Randman writes:
With all due respect, you are erring here. First, just because one rejects the personal God of the Bible does not mean one rejects belief in God. The term God means Divine Being, btw.
Spinoza's beliefs actually are more aligned with IDers than evos. He believed God was perfect, had an eternal nature, creates everything, and possessed Intelligence and a mind, and creates out of this eternal nature. Both Einstein and Spinoza argue that one can tell what God is like and what God is to a degree via looking at God's design. Both accept that the universe itself is evidence of God.
http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm
Spinoza's God is not the God of Abraham and Isaac, not a personal God at all, and his system provides no reason for the revelatory status of the Bible or the practice of Judaism, or of any religion, for that matter.
Since Spinoza explicitly identifies his God with Nature, it doesn't even seem to be a God at all.
--Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.
Some of Einstein's Writings on Science and Religion
EINSTEIN THE ATHEIST
The God of Einstein and Spinoza
From a letter to Eduard Bsching, Oct. 25, 1929, Einstein Archive, reel 33-275, quoted in Jammer, p. 51:
When its author sent a book There Is No God to Einstein, Einstein replied that the book did not deal with the notion of God, but only with that of a personal God. He suggested that the book should be titled There Is No Personal God. He added further:
We followers of Spinoza see out God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul as it reveals itself in man and animal.It is a different question whether belief in a personal God should be contested. Freud endorsed this view in his latest publication. I myself would never engage in such a task. For such a belief seems to me to the lack of any transcendental outlook of life, and I wonder whether on can ever successfully render to the majority of mankind a more sublime means in order to satisfy its metaphysical needs.
Einstein's View of God ” and Spinoza's
From a letter to Murray W. Gross, Apr. 26, 1947, Einstein Archive, reel 33-324, Jammer, p. 138 - 139:
When question about God and religion on behalf of an aged Talmudic scholar, Einstein replied:
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem ” the most important of all human problems.
No Personal God
This quote from Einstein appears in Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events.
To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.
In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task .
A Statement Against the Church and a Personal God
About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indocrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.
”W. Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet”In Search of the Cosmic Man (Branden Press, Brookline Village, Mass., 1983), p.132, quoted in Jammer, p.123.
Non-existence of the soul.
On 17 July 1953 a woman who was a licensed Baptist pastor sent Einstein in Princeton a warmly appreciative evangelical letter. Quoting several passages from the scriptures, she asked him whether he had considered the relationship of his immortal soul to its Creator, and asked whether he felt assurance of everlasting life with God after death. It is not known whether a reply was sent, but the letter is in the Einstein Archives, and on it, in Einstein's handwriting, is the following sentence, written in English:
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
The ball is in your court, Randman.
Ray
Edited by Herepton, : No reason given.
Edited by Herepton, : No reason given.
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