by onesong 16 Replies latest jw friends
nice quote. i like that one.
as per god and einstein: einstein was a pantheist, in the tradition of baruch spinoza, one of his idols.
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
here is a thread i started a while back about a xian who sent me an email about einstein and god:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/92961/1.ashx
TS
One of the most important quote in the history, often attributed to Einstein, was from Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
It's important to understand Einstein's view on God (or, shall one write "God"). Einstein's God represented a system that's orderly, ruled by rules which are discoverable by those able to continue searching for them. Several times in his letters he made this clear. Einstein did remark ‘Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not', but his explanation of this is that ‘Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse’; that may begin to make clear Eisntein's continued use of the word "God". Einstein's God is intangible and impersonal (he did comment that the idea of a personal God is childish), very different from the concept of God that's perhaps well known. He at a time described his position on the issue of "God" as an agnostic, but this doesn't make any one escape being classified as either a theist or an atheist. He also resented people quoting him to support the view that there is no God. Since one is either an atheist or a theist, it takes just a tiny bit of reading between the lines to see where Einstein stood.
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Thanks for those points Gozz and TS. I suppose I went a little over the top in saying that he credited "God" for his insights. ( Please forgive me, I'm still trying to eradicate the tendency to make emphatic statements without authenticity, I was a Dub after all.)
I was just trying to respond to a previous post that said he was cold and arrogant. That was an assumption that I had about him before also.
I understand he didn't believe in a personal god but he recognized a superior intelligence and in relation to it he seemed, to me, to be humble.He obviously used the term "God" often and I think it would be difficult for anyone to say exactly what he thought of God. Who of us can say how we view god for certainty, and hasn't any abstract definition that we might have had changed and will continue to?
( Please forgive me, I'm still trying to eradicate the tendency to make emphatic statements without authenticity, I was a Dub after all.)
no worries, i wasn't calling you out at all bro. i was just adding to the conversation. i liked your initial quote, and your subsequent ones too. always been a big einstein fan, and always found it interesting that he was so comfortable with his worldview, that he could just use the word "god" to explain things. and as a metaphor, i think it is beautiful. he didn't feel a need to explain further, and i respect that.
cheers mate,
TS
onesong: no problem. Interesting Einstein quotes. Einstein was perhaps humble, but 'arrogance' isn't indeed a terrible thing for such a mind :).
tetrapod: Einstein did explain a lot about his concept of "God"; he explained enough for anyone interested to know exactly what he felt. There appeared to be some change in the expression of those views with progressign age. And, unlike his views on Socialism (which views have perhaps been quite successfully 'supressed' by the American press), his view about God are perhaps only confusing when one reads excerpts from quotes.
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true actually. in the quote that i posted, he basically calls himself a pantheist. and one of the things that really irks me is when xians or jews say that he was an abrahamic monotheist when he spoke of god. i knew all that already as per my first post in this thread. i just didn't want to push it, remarkably, lol. there is much surface confusion with many people i have spoekn to about what he meant when he used the tern "god". but like you say, all one has to do is dig a bit, and it becomes pretty clear that he was basically a pantheist.
i dig pantheism. in certain places, it's almost indistinguishable from some people's atheism, and even in some cases paganism (the real liberal pagans anyways).
ts
