Einstein Letter Goes on Sale

ErkDemon writes "For any Slashdotters who want a piece of frameable Einstein memorabilia, a letter from A.E. to Eric Gutkind goes on sale at Bloomsbury Auctions today (May 15th). The content of the letter mostly deals with Einstein's views on religion. (Einstein pronounces himself rather unimpressed by the whole idea and rejects it as "childish.") The Guardian has printed a translated excerpt from the letter."

Well...

Reading it, you'd think this would stop the theists from repeatedly dragging the man unwillingly into their camp; but since this well-known remark...

"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

...didn't do it... somehow, I doubt this new letter will, either, clear as it may be.

Re:Well...

He also said:

I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

My own interpretation of that is, he appreciates the beauty and intelligence of how the world is put together, almost reveres its symmetry -- but certainly doesn't believe that there's a white-bearded man in the sky. The idea is that one can have an almost religious experience in the form of an equation, but the "I do not believe in a personal God" says that he doesn't believe praying is going to do any good -- if God is Nature, then Nature certainly doesn't care about your personal problems.

Oh, that, and does anyone want to date these quotes? It seems very likely that his beliefs changed; after all, how many of us were born or raised atheist? It seems mostly something that you come to on your own -- having once believed, you start to have doubts, which eventually turn into disbelief.

Re:Well...

having once believed, you start to have doubts, which eventually turn into disbelief.

That's a very friendly way of putting it, on course with what the various religions bash into our heads: That not believing in their bullshit is a kind of "fall from grace", that it has to do with "doubt" and "disbelief".

I'm not sorry, and I'm not buying it. You don't call the sane people "dis-paranoid", or "un-shizophrenic".

We don't "doubt". I "doubt" the christian god about as much as I "doubt" the flying spagetti monster, invisible pink elephants and moon-cheese. It's not a matter of "doubt", which is a negatively-loaded word and implies that there is some truth that could be believed. But in fact there's only a load of made-up bullshit. Not believing every shit someone came up with while on drugs isn't properly expressed with the word "doubt", and using that word indicates a tendency already.

Re:Well...

Spinoza didn't believe in a personal God either. In Ethica, his philosophical masterpiece, Spinoza says that God is "immanent" in nature, not some supernatural entity beyond the world, interfering or having feelings.

Spinoza's concept of Deus sive natura (the God from nature) does not fit in the concept that most people mean when they speak of God. Schopenhauer wrote that because Spinoza called the substance God, he created his own problem of people misunderstanding him. Schopenhauer thinks Spinoza used the term God to make his ideas less objectionable. If only Spinoza choose to call his God-concept by any other name, his ideas would be understood more frequently for what they are: atheism in awe for the Beauty of Nature and the Universe; not theism, or pantheism, etc.

Einstein has the same problem: he stated many times not to believe in a personal God; the quote from this letter is just one quote among many others, many times equally clear as in this letter. But because Einstein, like Spinoza, did use the term God (for instance in the dice comment), even if it meant something that falls outside of most people's definition of God, theists like to talk about him as if he were one of their own.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins explains why Einstein's God-quotes do not contradict his unbelief.

This is a quote from Albert Einstein, which summarises his position best (in my opinion):

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. 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 idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

Re:Well...

how many of us were born or raised atheist?

Er... all of us were born atheist. Many of us were later taught theism, and then some of us still later rejected that. Nobody is born believing in God, any more than they are born believing in Father Christmas.

Re:He just does not believe in the Christian God.

Einstein did not believe the universe was randomly generated, this means he believed in intelligent design whether or not it's a Christian God or just some self aware universe, he believed in a God.

Nope. Fail.

He never said self-aware, nor did he suggest anything about how it was created. That's more Hawking's department, anyway.

Athiests believe the universe is a complete accident and that everything in the universe is random.

And you know pretty much nothing about atheists.

Nothing Einstein has ever said in any of his writings support that he believes that the universe is random.

No, in fact, he said just the opposite. He ignored quantum mechanics because of that.

However, the fact that he recognized a symmetry in the Universe in no way suggests that he believed in a creator, or that the "God" he believed in was even sentient. He claimed to believe in Spinoza's God. [wikipedia.org] Quoting that Wikipedia article:

Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality, namely the single substance (meaning "to stand beneath" rather than "matter") that is the basis of the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect is only understood in part.

Sounds to me like Spinoza's God created nothing, but is everything. You could almost say that Spinoza was very much an atheist -- he believed in nothing more than matter, the physical world that we see. But he believed that this was what the Jewish God really is -- kind of like the world being created in six days has to be a metaphor, because we know it wasn't.

Re:Well...

Why do you need to be a "philosopher of religion" to have a say on whether God exists? Surely a physicist has as much to say on what's real as anyone?

Re:Well...

Agreed. Thats like saying an astronomer's opinion means nothing regarding astrology. If you're studying "the philosophy of religion", you've already decided on a camp.

Re:Well...

And unless you *also* have a degree in Chocolate Philosophy, don't even think of discussing Easter !

Re:Well...

the evidence that Jesus walked over water is exactly as strong as the evidence Julius Caesar conquered Gaul

In case (a) we have some guy telling a story of how Jesus walked on water. In case (b) we have some guy telling a story of how Caesar conquered Gaul, plus coins found throughout France showing Caesar's image, plus Roman and Gaulish weapons of the period found throughout France, plus centuries of evidence in writing and in artefacts of continuous Roman occupation of Gaul which coincidentally begin at the time of Caesar.

And that's before we discuss the relative plausibility of the two written accounts we began with. One describes a man doing something exotically impossible, while the other describes a man doing something we know perfectly well that men do from time to time. Does that not make one far more likely to be a fiction than the other?

Re:Absolutely not.

Explain this: if the universe cannot exist without self-awareness, and there was a time when the universe did not exist, then how did the universe came to be? One cannot be aware of oneself if one does not yet exist. Your philosophy sounds an aweful lot like that new-age crap, but let's assume you came up with this yourself. How did you come to this philosophy of yours?

Re:Absolutely not.

I propose a simple experiment. You say the universe exists only inside one's awareness.

In other words, you believe in magic. But we can easily experimentally verify this state of affairs.

I put you inside a dark room, completely and utterly dark, so that most of your perception is disabled. What you don't know is that there is a hole in the floor of the room : but no worries, nobody is aware of the hole, and it isn't aware of itself : so you won't fall through it.

Obviously if you do fall through : your "philosophy" is worthless and untrue : it failed a prediction.

Your philosophy is different in nothing from any ancient belief that you would call utterly stupid. They believed something that could be trivially disproven and "the world is only what you think about it".

Obviously it's not. The world exists independantly of you.

Re:Absolutely not.

The arguments about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Pink Unicorn and Russel's Teapot are all good responses to that. For example, I'm going to claim that pink unicorns did it and that you're wrong. How is your theory any better than mine? Where the evidence?

In your response please do keep in mind that unicorns are pretty and they can do anything they want.

Re:Well...

I think the following might be from the same letter. At least it's written in same year. Einstein used to describe himself non religious but spiritual (his meaning of spiritual don't include belief in supernatural).

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas 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. If there's any religion that would cope with scientific needs it will be Buddhism." - Albert Einstein, 1954,from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

Re:Well...

Einstein, though a brilliant physicist, was not trained in the philosophy of religion.

Sure, and brain surgeons are not trained in snake oil quackery. News at 11!

Re:Well...

not trained in the philosophy of religion
So to be clear here, what you are saying is that you have to be trained in religion to have an opinion on it? Surely this rules out 99% of theists out there today, pretty odd that they can't have a view.

The flip side of this is that no-one (theist or atheist) should have an opinion on science unless correctly trained. That no-one can have an opinion on the Law unless fully trained in the law and become a politician unless trained in politics.

Its a bit childish to refer to Einstein and saying "yeah see, proves it" but using his arguments (that religion is not rational for instance) certainly shouldn't be ruled out just because he was only a Nobel Prize winning physicist who revolutionised mankind's view of the universe. Philosophy of religion is the study of only a limited domain and it is a domain that has been reduced over the centuries by science, the best way to understand why religion is bunk is to read science books because they explain the universe much more effectively than "man with beard did it".

Enlightenment is the antidote to religion, and you don't get much more enlightened than Einstein.

Re:Well...

What makes you think that Einstein didn't think long and hard about his position? Given the number of people who tried to claim him as a theist and his rebuttals (including this letter) he comes across as someone who is extremely well read on the subject and has a huge advantage over those who limit themselves to a philosophical discussion on religion. Religion is not a testable scientific proposition and Einstein was (at the time) the man who saw further than all others on how the Universe operated and thus had greater insight about the universe around us than anyone who simply studied religion.

To imply that Einstein didn't think about his position and wasn't well read on the subject certainly appears to go against both his education and background as well as the writings and arguments he made on the topic.

If I want to know what is wrong with me, I ask a doctor not someone who studies the philosophy of illness, if I want to know what governs the universe then I'll ask a scientist over people who study the philosophy of religion. Einstein is an authority on what makes the universe tick, much more so than people who study religion.

So maybe the question is what authority do philosophers of religion have when talking about what created and governs the universe?
 

Re:Well...

Dawkins had a good passage in his latest book for that theory, that all religious matters must yield to "an expert of theism trained in the philosophy of religion"

"...Other Catholic clergymen chimed in: 'There is no other God but a personal God . . . Einstein does not know what he is talking about. He is all wrong. Some men think that because they have achieved a high degree of learning in some field, they are qualified to express opinions in all.' The notion that religion is a proper field, in which one might claim expertise, is one that should not go unquestioned. That clergyman presumably would not have deferred to the expertise of a claimed 'fairyologist' on the exact shape and colour of fairy wings. Both he and the bishop thought that Einstein, being theologically untrained, had misunderstood the nature of God. On the contrary, Einstein understood very well exactly what he was denying. "

Do people still write letters?

Einstein's letter raises another issue - do scientists, the great, good and so forth still write letters? My feelings are that people nowadays just type out emails or long journal articles. The letter writing industry seems to have disappeared - which would be a terrible shame. Letters written by big historical figures like Einstein provide important insights into their thinking that other forms of communication seem to lack.

Re:Do people still write letters?

What do emails fail to achieve ?

Well, for one I guess just-another-printed-copy of an email will never sell for as much as the original of a handwritten (or even typed) letter :)

Re:Views on Religion?

There's a good lesson here: Poetic/metaphoric language can get you in trouble when people take you too literally. The dice comment is regularly trotted out as "proof" of his religious convictions, but the later statements in which he unequivocally denies that he believes in God somehow get missed.

In any event, this is all a rather sad reverse ad hominem; whether or not Einstein believed in God has no bearing on whether or not God exists. But both theists and atheists try to "claim" Einstein, because having a genius on your side *seems* to add weight to your argument. It doesn't, but there you go.

Actually, appeal to false authority

Actually, that "reverse ad hominem" has a name: appeal to false authority. You know, X is accepted as a smart and authoritative guy on his domain, X said Y, therefore Y must be true. It's used all the time, sadly. Franklin sad this, Churchill said that, Einstein said that other thing, etc. Often raising somethig that's little more than a wisecrack or thinly veiled jab at one's opponents (Churchill for one was quite the wisecracker) to the rank of absolute truth, beyond all questioning. Just because the great man said it, and obviously someone that great can't be wrong about something outside the domain of his expertise. And very few people seem to be aware that it's a fallacy. In reality, even _within_ one's domain of expertise, one can be wrong all right. Einstein was against quantum mechanics. Tesla didn't believe in relativity. (And in quite the fighting words: "[a] magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king") Lorentz was _rabidly_ against Einstein's relativity, and even denounced it as bolshevism, although it was based on his own equations. Go figure. There's a reason why the scientific method assumes that anything is falsifiable, and nothing is above questioning, no matter how big a genius said it. (Although, you're still supposed to present your evidence if you want to challenge it. Just personal disbelief or contradicting one's pet dogma aren't enough.) Move outside what one really knows, and the association with some authority figure becomes fully irrelevant.

Re:Views on Religion?

When person A comes to visit his neighbour and sees him lying in a pool of blood and shrieks "Oh my God!", does that mean that person A is religious, too?

The word is pretty deeply rooted in the language, so even if you completely dismiss the concept of God, you may find yourself using the word more or less frequently.

Metaphor, dude

It may come as a shock, but people use metaphors or analogies or funny quotes all the time, without actually believing in the thing used as a metaphor.

E.g., we may spew or quote stuff like "Mother Nature always sides with the hidden flaw" or "Mother Nature is a bitch", without actually believing that there is such a sentient entity. Or when Stalin said that "artillery is the god of war", chances are he didn't mean it literally.

E.g., you may have noticed quotes from Futurama's characters before on Slashdot. I'll take a wild guess that most of those people don't actually believe that Bender or Dr Zoidberg are real.

More importantly, look at the context in which he said that. There was _nothing_ theistic about it. Einstein's view of the world was based on the evidenced-based large-scale physics, where stuff is very deterministic. More importantly, there seemed to be no obvious way to reconcile relativity with quantum physics, so one or the other had to be false. Einstein obviously favoured his own relativity, and had plenty of experimental confirmation (at macro level) that it's correct.

If anything, it just shows that even really really smart people can be occasionally wrong, when talking about stuff outside their expertise domain.

But the crucial thing is that it was based on falsifiable evidence, not on some belief in a deity whose will is absolute and whose habits can be guessed. There was nothing inherently theistic about that belief.

Yes, he used the word "god". It was just a metaphor/anthropomorphisation of the universe. He could have just as well used "mother nature" or just personified the universe itself. It was just supposed to get the point across, not be some declaration of faith in a god.

Re:Views on Religion?

Do I have to be religious to ask you to go to hell?

Can an atheist use the expression "The devil is in the details?"

.haeger