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 languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. 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 the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.
- from Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton University Press
2009-09-16 14:34:37
Sweet
2009-09-24 00:07:52
Heh. Nice quote mining --
but keep reading.
2009-09-24 11:48:24
I stand by my assertion that he was a smart guy. :-)
Read this article from TIME magazine: Einstein & Faith.
Jōl, what context did I miss?
2009-09-24 16:39:36
Well, I don't know that you're missing any context: standing alone, I imagine we both agree with the quote you provided. Maybe I'm being unfair, but your use of it struck me as odd because whatever the approach, your conclusions about religion (or at least the nature of God) couldn't be more starkly different.
Consider these quotes (also from _Einstein and Religion_):
"Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking..."
'After their two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, were born, questions arose regarding their religious instruction and therefore their elementary school education. Einstein reportedly said, “Anyway, I dislike very much that my children should be taught something that is contrary to all scientific thinking.”
'Einstein’s defiance of authority explains his well-known aversion to social conventions, his nonconformity in apparel and attire, his bohemian style of life during his student years in Zurich, and his friendship and solidarity with colleagues like the Austrian socialist Friedrich Adler or the members of the “Olympia Academy” in Berne, Maurice Solovine, Conrad Habicht, and Michele Angelo Besso. For all of them, the ideologies of Marx and Mach
replaced the religion of the Bible.'
2009-09-24 21:24:34
It's possible you think I'm making Einstein out to be a "Christian," but I am not. At most, I suspect he was a Deist, believing in "something," but that something remained undefined, maybe unknowable (in his opinion).
I was not making a religious statement at all.
What I liked about what he said that I quoted was that we are all like children, gazing in awe at the big, mysterious, seemingly incomprehensible universe. It's apt to make one humble in one's proclamations of knowledge.
(I remain steadfastly asserting that he was a smart guy.)