Jobar

ER, the EoG forum is normally for pure existence arguments, not Christian (or Islamic, or whatever) apologetics. Since the skeptics here do not consider the Bible authoritative, simply quoting from it (unless the quote actually supports a logical point) is normally useless. The way in which Hawkingfan words his questions, however, practically requires you to deal in apologetic arguments, so in this case 'frowns upon' is not synonymous with 'forbids'. I may yet decide to move the thread to either BC&A or GRD forum, but that is only an administrative detail, and not a 'limitation on what you are allowed to write'. I personally do not find your arguments at all convincing, but you are certainly free to make them. Jobar, mod.

njhartsh

Oh, really? That would have been news to Einstein. During his life, he himself was disgusted with people who make statements like yours--as he wrote:

Einstein certainly did not "feel an immaterial force is at work" in the universe. You are fundamentally misrepresenting the beliefs of a dead man for your own benefit. This seems to me rather dishonorable.

- Nathan

Normal

It's also dishonorable to only quote what he said that helps your own position.

He didn't believe in a personal diety, but he clearly states belief in an immaterial "spirit". This does not force Einstein into a "material presupposition".

Normal

Of course there's nothing stopping you from asking that. But the thing that irritates me about people in the pursuit of science is that they assume they have all the answers. Just asking why does not default your position to theism though

Philosoft

Not really. They just don't think the "why" questions have merit just because we might really want them to.
It really depends on what a person means when they ask, "why?".

ComestibleVenom

*The* one thing?

ex-xian

I really don't see how that quote helps your position. Einstein never told that girl that he believed that prayer actually affected the outcome of anything. The page you linked to makes a point to say that Einstein wrote the letter after Heisenburg's uncertainty principle was established, but Einstein never gave up on his belief in determinism.

Einstein said that he believed in the god of Spinoza, who was a pantheist. Spinoza also believed the everything in the universe was necessary. So even though Einstein believed in a type of god, vastly different from that of most theists, the believed that the laws of the universe was set and never varied. Thus his did subscribe to a materialistic presupposition when dealing with the actions within the universe though he did not when dealing with the universe taken as a whole.

ex-xian

So if one believes in god the operates outside the rules of logic, you still cannot make a coherent statement about her.
This is a false analogy. It is one thing for a person to act irrationally, it is another thing to postulate an omni-max being, infinite in all attributes, who is infinitely irrational.

They may feel that a god of some type is at work, but if that is introduced into the way they do science, it isn't science anymore. I'll repeat my above question to you. When your car is running low on fuel, do you assume that supernatural forces are at work in causing your car to need gas, or do you assume that your car used up the gas and you need to buy some more?

edited to correct vB code

Normal

So he had a conditional materialistic presupposition? I think you're reaching.

Not necessarily true, you'd just have no rational basis for making a statement about god. Any assertion you make about god may be irrational, but that does not make the assertion true or false.

Besides, this point is irrelevant to faith.

The point is irrational does not imply non-existant.

I could tell you how the car works and how the gas was used up. Science is purely functional.

ex-xian

You've offered nothing to support your first statement. The fact the Einstein was a spinozian pantheist does not that he believed that an immaterial force was at work in the universe. In fact, it implies the opposite--that only natural forces are at work in the universe. Spinozian panthiesm do believe in a type of force-like god, but she in no way interferes with the happenings of the universe. This is totally against her nature, since she would be acting against herself. Einstein did science devoid of supernatural intervention, even though he believed that a force/god was the underlying cause.

Personally, I don't have a problem with this philosophy; I am a panentheist, which is, practically speaking, similiar enough to atheism for me not to get to uptight about why people do science, as long as they do it.



It's not that any statement you make about god being irrational, it's that the very existence of god would be irrational. If god isn't bound by the laws of logic, then she exists and does not exist at the same time. Practially speaking, what is the difference between a god that exists and does not exist, and a god that does not exist? It's the same as the invisible, intangible dragon.

I don't understand the relevance of this statement.