Did Einstein try to destroy science?

I see it as a soundbite, not a theological statement, though at this point it seems our differences over Spinozan philosophy have somehow dissipated. But how you can see mixing Spinozan philosophy with science as somehow significantly theological in any traditional religious sense, one that the scientific community might find inappropriate, is beyond me. And if you don't see it as having any significance in any traditional religious sense, then it doesn't really seem worth mentioning or discussing.--Percy

If by this you're implying that Einstein might have thought creation science was a valid way to conduct science, then no, he would not. If you're in some way implying that Einstein would have thought the kind of evidence of the spiritual that you're advancing is valid scientific evidence, then no, he would not. Once again you have misinterpreted the words of someone who doesn't agree with you as somehow agreeing with you. Einstein didn't have religious beliefs or believe in a Divine Spirit in the sense that you're using those terms here. He equated religious beliefs to the wonder and awe one gets from studying the universe. If all you're saying is that Einstein believed the pursuit of science should be tempered by the wonder and awe of the universe, then while I wouldn't phrase it that way myself I guess it's acceptable.But by removing from your description of Einstein's beliefs any hint that his religious beliefs were non-traditional in the extreme, rejecting a personal God and Biblical myth in everything he said and wrote on the subject, you've implied that he would have found acceptable the highly inappropriate way creationists mix religion with their science. This he would never have done.Can you provide an example of where Einstein used religion in science?--Percy

Pardon me for replying while your away, but I have to write while the thoughts are fresh in my mind.I'm going to digress slightly from this discussion of Einstein's religious beliefs to touch on something else closely related. One of the approaches we often you see you take is to take what someone has said and reinterpret it to be consistent with your own views. This is what you're doing now with Einstein, and as I listen to the session videos of the Beyond Belief 2006 conference and I watch Paul Davies talking about quantum uncertainty in Session 5 I'm reminded that you did the same thing to John Wheeler.Davies claims to be following John Wheeler and Stephen Hawking when he explains apparent retro-causality in this way: This is as clear a statement of what Wheeler was saying as I've seen, and Einstein was just as clear about his religious beliefs. Apparently many at the Beyond Belief 2006 conference aligned themselves with Einstein as accepting a Spinozan view, further evidence that you're misinterpreting Einstein *and* Spinoza.Einstein's religious views were confined to a cosmological wonder and awe of the universe. He often used the term "God" in describing his views, and he believed that studying the universe revealed a great intelligence, but he definitely did not have anything close to a traditional view of a God as creator of the universe. Everything Einstein ever said on the subject rejected this view.--Percy

I see this as a criticism without any evidential support, and it appears to reflect a purposeful misconstrual of what I've been saying, though I've explained clearly many times and asked you not to do this. For instance, you imply at one point that that I am mixing theology and science. You have done this more than once and been called for it each time. Why do you continue to mislead in this way? For Einstein, God is a metaphor for the universe. Your argument confuses definitions from different contexts in a way that makes clear your advancement of hypocrisy. Your arguments have been shown wrong over and over again, and you have not been able to overcome any of the problems pointed out, instead taking an approach of incorrect characterizations of arguments. It is your own conduct that is odd. Please address the actual arguments instead of once again giving in to the temptation to attribute the failure to persuade to the deceitful behavior of your opponents.--Percy

I guess you missed where I quoted you in support of my contention? I can make no sense of this. Please stop not making sense. What from Einstein leads you to believe this? Einstein's views did not include a "God interacting with reality." For Einstein God and universe were one and same thing, synonyms in effect. Spinoza and Einstein believed that God and nature were one and the same, and I elaborate on this a bit in the next paragraph. You're confounding statements from different contexts. When Einstein says, "God does not play dice," he's saying the universe is not random. When he says, "Science without religion is lame, religion with science is blind," the religion he's talking about is his cosmic religion that is the wonder and awe of nature. In other words he's saying, "Science without wonder and awe is lame, wonder and awe without science is blind." Interesting. You didn't notice that in much of my post I was just rephrasing your own words back to you? If you're outraged at what was said, the object of your outrage is not here but in your mirror.--Percy

So you are still asserting that I'm accusing you of saying that Einstein believed in a personal God? How can these misstatements be taken as anything but purposeful? How often do I need to state how confused you are about Spinozan philosophy. I have rebutted all your arguments with more than sufficient evidence. The appearance of deliberate evasion is unavoidable, and it appears you do not want to engage in reasonable debate. Until the "presumably," yes, I agree. The concept you're advocating is not one held by Spinoza or Einstein, and to say that they did is untrue. I have made this clear on more than one occasion, but you seem to pay it no mind while again contending without any support that when Einstein says "God" he really means God. Of course, we've already established we're not talking about the Christian God, and since Spinoza did not advocate a God separate from nature, that leaves only one possibility. It is to bad that you're so reluctant to see the facts in both this and quantum physics. It's so sad. When you decide to engage is actual discussion please let me know. So far you're just repeating nonsensical points.--Percy

Hi Randman,I read the whole article (http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm) and found nothing in it to disagree with. In fact, it was very informative, probably the best article I've seen so far on Spinoza. But there's nothing there to support your contention that when Einstein said, "God does not play dice," that he was confounding religion with science.--Percy

I don't know about Spinoza, but when Einstein said, "God does not play dice," he was referring to quantum uncertainty, not chance and randomness. For example, Einstein certainly had no problem with the randomness associated with which radioactive atoms decay. I don't recall seeing anything by Einstein about evolution, but it seems very safe to assume that he accepted accepted evolution and would have rejected intelligent design.--Percy

I think subbie's quotes address this pretty well. Einstein thought of the divine as a state of reverence and not as an actual being. Yes, with respect to quantum certainty. Einstein didn't reject randomness. I already cited the randomness of radioactive decay, which is not a quantum effect. Neither is the randomness of mutation.--Percy

You say that you've shown that "Spinoza did believe God is an actual Divine Being," and it's when you say things like this that I begin to wonder if you're somehow confusing Spinoza's views with traditional theistic beliefs. You say to me, "You admitted that you agreed with the article that showed that." Yes, I agreed with the article (http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm), but that article never in any way attempts to demonstrate that the God of Spinoza was a divine being. The phrase "Divine being" does not appear in the article. In fact, even just the word "divine" does not appear anywhere in the article. It is when you use this word "divine" in a Spinozan context, a word that is just a stepping stone to "holy" and other similar terms, that causes me to ask if you're thinking of the Christian God.Anyway, I'm afraid you've provided no support for your argument that Spinoza believed in God as a Divine being. What your article actually says is that Spinoza saw God, along with Descartes, as a "Necessary Being". Is up down and left right in yours? I never said that random mutation and radioactive decay were equivalent. I cited them as examples of randomness accepted by Einstein. If we were to pursue this angle we'd eventually breach the question of Einstein's views on a deterministic universe, where the question becomes is a process inherently random, or is it just that we have insufficient knowledge and/or intellect to make a determination? I was never trying to explain why Einstein did not accept quantum uncertainty. I've only explained what he meant when he said, "God does not play dice." He meant that he rejected quantum uncertainty. Though the then level of scientific expertise had shown that quantum uncertainty was an inherent property of the universe, Einstein believed that there was more to be uncovered and that it would eventually be revealed to be incorrect. I suspect Einstein used the word God for the same reason all of us do - he was referring to his conception of God. The mistake that you're making is to think that God can only be a divine being. God was not a divine being for either Spinoza or Einstein. I think I see another aspect of what is causing this difference of opinion. If you're saying that Einstein had no science upon which to base his opinion that quantum uncertainty was false, then I agree with you. Einstein was painfully aware that the scientific evidence did not support his intuition. So if you want to say that Einstein's intuition on this matter derived from his theology and not his science, then I agree with you. Einstein was well aware he was stating an opinion and that he was not making a scientific statement.--Percy

So is yours. Since when do words have a single definition? So I said that by divine you seemed to be implying holy, which is one of the definitions of divine, and yet you have the unmitigated gall to accuse me of ignoring the truth here?If all you mean by divine is perfect, eternal, etc., then fine, use divine that way. I checked a couple dictionaries, and that didn't seem to be the definition, but if that's your preference, go ahead, use it that way. Just don't expect people to somehow "divine" the definition you're using.--Percy

Divine, like almost all other words in the English language, has multiple definitions. There is no reason for you to be confused on this point. If you're saying that Spinoza and Einstein believed in a God that existed outside the universe and brought the universe into being by a conscious act of creation, which is what you're implying by putting this in terms consistent with Christian views, then no, you're wrong. I think you're focusing on the portion of your article (http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm) where it criticizes science when it ignores that "Spinoza's god thinks", but you have to recognize that the article is not using the word "thinks" in any familiar way. As he says a few paragraphs later, "Spinoza's God does not make choices, does not really have a will -- which would imply deliberation or alternatives. Spinoza's God is perfect, which means everything is as it must be and cannot be otherwise. God's eternal nature necessitates the things that happen, which happen just as they must and cannot happen otherwise."Getting back to what we were talking about before, in the article this is followed immediately by a comment about randomness: "This all follows from the premise of God's perfection. It is deterministic. Chance or randomness would be an imperfection."Many scientists today identify their views as Spinozan, which would seem to contradict the determinism of a Spinozan universe. Had Spinoza been aware of, say, radioactive decay, would he have considered it antithetical to his views? Or would he, along with modern scientists, consider the very deterministic half life the dominant consideration? Interestingly, Spinoza was a contemporary of Robert Boyle, he of Boyle's Law, a statistical approximation of the random behavior of individual gas molecules. Of course, modern scientists all accept quantum uncertainty, which definitely seems to run counter to Spinozan determinism, but I expect that modern scientists, including Einstein, who claim to be Spinozan in outlook do so in the same way that most anyone claims to be of any particular view. Just as few Republicans align themselves with every point of the Republican platform, and just as few Catholics align themselves with every proclamation of the Pope, probably few scientists who claim Spinozan views align themselves with every aspect of Spinozan philosophy, and I would venture a guess that Spinozan determinism is one aspect left aside. It is certainly so for me. I hope you are at last prepared to concede that you are wrong and that Spinoza and Einstein believed in a God that was one with the universe.--Percy

I think this simple misconstrual is the basis of your mistake. As I've pointed out already, when Einstein said, "God does not play dice," he was not having a scientific discussion. He was aware that the available scientific evidence supported quantum uncertainty and was only stating his intuition that this was not the nature of the universe. He believed research would eventually support his position. Yes, please, no evasions or coming up with some bull about divine intelligence and God as a being separate from the universe.--Percy

Why not? Most people have little trouble understanding what he meant. If I knew by God they were only referring to the nature of the universe? I doubt I'd have a problem with it. Here at EvC Forum I only have a problem with the God of the six day creation and the global flood. You're trying to squeeze Einstein's beliefs about the universe into a religious framework that he would not agree with. Einstein was a very spiritual person, but he saw God and universe as one and did not see God as a being that existed outside the universe. I suspect that Einstein would agree with a statement that it was his intuition that "God does not play dice," but not that it was his faith. He would be well aware that words like divine and faith are attempts to place his religious beliefs into a conventional framework, and he was always very clear that his religious beliefs were unconventional. Your attempts to misconstrue your own cited article (http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm) are pathetically obvious by your use of words like divine and faith that do not even appear in that article. About this, your views have been demonstrated incorrect and yet you will not concede this. You've returned to distorting my position for the purpose of hiding your own errors. Einstein believed in a God who was one with the universe, who did not create the universe out of conscious act but only as an inevitable expression of his own nature, and who is not a conscious player on the universal stage. You have consistently disregarded these issues, raised spurious points, and taken recourse to distorting my position and Spinozan philosophy, too.--Percy

Randman, lurkers can clearly see your evasions. I've shown that Spinozan philosophy views God and universe as one, and that God is not a being who exists outside the universe, and especially not as an active player. Your insistence that Einstein was confounding science and religion in a scientific discussion is hence incorrect, but you fail to concede and persist in fabricating aspects of my position. Your continuing efforts to portray Einstein's non-traditional religious beliefs in traditional terms is a transparent effort to distort what Einstein really believed. One can't avoid the conclusion that you're incredibly mistaken to conclude that Spinoza and Einstein saw God as a deity separate from the universe. Your assertion that God is a conscious, thinking being, an active player as it were imposing his conscious will upon the universe, has been disproved. Any unbiased reader can perceive your unwillingness to concede error.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.