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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."
Reading it, you'd think this would stop the theists from repeatedly dragging the man unwillingly into their camp; but since this well-known remark...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There's a good lesson here: Poetic/metaphoric language can get you in trouble when people take you too literally. The dice comment is regularly trotted out as "proof" of his religious convictions, but the later statements in which he unequivocally denies that he believes in God somehow get missed.
In any event, this is all a rather sad reverse ad hominem; whether or not Einstein believed in God has no bearing on whether or not God exists. But both theists and atheists try to "claim" Einstein, because having a genius on your side *seems* to add weight to your argument. It doesn't, but there you go.
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When person A comes to visit his neighbour and sees him lying in a pool of blood and shrieks "Oh my God!", does that mean that person A is religious, too?
The word is pretty deeply rooted in the language, so even if you completely dismiss the concept of God, you may find yourself using the word more or less frequently.
It may come as a shock, but people use metaphors or analogies or funny quotes all the time, without actually believing in the thing used as a metaphor.
E.g., we may spew or quote stuff like "Mother Nature always sides with the hidden flaw" or "Mother Nature is a bitch", without actually believing that there is such a sentient entity. Or when Stalin said that "artillery is the god of war", chances are he didn't mean it literally.
E.g., you may have noticed quotes from Futurama's characters before on Slashdot. I'll take a wild guess that most of those people don't actually believe that Bender or Dr Zoidberg are real.
More importantly, look at the context in which he said that. There was _nothing_ theistic about it. Einstein's view of the world was based on the evidenced-based large-scale physics, where stuff is very deterministic. More importantly, there seemed to be no obvious way to reconcile relativity with quantum physics, so one or the other had to be false. Einstein obviously favoured his own relativity, and had plenty of experimental confirmation (at macro level) that it's correct.
If anything, it just shows that even really really smart people can be occasionally wrong, when talking about stuff outside their expertise domain.
But the crucial thing is that it was based on falsifiable evidence, not on some belief in a deity whose will is absolute and whose habits can be guessed. There was nothing inherently theistic about that belief.
Yes, he used the word "god". It was just a metaphor/anthropomorphisation of the universe. He could have just as well used "mother nature" or just personified the universe itself. It was just supposed to get the point across, not be some declaration of faith in a god.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Can an atheist use the expression "The devil is in the details?"
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
What do emails fail to achieve ?
We already have a few historical emails about the creation of internet, spam, linux, and so on...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Explain this: if the universe cannot exist without self-awareness, and there was a time when the universe did not exist, then how did the universe came to be? One cannot be aware of oneself if one does not yet exist. Your philosophy sounds an aweful lot like that new-age crap, but let's assume you came up with this yourself. How did you come to this philosophy of yours?
1. God is self awareness.
What is the basis for your core assumption ?
This means, life is real if it's aware of itself. Humans and most mammals are real.
Most mammals ? Which ones are unlucky enough not to make the cut ? Who decides ?
Where do reptiles and fish fit into your scheme ? Or, aren't they cute enough to have feelings ? Do the poor old insects get a raw deal as well ?
I propose a simple experiment. You say the universe exists only inside one's awareness.
In other words, you believe in magic. But we can easily experimentally verify this state of affairs.
I put you inside a dark room, completely and utterly dark, so that most of your perception is disabled. What you don't know is that there is a hole in the floor of the room : but no worries, nobody is aware of the hole, and it isn't aware of itself : so you won't fall through it.
Obviously if you do fall through : your "philosophy" is worthless and untrue : it failed a prediction.
Your philosophy is different in nothing from any ancient belief that you would call utterly stupid. They believed something that could be trivially disproven and "the world is only what you think about it".
Obviously it's not. The world exists independantly of you.
In your response please do keep in mind that unicorns are pretty and they can do anything they want.
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No? Einstein discovered some of the most important principles upon which the Universe is built; he revealed the strange nature of space and time and how the two are related, the equivalence of solid material things and abstract energy, the connection between the propagation of light and the principle of causality itself.
If there exists a creator, then Einstein's study of the creation has told us more about that creator than any prophet ever has.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
So the atheists are trying to beat on the theists by proving that a really smart guy was one of them?
Frankly, considering the off-kilter nature of genius as we know it, I wouldn't want to lay too much value on having some of the same ideals of other geniuses, or many other people for that matter.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.