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Ariala - I see an intentional ambiguity in his answers
To me it represents a defensive posture that any person in the public eye would have to assume during his time. We tend to forget that the man lived his life in a time when it could be very detrimental to one's welfare or career to contradict commonly held religious beliefs. You lend a bit of insight yourself when you suggest that he was asked many times if he believed in God. Why do you think he was constantly asked if he believed in God? The great minds of today are not subjected to this scrutiny, at least not to this degree. Where I agree that he was beginning to describe in his opinions, a version of what others may call God, I do not see a definition of a conscious supreme creator being found anywhere in his words. Only the occasional references to person such as "who" or "him" are used in his answers. These references may just be colloquialisms of the day.
posted by
gomedome
on May 7, 2006 at 11:35 AM
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Well, there's more than meets the eye on this subject, but I contend that
he believed in something like God, if not God.
Saturday Evening Post, in 1929:
"To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?" "As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."
"Have you read Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus?"
"Emil Ludwig's Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot."
"You accept the historical Jesus?"
"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life." 7
In view of this interview it is understandable that Einstein is reported to have said that Christ Jesus was the greatest of all Jews.
Einstein was often asked, "Do you believe in God?", to which he sometimes replied "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all being". 24 "By God", Spinoza wrote at the very beginning of his Ethica, "I mean a being absolutely infinite-that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality". Proposition XV of the Ethica stated: "Whatever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived." 25
I can't answer with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things. 26
http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/reflections_volume_1/torrance.htm
posted by
Ariala
on May 7, 2006 at 10:01 AM
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gomedome
Okay, just a bit of a dummy then. See, he had pills for is bad memory, but he kept forgetting where he left 'em. Know the feelin'. Very well.
posted by
ariel70
on May 7, 2006 at 9:44 AM
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ariel70 -- "total dummy" is a bit unfair
I can identify however with how the human brain works and why Albert Einstein got lost in his own neighbourhood, as well as the other seemingly stupid things he did routinely. Once an individual reaches a "zone" or a level of thought, all focus and mental energies are being channelled into the zone. The mundane and routine are outside of the zone with nothing left of the depleted focus and mental energy to contend with them . . . it's a good thing he didn't drive.
posted by
gomedome
on May 7, 2006 at 9:40 AM
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gomedome
You speak for yourself gomey! I never quote Einstein, not since I read that poem ...
There's a wonderfula family called Stein,
there's Gert and there's Ep, and there's Ein.
Gert's poetry's bunk, Eps' scupture in junk,
and nobody understands Ein.
Anyway, on the good authority of his housekeeper, Albert was a total dummy. Apart from cooking up atom bombs in the bath, that is.
Anyway, how do we not that e really equals mc squared? Would you take the word of a guy who couldn't even find his socks?
posted by
ariel70
on May 7, 2006 at 9:30 AM
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