Einstein letter, set for auction, shows scientist challenging idea of God, being 'chosen'

[cbayer]

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/04/einstein-letter-set-for-auction-shows-scientist-challenging-idea-of-god-being-chosen/


Up for auction: An original 1954 stamped envelope and letter, shedding light on Albert Einstein's religious beliefs.

October 4th, 2012
10:20 AM ET
By Jessica Ravitz, CNN

Decades before atheist scientist and author Richard Dawkins called God a "delusion," one world-renowned physicist - Albert Einstein - was weighing in on faith matters with his own strong words.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends,” Einstein wrote in German in a 1954 letter that will be auctioned on eBay later this month. "No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Dubbed Einstein’s “God Letter” by the Los Angeles-based auction agency that's posting it online, the original document will be up for grabs starting Monday. The opening bid: $3 million.

The letter provides a window into the famed genius's religious beliefs. Einstein wrote it to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind one year before Einstein died in reaction to Gutkind’s book, “Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.”

more at link

[d_r]

1. wow

that must have been a heck of book if it killed Einstein.

[struggle4progress]

2. +

"Einstein died in reaction to Gutkind’s book"

[onager]

8. I heard that when Einstein died, he was reading...

Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds In Collision."

OK, I heard that from a Velikovsky fanboi who was pushing Velikovsky like $cientologists push auditing.

He got sort of cranky when I responded: "Nice to know that Einstein probably died laughing..."

[longship]

3. Einstein is often said to be a pantheist.

He often used the word god as a placeholder for the natural order of the universe. And nothing more. We hear similar language from Steven Hawking.

Religious people latch onto this rhetoric to imply that he was a believer. But everything he said and wrote says the contrary. Einstein had consistently said that there was no personal god.

He wasn't even a deist. He believed in Spinoza's god and even stated it that way. Not much of a god, IMHO.

[cbayer]

4. They don't offer much substance from the letter, but what I have read leads

me to think he was ambivalent - similar to what I have read about Darwin.

I think pantheist may be an apt description.

[longship]

6. Well, Darwin called himself an agnostic...

...which is a word defined first by his friend and fierce defender, Huxley.

I do not think that Darwin, Huxley, Einstein, or Hawking are ambivalent about their lack of belief. What I think is that the description of atheist has become so culturally toxic that it has become almost an insult.

Darwin and Huxley would never had called themselves atheists in Victorian England any more than Einstein would have done the same in the USA during his life. Hawking is an outlier. I think he is basically channeling Einstein and his beliefs.

The reason that I explicitly label myself as an atheist, and that I eschew other labels, is that I do believe that evidence shows that there are very likely not any gods. The most accurate expression of this is to call oneself an atheist.

I cannot prove there are no gods. But it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the theists. They are the ones making claims of an entity whose attributes of which they cannot even agree. William of Okham would slice such claims right off.

But, no. I cannot prove there are not gods. But the null hypothesis must be that there are not unless there is evidence to the contrary. I see no such evidence. The universe seems pitifully ignorant of any such hypotheses.

[cbayer]

7. I know that Darwin struggled and it's unclear where he landed.

There is some information that he became very depressed when he realized that what he was discovering would be a strong challenge to the theism he had embraced. I'm not sure that it was the term atheist that bothered him and tend to believe that he really didn't know and didn't want to be labeled either way in terms of theism.

Again, I reject the notion that agnostic can only be used as a modifier. I think it's a legitimate position. There are prejudices against those that claim theism and those that claim atheism. There is not rational justification for claiming either as the only truth, and no one needs to prove or disprove either.

You can also not prove that there is not intelligent life somewhere else in the universe, but I would find it hard to take the position that we are the most highly evolved critters anywhere.

Whether that more highly evolved life is *god* or not may be semantic and perhaps why even those that believe can't agree.

[longship]

9. I could not agree more with your post.

It is pretty much my own.

As always.

[Silent3]

10. By any strong conception of "god" or deity...

...anything that evolves from anything else isn't much of a god, certainly not in the sense of a "Creator" or "Prime Mover". Only by a pretty lax definition of "god" can a being which comes along later, after the universe has been churning along nicely on its self-starting own, be called a god.

[cbayer]

11. You cold be right or you could be wrong.

The kelp fly I just killed might consider me a kind of god in his little kelp fly brain.

I think we can not even begin to imagine what there may be. Maybe we are an ant farm? Who knows?

[trotsky]

12. Just because we might not be able to "imagine what there may be"...

doesn't mean we can't rule some things out.

[Silent3]

14. I'm perfectly willing to entertain all sorts of thoughts of other possible beings.

Beings more powerful and intelligent than human kind seem not only likely, but very plausible.

In a certain sense they might seem "godlike" in their understanding and ability, but that in and of itself doesn't fit well with the capital-G form of "God".

Even if we're living in a "universe" (by a weak sense of that word -- by a strong sense there, by definition, only one universe) created by a particular being who has complete control over our universe, if that being lives in a larger outer universe where its kind evolved, where it is not omnipotent or omniscient or eternal, then that being isn't something I'd consider worthy of the title "God", but merely a resident in a nested, layered system of universes.

[cbayer]

15. Using your definition, I would agree

But your definition may be too narrow.

[Silent3]

16. Too narrow for what?

I don't take the approach that there's something out there that "must" or "should" be called a God, and that for some strange reason I need to be worried about making sure that I somehow, someway encompass (or at least not rule out) whatever that thing is when I used the word "God".

Consider the word "animal". Go back in time four hundred years and a sea sponge would not have been classified as an animal. Sponges don't move, they have no nervous system, they don't look or act like what people back then would have considered animals.

Does that mean people were wrong about sponges, not being open minded enough, that they were too ignorant to understand the "true" nature of animal-ness?

No. They simply had no use for an definition of "animal" based on cellular biology. Today we use an expanded definition of what "animal" means only because we now have a new way of looking at living things, and it's useful to modify the way we use the old word "animal" to accommodate our new ideas and information.

It would have done no one much good back in 1600 to worry about what might or might not be an animal that they didn't then think was an animal. No special enlightenment would have been demonstrated by anyone hedging their bets by allowing that sponges or pebbles or certain shades of purple might one day be considered animals.

Give me a reason or a context for expanding or modifying how I use the word "God", and then I'll worry about the utility of entertaining that expansion or modification. Until then, any worry about being too "narrow" makes no more sense than worrying if shoe laces or tractors or ink cartridges might be gods, if only I were using the "right" definition of the word.

[cbayer]

17. Too narrow for others who may not share your pov

No need for you to expand or modify your definition at all. Just perhaps recognize that it is by no means universally held.

[Silent3]

18. Then those people can tell me what "god" means to them from their point of view...

...and we can discuss what makes sense to call or "god" or not call a god by that definition.

If others can only vaguely say that "god" means something other than any definition I can offer, but are unable to form a cogent definition of what they mean, then meaningful discussion isn't possible.

When definitions used by others are clear, I don't think there's anything wrong about classifying those definitions as clear or murky, sensible or self-contradictory, useful or not useful, etc. None of that has anything to do with whether those other people are "entitled" to their definitions -- they're just as entitled as I am entitled to any opinions I might have about those definitions.

[cbayer]

19. That is fair, though many may choose not to have that meaningful

Conversation with you.

Are opinions about what a god may or not be really open to judgement and determination of rightness if they do not impinge upon you?

[Silent3]

20. Sure such things are open to judgment

Last edited Mon Oct 8, 2012, 06:46 AM - Edit history (1)

If someone decides to use "god" to mean "toaster" or "bicycle rack", that would likely never impinge upon me, but it still would be a ridiculous way to use the word, one that does nothing other than impede communication and understanding.

Calling beings which, like ourselves, have arisen naturally, "gods", just because those beings are more advanced in some way than humans, might have some evocative or poetic value. Since there are much deeper and more fundamental conceptions of godhood, however, than mere higher intelligence or advanced technology or culture, then, whether it "impinges" upon me directly or not, I feel perfectly justified in saying that blurring these different meanings is a great mistake, something that only leads to confusion and category errors.

[2ndAmForComputers]

13. Well, that letter kinda blows the "ambivalence" to smithereens, innit?

[dimbear]

5. Readers of this forum may enjoy the refutation of Eric Gutkind's book by Eric Bosekind.

*Not intended as a factual statement.