Slashdot Mirror
Einstein Letter Goes on Sale
ErkDemon writes "For any Slashdotters who want a piece of frameable Einstein memorabilia, a letter from A.E. to Eric Gutkind goes on sale at Bloomsbury Auctions today (May 15th). The content of the letter mostly deals with Einstein's views on religion. (Einstein pronounces himself rather unimpressed by the whole idea and rejects it as "childish.") The Guardian has printed a translated excerpt from the letter."
Dyslexics have more fnu.
He never said self-aware, nor did he suggest anything about how it was created. That's more Hawking's department, anyway. Athiests believe the universe is a complete accident and that everything in the universe is random. And you know pretty much nothing about atheists. Nothing Einstein has ever said in any of his writings support that he believes that the universe is random. No, in fact, he said just the opposite. He ignored quantum mechanics because of that.
However, the fact that he recognized a symmetry in the Universe in no way suggests that he believed in a creator, or that the "God" he believed in was even sentient. He claimed to believe in Spinoza's God. Quoting that Wikipedia article: Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality, namely the single substance (meaning "to stand beneath" rather than "matter") that is the basis of the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect is only understood in part. Sounds to me like Spinoza's God created nothing, but is everything. You could almost say that Spinoza was very much an atheist -- he believed in nothing more than matter, the physical world that we see. But he believed that this was what the Jewish God really is -- kind of like the world being created in six days has to be a metaphor, because we know it wasn't.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Actually, that "reverse ad hominem" has a name: appeal to false authority. You know, X is accepted as a smart and authoritative guy on his domain, X said Y, therefore Y must be true. It's used all the time, sadly. Franklin sad this, Churchill said that, Einstein said that other thing, etc. Often raising somethig that's little more than a wisecrack or thinly veiled jab at one's opponents (Churchill for one was quite the wisecracker) to the rank of absolute truth, beyond all questioning. Just because the great man said it, and obviously someone that great can't be wrong about something outside the domain of his expertise. And very few people seem to be aware that it's a fallacy. In reality, even _within_ one's domain of expertise, one can be wrong all right. Einstein was against quantum mechanics. Tesla didn't believe in relativity. (And in quite the fighting words: "[a] magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king") Lorentz was _rabidly_ against Einstein's relativity, and even denounced it as bolshevism, although it was based on his own equations. Go figure. There's a reason why the scientific method assumes that anything is falsifiable, and nothing is above questioning, no matter how big a genius said it. (Although, you're still supposed to present your evidence if you want to challenge it. Just personal disbelief or contradicting one's pet dogma aren't enough.) Move outside what one really knows, and the association with some authority figure becomes fully irrelevant.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
If you are going to be cited as an authority, it helps to be someone who has thought long and hard about one's position, and who is aware of common arguments for and against.
What a disgraceful slander.
"Intelligent design" is a sly relabeling of creationism. Einstein was above all a scientist. He would certainly not want to be associated with such intentionally deceptive pseudoscience.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
His opinion is just as relevant as anybody's This is because opinions like assholes are built in. With that said, why should his be any more relevant than anyone else's including mine? Discounting God, his only answer to "Where did it all come from?" is "I don't know".
Until he died, assuming there's an afterlife, he was no closer to the answer than I. In either case, now that he's dead and whether there's an afterlife or not, he still can't tell us the answer.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
I'm surprised no one else has posted this, so here is the actual auction listing: http://www.bloomsburyauctions.com/detail/649/303.0
It does not state that matter and energy are the same thing.
It states that mass has energy, and inversely, energy has mass.
A body travelling at enormous speeds gains mass because of the mass of its kinetic energy, which is the quantity described by E=mc^2. The body does not gain any matter (it's particle count remains constant).
The constituents of a nuclear fission reaction neither lose or gain mass. No mass is converted to energy. The energy released is the spare binding energy that the larger nuclei required but the more stable products do not. Products like photons with no intrinsic mass of their own carry away the mass of the energy they embody. No mass is destroyed or "converted to energy".
Even in a matter-antimatter annihilation, the products carry energy equivalent to the combined rest mass of the reagents and thus mass and energy are conserved.
If I should ever encounter an entity with god-like powers I'll treat them with a sensible amount of respect, either to gain their favour or avoid their wrath. But god-like powers aren't proof of being creator of the universe. Quite simply I can't conceive of any kind of proof that would make this evident to anyone within the universe. It's an impossibility.
Actually if you count the axis alliance of WWII, they did ...
1. God is the half-eaten sandwich on my desk.
There, proof that God exists!
Most Christian sects share this belief - fundamentalists are more of the exception than the rule.
It is impossible for science to "disprove" anything about the supernatural world, as science only seeks to explain our natural world. As you state, though, science is well-equipped to disprove specific claims about the effects of religion in the natural world.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Religion is a leap of faith. I'm a Christian and I don't believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God. It was written by men before there was much of an understanding of science. It was written by men who were subject to the prejudices of the time. The Bible that we know of today was translated from Hebrew and Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic, probably closer to Hebrew than Greek. Aramaik doesn't translate well to Greek, Hebrew doesn't translate well to either English or Greek and Greek doesn't translate that well to English. The Hebrew Bible refers to Moses parting the sea of reeds, not the red sea. The Hebrew Bible starts with "When God began creating..." not "In the beginning..." I could go on, but you get my drift. Look up a couple of books by Bishop (Episcopal) Shelby Spong. You'd all be very impressed. You're right the Bible is full of inconsistencies because its not a historically accurate book. Its poorly translated and it is a collection from a lot of different authors that were chosen by committee.
Oh, I see now. "most mammals". Perhaps just the tastey ones that are socially accepted in his locale don't have enough self awareness to be part of this God-fabric that protects the lucky ones from getting chopped up for dinner?
I like the 'fish vegetarians'. They try to convince themselves that fish are so dumb that it doesn't count as cruel. I like to fish and cook what I catch, and can say without a doubt that fish go absolutely ballistic about being bled out while alive and live longer in that situation than any mammal or bird I've ever seen.
Buddhism in Tibet is unholy merge between traditional BÃn religion, Tantric Hindu practices and Buddhism. So is almost any traditional Buddhist tradition in Asia.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
I can see why others don't want to give you serious replies. That's like saying "Electricity flows from positive to negative, therefore IT'S ALIVE!" Complete non-sequitur. Athiests have faith in the idea that a God doesn't, and shouldn't exist. How they rationalize it is their business, but these beliefs are the core of athiesm. I see, so you really don't know anything about atheism. Go read.
You're not much of a philosopher if you assume that absence of belief == belief of absence. If there is no randomness in the universe, then everything in the universe is deliberate, and this is the entire basis for intelligent design. Again, WTF?
No, everything in the universe is deterministic. For all you know, God exists, but it was really a big accident. If all events are caused, then even the big bang had to have a cause. It proves no intelligence behind the Big Bang. It also doesn't prove that there was a "first cause" -- tried and failed. I'm a philosopher myself. An exceedingly poor one. Take a philosophy course. Learn how to form a logical argument. Then come back. If the universe is nature, and nature is just self awareness, then the universe is self aware. You're right, that does follow -- but you've got a false premise. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure it out.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Atheism was popular, as it still is, in scientific circles in the early 20th century. Einstein was notable on this subject BECAUSE he subscribed to neither his native judaism nor atheism.
During his lifetime Atheists tried to claim this deterministic-jew as one of their own, and despite his rejection of their point of view they have continued non-stop ever since.