Einstein's God & Ethics Discussion On NPR's "Speaking Of Faith"

Madame Quixote

I enjoyed listening to this when I woke up this morning:

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/einstein/index.shtml

Hope you enjoy it, too.

ninja

thanks quixy.....downoaded for listening on my mp3 while working today....should be good...thanks again

onacruse

MQ, would you be inclined to have this thread continue forth? I've been thinking about it since you started the topic.

I don't have audio on my computer, so I couldn't listen to the program you mentioned, but in my modicum of familiarity with Einstein's Weltansicht, I found the following to perhaps be relevant:

1. It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term "scientific truth." Thus the meaning of the word "truth" varies according to whether we deal with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition, or a scientific theory. "Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all.
2. Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order.
3. This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in a world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic." (Spinoza)
4. Denominational traditions I can only consider historically and psychologically; they have no other signifance for me.

[Answers to questions of a Japanese scholar. Published in Gelegentichles, 1929, which appeard in a limited edition on the occasion of Einstein's fiftieth anniversary. As reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, Albert Einstein, 1994]

nvrgnbk

Einstein reportedly said: " I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion."

JamesThomas

Only had time to listen to about 30 minutes of it, enough to know we share a similar view.

I too when using the word God, do not mean what most people do; but rather feel that what the word G-O-D points to is not a personal deity, or anything which is circumscribable; but rather That which all existence flows from, is sustained by, and foundationally is.

Einstein, it seems felt that "God" could be mathematically defined in such a way as to be predictable, and so was extremely flippant when Quantum Physicists discovered chaos and stark unpredictability at the atomic level. To this he gave his famous reply "God does not play dice". I don't hold to such a restrictive view; but rather feel that even to God, God is a mystery and wonder, so that the next moment is always a surprise.

j