Woodridge wrote:

"Patrick Reany" wrote (to Franco):
OK, show us your evidence that Einstein was a pantheist.

I cannot know if Einstein was really a pantheist, and in which meaning
of this word.
But what is sure is that Einstein himself, not other people, claimed
to be a pantheist.


This newsgroup is about relatvistic physics, not religion.

Please post elsewhere.

John Anderson

"robert j. kolker" wrote in message ...
Woodridge wrote:

But what is sure is that Einstein himself, not other people, claimed
to be a pantheist.

Citation please?

Bob Kolker

Pantheism has a strange definition. It does not refer only to belief
in multiple gods, but also means: A doctrine identifying the Deity
with the universe and its phenomena.

To that meaning one could quote any reference in which Einstein
appeals to the harmony of Nature as god as proof of his pantheism.
That includes his references to Spinoza's god. A web search will
reveal references.

Patrick

Patrick Reany wrote:

To that meaning one could quote any reference in which Einstein
appeals to the harmony of Nature as god as proof of his pantheism.
That includes his references to Spinoza's god. A web search will
reveal references.

When I talk about Baruch Spinoza's philosophy I also refer to Spinoza's
God in All. But that does not make me a pantheist. We must distinguish
between use and mention.

Bob Kolker

Einstein said that he believed in the God of Spinoza. There are two
questions that then arise:

1. What did Spinoza mean by God?

2. What did Einstein understand of Spinoza's God?


The first question I have answered elsewhere in this thread. To
reiterate: Spinoza defined God as "Substance consisting in infinite
attributes whereof each expresses the eternal and infinite Beingness."
The material universe is but one of the infinite attributes of
Spinoza's God. This is contrary to pantheism, which construes the
material universe, and only the material universe, as the substance of
God. Spinoza asserts that humans perceive two attributes: matter and
thought.

As for Einstein, there are some good quotations at
http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/einstein.htm. From these quotations,
we can see that, because he recognizes "spirit" or "intelligence" as
real, Einstein was not strictly a materialist. And to the extent that
he was not a strict materialist, Einstein could not be a strict
pantheist.

Whether he fully understood or cared about Spinoza's God is another
question. The sad fact is that Einstein always remained firmly in the
grip of Kant. And, as Constantin Brunner shows in _Spinoza gegen
Kant_, the views of Spinoza and Kant are utterly antithetical to each
other. Thus I would conclude that as a scientist Einstein was
completely faithful to Spinoza, but when it came time to express his
own fundamental views of the Absolute, Einstein became a little
confused and mixed together bits of Spinoza and Kant. And in this
confusion their inevitably appear pantheistic statements.

Einstein explicitly said that he believed in the God of Spinoza. There
are two questions that then arise:

1. What did Spinoza mean by God?

2. What did Einstein understand of Spinoza's God?


The first question I have answered elsewhere in this thread. To
reiterate: Spinoza defined God as "Substance consisting in infinite
attributes whereof each expresses the eternal and infinite Beingness."
Spinoza states that there are two attributes perceptible by human
beings: matter and thought. This is contrary to pantheism, which
acknowledges the reality of only the two attributes of matter and
thought, and furthermore construes these two attributes not as
attributes but as substance.

As for Einstein, there are some good quotations at
http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/einstein.htm. From these quotations,
we can see that Einstein recognizes the two attributes of thought and
matter, but he makes no statement touching on the infinite number of
attributes. This is understandable. Science is concerned only with
that which is humanly perceptible, and only the attributes of thought
and matter are humanly perceptible

Whether Einstein ever considered the question of infinite attributes
is unclear. As a scientist, he had no need to. But when it came to
looking beyond science to his own view of the Absolute, Einstein's
statements become a little confused. The sad fact is that, in the end,
Einstein was something far worse than a pantheist. He was a Kantian.
In his non-scientific statements, where he speaks of universal spirit,
order, and intelligence, he mixes together elements of Spinoza and
Kant. And in this confusion there inevitably appear pantheistic
statements.

wrote in message ...

| This newsgroup is about relatvistic physics, not religion.
|
| Please post elsewhere.

| John Anderson

Please respond to the points I raised earlier, this newsgroup is about
relativistic religion.
In the event you've lost them,

The Seven Deadly Sins of Special Relativity.

For quotations following, reference:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/
("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" by Albert Einstein)

1) "light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c
which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body",
a totally unproven assumption without any evidence to support it.

2) "In agreement with experience we further assume the quantity
2AB/(t'A-tA) = c to be a universal constant- the velocity of light in empty
space.",
an admitted assumption that is quite worthless when there is any
relative motion between A and B, yet essential to the derivation of the
remainder of Einstein's nonsense.

3) The equation
½[tau(0,0,0,t)+tau(0,0,0,t+x'/(c-v)+x'/(c+v))] = tau(x',0,0,t+x'/(c-v)) ,
the ½ of which is derived from 2) above and is tantamount to saying
(1/3 + 2/3)/2 = 1/3.

4) The missing 0' from that equation, since x' = x-vt, hence 0' = 0-vt,
and the equation should be
½[tau(-vt,0,0,t)+tau(-vt,0,0,t+x'/(c-v)+x'/(c+v))] = tau(x',0,0,t+x'/(c-v))
at the very least.

5) The further assumption "IF we place x' = x-vt ... " without considering
IF we place x' = x+vt, from which we derive (using Einstein's method)
tau = (t+xv/c^2)/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)
xi = (x + vt)/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)" -Paul B. Andersen

6) The statements
"But the ray moves relatively to the initial point of k,
when measured in the stationary system, with the velocity c-v..."
and
"It follows, further, that the velocity of light c cannot be altered by
composition with a velocity less than that of light. For this case we obtain
V = (c+w)/(1+w/c) = c."
which are contradictory, the first being Galilean, the second being
contrary to the vector addition of velocities, an axiom of a vector space.

7) The lack of a check to verify the theory is self-consistent by feeding
the new PoR given in 6) into the equation given in 3) and finding a total
failure.
Check:
(t1-t)/(t2-t)*[tau(-vt,0,0,t)+tau(-vt,0,0,t+x'/V+x'/V)] = tau(x',0,0,t+x'/V)

Androcles.

"Woodridge" wrote:
But what is sure is that Einstein himself, not other people, claimed
to be a pantheist.

"robert j. kolker" asked:
Citation please?

Oh, I'm sorry Bob, I haven't read your reply. Actually I did not
expect this request, since I posted weeks ago this citation also in
the relativity NG, in a debate between two other users.
I copied and pasted it below.

-------

I report in the following some *explicit* words *written* by Einstein.
The English title of the work is "How I see the world". I have an
Italian version and I am going to translate from it, but I have no
doubt that if you check the English version you'll find the same
concepts and contents if not the exact words (I apologise in advance
for any error and imperfection in the translation).

****

.... I cannot imagine a God rewarding and punishing the object of his
creation, and moreover a God exerting his will in the same way as we
do on ourselves...

.... the human spirit imagines gods more or less similar to us, from
whose will and actions the events depend... I call this religion the
religion of terror...

....these religions have a common point: an anthropomorphic God: beyond
this level there are only very noble men...

....there is another level of the religious life... the cosmic
religion... no anthropomorphic God idea corresponds to it... we can
found men filled by this kind of religion... such as Democrito, S.
Francesco d'Assisi, SPINOZA...

....the existence of a superior mind which manifest itself in the
natural world is FOR ME the idea of God; in the current language it
can be called PANTHEISM (SPINOZA).

****

Of course, I extracted some sentences (in sequence), but I can assure
you that reading the integral text gives the same feeling. In
particular, a kind of negative judgement on the "traditional" ideas of
God is very evident. You can trust me, but anyway you can easily check
on the English version of the book.
(Anyway, the last sentence does not leave any doubt about the
Einstein's belief).

--------

Regards

Woodridge

" wrote:
This newsgroup is about relatvistic physics, not religion.

Please post elsewhere.

Mmm... actually you are not wrong.
But I was just replying to some other posts, and my one was the
shortest one.
:-)

Maybe, you should have addressed you concern to the thread in general.
Anyway, at least in this case, I don't think this thread was so Off
Topic, since the influence of Einstein's religious ideas on his
science (and vice-versa also) was discussed.

Just to talk about physics:-)
I don't know if this ideas influenced his work on relativity, and to
say the truth I don't think so. But it is not a non-sense argument,
since, for instance, the Einstein ideas about wave mechanics were not
originated by experimental evidences or physical considerations and
calculations: they were originated, I'd say, by metaphysical
considerations.

Regards

Woodridge