, Jefferson, and others. Lack of belief in the western God, or even disbelief in the western God does not equate to atheism.

[magellan01]

@Fear_Itself

Wrong. False is the absence of truth, which you have failed to prove. I don’t have to prove anything for your little story to be false. The burden of proof is entirely on you.

No. tafowler87 is right on this. False is the opposite of true. The mere absence of truth leaves us with an unknown.

[Fear_Itself]

@magellan01

No. tafowler87 is right on this. False is the opposite of true. The mere absence of truth leaves us with an unknown.

That is a distinction without a difference. If it can’t be proven that Einstein actually said what was attributed to him, whether it is false or unknown is a semantic quibble.

[Razncain]

@Human_Action

Very well said. Bravo.

Thanks. That was addressed to me, right? Seriously, I second that for Miller, very well said, even if it probably won’t do some any good, it was certainly appreciated in this household.

[CurtC]

@magellan01

The error that I most often see, and not just with Einstein, comes from atheists. They often use the disproof of someone’s belief in the western “God” to imply that the person has an atheistic outlook. I’ve seen it done more than once with Einstein, Hawking, Jefferson, and others. Lack of belief in the western God, or even disbelief in the western God does not equate to atheism.

The largest source of misrepresenting Einstein’s views, IME, come from theists, by far. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen atheists misrepresenting him.

When I picture the range of religious beliefs in my head, I see it as a Venn diagram, Atheism is a little circle, and pantheism (of Einstein) is another little circle that overlaps atheism. Deism is a separate circle that lies not far away from it, and way over yonder lie the various theisms. Einstein’s views were way different from just not believing the the western God, and although they’re not exactly atheism, they’re pretty darn close.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@CurtC

Atheism is a little circle, and pantheism (of Einstein) is another little circle that overlaps atheism.

To quote the man himself, “I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.”

[Czarcasm]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

To quote the man himself, “I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.”

Where and when did he say this?

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

He was quoted as saying it in Glimpses of the Great, back in 1930; I’m not aware of him ever disputing it, which is why it’s since been quoted in everything from – well, naturally The Quotable Einstein, but also the recent Einstein and Religion.

[Andy_L]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

He was quoted as saying it in Glimpses of the Great, back in 1930; I’m not aware of him ever disputing it, which is why it’s since been quoted in everything from – well, naturally The Quotable Einstein, but also the recent Einstein and Religion.

Here’s a link to a book which discusses the quote you provided (and confusingly also provides quotes in which Einstein likened his beliefs to Spinoza, who is considered a pantheist by some Einstein A to Z - Karen C. Fox, Aries Keck - Google Books)

[GIGObuster]

IIRC it was the one that recorded that interview in 1930 the one that is in doubt, I think it was made by a nazi sympathizer that wanted to discredit Einstein’s “Jewish science” back in the 1930’s. In any case I have seen that a good case can be made by noticing that Einstein preferred the term Agnostic and that for him God was a meaningless term except as what nature and its laws are. It is not at all what many people of faith think what god is supposed to be. And regarding the quote that was made in 1930 IMHO it looks more doubtful once one looks at later interviews and writings.

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.” Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2

“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. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.” Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954

    "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God." Albert Einstein, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman 

    "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." Albert Einstein, responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein's question "Do you believe in God?" quoted in: Has Science Found God?, by Victor J Stenger 

http://untemperedintellect.blogspot.com/2014/05/taken-out-of-context-albert-einstein.html

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@GIGObuster

IIRC it was the one that recorded that interview in 1930 the one that is in doubt, I think it was made by a nazi sympathizer that wanted to discredit Einstein’s “Jewish science” back in the 1930’s. In any case I have seen that a good case can be made by noticing that Einstein preferred the term Agnostic and that for him God was a meaningless term except as what nature and its laws are. It is not at all what many people of faith think what god is supposed to be. And regarding the quote that was made in 1930 IMHO it looks more doubtful once one looks at later interviews and writings.

IMHO, it’s entirely compatible with his later interviews and writings.

I note, in passing, that the website you just now linked to goes on to include the quote itself – “I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.” – and expresses no “doubt” about it at all, but just blandly mentions it right before continuing on to concluding that he, y’know, thought the concept of God was beyond human understanding.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

Also, I kinda need you to walk me through this: you figure the quote ‘is in doubt, I think it was made by a nazi sympathizer that wanted to discredit Einstein’s “Jewish science” back in the 1930’s.’ How would that work? I don’t see how you’d discredit someone in the 1930s by having him say “I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist.”

I see how you could discredit someone in the 1930s by having him say “I’m an atheist. No, write that down all in capital letters: ATHEIST. Yeah. That said, I think I could describe myself as a pantheist – but it seems more accurate to say I’m an atheist.” But how would the actual quote, the opposite of that, work as a discredit?

[GIGObuster]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Also, I kinda need you to walk me through this: you figure the quote ‘is in doubt, I think it was made by a nazi sympathizer that wanted to discredit Einstein’s “Jewish science” back in the 1930’s.’ How would that work? I don’t see how you’d discredit someone in the 1930s by having him say “I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist.”

I see how you could discredit someone in the 1930s by having him say “I’m an atheist. No, write that down all in capital letters: ATHEIST. Yeah. That said, I think I could describe myself as a pantheist – but it seems more accurate to say I’m an atheist.” But how would the actual quote, the opposite of that, work as a discredit?

Uh? It seems that you are not aware that in this case the critics of Einstein needed to pump up his religiousness, particularly his Jewishness.

How 2 Pro-Nazi Nobelists Attacked Einstein’s "Jewish Science" [Excerpt]

Anti-Semitism did not just deprive German physics of some of its most valuable researchers. It also threatened to prescribe what kind of physics one could and could not do. For Nazi ideology was not merely a question of who should be allowed to live and work freely in the German state—like a virus, it worked its way into the very fabric of intellectual life. Shortly after the boycott of Jewish businesses at the start of April 1933, the Nazified German Students Association declared that literature should be cleansed of the “un-German spirit”, resulting on 10 May in the ritualistic burning of tens of thousands of books marred by Jewish intellectualism. These included works by Sigmund Freud, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Stefan Zweig and Walter Benjamin: books full of corrupt, unthinkable ideas. Into some of these pyres, baying students threw the books of Albert Einstein.

An operation for an illness of the lymph nodes around 1907 left Lenard less able to work, and contributed to his difficulties in keeping up with the latest developments in physics. Because he was not mathematically adept, he could not get to grips with relativity or quantum theory. As a result, he decided they were nonsense. The fact that this nonsense—whose premier architect was Einstein—was being accepted and acclaimed by physicists all over the world must therefore be the result of a conspiracy. And conspiracies and cabals were the specialty of Jews.

Einstein was the embodiment of all that Lenard detested. Where Lenard was a militaristic nationalist, Einstein was a pacifistic internationalist. Einstein was feted everywhere, while Lenard’s great merits seemed to have been forgotten. Worse, Einstein was celebrated most of all in England! And he hawked a brand of theoretical physics that frankly baffled Lenard. How convenient, then, that Einstein was a Jew, so that all of these deplorable traits could be labeled Semitic. (Of course, many of Einstein’s supporters were not Jewish, but as we shall see, Lenard and his ilk later contrived to make them “honorary Jews”.) Lenard decided that relativity was a “Jewish fraud” and that anything important in the theory had been discovered already by “Aryans.”1

What I understand was that the critics could not had made much hay if Einstein himself did not consider himself a Jew, or worse, that he was a non believer then. It was crucial to pump up his religiousness, that for the ignorant Nazis it was just the same as demonstrating his Jewishness, remember that the objective then was to hate the Jew, and so it was for the science that any of the Jews were involved with.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@GIGObuster

What I understand was that the critics could not had made much hay if Einstein himself did not consider himself a Jew, or worse, that he was a non believer then. It was crucial to pump up his religiousness, that for the ignorant Nazis it was just the same as demonstrating his Jewishness, remember that the objective then was to hate the Jew, and so it was for the science that any of the Jews were involved with.

That’s some impressive aspersion-casting, there.

So, just to be clear: the website you linked to blandly presents the quote (a) right before blandly delivering the conclusion it fits, and (b) without mentioning that anyone doubts it; and the quote gets matter-of-factly relayed in book after book after book, with, as far as I can tell, never any “doubt” rider attached…

…but you figure someone was out to put words in his mouth to make him look bad, and passed up the chance to have him simply declare for Judaism? While also passing up the chance to have him declare for atheism? And you do this with a quote noting how they of course cheerfully burned Einstein’s books alongside those of Karl Marx, with his ready talk of materialism and the opiate of the masses and so on?

So his diabolical plan to discredit Einstein for people who’d hate a confirmed atheist as readily as hate a devout Jew was to paint him as neither? Has anyone else ever said this about GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT, or is it just you so far?

[Bryan_Ekers]

If Christianity isn’t under attack, it’ll just claim that it is, because Christianity loves that sort of thing.

[inscrutable]

Einstien’s values are under attack these days.

[GIGObuster]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

That’s some impressive aspersion-casting, there.

So, just to be clear: the website you linked to blandly presents the quote (a) right before blandly delivering the conclusion it fits, and (b) without mentioning that anyone doubts it; and the quote gets matter-of-factly relayed in book after book after book, with, as far as I can tell, never any “doubt” rider attached…

…but you figure someone was out to put words in his mouth to make him look bad, and passed up the chance to have him simply declare for Judaism? While also passing up the chance to have him declare for atheism? And you do this with a quote noting how they of course cheerfully burned Einstein’s books alongside those of Karl Marx, with his ready talk of materialism and the opiate of the masses and so on?

So his diabolical plan to discredit Einstein for people who’d hate a confirmed atheist as readily as hate a devout Jew was to paint him as neither? Has anyone else ever said this about GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT, or is it just you so far?

Meh, too much tap dancing to avoid the evidence that Einstein did not go so far as he did in 1930. It is more likely that he changed his opinion a bit.

I did remember that Viereck, who did the interview in 1930 also reported this from Einstein:

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein

Viereck began by asking Einstein if he considered himself a German or a Jew, to which Einstein responded, “It’s possible to be both.” Viereck moved along in the interview to ask Einstein if Jews should try to assimilate, to which Einstein replied “We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform.”[23] Einstein was then asked to what extent he was influenced by Christianity. “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”[23] Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, to which he replied, “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”[23]

He stressed however in a conversation with William Hermanns that, “I seriously doubt that Jesus himself said that he was God, for he was too much a Jew to violate that great commandment: Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God and He is one!’ and not two or three.”[50] Einstein lamented, “Sometimes I think it would have been better if Jesus had never lived. No name was so abused for the sake of power!”[50] Nevertheless, he also expressed his belief that “if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity.”[51]

In any case I pointed at why his Judaism was more important to the Nazis rather than any Atheism. As Einstein put it in in many other occasions, his agnosticism and his peculiar view of what god was would not be approved at all among people of organized faiths nowadays. The site I linked with the quotes from Einstein that I used also blandly presents much more that just the bland quote.

More context of those days from the article from American Scientist:

It would be absurd, of course, to suppose that most of the book-burners had given these questions a moment’s thought. The simple fact was that Einstein was a prominent Jew, and his thoughts therefore fit for the bonfire. But Einstein’s theory was attacked on racial grounds. This assault came not by asinine ideologues in the party whose knowledge of science extended no further than a belief in fairy tales about “cosmic ice,” nor from individuals on the scientific fringe seeking official approval and support. It was orchestrated by two Nobel laureates in physics, who devised a full-blown thesis (it can’t be dignified by calling it a theory) on how stereotypical racial features are exhibited in scientific thinking. They were Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, and they wanted to become the new Führers of German physics.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@GIGObuster

Meh, too much tap dancing to avoid the evidence that Einstein did not go so far as he did in 1930.

On the one hand, I’m engaging in no tap-dancing.

On the other hand, I’ve never seen tap-dancing as good as “evidence that Einstein did not go so far as he did in 1930.” That’s gorgeous! It twirls right into itself!

On the other other hand, how about Isaacson’s biography of Einstein? It seems to have been pretty well-received, and he – reports Einstein’s quote to Viereck at face value, even while making clear he’s no fan of Viereck’s; the key is, he still relates the quote from Einstein the way everyone else apparently does, because of course he does.

Isaacson reports as blandly as Jammer does, as blandly as your chosen website does. He blandly reports it like, AFAICT, damn near everyone does – 'cepting you.

I did remember that Viereck, who did the interview in 1930 also reported this from Einstein:

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein - Wikipedia

I see you’ve linked to the Wikipedia page which also relays the quote in question. Kudos.

The site I linked with the quotes from Einstein that I used also blandly presents much more that just the bland quote.

Er, yes; of course it does; why wouldn’t it? It blandly presents rather a lot of quotes from Einstein, introducing no doubt that any of them came from him. I understand there are quite a number of books which blandly present the quote in question, right alongside a bunch of other Einstein quotes, while introducing no doubt that they came from him, because, again, while the one upthread was Snopes fodder with no source and plenty of dispute, some quotes ain’t Snopes fodder and ain’t in dispute.

Anyhow, by all means, tap-dance Isaacson away, and tap-dance Jammer away; it’s entertaining so far, but at some point I’d like to see a shred of substance.

[GIGObuster]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

On the one hand, I’m engaging in no tap-dancing.

On the other hand, I’ve never seen tap-dancing as good as “evidence that Einstein did not go so far as he did in 1930.” That’s gorgeous! It twirls right into itself!

On the other other hand, how about Isaacson’s biography of Einstein? It seems to have been pretty well-received, and he – reports Einstein’s quote to Viereck at face value, even while making clear he’s no fan of Viereck’s; the key is, he still relates the quote from Einstein the way everyone else apparently does, because of course he does.

Isaacson reports as blandly as Jammer does, as blandly as your chosen website does. He blandly reports it like, AFAICT, damn near everyone does – 'cepting you.

Straw must be on sale, I only reported that it is in doubt, that others accept it is not a contradiction.

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Er, yes; of course it does; why wouldn’t it? It blandly presents rather a lot of quotes from Einstein, introducing no doubt that any of them came from him. I understand there are quite a number of books which blandly present the quote in question, right alongside a bunch of other Einstein quotes, while introducing no doubt that they came from him, because, again, while the one upthread was Snopes fodder with no source and plenty of dispute, some quotes ain’t Snopes fodder and ain’t in dispute.

Anyhow, by all means, tap-dance Isaacson away, and tap-dance Jammer away; it’s entertaining so far, but at some point I’d like to see a shred of substance.

As I said, lots of straw.

The point anyhow is that later Einstein reported a less rosy picture of what he considered what god and religion was.

Nonreligious Questions

In a book titled Albert Einstein, the Human Side: New Glimpses from His Archives by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, the authors quoted another letter Einstein wrote in 1954:

… 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.

How much more evidence do you need?

Einstein’s religion, if you have to put a label to it, is a sort of nebulous Deism: Maybe God played in role in creating the universe — because nature inspires such awe and the universe seems perfectly guided by mathematics — but that God has no direct affect on our lives today.