What were Albert Einstien's Religious Beliefs?

by KateWild 110 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • adamah
    adamah

    Cantleave said-

    I concur ...........nothing worse than pedantry

    Puleeze: NOTHING worse than pedantry?

    Note I was making an observation, but I also actually added relevant information to the discussion (re: Einsteins' definition of religion).

    I didn't simply post a useless "I agree" or "I disgree" comment (this aint' FB, where there's a 'like' or 'dislike' button).

    Those kind of comments are arguably more vapid in a discussion, since it's only an unsupported conclusion that aims to kill the dialogue.

  • cantleave
    cantleave

    I would say my posts (except that one) on this thread have moved the discussion forward without excess verbosity.

    The skill is being succinct.

  • Giordano
    Giordano

    A few further thoughts about Einstien:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein

    Einstein was a Humanist and a supporter of the Ethical Culture movement. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York. [ 29 ] For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism.

    With regard to Divine command theory, Einstein stated,
    "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation,
    whose purposes are modeled after our own—a God, in short, who is but a
    reflection of human frailty." [

    "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and
    social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary."

    "I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being
    afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in
    this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper
    guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics
    and the amount of consideration that he has for others." [

  • Monsieur
    Monsieur

    kate

    Ok everyone I will define God. I believe in the Chemistry God. I worship Chemistry and love it and see it everywhere. But I am not going to define God for Einstien he defined God himself already.

    This definition is subject to change, as I want to be open minded.

    Kate,

    you've hit the nail on the head. (Einstein did too).

    Defining God should be the simplest thing possible, because 'God' can and IS anything you want it to be.

    Being really OPEN MINDED has allowed you to see 'God' in chemistry (a perfect and beautiful science). A 'God' that can be all things is trully all-powerfull, trully omnipresent, trully eternal. Einstein referred to perfect physics as God, as well as kindness and other positive and constructive concepts.

  • cofty
    cofty

    In which case the concept of god can be discarded and nothing has been lost.

  • adamah
    adamah

    Monsieur said-

    Being really OPEN MINDED has allowed you to see 'God' in chemistry (a perfect and beautiful science). A 'God' that can be all things is trully all-powerfull, trully omnipresent, trully eternal. Einstein referred to perfect physics as God, as well as kindness and other positive and constructive concepts.

    Of course, Einstein was strongly criticized by his colleagues for having the audacity (or was it more timidity?) of playing word games by feeling he had the authority to redefinine terms to suit HIS needs, rather than simply using the terms everyone assumes he meant. It's intellectually dishonest to play such word games, since it's called 'obfuscation'.

    It's an intellectually-dishonest approach: read Orwell's '1984' if you're not familiar with the attempts totalitarian gov'ts and high-control organizations (eg the WT) make to attempt to control others by co-opting and redefining words within language.

  • cofty
    cofty

    since it's called 'obsfucation'.

    To be pedantic, it's called obfuscation.

  • konceptual99
    konceptual99

    I agree.

  • konceptual99
    konceptual99

    Sorry - I should at least contribute something that tries to move things on....

    Surely the point has been made over and over again now that whatever Einstein believed we can be sure it was not that a Judeo-Christian god was sitting up in the sky making the things that he did not understand happen.

    We can be sure, can we not, that Einstein's desire to investigate and research the world with an open and scientific mind was never compromised by some deference to the supernatural.

    I don't believe there is any rationale for assuming that when faced with the inevitiable questions his own answers raised he did not revert to a "god of the gaps" position.

    The critical outcome of this is it is a complete fallacy to even attempt to use Einstein and his beliefs as a basis for promoting clearly irrational and unscientific postulations.

  • KateWild
    KateWild

    Wow! This thread is still in Active topics....Nice research Giordano, its interesting to see that Einstein's religious beliefs are such a widley discussed topic. I think I read somewhere when discussing God both atheists and believers want him in their camp.

    I would agree with that, because I want him in my camp. But really everyone can have a different concept of God, because God has not directly revealed himself in a unifrom way, IMO. I think for me that is what Einstein's example says to me.

    It's okay to believe in a God how we wish to, whatever way makes us happy, or not to believe at all. Like Giordano's post says, Einstein had different priorities....ethics....I have read he joined the UN, and campaigned for nuclear disarmament, I even read he was offered the post as Prime Mininster of Israel.

    The critical outcome of this is it is a complete fallacy to even attempt to use Einstein and his beliefs as a basis for promoting clearly irrational and unscientific postulations.-K99

    I would say if he were alive today, Einstein would agree with you. That is probably why he talked about his religious beliefs so much. We were doing this when he was alive and we will as humans continue to. Einstein is a role model, even though he clearly didn't want religious followers.

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