Its a question asked by many people. Day to day life brings us pain, and the things that hurt us are considered evil. But does it really exist? Here is a simple answer for it:
| Quote: |
The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!" "God created everything? The professor asked. "Yes sir", the student replied. The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil". The student became quiet before such an answer.
The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth. Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?" "Of course", replied the professor.
The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?" "What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question. The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."
The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?" The professor responded, "Of course it does." The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."
Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?" Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man!. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil." To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."
The professor sat down.
The young man's name - Albert Einstein. |
Dave Why don't you repeat that entire story, only this time, swap the words "good" and "evil"?
Tell my why that version is false and the first one is not, without appealing to faith.
The only thing that I can say is, go read the book Evil: A Primer. It goes into what evil really is. Check it out.
nice post 
Don't you mean "isn't evil just the absence of good."??? Pretty sure it isn't God, that doesn't even make sense.
Evil is a word like hot, cold, darkness, etc. None of these words are real things. Their meaning can only be learned through experience. You don't learn what hot is until you touch something hot; same with cold.
What is evil though? Evil is such a subjective term. The definition of evil is defined by society. We deem murder as 'evil,' but why? There is no TRUE evil, only what society deems as 'evil.'
What i'm really curious about is why everyone assumes evil is the absence of good and not vice versa. It seems to be an assumption worth examining to me.
Indi, I think you are the only one that has actually made some meaning in this thread. Thank you for being the first one to actually question what everyone takes to one of the bases for life. I actually posted this to just get some people thinking, and because it happens to be one of my favorite stories, but when you think about it in philosophical terms, then yes, why do people assume evil to be the absense of good, and not vice versa? Well your answer is this: In all (hopefully) religions, as we are brought up, we are taught to be "good". But are we defined what "good" is? Maybe "good" is growing up to be a teenager and going and joining a terrorist group. We are told that terrorist groups are bad because they hurt people, but that statement only justifies their actions, not what they are. So to a person who thinks that terrorist groups are cool, terrorists are "good", and hence, they are labelled so. So in everyone's view, "good" is positive, whether it be helping an old lady cross the street, or it be blowing up an embassy in Iraq. So when everyone says "good is the absense of evil", they are actually taking the positive word first, but NOT the positive action. The positivity coming first is just a convention we have followed throught change, whether you wanna see it in philosophy, or even in Physics when we study the flow of electrons from the positive end of a battery to a negative end, when it actually flows from the negitive terminal to the positive terminal.
I am a believer of God, but my faith lies in myself. I do not leave any hopes on the divinity, and I believe that the rewards I reap are the consequenses of my own actions, and not a gift from God. I believe in myself. I worship God for reasons I still am trying to find. Most people worship because they believe in him. I dont believe Good or Evil to be associated with God at all, whether it is taught in a religion or not. I believe it to be the view marked by most people to be Good or Bad.
Dave
(15 yrs old, lol! and in the philosophy forum!)
Well, if evil is the absence of good, then I see no reason that good can't be the absence of evil. Fluid concepts, I suppose. At any rate, it doesn't matter whether they "exist" or not (though I say they do not objectively exist). Everyone has a variation of "good" and "evil."
| dez_trukshun wrote: |
| Indi, I think you are the only one that has actually made some meaning in this thread. Thank you for being the first one to actually question what everyone takes to one of the bases for life. I actually posted this to just get some people thinking, and because it happens to be one of my favorite stories, but when you think about it in philosophical terms, then yes, why do people assume evil to be the absense of good, and not vice versa? Well your answer is this: In all (hopefully) religions, as we are brought up, we are taught to be "good". But are we defined what "good" is? Maybe "good" is growing up to be a teenager and going and joining a terrorist group. We are told that terrorist groups are bad because they hurt people, but that statement only justifies their actions, not what they are. So to a person who thinks that terrorist groups are cool, terrorists are "good", and hence, they are labelled so. So in everyone's view, "good" is positive, whether it be helping an old lady cross the street, or it be blowing up an embassy in Iraq. So when everyone says "good is the absense of evil", they are actually taking the positive word first, but NOT the positive action. The positivity coming first is just a convention we have followed throught change, whether you wanna see it in philosophy, or even in Physics when we study the flow of electrons from the positive end of a battery to a negative end, when it actually flows from the negitive terminal to the positive terminal. |
If the idea that "evil is the absence of good" is just a convention, then "Einstein's" argument above is meaningless.
Here's something to try. Why is darkness the absence of light and not vice versa (or why is cold the absence of heat and not vice versa)? The answer is because light is just what we call the effect of photons, and taking photons away leaves us with darkness - that is, when there is something there (photons/electromagnetic energy/whatever), we have light, and when there is nothing there we have darkness. (The same goes for heat and cold - heat is what we call the kinetic energy of particles in a substance, and if you take away the kinetic energy, you take away the heat and get cold.) If we had a room, and we took away the light without adding anything else, we'd have darkness. If we had a dark room and we "took away the darkness" without adding anything else, we wouldn't have light.
So what if we define evil things as whatever causes suffering, pain and misery and good things as whatever causes happiness, pleasure and contentment? What if we had a person who was suffering just a little (normal suffering, day-to-day life suffering, not like they're being tortured or anything), and we took away all evil without adding any good? Even though we didn't actually add anything, wouldn't they be happy to be no longer suffering? Without adding any good, taking away evil created good. Now what if we went the other way and took a person that was just a little happy (not in bliss or anything, just day-to-day, average person contentment), and took away all good without adding any evil? They may no longer have whatever was causing them happiness, but without something extra to cause them misery, they won't actually be upset. (Think of it this way, if you were being pricked with needles, wouldn't you be happy if it stopped? On the other hand, if you were getting a nice massage and it stopped, would you say you were suffering suddenly?)
From that, it would seem at least possible that evil is the thing that actually exists, and that good is simply what you have when you have no evil. And if that's the case, then the "Einstein" example above gets turned on its head.
| dez_trukshun wrote: |
| I am a believer of God, but my faith lies in myself. I do not leave any hopes on the divinity, and I believe that the rewards I reap are the consequenses of my own actions, and not a gift from God. I believe in myself. I worship God for reasons I still am trying to find. Most people worship because they believe in him. I dont believe Good or Evil to be associated with God at all, whether it is taught in a religion or not. I believe it to be the view marked by most people to be Good or Bad. |
For those who believe in a god, there are two possibilities for where good/evil comes from:
- God says X is good/evil because X is good/evil. (Absolute good/evil exist.)
- God says X is good/evil therefore X is good/evil. (Divine command theory: there is no absolute good/evil, but whatever God commands becomes good/evil.)
The second view isn't really that popular anymore, but it was really big in the middle ages. It still has its fans today though.
| Soulfire wrote: |
| Well, if evil is the absence of good, then I see no reason that good can't be the absence of evil. Fluid concepts, I suppose. At any rate, it doesn't matter whether they "exist" or not (though I say they do not objectively exist). Everyone has a variation of "good" and "evil." |
The fact that different people have different ideas of good and evil does not rule out the existence of absolute standards. Different people have different conceptions of god, but i'm sure you wouldn't claim there is no single, absolute, true conception. If you had ten people with ten different ideas of what is good or evil, that can mean one of three things:
- All ten are right - as you claim - because there is no absolute standard and any one of their definitions is just as good as anyone else's.
- One is right and nine are wrong - because there is an absolute standard and one of them has actually figured it out (although they may not know it).
- All ten are wrong - because there is an absolute standard, and none of them have got it.
If you had three people, and you asked them to describe the solar system, and one said the Earth was flat and the stars were lights on the inside of a cover over us, one said the Sun revolved around the Earth, and one said the Earth revolved around the sun, would you conclude there is no objective truth to the structure of the solar system? If not, then why can you make that conclusion about good and evil? | Quote: |
| Indi:"If the idea that "evil is the absence of good" is just a convention, then "Einstein's" argument above is meaningless." |
Yes it is. 100% true, but not the entire crowd is expected to realize that, and if they do, they are not expected to understand it, and if they understand it, they are bound to question their own understanding in an attempt to debate over why only only few people understand it, and not everyone. You are one of those people, Indi. Congrats. This topic is never ending, and can keep on going, but it has come to a point where I can contribute no more, because of two reasons: first, I have my own unanswered questions that have hit harder walls which I need to break first before I can go ahead with this, and second, I am only 15, and have experienced enough to say only this much, and am not willing to go any further because it is not my place. Thank you for your beautiful posts, Indi, and I hope to meet you in more debates over religion's mysteries.
If anyone else feels like contributing to this thread, however, please go ahead.
Also, please realize that this story has no Genuine proven source, and can be falsely created in an attempt to scientifically answer the question, and given the name of the narrarator Einstein, as he is considered by many as the greatest ever in the scientific community. Also, even if this is true, please realize that Einstien was in school, and I doubt he had enough stamina to take this into detail against his professor, much less the knowledge base to question what everyone around him had learnt from childhood, so please, dont take the story too seriously, but take topic in question, "Does evil exist?" as the actual theme of this thread.
Dave | dez_trukshun wrote: |
| Also, please realize that this story has no Genuine proven source, and can be falsely created in an attempt to scientifically answer the question, and given the name of the narrarator Einstein, as he is considered by many as the greatest ever in the scientific community. Also, even if this is true, please realize that Einstien was in school, and I doubt he had enough stamina to take this into detail against his professor, much less the knowledge base to question what everyone around him had learnt from childhood, so please, dont take the story too seriously, but take topic in question, "Does evil exist?" as the actual theme of this thread. |
(Actually, you can be pretty sure it wasn't Einstein, if the story is true at all. Einstein said he stopped believing in God when he was 12. He was also a famously poor student until his graduate thesis. For a mediocre 12-year old to have made the arguments about absolute zero, heat energy and light as a wave (in 1890!!!), then to have someone actually remember that it was Einstein and report it at least 15 years later... yeah, not happening.)An uplifting post dez_trukshun. Don’t lose heart dude, you know what they say. “You can lead a horse to water . . .”, or even better, “Cast your pearls in front of pigs and they’ll turn on you”.
Isn’t it amazing that absolutely nothing has changed from the beginning.
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| On the other hand, if you were getting a nice massage and it stopped, would you say you were suffering suddenly? |
what if all you had was a 100 dollar bill and it suddenly disappears? | tingkagol wrote: |
| Quote: | | On the other hand, if you were getting a nice massage and it stopped, would you say you were suffering suddenly? |
what if all you had was a 100 dollar bill and it suddenly disappears? |
Unless the disappearance causes suffering by suddenly making you unable to buy something, you wouldn't suffer from losing it.The terms are subjective. The more mundane good and bad are equally so.
What might be normal to someone, could either be good or bad/evil to someone else from a different society.
For instance: human sacrifices used to be seen as good, but now most would see them as evil.
Its easy, no, wiki says:
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| In religion and ethics, evil refers to the morally objectionable aspects of the behaviour and reasoning of human beings — those which are deliberately void of conscience, and show a wanton penchant for destruction. Evil is sometimes defined as the absence of a good which could and should be present; the absence of which is a void in what should be. In most cultures, the words are used to describe acts, thoughts, and ideas which are thought to (either directly or causally) bring about suffering and death — the opposite of goodness, which itself refers to aspects which are life-affirming, peaceful, and constructive. |
Its all just tagging bad events, theres nothing to exist... only a label.... I think evil does exist but maybe God didn't create evil. there was a rebellion in heaven, according to the bible so maybe the rebellion was the start of all evil and God, for some reason, couldn't reverse the effects.
| Indi wrote: |
(Actually, you can be pretty sure it wasn't Einstein, if the story is true at all. Einstein said he stopped believing in God when he was 12. |
While Einstein's notions of God were far from conformist religious notions, he was most definitely not even remotely an atheist.
“God does not roll dice with the universe!” | mike1reynolds wrote: |
| Indi wrote: |
(Actually, you can be pretty sure it wasn't Einstein, if the story is true at all. Einstein said he stopped believing in God when he was 12. |
While Einstein's notions of God were far from conformist religious notions, he was most definitely not even remotely an atheist.
“God does not roll dice with the universe!” |
You have misquoted Einstein. He didn't actually say that.
Einstein used god as a metaphor frequently. That does not make him a theist. i do it too, and no one would accuse me of being a theist, would they? In a letter to Max Born, a fellow physicist, Einstein used a metaphor of God rolling dice to elucidate the discomfort he felt with giving up a deterministic universe for the sake of one governed by quantum probabilities (which was what Born came up with). He was not suggesting that there exists a God who does not gamble. (Interestingly, they weren't actually talking about physics, if i recall, but ethics and morality.)
Einstein was quite clear about what he believed in respect to a god and religion. The reason that there is any confusion is twofold. First, the terminology he uses goes over the heads of most people. He speaks of believing in "Spinoza's God". Unless you know what Spinoza was talking about, that sounds rather theist, but it is not. It is deist. Second, Einstein liberally redefined terms to suit his own beliefs. He redefined bother "God" and "religion" (among other words). Whenever anyone asked, he cheerfully and clearly provided his own definitions, but if you read his words without keeping those definitions in mind, they can sound like they support beliefs that they do not (something that Einstein himself was often frustrated by, but it was really his own fault). In brief, Einstein believed this: he cannot explain everything, and there is much that he cannot explain that is marvelous and beautiful... that is God - not that is evidence of God or that is where God can be found, that is God - "God" is the majesty and mystery of the universe, nothing more, nothing less. No being. No intelligence. No creator. Just the beauty of the universe itself.
Would you call Einstein a theist? If you would, then if i were to take a crap, point at it, and say "there lies God!", you would call me a theist, too. If that's the case, the term becomes meaningless.
Yes, Einstein believed in "God"... but in EINSTEIN'S "God" (which was also Spinoza's "God"), not yours or anyone else's. And Einstein's God was not a supernatural intelligent being that created and/or manipulates the universe. Einstein's God was Mystery. If you use Einstein's definitions, then i am a believer in God, too, and i am deeply religious (and many of those who are considered to be the most religious and faithful throughout history are not at all).
If you use an actual English dictionary's definitions of those words, i am neither.
Do it any way you want to, but be honest or clear about which definitions you use. i use the standard English definitions. By those definitions, Einstein was not religious, and he was certainly not a theist.The problem of evil rests on two eminently plausible background assumptions: that if God exists then he is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good, and that evil exists in the world. It is on the remaining premise, which states that if God existed then evil would not exist, that most discussion of the problem of evil focuses. The background assumptions are usually granted.
There are, however, two responses to the problem of evil that do not grant the eminently plausible background assumptions. The first is the denial that God is morally good. The second is the denial that evil exists.
To most of us, the existence of evil appears to be undeniable. There is widespread suffering in the world. We have all experienced some amount of pain, both physical and emotional; evil confronts us all. Some, however, have sought to deny the reality of evil, and so to eliminate the problem of explaining how evil can exist in a world governed by God.
Christian Scientists are among those that teach that evil is an illusion. The movement’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote, “Sin, disease, whatever seems real to material sense, is unreal.” Suffering, on this view, may appear to surround us, but this only an appearance.
It is difficult, however, to dismiss all evil as illusory. If it appears to me that I am racked with disease, but that appearance is merely illusory, then it is nevertheless a painful illusion. Even if the disease is no evil because it does not exist, the appearance of disease remains an evil. Objective suffering may, perhaps, coherently be dismissed as illusory, but subjective suffering cannot be.
Far more promising than the dismissal of evil as illusory is the Augustinian and Thomist view that it is nothing more than a privation of good. According to this view, evil is not a positive thing that is out there in the world, but merely an absence of good. God therefore cannot be blamed for bringing evil into existence; evil is not a thing and so was not brought into existence. The idea that the world contains evil (i.e. certain privations of good) can thus be reconciled with the idea that it was created by a God who would not create evil; it is only the good in the world that was created, the bad is merely an absence of good.
Even if this account of evil were accepted, however, it would not completely resolve the problem of evil. For it may still be asked why God neglected to create those goods that are found to be lacking in the world. Even if evil is simply an absence of good, there is a tension between this absence of good and the existence of a Creator that knows how to, is able to, and wants to create all goods. The problem of evil, then, in some form at least persists.
| secondeye wrote: |
The problem of evil rests on two eminently plausible background assumptions: that if God exists then he is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good, and that evil exists in the world. It is on the remaining premise, which states that if God existed then evil would not exist, that most discussion of the problem of evil focuses. The background assumptions are usually granted.
There are, however, two responses to the problem of evil that do not grant the eminently plausible background assumptions. The first is the denial that God is morally good. The second is the denial that evil exists. |
Would a third not be that God is good but either not omniscient or not omnipotent or perhaps neither omniscient nor omnipotent? | Indi wrote: |
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | Indi wrote: |
(Actually, you can be pretty sure it wasn't Einstein, if the story is true at all. Einstein said he stopped believing in God when he was 12. |
While Einstein's notions of God were far from conformist religious notions, he was most definitely not even remotely an atheist.
“God does not roll dice with the universe!” |
You have misquoted Einstein. He didn't actually say that.
|
That is an exact quote from Einstein in response to Neils Bohr, albiet in German, which makes it hard to capture all of the subtle nuances of what was said. Another translation could just as easily be, "God is slick, but he is not that slick."
Einstein and God
By Thomas Torrance
In a recent book Max Jammer, Rector Emeritus of Bar Lan University in Jerusalem, a former colleague of Albert Einstein at Princeton, claims that Einstein's understanding of physics and his understanding of religion were profoundly bound together, for it seemed to Einstein that nature exhibited traces of God quite like "a natural theology." Indeed it is with the help of natural science that the thoughts of God may be tapped and grasped. 1 On the subject of Einstein and God Friedrich Dürrenmatt once said, "Einstein used to speak of God so often that I almost looked upon him as a disguised theologian." 2 I do not believe these references to God can be dismissed simply as a façon de parler, for God had a deep, if rather elusive, significance for Einstein which was not unimportant for his life and scientific activity. It indicated a deep-seated way of life and thought: "God" was not a theological mode of thought but rather the expression of a "lived faith" (eines gelebten Glaubens).
1. Max Jammer, Einstein und Die Religion, Konstantz, 1995.
2. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Albert Einstein, Z ürich, 1979, p.12, cited by Max Jammer, op. cit. p. 54: "Einstein pflegte so oft von Gott zu sprechen, dass ich beinahe vermute, er sei ein verkappter Theologe gewesen."
http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/reflections_volume_1/torrance.htm
This is a long and well referenced article with nearly 60 references in all.
Suffice it to say that you are presenting Einstein in a way that is not entirely accurate.Instead of talking about good and evil, let’s talk about love and hate for a moment. Is love the absence of hate, or is hate the absence of love?
Who here would really attempt to argue that hate is more fundamental than love and that all true love is nothing more than a vacuum of hate, with that love having no essence of it’s own other than the vacuum created by the absence of hate? No one of course. While not everyone will agree with the counter assertion, I’ll bet that a majority do. Pure Hitlerian hate has no fundamental essence beyond insanity. It has no inherent meaning of its own, its entire existence is defined exclusively by the absence of love.
Evil is a product of ignorance, just as hate is. Good and love are products of understanding and wisdom.
(Note that righteous anger is a product of love, not hate. When a father gives a harsh scolding he is genuinely angry, but is it hate?)
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| Indi wrote: | | mike1reynolds wrote: | | Indi wrote: |
(Actually, you can be pretty sure it wasn't Einstein, if the story is true at all. Einstein said he stopped believing in God when he was 12. |
While Einstein's notions of God were far from conformist religious notions, he was most definitely not even remotely an atheist.
“God does not roll dice with the universe!” |
You have misquoted Einstein. He didn't actually say that.
|
That is an exact quote from Einstein in response to Neils Bohr, albiet in German, which makes it hard to capture all of the subtle nuances of what was said. Another translation could just as easily be, "God is slick, but he is not that slick."
Einstein and God
By Thomas Torrance
In a recent book Max Jammer, Rector Emeritus of Bar Lan University in Jerusalem, a former colleague of Albert Einstein at Princeton, claims that Einstein's understanding of physics and his understanding of religion were profoundly bound together, for it seemed to Einstein that nature exhibited traces of God quite like "a natural theology." Indeed it is with the help of natural science that the thoughts of God may be tapped and grasped. 1 On the subject of Einstein and God Friedrich Dürrenmatt once said, "Einstein used to speak of God so often that I almost looked upon him as a disguised theologian." 2 I do not believe these references to God can be dismissed simply as a façon de parler, for God had a deep, if rather elusive, significance for Einstein which was not unimportant for his life and scientific activity. It indicated a deep-seated way of life and thought: "God" was not a theological mode of thought but rather the expression of a "lived faith" (eines gelebten Glaubens).
1. Max Jammer, Einstein und Die Religion, Konstantz, 1995.
2. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Albert Einstein, Z ürich, 1979, p.12, cited by Max Jammer, op. cit. p. 54: "Einstein pflegte so oft von Gott zu sprechen, dass ich beinahe vermute, er sei ein verkappter Theologe gewesen."
http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/reflections_volume_1/torrance.htm
This is a long and well referenced article with nearly 60 references in all.
Suffice it to say that you are presenting Einstein in a way that is not entirely accurate. |
i'm afraid that you don't know what you're talking about.
First, the quote "God is slick, but he is not that slick" is one translation of "Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht", a comment made in 1921. It has nothing to do with the dice comment that you misquoted, which was in a letter to Max Born in 1926. Get your facts straight.
Second, nothing in that bit you quoted is in any way representative of Einstein's beliefs. It is an opinion piece being made by someone who wants to interpret Einstein's use of "God" as a reference to a being... something Einstein explicitly spoke against. Don't use opinion pieces as sources of fact. You want to know what Einstein believed about God, read Einstein.For evil to exist we must first define it.
Yet every human being will define it in a different way.
What may be evil to one is not evil to another.
Every religion has it's own sense of what is good or evil such as Paganism's view on witchcraft and the Christian view of witchcraft.
I believe myself that evil does not exist. Instead it is just a by product of someone's fear and/or societies limitations placed on a group.
It is simply just something somebody can define an act or thought as.
Indi, you assert that Einstein was in fact an atheist. You are utterly alone in this fanatical nut case belief.
there can be little doubt that it left some imprint on what he was to think and say of God, evident in the use he frequently made of terms such as "transcendent" and "incarnate" to speak of "the cosmic intelligence" which lay behind the universe of space and time, which seems to indicate that there was rather more than just a way of speaking in what he said and thought of God.
Oh yes, indeed, you MUST be correct and only you truly understand Einstein, like none of his friends and colleqagues could possibly have understood him. So explain to us what Einstein meant by "cosmic intelligence"?
I get 60,000 hits on Einstein and "cosmic intelligence". Perhaps you should check a few of them out and stop pretending you know even the first thing about Einstein's theology. All you are doing is twisting and distorting him into a nonsensical God talking reflection of your own atheism.
If Einstein is really what you claim then he was an idiot who just completely contradicted himself. Is that what you are trying to argue?
A collection of quotes from Einstein - decide for yourself....
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.”
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it”
“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.”
(1936 - Responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray.)
“A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. “
(Religion and Science, New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930
“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvellous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
(The World as I See It)
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modelled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbour such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”
(obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955)
“I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgement on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God.”
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. “
“The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously."
“The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.”
“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”
“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervour is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”
“A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
("Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930)
“What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”
“The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.”
A bunch of extremely brief enigmatic statements without any explanatory context is no help. All that can be said for certain from these quotes is that he talked about the subject quite a bit, but was trying very hard not to be pinned down by a superficial label.
BTW, what is a personal God as opposed to an impersonal God? Einstein often stated that he didn’t believe in a personal God, as has been pointed out in these two threads quite a number of times, but no one has yet even vaguely attempted to flesh out what this initially indecipherable statement means, despite how often it is repeated.
How is that not just a very general definition of God?
When Einstein said that he did not believe in a "personal God", you are clearly making a blanket assumption that he didn't believe in any God. If so, why add the word personal? Why didn't he just say he didn't believe in God?
You reference is garbage, it makes no distinction between a personal and an impersonal God and thus has absolutely nothing to do with Einstein's statements. | mike1reynolds wrote: |
You reference is garbage, it makes no distinction between a personal and an impersonal God and thus has absolutely nothing to do with Einstein's statements. |
I thought it was fairly clear:
| Quote: |
| 'a personal God' means 'a God which either is a person or is a whole composed of nothing but interrelated persons'. |
As far as I can remember I think that only the Abrahimic religions have this type of God - and even then I'm not sure whether Allah is defined as personal or not..(I could well be wrong and am willing to be shown otherwise). I think it's fairly clear that Einstein was saying that he did not accept the notion of God as a 'person' - more of a 'force' or even, perhaps more abstractly as the embodiment of the fundamental physical laws...
Einstein himself elaborated on the notion : | Einstein wrote: |
| The sense of the religious, which is released through the experience of potentially nearing a logical grasp of these deep-lying world relations, is … a feeling of awe and reverence for the manifest Reason which appears in reality. It does not lead to the assumption of a divine personality—a person who makes demands of us and takes an interest in our individual being. In this there is no Will, nor Aim, nor an Ought, but only Being. |
And later: | Quote: |
| 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. |
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| A bunch of extremely brief enigmatic statements without any explanatory context is no help. All that can be said for certain from these quotes is that he talked about the subject quite a bit, but was trying very hard not to be pinned down by a superficial label. |
I think he is fairly consistent and clear. I think a few things emerge:
1) He rejected any 'anthropomorphic' model of God - one based on God being like us in some way. A personal god is another way of putting it.
2) He rejected any conventional notion of life after death.
3) He rejected the notion of an 'active' deity which involves itself in our lives
4) Moral/ethical behaviour should not result any theistic notions.As to incarnations of God, Hinduism is full of them. Islam totally rejects the notion and is not panentheistic at all. Only the panentheistic religions believe in an incarnation of God. (Although that is not what panentheistic means, never the less there is a strict one to one correlation between panentheism and belief in Incarnations.)
That is a good guess, Bikerman, but it doesn't jive with any of his other statements. That was my first guess too, but it doesn’t make in sense in the context. Einstein has only good things to say about Jesus and he never correlations the term “personal God” with Jesus, Krishna, Rama, Elijah, or anyone else.
From what I can tell it appears to be referring to a God that deals with personal affairs. That certainly jives with his other statements. But it still leaves the question as to what kind of God he did believe in, since he made it clear that he did believe in God in some form, just not the standard religious form. Neither do I, but that hardly makes me an atheist.
| Bikerman wrote: |
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
You reference is garbage, it makes no distinction between a personal and an impersonal God and thus has absolutely nothing to do with Einstein's statements. |
I thought it was fairly clear:
| Quote: | | 'a personal God' means 'a God which either is a person or is a whole composed of nothing but interrelated persons'. |
|
Ah, actually, i disagree. That's where Broad started (pretty much), but that was just the start. The truth is much simpler, and more profound.
He then went on to discuss what it meant to say that something is a "person" (or persons). Condition number one is:
| Quote: |
| It must think, feel, will, etc. |
Further conditions add more restrictions, but this is the one that matters most for our purposes.
A "personal god" is a god that thinks, feels and wills. Spinoza rejected the idea of a thinking, feeling, willful god, and Einstein did too. To Einstein, to assign those characteristics to the universe (aka, God, to Einstein), was to anthropomorphize unnecessarily.
It has been asserted that Einstein's god has intelligence and will. Einstein said no.
In fact, Einstein already had this entire debate we're having on Frihost figured out. He said that you can't even explain his conception of a non-personal god to someone who believes in a personal god, because they are trapped by their own conceptions of the word: "But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it." Thus it is that some people cannot understand how it is possible for Einstein to say "God exists", but not believe in an intelligent divine being. He also noted: "The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints."So you are saying that Einstein conceived of God as an unconscious computer?
How do any of these statements apply to a shamanistic conception of the Great Spirit that is no way personal or anthropomorphic?
Indi, what do you know of the profound "religious feeling" that Einstein was referring to? You pretend to know what Einstein thinks, so what was he thinking of here? You certainly can't make any statement of the kind.
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| As to incarnations of God, Hinduism is full of them. Islam totally rejects the notion and is not panentheistic at all. Only the panentheistic religions believe in an incarnation of God. (Although that is not what panentheistic means, never the less there is a strict one to one correlation between panentheism and belief in Incarnations.) |
So that means Jesus was not an incarnation of God? Or is Christianity Pantheistic?
Sorry....I retract the question since I misread your post...I mistook panentheist for pantheist...my mistake.
Last edited by Bikerman on Sat Apr 21, 2007 4:31 am; edited 1 time in totalThanks muchly for the inspirational post dez_trukshun I loved it! 
I look at Einstein through different eyes now. Its really a shame to see how so many people jump to argue the awesomeness that Einstein says here in support of evil.. 
| Indi wrote: |
Ah, actually, i disagree. That's where Broad started (pretty much), but that was just the start. The truth is much simpler, and more profound.
|
Yes, correction accepted. | Bikerman wrote: |
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | As to incarnations of God, Hinduism is full of them. Islam totally rejects the notion and is not panentheistic at all. Only the panentheistic religions believe in an incarnation of God. (Although that is not what panentheistic means, never the less there is a strict one to one correlation between panentheism and belief in Incarnations.) |
So that means Jesus was not an incarnation of God? Or is Christianity Pantheistic? |
Christianity is one of the three panentheistic religions, not pantheistic. I never said pantheistic.
And as for myself, like most Jews I don’t believe that Jesus was the true Incarnation, but I think that is a tangent to this topic. | mike1reynolds wrote: |
| Bikerman wrote: | | mike1reynolds wrote: | | As to incarnations of God, Hinduism is full of them. Islam totally rejects the notion and is not panentheistic at all. Only the panentheistic religions believe in an incarnation of God. (Although that is not what panentheistic means, never the less there is a strict one to one correlation between panentheism and belief in Incarnations.) |
So that means Jesus was not an incarnation of God? Or is Christianity Pantheistic? |
Christianity is one of the three panentheistic religions, not pantheistic. I never said pantheistic.
And as for myself, like most Jews I don’t believe that Jesus was the true Incarnation, but I think that is a tangent to this topic. |
See above....I corrected myself, acknowledged my error and withdrew the question....my mistake. | Bikerman wrote: |
| Indi wrote: | Ah, actually, i disagree. That's where Broad started (pretty much), but that was just the start. The truth is much simpler, and more profound.
|
Yes, correction accepted. |
Yes, as Broad was aware, if you simply say a personal god is a god that is a "person" or "person-like", you will inevitably get responses by people who don't bother to consider what a "person" might be, beyond a human being or some extension thereof. They will issue objections like: "Well my god isn't a person... it's a god!..." or "My god is a flying spaghetti monster, not a person!..." or "My god is just a disembodied consciousness, not a person!..." and follow anyone of those with "... therefore Einstein believed in my god!"
Of course, that's just a slippery way to sidestep the underlying objection implied in rejecting a "personal god". When Einstein rejected a "personal god", he rejected the idea of a god with person-like characteristics... including thought, reason, emotion and more. He was not vague about this either; he wrote repeatedly on the silliness of anthropomorphizing god.
It is unfortunate that Einstein chose to use the phrase "personal god" so prominently. It has allowed people to distort his view with such ease. i have heard people claim things as ridiculous as "(the Judaistic/Christian/Islamic) God is not a personal God, he's a universal god shared by all... therefore Einstein does believe in (the Judaistic/Christian/Islamic) God." Or any one of the previous examples of obviously anthropomorphic god concepts that aren't human-like are claimed to be "non-personal".
Einstein's "god" was nature. Dumb, mechanistic nature. His view is pantheistic, but unlike classic pantheism, he does not ascribe personal characteristics to nature; he does not anthropomorphize it. Nature, and by extension "God", is just all the matter and energy of the universe, and the interoperations thereof (the laws of physics). "Religiousness" is just admiration of the beauty and wonder of nature. Einstein said so explicitly.
Honestly, all of the claims to the contrary - that Einstein actually believed in the existence of some divine entity, and that he thought of religiousness as anything more than just love of nature - are either couched in ignorance and/or outright dishonestly. For example, it is common to see people quote the phrase: "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." as support for Einstein's belief in the traditional sense of religion. What is ironic is that if one quotes the surrounding text, the complete opposite reasoning shines through! Before making that comment, Einstein explains what aspects of traditional religion are useful to science. And after it, Einstein goes on to criticize traditional religion! | Indi wrote: |
Yes, as Broad was aware, if you simply say a personal god is a god that is a "person" or "person-like", you will inevitably get responses by people who don't bother to consider what a "person" might be, beyond a human being or some extension thereof. They will issue objections like: "Well my god isn't a person... it's a god!..." or "My god is a flying spaghetti monster, not a person!..." or "My god is just a disembodied consciousness, not a person!..." and follow anyone of those with "... therefore Einstein believed in my god!" |
Yep, it's a good point and certainly sounds familiar.
.... | Quote: |
Einstein's "god" was nature. Dumb, mechanistic nature. His view is pantheistic, but unlike classic pantheism, he does not ascribe personal characteristics to nature; he does not anthropomorphize it. Nature, and by extension "God", is just all the matter and energy of the universe, and the interoperations thereof (the laws of physics). "Religiousness" is just admiration of the beauty and wonder of nature. Einstein said so explicitly.
|
That has always been my interpretation of his various quotes and writings on the subject. The 'vagueness' frequently cited seems to me to be largely based on wishful thinking and a wish to appropriate the great man for whatever cause. His quotes are actually pretty consistent in my view and all support the notion of a non-anthropomorphic and non-interventionary concept of 'god' which, I agree is, when summarised, nothing more than a wonder at the pattern/complexity/simplicity and symmetry of the universe around us.Heretic Monkey has it dead on, Einstein’s early atheism, much like my own, was a product of youthful rebelliousness, but in his later years he was most clearly not an atheist at all. Only appeals to Einstein’s youth produce any appeal too atheism. Anything else is just bull crap, as BM is so egregious for.
| Indi wrote: |
| Bikerman wrote: | | mike1reynolds wrote: |
You reference is garbage, it makes no distinction between a personal and an impersonal God and thus has absolutely nothing to do with Einstein's statements. |
I thought it was fairly clear:
| Quote: | | 'a personal God' means 'a God which either is a person or is a whole composed of nothing but interrelated persons'. |
|
Ah, actually, i disagree. That's where Broad started (pretty much), but that was just the start. The truth is much simpler, and more profound.
He then went on to discuss what it meant to say that something is a "person" (or persons). Condition number one is:
| Quote: | | It must think, feel, will, etc. |
Further conditions add more restrictions, but this is the one that matters most for our purposes.
A "personal god" is a god that thinks, feels and wills. Spinoza rejected the idea of a thinking, feeling, willful god, and Einstein did too. To Einstein, to assign those characteristics to the universe (aka, God, to Einstein), was to anthropomorphize unnecessarily.
It has been asserted that Einstein's god has intelligence and will. Einstein said no.
In fact, Einstein already had this entire debate we're having on Frihost figured out. He said that you can't even explain his conception of a non-personal god to someone who believes in a personal god, because they are trapped by their own conceptions of the word: "But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it." Thus it is that some people cannot understand how it is possible for Einstein to say "God exists", but not believe in an intelligent divine being. He also noted: "The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints." |
I think I understand what is being said here. You're saying that Einstein believed in God, but felt they he did not have human attributes. Much like the concept of a simple "higher being." I think I would have to agree with this somewhat. People have a hard time understanding something new without relating it to something else, so they gave God human characteristics in order to understand him/her/it better. It would have been even more difficult for people in much older and primitive times to understand an all-powerful being without emotions or will. | laurenrox wrote: |
| I think I understand what is being said here. You're saying that Einstein believed in God, but felt they he did not have human attributes. Much like the concept of a simple "higher being." I think I would have to agree with this somewhat. People have a hard time understanding something new without relating it to something else, so they gave God human characteristics in order to understand him/her/it better. It would have been even more difficult for people in much older and primitive times to understand an all-powerful being without emotions or will. |
Yes, correct. That's pretty much exactly how Einstein put it.
The only thing is Einstein believed in a "god" (i hesitate to use "God", because "God" is the proper name of the Christian god) not only without human attributes, but also lacking "personality" and "emotions", Einstein's god had no will or desire... no nothing. Can you call a computer a "being", let alone a "higher being"?
i'm not so sure. i mean, yes, it is techically correct. A computer is indeed an inanimate being, and so is a rock. But the word "being" normally tends to be associated with personhood... something Einstein was explicitly against.
So this is where some of the people here split on this topic (some others are still trying to insist that Einstein's god had personhood). To me, a... let's use the neutral word "thing"... a thing cannot be qualified to be a god unless it has the qualities to make it a person - not necessarily a human-like person, god could be a completely alien form of intelligence. For example, if you didn't believe in any god, could you argue that since the big bang created the universe, it is god? Or could you call the electroweak force god, because it binds everything together? To me, no. You can't just call any old arbitrary thing god. | Quote: |
Yes, correct. That's pretty much exactly how Einstein put it.
The only thing is Einstein believed in a "god" (i hesitate to use "God", because "God" is the proper name of the Christian god) not only without human attributes, but also lacking "personality" and "emotions", Einstein's god had no will or desire... no nothing. Can you call a computer a "being", let alone a "higher being"?
i'm not so sure. i mean, yes, it is techically correct. A computer is indeed an inanimate being, and so is a rock. But the word "being" normally tends to be associated with personhood... something Einstein was explicitly against.
So this is where some of the people here split on this topic (some others are still trying to insist that Einstein's god had personhood). To me, a... let's use the neutral word "thing"... a thing cannot be qualified to be a god unless it has the qualities to make it a person - not necessarily a human-like person, god could be a completely alien form of intelligence. For example, if you didn't believe in any god, could you argue that since the big bang created the universe, it is god? Or could you call the electroweak force god, because it binds everything together? To me, no. You can't just call any old arbitrary thing god. |
So basically your saying that "god" can't really be a "god" if he/she/it has no human-like qualities? | laurenrox wrote: |
o basically your saying that "god" can't really be a "god" if he/she/it has no human-like qualities? |
He was pretty specific though... | Quote: |
| The sense of the religious, which is released through the experience of potentially nearing a logical grasp of these deep-lying world relations, is … a feeling of awe and reverence for the manifest Reason which appears in reality. It does not lead to the assumption of a divine personality—a person who makes demands of us and takes an interest in our individual being. In this there is no Will, nor Aim, nor an Ought, but only Being. |
So his 'god' has no will, no goals/aim, in fact nothing except existence.
You can call it God, I wouldn't.Einstein proves Religion !
Why, it's the same set of people, discussing the exact same thing at two different places. 
Please use the report feature !
I'm going to -close- this thread. Please continue the discussion in the older thread.
If you feel the discussion in the two threads is somehow different, PM any staff member to have this re-opened.
