After Terry McAuliffe’s and James Carville’s, yours is the most ballsy spinmeistering I’ve ever seen, especially in matters of religion where you routinely invoke jabberwockial declarations of fiat with such sweeping devastation that they can paint Einstein as an idiot who doesn’t know what an atheist is and can’t communicate what he himself is. I would salute you, but I can’t find my hand and I define salute to mean tofu salad.
Theism includes Deism, Misotheism, Henotheism, Monotheism, Cosmotheism, Panentheism, Pantheism and others. “Theism” is the broadest term that applies to the philosophical examination of deity.
The article quotes heavily from various sources, including Einstein, and in particular a book by Max Jammer. However, in the article linked from my link, it seems this 1954 letter was not available to Jammer, and presumably to the author of that article, as it has only just come to light.
There are lots of us who don’t view God in the stereotypical manner of most churches, synagogs, and mosques, including me. Would you say that I’m an atheist?
Why does that make someone an atheist? I’m unclear on the difference between a “personal god” and a “god”.
I’d be surprised if he was actually an atheist. Most scientists who are non-believers would probably call themselves agnostic. A lot of use those terms interchangeably, but I would think someone as thoughtful as Einstein would be more careful.
I may have just already read a fair amount of Einstein’s writing, but - with due reservations about whether the Bloomsbury Auction translation is nuanced and acknowledging that nobody has recently read Gutkind’s book, so we don’t know the exact context - his point seems reasonably clear to me.
He’s noting that Gutkind is claiming free will “as a man”. (And Gutkind’s title for his book, Choose Life, does support this.) Einstein is then rejecting free will on the basis that it implies a universe that is partially deterministic (presumably applying to individual protons, the planet Mars and rabbits) and partially non-deterministic (humans and, er, that’s it). For Einstein, the universe is completely determinstic and hence there is no room for non-causal processes. He then, slightly clumsily, acknowledges Spinoza as a forerunner of this sort of position.
On his views about the subject of religion in general, it’s worth noting that he tended to talk about religion - and be fairly specific about what he meant by that term - without defining or even referring to “God” in doing so. He was simultaneously usually quite clear about the types of “God” he was rejecting: the personal Judeo-Christian God and other similar conceptions.
Personally, the resulting ambiguity about what he possibly believed “God” to be means that the religious or non-religious positions people co-opt him for almost invariably tell us far more about the particular interpreter than about Einstein himself.
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual… I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
Albert apparently saw god as a something remote and far away from man. It seems to be what exists somewhere beyond our knowledge and reach. Apparently he would not figure in the life of man. Did he think god exists?. I am not sure but he certainly felt if he did he had nothing to do with us.
Why do you think this? From what I’ve read about scientists that talk about their belief, those that are non-believers would call themselves atheists, as that’s how most of us, as far as I can tell, define ‘atheist’.
DtC already mentioned that this isn’t about what Einstein would have called himself, but whether or not he was an atheist by definition.
He doesn’t like this person claiming to have some enlightened position better than others. As part of the chosen ones or the ‘true believers’
I’m not sure precisely what he was responding to, but he could mean that if you believe in the power of prayer or otherwise believe that God will intercede on your behalf, yet still claim to have free will over other things, Einstein is pointing out that if God chooses what you get to have free will over or not, you don’t have free will.
I gather he’s responding to the claim that monotheism is somehow an advanced religion, whereas pantheistic religions are primitive and animistic. Einstein is saying that there’s nothing special about having one God that makes a monotheistic religion any more rational or advanced than a pantheistic religion - they’re all rubbish."
As for Einstein’s own belief, he basically said “My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe.” In other words, he was awed and humbled by the magnitude of the construct around him, and felt it was arrogant and childish to claim some special knowledge about what it all meant, or to claim some privileged position within it. Our search for God is our search for understanding of the universe. It never ends. And science, reason, logic, and empiricism are the appropriate tools for the quest. I think that’s a statement Einstein would have been comfortable with. That also pretty much mirrors my own viewpoint.
I don’t get your point. You quoted wikipedia about the “broadest” definition of God. But that clearly isn’t the only or the definitive definition.
I can’t explain myself any better than I did. A thoughtful scientist will not say something has been proven to be non-existent (atheist) but that there is no evidence for its existence (agnostic). A subtle but important difference for a thoughtful person.
Sorry, but I don’t get your point. There’s no such thing as “an only or definitive definition” of any word. I linked to the Wikipedia article because that’s the definition of “personal god” I’m familiar with and the only context I’ve heard it used in. The Wikipedia article also includes more narrow definitions if that makes a difference to you:
I think the broad definition would be the best to quote. It’s a god with a personality. It doesn’t include “I think the Universe is God” or “God is nature”.
And I wouldn’t think I’d have to explain myself better than I did. Most atheists don’t confine the word for only those who believe gods have been proven not to exist. Being without theism is all that is necessary.
Being agnostic says nothing about one’s belief. Most Christians that I know admit that there’s no evidence for God’s existence, yet believe in him based on faith. Some are even “thoughtful scientists”.
Yes, it is about Einstein. It’s about the long-lived debate about whether or not Einstein was an atheist. It’s never been about what Einstein would have called himself, how he defined ‘atheist’ or if he liked the term.
I think it was just hard for him to clearly communicate what he felt. He was atheistic (no matter what he said), but he wasn’t really areligious and he didn’t like nihilsm. He obviously felt a sense of mystery and awe for the universe, and he sensed a transcedent quality, but that transcendence was not a deity in his mind (a concept which he found simplistic and “childish”). He didn’t know what to call it, pantheism wasn’t quite right. He referenced Spinoza, but that wasn’t quite right either. Some of what he’s saying actually reminds me of Lao Tzu’s “Tao,” or the Hindu Brahaman. I wonder if he ever studied Eastern traditions. He might have found a better vocabulary for nontheistic religious feeling in those philosophies.
Or Judaism. There was a formally non-theistic line of Judaic thinking by the mid-nineteenth century. I’d like to hear from people educated in Judaism about the extent to which the you-with-the-face, personal-relationship-havin’ kind of God was one you came to expect.
x-ray: I just don’t understand where you are going with this discussion. I asked why non-belief in a “personal god” = atheist. If someone believes in God, but not a “personal God”, then that person is not an atheist. That’s is all.
An interesting exchange of letters here between Einstein and a Navy officer named Guy Raner (an Ensign serving in the Pacific theater at the time) who asked him some questions about this issue.
Raner (6/10/1945):
Einstein responds (7/2/1945)
Raner writes again 4 years later (9/25/1949):
Einstein (9/28/1945):
To me, this exchange spells out an even more explicit atheism (as much as he may have resisted the label) than the one in the OP.
By the way, kudos to Raner for making exactly the correct responses to the Priest’s proffered syllogisms and to asking the exact same follow up questions I would ask. This guy would have been a good Doper.
