patrick.net

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."

Einstein worshiped what Carlin called the "Great Electron" - the mystery and seeming order of the universe. That was his "religion". He did not believe even in an impersonal God or Divine Architect.

There are far better reasons to be good to each other without justifying it based on a 2000 year old Jewish Hippie Carpenter Zombie's divinity.

To wit:
* Equitable societies have better outcomes for everybody in health, education, happiness, longevity, rate of criminal behavior, and material wealth.
* Equitable societies are more stable and resilient in the face of adversity.
* Equitable societies are more dynamic and able to compromise and solve problems; inequitable societies are static, rely upon force and obedience, and prone to lie and propagandize in the face of adversity, as the winners in an inequitable society are terrified of losing wealth and status and resist any change or compromise that may cause them to fall down the ladder.
* Equitable Societies tend to atheism (Sweden, Norway).
* Inequitable Societies tend to religious belief (Africa, Middle East, much of South and Central America, Nepal, Burma, much of India, etc.).
* Religious belief innoculates those who are at the bottom rungs of an inequitable society, protecting the winners at the top rungs from change ("Opium of the People").

It's not a coincidence that Jesuits, Jews, Shi'a Mystics, and other, more freethinking/intellectual orders and religious groupings are accused of "Atheism" in Inequitable Societies. Whereas orders that defend the status quo historically - like the Dominicans ("The Hounds of God")- are celebrated in inequitable societies.

Read up on the history of the Jesuits - they were banned because they had (have) genuine concern for the poor and sought to change society along more equitable lines. IE the movie "The Mission".

Reducing belief in religion takes away a major tool and crutch of inequitable societies.

Interesting (but pathetic ) job by editors of this.

thunderlips11 says

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion

The title says "Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear."

But then later they say.

"His position on God has been widely misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheism/religion divide but he always resisted easy stereotyping on the subject."

""Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him," said Brooke. "It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions ... but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion."

"Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

In other words people like Dan and Thunderlips pissed him off.

Brooke's interpretation of his beliefs. Einstein's direct quotes lead me to believe he had an underlying respect for the mysteries of the universe, some regard for the occasional better angels of religious tradition, AND NO MORE.

There are plenty of atheists who are either not interested in pushing their views or too wimpy to assert them, hiding behind a vague protestation of respect for religulous institutions.

Our numbers are legion, Marcus. It's time for the US to join the rest of the Western World and advance beyond superstition.

thunderlips11 says

Are numbers are legion, Marcus

okay...ewe can say that...

I would agree, but one form that might take would be having spiritual beliefs that aren't basically just superstition. Apparently this is what Einstein did.

If experiencing awe in the face of the universe is a spiritual belief, then I too am spiritual. I mean that without sarcasm.

I belief those who believe in equities and chuck their earnings into they 401K are a prime example of religious thinking,

I am learning from Patrick.net and forming a possible hypothesis about religious logic. I think a recurring syllogism goes something like this:
1) An omnipotent god somehow needs my help (this is an obvious impossibility, logically, but hold that thought);
2) The omnipotent deity will reward me if I help (virgins, goats, whatever);
3) The omnipotent deity is omniscient, too, and watching ME all the time, paying attention to ME;
4) I am a sinner, and the omnipotent deity knows this, so I must atone somehow, make feverish penance to avoid being punished for my sins;
5) I (or my parents, or my fellow cult members) know what the omnipotent deity most wants, which is to eradicate/persecute/otherwise discriminate against those other people who do not believe in Him/Her/It, or at least disagree about what he/she/it wants, and therefore are a threat to us, so we must protect our omnipotent god by persecuting them;
6) Therefore I will work at this endlessly, in my bubble of fact-proof armor, because every time I ignore facts and repeat nonsense and strike a blow against against those other people who must surely be worse than I am, the omnipotent deity sees me and pays attention to me and is pleased with me, and will store up more points in my favor to outweigh my sins.

marcus says

Okay well, of course I ignored you again the other day because of your obnoxious personality (again).

If I'm obnoxious to you it's because you warrant it.

marcus says

I predicted correcltly that it would be #2, #3 or a combination of both.

You're welcome to your opinion, but that doesn't make it a fact. Nor does it mean that anyone agrees with you. Plenty of people like my posts -- see the user stats -- so I sure as hell don't need affirmation from you.

marcus says

For the record, you are wrong, rational numbers are countably infinite.

No shit Sherlock. I mistyped, but it was obvious I meant "irrational" as they are the same order of infinity as the real numbers. You should have been able to figure out what I meant, but that would mean not jumping up an down with joy as you discovered a mistake. Granted, the mistake was in typing, not thought, but don't let that ruin your joy.

A trivial proof that the rational numbers are countably finite is to arrange them in a two-dimensional array with denominators for the rows and numerators for the columns. Then count them off diagonally from the top-left corner of the grid. You see, I do remember my abstract algebra.

marcus says

Dan8267 says

the "comes right before" question applies only to countably infinite

This is also wrong. Even for any two rational number you give me, it's simple to come up with one that is between them (actually an infinite number of rational numbers between them).

And your analysis would actually apply had I said the rational numbers aren't an ordinal set. But as you quoted, I said "applies only to countably infinite", which is exactly what you stated.

Sets of the second order of infinity may be scalar, but not ordinal.

Yep, I remember a lot of abstract algebra. You want to have a mathletes contest?

Anyway, I hope I didn't terribly ruin your fun of pointing out a typo. I know how much it means for you to find any flaw in me no matter how minor. So to make up for it, I'll let you know one of my personal flaws. I have little tolerance for stupidity.

OK, that flaw was obvious by the way I respond to all your postings, so let me give you another flaw. How about a physical one? My dick is too large for many women. There, run with it. Run with the idea, that is, not my dick. You probably wouldn't be able to run while carrying it.

marcus says

Even if the first sentence is true,

I'd actually point you to some good reading material if I thought you were even capable of sincerity and actually wanted to know more about physics. It's an area I've always been interested in and have read a lot about. However, you are probably just being your usual snarky ass, so fuck it.

If anyone else wants some reading recommendations, I'd be happy to offer them.

marcus says

What's that? THat there are are assholes out there that that are still doing what most people get over at the age of 15 or 16 ?

That is, challenging the logic of religious belief.

Over the past two thousand years, countless people have been murdered, raped, tortured, burned alive, and imprisoned because of religious beliefs. Anyone who says that challenging religious beliefs and using reason as an alternative to superstition is just plain retarded.

G.W. Bush said "God told me to invade Iraq" and after a million deaths we're not allowed to question the logic of religious beliefs?

Marcus,
http://www.youtube.com/embed/EwT4Rl2uGJY

marcus says

Fundamentalists are another story.

What fools like Marcus can't realize is that the term Fundamentalist is meaningless. It's just a marketing term.

There is no line between so-called fundamentalist beliefs and non-fundamentalist beliefs. It's a continuous spectrum of behavior from causal and infrequent crazy to constant and severe crazy.

Talking to fictional beings and having delusions of immortality is a mental disorder no matter how you label it.

Randy H says

I'm neither a mathematician nor a physicist. But Dan captured pretty much what I was trying to convey, and which marcus sort of jokingly hinted at: the physical universe is granular (or digital, if you will). Continuity is a wonderfully useful mathematical concept that helps figure out all sort'a'stuff. But at the quantum level, empirically observable things are not infinite. And somewhere I do recall that even adding lots and lots of zero-order things together are still zero-order sums.

Thankfully, another rationalist in this conversation to offset the b.s. spouted by Marcus.

Randy H says

I was originally responding to Bap33, who believes in a very fundamentalist, classical interpretation of god from the king james bible.

Does that include the mistranslations like

And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.

http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ISaiah-34-7/

I'm pretty sure the unicorn was a Medieval myth, not a Bronze Age one.

Randy H says

But I can see some history obviously exists

Yeah, a long while back Marcus started making childish personal attacks on me on several threads. I ignored the first dozen, but then responded. Having a sharper wit than Marcus, I showed the community what an idiot he was and why.

Of course, that just made him even more belligerent to me. I did give him quite a few opportunities to save face by just agreeing to start talking like a rational adult, but he just kept flinging mud. After that went on for a while, Marcus pretended to offer an olive branch so he could back-stab me, but he doesn't quite have the intellect to be subtle. So I countered by responding in such a way that if he didn't make good on his peace-offering, he would look like a dumb ass. And of course he immediately went back to his childish ravings.

The thing is I'd be willing to bury the hatchet with Marcus, but he lacks the emotional maturity to do so. Still, I will admit to having a bit of fun making him look the fool. As I've admitted above, one of my personality flaws is that I have little tolerance for idiots and stupidity always brings out the asshole in me.

thunderlips11 says

If experiencing awe in the face of the universe is a spiritual belief, then I too am spiritual. I mean that without sarcasm.

Homo Economicus. A Legendary Creature, like Bigfoot, claimed to exist by Pseudoscientists.

I would argue that is an emotional experience. And yes, we atheists have such moments of awe frequently when looking at the universe or thinking about how it works. However, emotional experience do not imply the existence of anything supernatural. The mind itself is a wondrous work of nature. Well, maybe not Marcus's mind, but you get the idea.

thunderlips11 says

If experiencing awe in the face of the universe is a spiritual belief, then I too am spiritual. I mean that without sarcasm.

When you have the kind of intellect that allows you to boil down and summarize all of Einstein's thinking on religion and his actual spirituality to such a simplicity it must be hard to maintain your humility.

http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/einstein/

OF course those aren't all of his quotes on spirituality.

One thing for sure, Einstein was bothered by being pigeonholed as an atheist and he was tolerant of religious belief in others. He probably was the kind of person who had had many engaging conversations with rabbis and priests and understood that by and large, even many of them don't buy in to the superstition, or personal god nonsense, or literal interpretation of scripture that so many atheists love to ascribe to the typically religious adult.

Whether or not Einstein was an atheist is irrelevant. The whole discussion rests on the logical fallacy Appeal to Authority.

We don't accept The Theory of Relativity as correct because it came from Einstein. We consider it correct because the predictions it made such as gravitational lensing and time dilation have been confirmed.

Isaac Newton is admired for his successes in laws of motion, the laws of gravity, Calculus, and the application of mathematics to model the cosmos. Newton also believed in astrology and other hocus pocus. He is not admired for that.

Appealing to authority is bullshit, and it's one of the many fundamental problems with both religion and faith. Appealing to a god as a moral authority is the ultimate fallacy.

The messenger is irrelevant. All that matters is the message itself and the evidence to support that message.

Dan8267 says

He is not admired for that.

ummm. no. YOU do not admire him for that. SOME others, that are not you, may admire him as much for this as for how he dressed. Right?

Dan8267 says

pealing to authority is bullshit, and it's one of the many fundamental problems with both religion and faith.

... and human caused global warmingests

Bap33 says

... and human caused global warmingests

Yes, and the evidence backs that up. Only people who profit from destroying the future and fools who listen to them believe otherwise. How much money will you make by turning America's farmland into desert? Will it be enough to buy food when 2/3rds of America's population will have to starve to death? How much money does it cost to get a person to sacrifice his life for yours by giving you what little food he has?

Do the cost benefit analysis. Even if you don't give a shit about the immorality of destroying the environment for future generations, at least realize that it is highly unprofitable in the long run.

The costs of terraform the Earth so that it is once more suitable to sustain billions of humans far exceeds the slight increase in profits reaped by companies in the short term for dumping massive amounts of pollution into the air, land, and ocean.

Or think of it this way, every carbon-dioxide molecule released by burning fossil fuels is like a Mexican illegally sneaking into America's atmosphere driving up costs of everything for you.

Bap33 says

Dan8267 says

He is not admired for that.

ummm. no. YOU do not admire him for that. SOME others, that are not you, may admire him as much for this as for how he dressed. Right?

Yes, there are masses of people who re-create Newton's astrological charts and biorhythms. This is one of the first things any university teaches you.

Dan8267 says

Yes, and the evidence backs that up. Only people who profit from destroying the future and fools who listen to them believe otherwise. How much money will you make by turning America's farmland into desert?

It was probably always baked in, though, Dan. Self-destruction is a fundamental part of our human ecology. Not to say that it is a blank check for trashing the place up, but jsut to say that it was inevitable that us homosaps would wrack up our habitat and ourselves, thus, paving the way and providing some fossil fuel for the next bunch of bi-pedal wack-a-nuts to have a go at whatever it is we're supposed to be having a go at...happiness? propagation? I have no idea. I am just looking for my next rental property!