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."

Re:Well...

[notany]

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:He just does not believe in the Christian God.

[SanityInAnarchy]

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.

Actually, appeal to false authority

[Moraelin]

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:Well...

[aywwts4]

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. "

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

[ozmanjusri]

this means he believed in intelligent design

What a disgraceful slander.

"Intelligent design" is a sly relabeling of creationism. Einstein was above all a scientist. He would certainly not want to be associated with such intentionally deceptive pseudoscience.

Re:Well...

[croftj]

His opinion is just as relevant as anybody's This is because opinions like assholes are built in. With that said, why should his be any more relevant than anyone else's including mine? Discounting God, his only answer to "Where did it all come from?" is "I don't know".

Until he died, assuming there's an afterlife, he was no closer to the answer than I. In either case, now that he's dead and whether there's an afterlife or not, he still can't tell us the answer.

Re:Well...

[Bob_Sheep]

I'm surprised no one else has posted this, so here is the actual auction listing: http://www.bloomsburyauctions.com/detail/649/303.0 [bloomsburyauctions.com]

E = mc^2 != (mass == energy)

[Dr_Barnowl]

Mass is simply energy like everything else

I hate it when I see this assertion applied to the implications of special relativity.

It does not state that matter and energy are the same thing.

It states that mass has energy, and inversely, energy has mass. [wikipedia.org]

A body travelling at enormous speeds gains mass because of the mass of its kinetic energy, which is the quantity described by E=mc^2. The body does not gain any matter (it's particle count remains constant).

The constituents of a nuclear fission reaction neither lose or gain mass. No mass is converted to energy. The energy released is the spare binding energy that the larger nuclei required but the more stable products do not. Products like photons with no intrinsic mass of their own carry away the mass of the energy they embody. No mass is destroyed or "converted to energy".

Even in a matter-antimatter annihilation, the products carry energy equivalent to the combined rest mass of the reagents and thus mass and energy are conserved.

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

[gsslay]

My problem with agnosticism is that it promotes a certain hope or at least implies spiritual things exist...maybe.

I don't see any "hope" or "implication" in agnosticism. Agnostics say "I can't know if there is a god and, just as importantly, neither can you." Belief in a god, and belief in there being no god are two sides of the same faith coin. Neither can be proved.

If I should ever encounter an entity with god-like powers I'll treat them with a sensible amount of respect, either to gain their favour or avoid their wrath. But god-like powers aren't proof of being creator of the universe. Quite simply I can't conceive of any kind of proof that would make this evident to anyone within the universe. It's an impossibility.

Re:Well...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Actually if you count the axis alliance of WWII, they did ...

Re:Absolutely not.

[mdwh2]

1. God is the half-eaten sandwich on my desk.

There, proof that God exists!

Re:Well...

[MightyYar]

The Christian religion believes that the bible in the inerrant word of their god.

The largest sect, the Catholic Church, believes no such thing. They fully understand that the bible was written and translated by men. They do believe that it was divinely inspired.

Most Christian sects share this belief - fundamentalists are more of the exception than the rule.

It is impossible for science to "disprove" anything about the supernatural world, as science only seeks to explain our natural world. As you state, though, science is well-equipped to disprove specific claims about the effects of religion in the natural world.

Re:Well...

[cmaurand]

Religion is a leap of faith. I'm a Christian and I don't believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God. It was written by men before there was much of an understanding of science. It was written by men who were subject to the prejudices of the time. The Bible that we know of today was translated from Hebrew and Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic, probably closer to Hebrew than Greek. Aramaik doesn't translate well to Greek, Hebrew doesn't translate well to either English or Greek and Greek doesn't translate that well to English. The Hebrew Bible refers to Moses parting the sea of reeds, not the red sea. The Hebrew Bible starts with "When God began creating..." not "In the beginning..." I could go on, but you get my drift. Look up a couple of books by Bishop (Episcopal) Shelby Spong. You'd all be very impressed. You're right the Bible is full of inconsistencies because its not a historically accurate book. Its poorly translated and it is a collection from a lot of different authors that were chosen by committee.

Re:Absolutely not.

[Awptimus Prime]

Oh, I see now. "most mammals". Perhaps just the tastey ones that are socially accepted in his locale don't have enough self awareness to be part of this God-fabric that protects the lucky ones from getting chopped up for dinner?

I like the 'fish vegetarians'. They try to convince themselves that fish are so dumb that it doesn't count as cruel. I like to fish and cook what I catch, and can say without a doubt that fish go absolutely ballistic about being bled out while alive and live longer in that situation than any mammal or bird I've ever seen.

Re:Well...

[notany]

Buddhism in Tibet is unholy merge between traditional BÃn religion, Tantric Hindu practices and Buddhism. So is almost any traditional Buddhist tradition in Asia.

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

[SanityInAnarchy]

His theory proves the universe is self aware. Mass is simply energy like everything else, and energy is never created or destroyed.

WTF? How did you make that leap?

I can see why others don't want to give you serious replies. That's like saying "Electricity flows from positive to negative, therefore IT'S ALIVE!" Complete non-sequitur.

Athiests have faith in the idea that a God doesn't, and shouldn't exist. How they rationalize it is their business, but these beliefs are the core of athiesm.

I see, so you really don't know anything about atheism. Go read. [wikipedia.org]

You're not much of a philosopher if you assume that absence of belief == belief of absence.

If there is no randomness in the universe, then everything in the universe is deliberate, and this is the entire basis for intelligent design.

Again, WTF?

No, everything in the universe is deterministic. For all you know, God exists, but it was really a big accident. [yoism.org]

If all events are caused, then even the big bang had to have a cause.

It proves no intelligence behind the Big Bang. It also doesn't prove that there was a "first cause" -- tried and failed. [wikipedia.org]

I'm a philosopher myself.

An exceedingly poor one. Take a philosophy course. Learn how to form a logical argument. Then come back.

If the universe is nature, and nature is just self awareness, then the universe is self aware.

You're right, that does follow -- but you've got a false premise. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure it out.

Re:famous equation, famous quote

[Planesdragon]

I also wonder if this whole issue as to what einstein's religious beliefs were isn't driven almost entirely by his famous god and dice quote?

Find a good biography of Einstein. Albert was famous as much for his religious views as he was his published scientific papers.

Atheism was popular, as it still is, in scientific circles in the early 20th century. Einstein was notable on this subject BECAUSE he subscribed to neither his native judaism nor atheism.

During his lifetime Atheists tried to claim this deterministic-jew as one of their own, and despite his rejection of their point of view they have continued non-stop ever since.