Einstein: The Bible Is Pretty Childish

[karlhenning]

If you are looking for a scientist who is a model of Christian piety, you would do well to choose someone other than Newton.

Ah! I see you have not at all lost your taste for strawmen!

[M forever]

It's amazing how quickly you can swerve just about any topic to what you think you're best at arguing.

That's the way discussions work, Mr Campbell. You give your best arguments and then the other participants give their best arguments. Your response here doesn't contain *any* arguments though. It is completely childish. Thanks for illustrating that point by your example.

[MN Dave]

Einstein upon seeing the 12-year-old Menuhin perform: "Now I know there is a God."

0:)

[Harry]

Einstein upon seeing the 12-year-old Menuhin perform: "Now I know there is a God."

0:)

He was right!

[Don]

What I don't get is hotel rooms that still have a Bible in the night drawer.   

When I was receiving radiation treatments for prostate cancer, there was a bible in the patient waiting room on one of the tables.  Day after day it was facing, so I turned it around so that its face was against the wall.  As time went on, I noticed that nobody changed its position. 

I have to say that those waiting rooms are a downer - patients sharing their horror stories and pain.

[head-case]

Einstein upon seeing the 12-year-old Menuhin perform: "Now I know there is a God."

0:)

He was right!

That there is an intelligence at the root of the universe does not imply that one of the systems of primative superstitions that we call organized religion has anything to do with that intelligence.

[MN Dave]

When I was receiving radiation treatments for prostate cancer, there was a bible in the patient waiting room on one of the tables.  Day after day it was facing, so I turned it around so that its face was against the wall.  As time went on, I noticed that nobody changed its position. 

I have to say that those waiting rooms are a downer - patients sharing their horror stories and pain.

Hospitals are downers--period. 

[Harry]

That there is an intelligence at the root of the universe does not imply that one of the systems of primative superstitions that we call organized religion has anything to do with that intelligence.

Maybe, but it could be the other way around too!

[M forever]

Sir Isaac Newton, considered alongside Einstein the greatest physicist of all time, held the Bible in high esteem:

Well, Al, it’s a proven fact that Newton wasn’t right about everything, so no need to be so harsh with him... 

Sure, but neither was Einstein 

It doesn't matter what Newton or Einstein believed or not or what they were "right" and "wrong" about. We aren't talking about exchanging one "absolute and infallible" authority ("God" or any of his self-appointed spokespersons) for another, be it Newton or Einstein or anybody else. I find it interesting that you appear to be conditioned to need to have that kind of absolute authority. You can't understand "god" or "the universe" anyway. Einstein didn't either, although he may have understood it better than most people and I find it interesting that he kept that kind of curiosity and respectful distance to his object of study rather than trying to come up with some thinking or believe system to explain it all. These systems just reduce the miracle of the universe we live in to something small we can comprehend. Which is basically what he said. I think the "sense of wonder" and curiosity about the universe and the powers that appear to rule it is the true religious attitude, but it also means that we have to admit to ourselves that we simply are not able to understand it all. So any attempt to grasp the universe with a set of mythological stories and cultic beliefes really is childish in the literal sense of the world. Children need fairy tales and myths to make the world around them understandable. I think adults need fairy tales just as much as children (I know I do, I am very interested in mythology). But the difference is that a child believes in them literally and the mature adlut knows they are just artistic expressions of things which are beyond our understanding but which we can feel are there.

[M forever]

Maybe, but it could be the other way around too!

Very true, but while we still haven't figured out the universe, we can trace the origin of all forms of organized religion and put them into a historical context which tells us without doubt that they were invented by people. The argument which most "religious" people have is that, yes, most forms of religion are indeed superstitions, except, the one that *I* believe in, *that one* is the only true one. I don't thik it can get any more childish than that ("my daddy's car is bigger than your daddy's").

[ChamberNut]

The argument which most "religious" people have is that, yes, most forms of religion are indeed superstitions, except, the one that *I* believe in, *that one* is the only true one.

Couldn't have worded it any better, M.

[Al Moritz]

I find it interesting that you appear to be conditioned to need to have that kind of absolute authority.

Ironic that you would say that, given that you treated Einstein as an authority in your preceding post.

All I was saying is that Einstein is not necessary a great authority on the topic just because he is the greatest physicist next to Newton, given that Newton had a contrary opinion (and Bunny, please check the reference in that Wikipedia link that I gave).

This does not imply that in turn Newton himself must be right because he was such an authority in science. He is right, but for other reasons.

[Al Moritz]

The argument which most "religious" people have is that, yes, most forms of religion are indeed superstitions, except, the one that *I* believe in, *that one* is the only true one. I don't thik it can get any more childish than that ("my daddy's car is bigger than your daddy's").

Funny, Islam a superstition? As John Paul II once said to a cheering stadium crowd of Muslims, "We all believe in the same God". Judaism a superstition? Hmm, let's see, didn't Christianity arise from there? Isn't Jesus Christ a Jew?

[Brian]

Welcome back, Al. 

Einstein upon seeing the 12-year-old Menuhin perform: "Now I know there is a God."

0:)

Well, guess I should set down my C.S. Lewis and Bertrand Russell, and listen to a concert by the 12-year-old Menuhin instead. 

[MN Dave]

Welcome back, Al. 
Well, guess I should set down my C.S. Lewis and Bertrand Russell, and listen to a concert by the 12-year-old Menuhin instead. 

The time-travel machine awaits you, sir.

[Brian]

[Joe_Campbell]

That's the way discussions work, Mr Campbell. You give your best arguments and then the other participants give their best arguments. Your response here doesn't contain *any* arguments though. It is completely childish. Thanks for illustrating that point by your example.

No. What's childish is assuming that every argument about God (god ) can ultimately be boiled down to talking about 'ancient superstitions' which may or may not be true, and that we really have no idea so what's the point. It's unfortunate that this is your best argument, because you've been called on it several times for substantiation, and have come up dry.

[M forever]

No. What's childish is assuming that every argument about God (god ) can ultimately be boiled down to talking about 'ancient superstitions' which may or may not be true, and that we really have no idea so what's the point. It's unfortunate that this is your best argument, because you've been called on it several times for substantiation, and have come up dry.

You still haven't understood my argument. The point is that since we simply don't know, it is best to keep the question open rather than "deciding" this or that set of views and "beliefs" is the right one. It is even a significant element of all major monotheist religions not to picture "god" in any way. But all forms of organized religion fundamentally violate that "command" and give in to the desire to still define what their "god" is and what he wants. And that *only they* really know that. It is pretty obvious where the "line" is between the quest for spiritual insights about the mysterious power(s) that govern our world and the reduction of that to some form of cultic worship.

I think in all these religions, we can see the attempt to go beyond such organized forms of cultic worship, transcend them and find a deeper truth, but we can also see how people who follow them almost invariably fall back into the cultic worship state. There is a great tension there between true spiritual insight, between the reaching of the human mind into the "unknown", and primitive, archaic forms of worship which want to reduce that to a defined set of rules and then dance around the golden calf. Which is essentially what these organized religions are still doing. They say, "don't dance around that golden calf, dance around ours". The further we progress from being reined in by these organized religions, the closer we can get to whatever the "thruth" is about the world we live in. Since we can't rationally comprehend it, we can still experience elements of that truth in a spiritual way. Reducing ourselves to a defined set of beliefs only keeps us away from that. And remember, these beliefs are always defined by simple human beings like you or me - not by any "gods".

[drogulus]

That there is an intelligence at the root of the universe does not imply that one of the systems of primative superstitions that we call organized religion has anything to do with that intelligence.

     Nothing implies that, so far as anyone knows. Nor does anything imply that there is intelligence at the root of the universe.

     We can say that the universe is a very unlikely arrangement, considered from the point of view of someone living in it. But this special point of view disguises the fact that all universes are unlikely. What are the odds that you are standing on precisely this spot on the surface of the earth? Also, we have no way of knowing how an unintelligent design process differs from an intelligent one. We can surmise that an intelligent designer would maximize the possibilities for whatever it wanted to produce. We don't know what that would be, though, and I don't see how anthropocentric assumptions carried over from earlier beliefs help to solve the problem.

     In any case this is not a Panglossian universe for humans. It's extremely hostile to life, though it's very friendly to black holes. If maximizing the chances for higher life forms to evolve is the criterion then we are not in an ideal universe, though it's big enough and old enough so that just about all natural possibilities will be realized somewhere. The latter is certainly consistent with unintelligent nondesign.

     What's really hard to imagine in any detail is how a generative intelligence can exist outside a basis for information processing and storage necessary to implement a design. Here's the part that I like: The ideal processing and storage medium is matter, which means any god would be dependant on precisely the kind of processes that are supposed to be created. If they aren't matter/energy then they must be just as good for the job! This is the problem of dualism in another form. Just as mind dualism causes for you to posit unknown mystery stuff to bridge the natural/supernatural divide, cosmological dualism means everything has to be done twice! And not just twice, of course, but an infinite series of times, as we keep trying to figure out how the creation process is itself created and so on and so on. The supposed regression stoppers of the apologists depend on massive information complexity being paradoxically simple. That won't do. You can say that gods don't do it like that, but that just raises the question of what way might be available for a god to use.

     So creation by god is not an alternative to creation ex nihilo, it's the same problem just moved back one step. As I see it, the problem is not a god, but creation. If we really needed a god, we could probably come up with one that wouldn't outrage sensibilities if we were willing to permit an evolutionary process to design it. But if you did that, I think you'd see that an evolutionary process that could create a god could just as easily create a universe, so why bother? Gods are not that big a problem once you permit evolution to create intelligent life. Nothing solves the god problem quite as efficiently as the growing pains of an intelligent species trying figure out where it all came from and what it all means. You want gods? That's how to get them.

     

     

[Bunny]

Ah! I see you have not at all lost your taste for strawmen!

It's not a "strawman" to point out errors of fact that form the basis of a statement.  Newton was not a devout "Christian" and had little respect for the Bible.  It's an error to think that he did.