Einstein quote

[Abbey Normal]

I like this one, from our most revered God-believing scientific genius.

"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"

-Albert Einstein

 

[USViking]

I like this one, from our most revered God-believing scientific genius.

"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"

-Albert Einstein

I do not doubt the accuracy of the quote.

However, Einstein did not believe in a personal God
who intervened in human affairs, or who judged mankind,
as portrayed in the scriptures.

 

[Mini]

I do not doubt the accuracy of the quote.

However, Einstein did not believe in a personal God
who intervened in human affairs, or who judged mankind,
as portrayed in the scriptures.

"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." - Albert Einstein

Although he may not have believed in a personal God, the fact that he believed, at least, in a higher power is pretty cool.

 

[Max Power]

"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." - Albert Einstein

Although he may not have believed in a personal God, the fact that he believed, at least, in a higher power is pretty cool.

I think it's cool when religious people believe in physics!

 

[dilloduck]

I think it's cool when religious people believe in physics!

Hopefully this doesn't come as any kind of giant shock to you.

 

[Nuc]

"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." - Albert Einstein

Although he may not have believed in a personal God, the fact that he believed, at least, in a higher power is pretty cool.

Is that really a god, or is he just using it as a metaphor for nature? In any case it doesn't seem like the god portrayed in the Bible or derivatives.

Personally I like it when Nick Faldo refers to "the golf gods" but I doubt he is being literal.

 

[Max Power]

Is that really a god, or is he just using it as a metaphor for nature? In any case it doesn't seem like the god portrayed in the Bible or derivatives.

Personally I like it when Nick Faldo refers to "the golf gods" but I doubt he is being literal.

Einstein believed in a creator of the Universe.

He also believed that random things don't happen (i.e. Quantum physics) because, God doesn't play dice*.

*Actual Einstein quote

 

[Nuc]

Einstein believed in a creator of the Universe.

He also believed that random things don't happen (i.e. Quantum physics) because, God doesn't play dice*.

*Actual Einstein quote

Specifically what kind of god did he believe in, or was he unsure of the details?

 

[USViking]

Einstein believed in a creator of the Universe.

I would like to see a quotation spelling out his views
on creation, if he gave any.

Here is a link which provides good range and depth
on Einstein's religious views, which were not at all
in conformance with organized religion, and in fact
attacked its foundations:

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_einstein.html

(from the link, all emphasis added):

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...

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms-it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature...

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...

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” ...


The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere...

Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?...

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...

He also believed that random things don't happen (i.e. Quantum physics) because, God doesn't play dice*.

*Actual Einstein quote

It was specificall Quantum Mechanics which aroused
Einstein's oppostion.

In spite this oppostition, Quantum Mechanics remains
to this day unassailable. If it is not the whole truth,
it is almost surely part of the whole truth.

 

[Nuc]

" I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves"

This pretty much sums up why the idea of god/gods has never appealed to me. Doesn't take an Einstein.

 

[Max Power]

"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."

 

[Abbey Normal]

"An interview which Einstein later in life gave to an American magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, in 1929:

"To what extent are you 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."

"Have you read Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus?"

"Emil Ludwig's Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot."

"You accept the historical Jesus?"

"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word.

And:
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior Spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. The deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning Power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

And:
"Einstein held that the main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lay in "the concept of a personal God" for that was to think of God in an anthropomorphic way, and to project into him figurative images and human psychological notions of personality, which give rise, he held, to religious practices of worship and notions of providence shaped in accordance with human selfish desires. That did not mean that Einstein thought of God merely in some impersonal way, for, as we have noted, he thought of relation to God in a sublime superpersonal way which he confessed he was unable to grasp or express and before which he stood in unbounded awe and wonder. Hence he felt it deeply when Cardinal O'Connell of Boston charged him with being an atheist. 31 When a newspaperman once accosted him in California with the question, "Doctor is there a God?", Einstein turned away with tears in his eyes."

"What, then, did Einstein mean by claiming to believe in Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, the intellectual love of God, the highest happiness that man can know? He was approving of Spinoza's idea that to be rational is to love God and to love God is to be rational, so that for one to engage in science is to think the thoughts of God after him. With Spinoza, however, that involved the outright identification of God with nature, a causally concatenated whole, whereas, as we have seen, with Einstein the Verständlichkeit of God was so exalted that it could not be reduced to the logico-causal intelligibilities of nature. A transcendent relation had to be taken into account."

 

[USViking]

"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."

Fair enough, although the quotations in the link
I cited in post #9 leave no doubt that Einstein's
religious views remained incompatible with scriptural religion.

 

[Nuc]

Fair enough, although the quotations in the link
I cited in post #9 leave no doubt that Einstein's
religious views remained incompatible with scriptural religion.

Hey Viking, any links as to what he thought about the Norse gods? If not for Buddhism, that's what I'd be into!

 

[USViking]

"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."

One other quote from my earlier link:

I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism...

 

[USViking]

Hey Viking, any links as to what he thought about the Norse gods? If not for Buddhism, that's what I'd be into!

It would be a pretty safe bet that Einstein considered
the Norse Gods laughable. I wonder what Oden is doing
to him now.

Since he did not believe in an afterlife (and probably
not in the soul itself), then he could not have accepted
Buddhism either:

"An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension..."