WeAreTheKey

Since we're doing quotes:

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

-Albert Einstein

Nail. Head.

More interesting quotes from Einstein on his Theory of Theologitivity.....

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…

-From a letter dated March 24, 1954

…wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.

-From the same letter (not theological but I just like it)

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.

-From a letter dated July 17, 1953

...That is, if this being (God) is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?

-From an address at Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939

I dig the quotes the 'steiner was a rad guy..
but i have a small statement for chewing on..
Omnipotent may mean you have all the power.. but whos to say you as an omnipotent being,
wouldnt put limitations on yourself, and your own power..
a bit of selfrestraint by an all powerful being..
sound ludicrous to a power hungry being...
but really is it that far off of an option?




as for this i agree that you do not NEED the concept of a super entity to be motivated to have ethical actions/beliefs, BUT that doesnt mean that there isnt these "entities"

and does he believe in immortality in ways OTHER than the individual? Notice he doesnt say 'I do not believe in immortality'.. he specifies the individual..

What lucky barsted was getting all these letters in the first place? I wanna recieve letters like these!

"That is, if this being (God) is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?"

This is the same argument that I used to make when I first started thinking about these things. I used to grill my mom on this issue quite a bit. I still think there is validity to it, but have since come to understand that, as with everything in the world, the truth can be very complex and more intricate than it first seems.
It is true that someone could be 'omnipotent', and yet create something that exists and makes decisions on its own free will,
if you choose to give it that power.
anyway...

the individual seems an illusion we have fooled ourselves into believing is THE macroscopic level boundary at which division and separatism is appropriate. Is not the universal level, as far as the individual is concerned, living and virtually immortal?

Ko,
The individual is the boundary at which division and separatism is appropriate for what? For believing in immortality, or an afterlife? Just trying to sort out what you mean..
Also I suppose it could be argued that the universe may not be immortal, in the sense that upon collapsing it may cease to exist rather than "bang" outward again.
But also, Einstein could have theoretically been talking about a collective immortality, in which our spirits are fused into a collective existence or some such thing, which would also not be "individual immortality".

1-Silly, just for fun discussion contradiction: If you're truly omnipotent, and you restrained your own powers, then you would also have the power to unrestrain them at will, which means that you actually can't restrain them, which means there is something you cannot do, which means that true omnipotence is an impossibility

2. I think that what Einstein might have been saying was that he does not believe in an afterlife for individual humans, but that the existence of the human species continues to exist, and therefore, through the passing on of our genes, we are as a species immortal.

3. I think you are correct, Transfixed, about the complexity of the nature of the universe. But I think you are pushing the limits of the meaning of GOD. Would the word God correlate to an energy force or connectiveness in nature and the universe? Does the term Mother Nature or Mother Earth correlate with the meaning of God? God typically refers to a Singular-consious entity, aware of itself and able to make decisions and is generally seen as "good", not a collective force that is made up all beings, which is neither "good" or "bad" but simply is.

I believe there is no "pushing the limit of the meaning of GOD".If this entity God is omnipotent and ominipresent, therer can be no limit to that entity. Personally I believe that God IS an energy force, connectiveness in anture and the universe, as well as MOther nature, AND a conscious entity. Typically it is seen as only one form at any given time(depending on the persons paticular viewpoint) but that doesnt mean that there cant be an "all of the above" selection and not still ring true.
Singular is debatable....
But multifaceted, I see as completely feasable.

In a sense you answered for me. In this culture there seems little regard for a collective entity of humankind, or planetkind, and universekind is a rarely considered and certainly rarely felt state of mind. the nearest we generally get is nationalism as a unit. But more generally than that most consider the individual as the base unit used for one-ness or being-ness. That's the accepted consensus-reality of the culture. when a person dies, that's it, run the credits, done. or that individual spirit does whatnot afterward...

and yeah, there are a few different ways to interpret what he may have meant: collective energy, DNA, species, planet, Universe that carry on. micro or macro, pick your scale, I'm not so interested in what he meant, rather what rings closest to truth to me... (if you're curious, it's all an none of them )



I would include these things as attributable to my personal idea of interpreting such an entity/force. Whether this pushes limits for you seems a personal choice of boundary.

It's funny why people care so much about Einsteins opinion anyway. He was surely a brilliant mathematician and physicist, buuuut I don't see how that makes his 'spiritual' viewpoints any more relevant than anyone elses...

To Prasutagus, I'm not sure how you mean 'pushing the limits of the meaning of god'. Certainly god is not just some dude sitting on some throne having casual conversations with dead people and angels. The reality would have to be much more astounding and complexly mindblowing, so it's hard to grasp just what that entity would consist of. Energy? Nature force? Pure love? I don't know exactly, none of us really do. He would likely be something along the lines of a "singular conscious entity" althought with something like 'omniscience' you would have to have an entirely different way of sensing and perceiving the universe. But a singular conscious entity could still separate a part of the universe into its own functioning, self-contained environment that wasn't totally controlled by him. By giving the beings the infamous "free will" they are free to decide for themselves their own fate without being 'puppeted' by god.
Of course, this would theoretically cut down on god's "omnipotence" in a small way, but not really, if he DECIDES to not interfere and let humans operate outside of his control, it doesn't mean he couldn't jump in at any moment if he wanted to. There are certain logical paradoxes that will always restrict god's omnipotence anyway, like is god so powerful he can make a circular triangle? No. Can he make a rock so heavy that not even he can lift it? No. Could he puposefully make some arbitrary restriction on himself like "I cannot go into this quadrant of the universe"? Either way he loses, because if he CAN make that restriction on himself, then he's just created something he cannot do. And if he CAN'T make that restriction, then there's something right there he cannot do, so.....
creating beings that run 'autonomously' outside of his command seems like the least of his difficulties when it comes to impossible tasks...
But then again, I really dunno...

Yes, the idea of God is a very broad concept in which it seems everyone has somewhat of a different view. However, there must be some sort of parameters, however broad that may be, or else you cannot even have a true discussion, or answer the question "Do you believe in God?"

For instance, it would be generally very much agreed upon that an answer of "Yes, I believe in donkeys" is not an answer that fits into the parameters of the definition of a God. Therefore, we can narrow the parameters for the definition of God.

But just where do those parameters lie? Is a collective, natural energy that permeates through living organisms considered God, even if it is not a singular consious, creator entity? I don't believe that is what 99.9% of people are envisioning when they hear the question "Do you believe in God?", even if their answer is "no".

In other words, I would say one could be spiritual and believe in a connectiveness and energy that life exudes and still NOT believe in "God". And I think that maybe Einstein was somewhere in that realm of rationalization.