Einstein and the Mind of God
March 9th, 2007 by 
soulster
You can find few people quoted and mis-quoted as often as Einstein on the internet. He was the catalyst who divided an age for us. His brillance began a galactic morph from a fixed, clock-work universe to one dynamic and shifting, and in so doing forever changed science and life on planet earth. No wonder people are quick to stand up Einstein and put words in his mouth — a ventrilaquist’s dummy for their rhetoric. And because of this, it is increasingly important to talk about what Einstein really said and meant, reviving the real person and letting him speak for himself.
Speaking of Faith, a public radio program I listen to frequently is featuring a two-part series on Einstein that I think is worthy of attention. Far from using Einstein to justify all forms of theism, this program reveals his “religiousity” thourgh his own words and his influence on current physicists. Catch the podcast here, listen online, and view more related resources:
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/einstein/index.shtml
The two parts of this series have particular import to the conversations here. The first “Einstien’s God” talks about the wonder with which Eienstien viewed natural reality. While Einstien was quite clear that he did not believe in a personal God, especially those of either the Jewish or Christian faith, he used “God” and “Lord” frequently as a metaphor for an “intelligent spirit” he saw in the elgance of the universe.
The second part, “Einstein’s Ethics” reveals what the man thought should be the “guiding light” of human behavior. Argueably, Einstien and his contemporaries for the first time in history were dealing with ethical issues on a scale that could realistically determine the survival of the species. As the nuclear age was born, they were in a real and unique position to speak on what it means to be fully human and how we should act in the world where “mutually assured destruction” has become the insurance of survival. Interestingly, Einstein thought this possible without the constructs of a “divine enforcer” so central to much of religious morality.
I respect the honesty of this programming, however, because it does not paint Einstein as a man without limits, as he is sometimes deified and mythologized in science. Specifically, it is interesting that Einstein had little favor for quantum physics, a “Pandora’s Box” his theories allowed to open, but one he didn’t much like. It was of this discipline that Einstein said famously, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Although Einstein exploded Newton’s mechanistic reductionism, he was never fully free of a deterministic universe expressed by a few beautifully simple equations. While he opened the door to a scientific Promised Land, it seems in some ways he did not enter it fully himself, but like Moses viewed it from the top of a mountain while life and chaos marched on in the valley.
Posted in atheism, belief, epistemology, naturalism, philosophical issues | 
March 9th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Einstein means a good deal to me: to this day I still have a massive poster of him in my room.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
That quote doesn’t make much sense to me, perhaps because it is out of context. For one, when was the theory of evolution Einstein’s? And what is this guy talking about, anyway? It just plain painful to read.
March 10th, 2007 at 12:45 am
I know. It’s a letter with the best intentions, but the two hands of ignorance and voice allow such words. It’s not a heavy anger, but what I see as reactionary anger (or emotionally-charged dissapointment) and outrage: anger of any dissent or dissagreement from a well-known public figure (e.g. Why would the Dixie Chicks insult Bush?); outrage at the very content, striking so close to home of many Christians in America. The letter is in response to the 1940 paper Einstein wrote justifying his statement ‘I do not believe in a personal God.’
Here’s another:
I’ll be out this week, leaving tomorrow morning: I’m off to help out in the Gulf Coast, rebuilding some houses.
It’s times like this it pains me to call myself an American. When we have to rely on small churches and private organizations (I’m staying this week in the basement of a Catholic church) while we spend half of this year’s budget on the military, it’s just obviously silly, just wrong. So much money spent on killing for - what’s the reason again? Can any man you stop on the street give a reason that goes beyond ‘Oil? Greed?’; so little time, energy, money, spent on our neighbors.
I’ll take pictures.
March 10th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
R “God does not play dice with the universe.â€
Einstein was bothered by the lack of order implied in quantum mechanics. He basically believed that the processes of the universe could be described and aptly expressed through the laws of physics. Quantum mechanics doesn’t play ball. It doesn’t fit neatly into the ordered universe that Einstein believed in.
Einstein unified space, time and gravity into one theory of general relativity and he spent the remainder of his life trying to generalize his theory of gravitation in order to unify and simplify the fundamental laws of physics, particularly gravitation and electromagnetism. He described this effort, which he referred to as the “Unified Field Theory”.
Einstein’s goal of unifying the laws of physics under a single model survives in the current drive for the grand unification theory.
It seems to me that Einstein was not refering to the concept of a supernatural god when he made that “dice statement.” Merely his belief that all the processes of the universe could be explained in an elegant equation. He was unable to show this, even after working on such a theory until his death.
March 10th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
drunkentune:
Thanks for this quote too. Perhaps in the future you could write a post about the Christian reaction to Einstein so we could discuss such reactions from several perspectives. I hope your trip is productive and I look forward to seeing your pictures if you’d like to share them. (I think you could do an article here with pics if you want as a human interest item that transcends our heady debate.)
to other readers:
Einstein was quite clear that his disbelief in a personal God was connected to the determinism he saw in the universe. As I hinted at above, Einstein disapproved of the Bohr-Heisenberg view that the position of any particle can only be spoken of in probabilities, but can never be truly known (see Uncertainty Principle). Einstein, on the other hand, thought that if you knew all the details regarding a particle, you could at any time know its position. The implications for the nature of reality itself and the possibility of knowledge are titanic.
Well, so far, experimentation seems to be leaning on Bohr and Heisenberg’s side, although testing things on the level of quantum mechanics is extraordinarily difficult. A great deal of the weight of any theory at the level of quatum mechanics is its explanatory power — does it account for more phenomenon than the alternatives. Choosing between Einstein and Bohr-Heisenberg is then partly philosophical (in fact the famous Bohr-Einstein [wiki] debates was basically a series of epistemological and philosophical “thought experiments”).
It is my interpretation that Einstein and other physicist’s objection and resistence to B-H quantum mechanics is really high level choice in aesthetics. Which do you like better — a mechanically predicable universe, or a reality that is really just probablities without mathematical realism.
This is largely why I do not, from the prespective of physics, think that strict naturalism plays by it’s own rules and is a choice soley supported by empirical evidence. Further more, this is why I disagree with complete determinism and reductionistic models of reality. Also, as Paul Davies points out in the first program, now physics has opened up room for God as a concious mover without resort to a “God of the gaps” arguement.
March 10th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
beebeep:
Exactly. For those who read my above statement without listening to the radio program, Einstein used “God” and “Lord” metaphorically and did not believe in an aware, personal God (see my emphatic statements above). He appreciated and wondered about an “intelligent spirit” in nature, but my understanding of his view was that this was more an awe in how this all worked naturalistically that Einstein found analogous to religiousity in an emotive sense. I’m not interested in putting my words in Einstein’s mouth or ill using him like so many find fashionable, including many believers. What I am interested in looking at is how Einstein actually saw things and the power and limitations of those views.
March 12th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Did Einstein use the words “intelligent spirit.”?
March 13th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I’m not sure. Krista Tippet and Paul Davies used this term repeatedly.
Einstein is not afraid of the word “spirit” when he says:
His usage, in light of his other quotes would seem to me to indicate that which causes a reaction of awe, wonder, and mystery in the human (all things he fits into the category of “spiritual”). It would not be an “intelligent spirit” in the sense of a self-aware or personal God. Perhaps his thinking would be more along the lines of a “spirit of intelligence” that pervades the universe under our observation, but not an intelligent spirit as ID proponents and theologians would claim of the Christian God.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
He also said -
“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
I am not convinced that when Einstein uses the words “spirit” or “spiritual” that he is using them in a strictly religious sense.
I think that more likely he used the words which would best resonate with his audience.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
You’re right. What Einstein claimed as religiousity, if you could call it that, was a wonder after the elegance of the universe. This is not religion according to your definition, I think, nor would it be for many who believe that such requires a personal deity. One the other hand, I think Einstein is attempting to explain in a way what he thinks religious experience really is: in a way a miss placed wonder.
Einstein did see a role for religion, but the religion of the future he wanted was a cosmic religion of reason with no personal God, but love-action and morality based on simple “human” principles. So according to conventional definitions, one could wonder in what sense this future religion is a religion at all. Paul Davies continues this line as he also calls for this type of “global religion”.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Today is the 128th celebration of Albert Einstein’s birth so I thought it fitting to post this collection of his quotes from FFRF’s Freethought of the Day:
On this date in 1879, Albert Einstein was born in Germany. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich by 1909. His 1905 paper explaining the photo-electric effect, the basis of electronics, earned him the Nobel Prize in 1921. His first paper on Special Relativity Theory, also published in 1905, changed the world. Einstein split his time and academic appointments between various European universities. In 1932, Princeton named him head of the Mathematics Department, and he traveled back and forth between the continents. After the rise of the Nazi party, Einstein made Princeton his permanent home, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1940. Einstein, a pacifist during World War I, stayed a firm proponent of social justice and responsibility. He chaired the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, which organized to alert the public to the dangers of atomic warfare.
In an article for The New York Times (Nov. 9, 1930), Einstein wrote about his views on religion, and wonder at the cosmic mysteries: “This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, also has given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms–this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.”
Confusion over his beliefs stemmed from such comments as his public statement, reported by United Press in April 25, 1929, that: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony in being, not in God who deals with the facts and actions of men.” Einstein’s famous “God does not play dice with the Universe” metaphor–meaning nature conforms to mathematical law–fueled more confusion.
At a symposium, he advised: “In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task. . . .” (”Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium,” published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941). D. 1955.
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own–a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.â€
– Albert Einstein, column for The New York Times, Nov. 9, 1930 (reprinted in The New York Times obituary, April 19, 1955)
March 14th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Thanks for the quotes, Infidel. Happy Birthday, Einstein!
March 15th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Anyone out there have too much time on there hands? If so, you may want to watch Paul Davies’ explanation of why the universe is order and rational and oragnized in such a way as to allow life and obersevers within it [watch here]. Davies is one of the interviewers in the Einstein series posted in this article, and therefore this is helpful in seeing what his views are. He seems to be advocating a kind of reasoning that appears circular to overcome the philosophical problem of orgins, namley that reality (space-time), mathematics, and phsyical law are all co-emergent from the system of the universe and it is the co-emergence that gives the ingenituity and “purpose” to the universe. The reactions to his thoughts are equally interesting.
After him in the video, Steven Nadler explains his reading of Spinoza [wiki] and his “God”. He claims Spinoza is an atheist because he is simply saying “that which people call ‘God’ is nothing other than nature”. This differs from naturalistic pantheism, according to Nadler, in that it sees a “religious” sense of wonder as ill-advised and likley to awake passions such as fear or hope that should be supressed by a truly rational mind. In this way, athough Einstein liked the concept of Spinoza’s God and claimed it in quotes, he would be described as Nadler as a pantheist and not strictly a Spinozaist. This demonstrates the difficulty in interpreting and translating concepts of a metaphysical nature, especially if we pretend to do so on only a rational basis.