are you an atheist?

Wasn't Einstein saying he believed in Spinoza's god a polite way of saying he was an atheist?

There's a lot of scholarship on what Spinoza believed exactly, but I think it seems clear Einstein believed in some form of the divine, just not a personal god.

jeez I really need to read Spinoza, don't know how I've gone this long avoiding it

Einstein was definitely not an atheist

Spinoza is super important, and next to Abraham Joshua Heschel (and Shneur Zalman of Liadi), is the most formative theologian in terms of creating my own feelings about God + Judaism.

I'm aware of him, read plenty of stuff that references him, but for some reason never gone to the source. To the library!

"Einstein was definitely not an atheist"

I will trade you Bill Maher for Einstein. Well, basically you can have Bill Maher for free. But we are very interested in Einstein playing for our team.

Who in their right mind would want Bill Maher on their team?

Wow so it sounds like I might be a Spinozian Pantheist!!!

I don't personally think that anyone's scientific accomplishments should qualify their religious opinions. And I've read Einstein's "The World As I See It." Unfortunately being a genius in one area didn't make him super insightful about other conditions of being alive, writing literature, etc. Even if he was an atheist I'd be really eye-rolly.

Who in their right mind would want Bill Maher on their team?

yeah seriously - you can shoot this guy into the sun afaic

I'm not saying Einstein's not without shortcomings. I'm just saying he's a better rep for atheists than Bill Maher.
I'd also trade Bill Maher for Dick Dale.

But Einstein definitely did NOT belive in a personal god who hears prayers, created the universe, and directs earthly events. I belive he was, more or less, agnostic.

"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a lawgiver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."--Einstein, 1950

"The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive."--E in 1952

I believe he was, more or less, agnostic.

no. he believed the universe had a rational, fundamental design underpinning it, he made this clear constantly (and most famously with that "He does not throw dice" line). Just because someone is knot a bonkers fundie /= they do not believe in God. wide spectrum of beliefs, ya know.

a God with personality, who gives laws = these are not requirements for a concept of God.

a God with personality, who gives laws = these are not requirements for a concept of God.

― in my day we had to walk 10 miles in the snow for VU bootleg (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, June 7, 2010 8:11 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

But they are definitely requirments for belief in the belief of god in the judeo-christian sense.

"I have never imputed to nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in nature is a magnificant strucutre that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism."--circa 1955

"I have repetedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose ferveor 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 intelletual undersanding of nature and of our own being."--1949

First encountered something like pantheism through my (c of e) Sunday School teacher: "Do you believe in Good? Excellent, then you already believe in God, because, God is Good" , then pointed at a blackboard on which was written "GOD = GOOD", to really stress these two words were equal, identical and interchangeable. I still do believe in God as shorthand for goodness, I think, and I do very occasionally "pray to God". I guess I could also call the same activity "meditating on goodness", or even just "thinking about what might be the right thing to do", but the Religious tool of prayer does help to provide a nice framework for enquiring how to be better... Anyway, to answer the OP, as regards the story of the beardy bloke in the sky, nah.

God = Good is a nice approach, but if he were shut out of the bad then he really wouldn't be an infinite being/concept. Not that the idea of a finite God doesn't work (and indeed it's tremendously popular) but to me that is describing more a demigod or some kind of super being rather than an eternal process of creation and destruction.

don't see why an eternal process of creation and destruction has to have anything to do with a god.

or with us

'It's not you, it's Me.'

I need some poetry and some mystery, you know?

one argument i've had with religious-minded friends is whether the word "mystery" is sort of inherently religious, in that it implies some kind of larger or hidden truth. my take on it is no, i think the universe is plenty full of mystery without in any way needing to drag a deity into it. to me, in a way, any kind of theism really actually reduces the appreciation of mystery, because it proposes a structure and an order for things that we don't actually know. a universe without a "god" is a lot more mysterious than one with one.

^ agree 100% with all of that.

'God did it' is the opposite of mystery/wonder, from a Catholic background. It's the equivalent of 'stfu' for most lines of questioning.

For me it's more that there ARE mysteries in the universe, and a common human way of dealing with those mysteries has been making up stories and gods to explain them. Those stories tho were rarely ever just about explaining those mysteries, but also about a host of other things -- how people should act to each other, what are the myths we tell ourselves to constitute communities, who am I in the world, etc. And they also happen to be about God who created the world in 7 days, or Jesus who turned water into wine, or whatever have you. The myths are potent even if you don't fully buy into them (which is how I set up all my beliefs -- take what is useful and shrug at what isn't).

Definitely, transcendent feelings of wonder and mystery do not in anyway require belief in a supernatural god.

Yes, I should have said from the beginning: I am 100% great with religion as mythology. In any other way, not so much.

But you know there are people who can't get their heads around that: for them, religion is meaningless unless it is literally true. I'm not sure exactly what kind of thinking that is a sign of, or where it fits historically but they are there.

But not just mythology, because (unless you're using the word differently than I use it) mythology feels very remote and removed. Like I wrote above, I'm rarely moved by Antigone, or Odysseus, but I am moved by my religious tradition. Not just because it may or may not say more than mythologies, but because my great-grandparents found use in it for creating a life and learning how to live, and even if my grandparents were atheists, they still found use from those stories, and my parents (who came back to religion) certainly found use in those stories, so they are really well worn and lived in in ways that mythologies tend not to be -- they don't feel distant and removed by very personal and present.

But not just mythology, because (unless you're using the word differently than I use it) mythology feels very remote and removed

A religion's just a mythology that hasn't died yet, maybe.

makes u *think*

Yep. Your own or one closer to you might have more resonance but it's all the same really.

I'm not really moved by the Babylonian epics about flooding and Inanna going naked into the underworld but that's cos the wording is stilted and distant and symbolic and I didn't cut my eyeteeth on it so it has no additional texture or layering of meaning for me. But the Bible is no different really; depending on the translation or edition there can be a great deal of poetry and poignancy, or none at all.

For sure, but that difference is everything-- how close you feel to the stories you tell

Surely being raised in western culture there are some "myths" u feel close to, no?

Paul Bunyan. Pecos Bill.

It's everything to you, but it doesn't make the stories more or less objectively true, or better or worse tools for building a society or a life with. All that matters is that you have the feeling/belief that they are True in an enduring way, ie that they account for something eternal or basic to human experience.

Well yeah but I feel that telling stories about being human is fundmental to this condition of being human. Whether those stories are from the bible or westerns or the simpsons

I would like to see more lay-people bust out homebrew exegesis on the myths of their own religious upbringing with the same verve as applied to seasons of LOST (including complaints of shitty writing and animated gifs.)

xpps
we share our culture through storytelling, so isn't it self-evident that the stories that form your culture & upbringing are the ones that will resonate the most? I was raised atheistish, but from a strong methodist background and in strongly C of E schools (the "scripture lessons" CofE, not the "Youth Club for Grannies" CofE) I learned to read from picture books of simplified bible stories as a toddler, we acted out scenes from the Bible for our school plays. These stories were a big part the culture I grew up in; they resonate like Thundercats, like Space Lego, like Manic Miner, with added bright neon signage pointing out the moral take-away.

That was kinda to Laurel a few posts back, but you've all said something similar.

This is a big thing I'm working through these days but basically the television movies and literature that resonate with me are the ones that best seem to capture what it means to be alive (I've been watching a ton of westerns lately for that reason)

tom, yes to all of that. I was just responding to Mordy saying "But not just mythology, because (unless you're using the word differently than I use it) mythology feels very remote and removed."

And my answer to Mordy is, Yes, in that case I am using the word "mythology" differently than you might, because I don't think it makes any difference in the function of religion-as-mythology whether you or I feel that a certain Creation myth is more "meaningful" to us.

And once you have got to the point where you experience contact/a very real vision of the deity, then you start back over with a totally different deity. The purpose is to enhance your control of your willpower, to beef up your creative energies and hone them. You could say this deity is only a figment of your mind, a hallucination you experience after focusing so much time and effort on it. But really you could say that about the everyday reality we live in as well...

― Adam Bruneau

Like, I think I'm an atheist because I can't handle cognitive dissonance in the slightest.

― breaking that little dog's heart chakra (Abbott)

some very interesting discussion going on here. like kingkonggod, i've become much more open to faith & belief over the last year or so. a product of prayer (something i discussed on another atheism thread?), which for me = simple statements of thanks and devotion directed at some undefined godlike totality - whatever it is that has enabled this world and my own small part in it. i believe that my sincere expressions of gratitude and love make me feel better, stronger, happier and more in control of my own life. i dunno, it may be just the classic "i don't want to be alone" that i used to sneer at in others, but i find that i really like seeing myself not as the ultimate arbiter, but as an agent in service to something magnificent, even as an extension of that magnificence

at the same time, none of this undermines my rationalist conception of the universe. i don't see any good reason to believe in anything, and would argue that the available evidence suggests the existence of a godless, purely material universe. but the cognitive dissonance that abbot mentions doesn't bother me at all. my relationship with the the god i worship has nothing to do with my rational conception of the physical universe. it is a wholly internal/personal experience, taking place solely in the space inhabited not by my rational mind, but by my spiritual/emotional self - and i'd argue that that space is only tangentially related to the perceptible material world in the first place. plus i find cognitive dissonance interesting, and i like the idea that i might be able to sensibly contain and integrate beliefs that seem contradictory.

at the same time, and as fascinated as i am by the idea that i'm creating the spiritual relationship i see myself as engaged in, i ultimately reject the radical, hermetically-sealed solipsism that adam bruneau seems to be advocating. it's true that we all create our perceptions of and reactions to the world around us, and yeah, this means that in some sense we DO create the world, since our own perceptions and reactions are all we can ever know of it. but at the point where you begin to classify the tragedies and realities of the people around you as mere figments of your own conscsiousness, things you can turn a blind eye to with impunity, you've become almost monstrously selfish - imo. and the essence of the spirituality i'm interested in is not selfishness ("what do i want the world to be?"), but selflessness ("how can i use my god-given time and ability to make the world a better place?").

isn't using the word "god" to describe a sense of wonder and mystery at the universe problematic? you could be a bit more specific. carries an awful lot of baggage, to say the least.

ICP, by loading the word "miracles" with the baggage of rapping clowns and magnets and pelicans, has made it the word you're looking for maybe? The word now feels divorced from the divine and anchored to the absurd, gaping jaw sort of thing (which their being Christian and all, it was probably the opposite of their intention).

Good post, contenderizer.

isn't using the word "god" to describe a sense of wonder and mystery at the universe problematic? you could be a bit more specific. carries an awful lot of baggage, to say the least.

― max arrrrrgh

My friend likes to associate the idea of God being the concept of the force that manages and organizes the universe (I think I have it right...). It seems like a bit of a stretch to fit the word god into his equation. If it were me, I wouldn't try to associate my theory with "god", when the general idea of god for most people only is vaguely comparable to my concept.

i also have the idea that i'm in communication with (or, really, a part of) an entity larger than myself, a being of some sort.

i think this is fine, but imo it's important to remember that it's your idea.

^ I was gonna say, not in a nasty way or anything.