Einstein and his belief

Discussion about scientific issues as they relate to God and Christianity including archaeology, origins of life, the universe, intelligent design, evolution, etc.
Post Reply
User avatar
1over137
Technical Admin
Posts: 5329
Joined: Tue May 10, 2011 6:05 am
Christian: Yes
Sex: Female
Creation Position: Undecided
Location: Slovakia
Contact:

Einstein and his belief

Post by 1over137 »

I came across an interesting article (at least interesting for me) http://www.bethinking.org/science-chris ... in-god.htm. Now I see I was mistaken. I thought that Einstein was a pantheist as well as Spinoza was. In fact, he was a theist.

From the summary:
Einstein was – like Newton before him – deeply religious and a firm believer in a transcendent God. However Einstein rejected anthropomorphic and personal understandings of the word ‘God’.
(The definition of theism does not necessarily include the notion that God is personal.)
But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
-- 1 Thessalonians 5:21

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
-- Philippians 1:6

#foreverinmyheart
User avatar
SnowDrops
Established Member
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2011 12:16 pm
Christian: No
Sex: Male
Creation Position: Undecided

Re: Einstein and his belief

Post by SnowDrops »

Actually, that would be Deism, not theism. The belief that there is a god, but he is not necessarily personal and has not revealed himself to mankind (all religions are false, since they are based on revelation).
The first step to learning is to admit that you don't know.
narnia4
Senior Member
Posts: 560
Joined: Tue Jul 06, 2010 12:44 pm
Christian: Yes
Sex: Male
Creation Position: Undecided

Re: Einstein and his belief

Post by narnia4 »

SnowDrops wrote:Actually, that would be Deism, not theism. The belief that there is a god, but he is not necessarily personal and has not revealed himself to mankind (all religions are false, since they are based on revelation).
Deism would fall under theism though, wouldn't it? I would at least describe theism simply as "the belief that there is a God", and deists would also believe this.

I've seen Einstein described as a pantheist (I too thought that's what he was for the longest time), agnostic, an atheist (which he was not), and a deist. From what I've read on different sites and his writings, deism does seem to be the most fitting.
Young, Restless, Reformed
User avatar
SnowDrops
Established Member
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2011 12:16 pm
Christian: No
Sex: Male
Creation Position: Undecided

Re: Einstein and his belief

Post by SnowDrops »

Yeah, theism includes Deism, but Deism doesn't include theism so when most people say theism they are talking about a god who has revealed himself to mankind (like the Christian god).
The first step to learning is to admit that you don't know.
User avatar
Murray
Esteemed Senior Member
Posts: 1102
Joined: Sun Apr 17, 2011 3:54 pm
Christian: Yes
Sex: Male
Creation Position: Undecided
Location: Williston, North Dakota
Contact:

Re: Einstein and his belief

Post by Murray »

I'm not sure how a deist , such as einstein, is deeply religious?

Newton on the other hand was a devout christian.
in nomine patri et fili spiritu sancte
User avatar
SnowDrops
Established Member
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2011 12:16 pm
Christian: No
Sex: Male
Creation Position: Undecided

Re: Einstein and his belief

Post by SnowDrops »

Murray wrote:I'm not sure how a deist , such as einstein, is deeply religious?

Newton on the other hand was a devout christian.
He did seem to value religion a lot, despite being a deist. In any case, he was more religious than Dawkins seems to think.
The first step to learning is to admit that you don't know.
User avatar
Murray
Esteemed Senior Member
Posts: 1102
Joined: Sun Apr 17, 2011 3:54 pm
Christian: Yes
Sex: Male
Creation Position: Undecided
Location: Williston, North Dakota
Contact:

Re: Einstein and his belief

Post by Murray »

Einstein did also acknowledge that jesus is historic fact.
in nomine patri et fili spiritu sancte
User avatar
Tiffany Dawn
Familiar Member
Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:17 pm
Christian: Yes
Sex: Female

Re: Einstein and his belief

Post by Tiffany Dawn »

I really like researching Einstein because he has so much to offer-He was unique-
I like to read his info on Success-

Per Einstein-
Well, the campaign enters its second phase on Monday which - according to the press release - will involve quotes from “famous atheists” hitting the London underground.

Included is Einstein’s quote: “I do not believe in a personal God and have never denied this but have expressed it clearly”

See: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/albert-e ... eline.html

From what I've been reading lately it looks like there are a lot more Scientist that are converting to Christianity.
There's been some interesting documentaries concerning this.

This is interesting-Converts and reverts to Christianity

Mortimer J. Adler - Philosopher who co-founded Great Books of the Western World. Agnostic convert to the Catholic Church.[3][4]
Steve Beren - Former member of the Socialist Workers Party (United States) who became a Protestant conservative politician.[5]
Anders Borg - Sweden's Minister for Finance.[6]
Paul Bourget - French author who became agnostic and positivist at 15, but returned to Catholicism at 35.[7]
Ferdinand Brunetière - Rationalist and freethinking writer who became a Catholic.[8][9]
Julie Burchill - British journalist and feminist.[10]
Kirk Cameron - An American actor best-known for his role as Mike Seaver on the television situation comedy, Growing Pains, as well as several other television and film appearances as a child actor. Today he is a Protestant Evangelical. Recently, he portrayed the lead roles in the Left Behind film series and in the 2008 drama film, Fireproof.[11]
Whittaker Chambers - Former Communist turned conservative writer.[12][13]
Francis Collins - Geneticist who was an atheist until age 27, but then converted to Christianity.[14]
Larry Darby - Holocaust denier and former member of the American Atheists.[15][16]
Joy Davidman - Poet and wife of C. S. Lewis.[17]
Avery Dulles - A Jesuit priest, theologian, and cardinal in the Catholic Church. He was raised Presbyterian, but was an agnostic before his conversion to Catholic Christianity.[18][19]
Dawn Eden - Rock journalist of Jewish ethnicity who went from an agnostic to a Catholic writer, who was particularly concerned with the moral values of chastity.[20][21]
André Frossard - French journalist who was atheist, but converted to the Catholic Church in 1935.[22]
Eugene D. Genovese - Historian who went from Stalinist to conservative theist.[23]
Bo Giertz - Atheistic in youth he became a Lutheran bishop and writer.[24]
Tamsin Greig - British actress.[25]
Nicky Gumbel - Raised atheist and became an Anglican. He is known for his work with the Alpha course.[26]
Keir Hardie - Raised atheist and became a Christian Socialist.[27]
Anna Haycraft - Raised as a member of Britain's Comtist and atheistic "Church of Humanity", but became a conservative Catholic Christian in adulthood.[28]
Ammon Hennacy - Initially an atheist labor activist he became a religious pacifist in the Atlanta Penitentiary.[29]
Peter Hitchens - Journalist who went from Trotskyism to Traditionalist conservatism, and estranged brother of outspoken anti-theist and Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens.[30][31]
Paul Jones - Musician, of Manfred Mann. Previously atheist and in 1967 he argued with Cliff Richard about religion on a TV show.[32][33]
Mary Karr - Memoirist and poet who switched from agnosticism to Catholicism in 1996.[34]
Ignace Lepp - French psychiatrist whose parents were freethinkers and who joined the Communist party at age fifteen. He broke with the party in 1937 and became a Catholic priest.[35]
Félix Leseur - Doctor turned Catholic priest. His conversion, in part, came by efforts of his wife who was declared a Servant of God by the Catholic Church.[36]
C. S. Lewis - Writer who became an atheist as a young man, later paradoxically describing himself as being "very angry with God for not existing". He later returned to Anglicanism and wrote many books about his faith.[37]
Arnold Lunn - A skier, mountaineer, and writer. As an agnostic he wrote Roman Converts, which took a critical view of Catholicism and the converts to it. He later converted to Catholicism due to debating with converts, and became an apologist for the faith, although he retained a few criticisms of the faith.[38]
Gabriel Marcel - A leading Christian existentialist. His upbringing was agnostic.[39]
Alister McGrath - Biochemist and Christian theologian. Founder of 'Scientific theology' and critic of Richard Dawkins in books like Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life and The Dawkins Delusion?[40][41]
Claude McKay - Bisexual Jamaican poet who went from Communist atheist to a devout Catholic Christian.[42]
Czesław Miłosz - Poet who won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature.[43]
Nina Karin Monsen - A Norwegian moral philosopher and author who grew up in a humanist family, but later convert to Christianity through philosophic thinking.[44]
Malcolm Muggeridge - British journalist and author who went from agnosticism to the Catholic Church.[45][46]
William J. Murray - Son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair who became a Born again preacher.[47]
Bernard Nathanson - A founder of NARAL Pro-Choice America who dubbed himself a "Jewish atheist", but later became a Pro-life activist within the Catholic Church.[48]
Marvin Olasky - Former Marxist turned Christian conservative, he edits the Christian World Magazine.[49][50]
Giovanni Papini - He went from pragmatic atheism to Catholicism, also a Fascist.[51][52]
Joseph Pearce - An anti-Catholic and agnostic British National Front member who became a devout Catholic writer with a series on EWTN.[53][54]
Charles Péguy - French poet, essayist, and editor. He went from agnostic humanist to a pro-Republic Catholic.[55]
Rosalind Picard - Director of the Affective computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab. She was raised atheist, but converted to Christianity in her teens.[56]
Enoch Powell - Conservative Party (UK) member who converted to Anglicanism.[57]
Kirsten Powers - News commentator, raised Episcopalian who drifted to atheism but eventually began to "view everyone as God's child and that means everyone deserves grace and respect."[58]
George R. Price - Geneticist who became an Evangelical Protestant and wrote about the New Testament. Later he moderated his evangelistic tendencies and switched from religious writing to working with the homeless.[59][60]
Gerald Priestland - News correspondent who discusses having once been the "school atheist" in Something Understood: An Autobiography. He became a Quaker after an emotional breakdown.[61]
Michael Reiss - British bioethicist and Anglican priest.[62]
Dame Cicely Saunders - Templeton Prize and Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize winning nurse known for palliative care. She converted to Christianity as a young woman.[63]
E. F. Schumacher - Economic thinker known for Small Is Beautiful, his A Guide for the Perplexed criticizes what he termed "materialistic scientism." He went from atheism to Buddhism to Catholicism.[64][65]
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Nobel Prize-winning dissident author who converted to Russian Orthodoxy.[66]
Edith Stein - Phenomenologist philosopher who converted to the Catholic Faith and became a Discalced Carmelite nun; declared a saint by John Paul II.[67]
Peter Steele - Lead singer of Type O Negative.[68]
John Lawson Stoddard - Divinity student turned "Scientific humanist" turned Catholic. His son Lothrop Stoddard remained agnostic and would be significant to Scientific racism.[69]
Lee Strobel - Writer, Christian apologist, a former journalist and megachurch pastor.[70]
Lacey Sturm - Vocalist and lyricist for alternative metal band Flyleaf.[71]
Allen Tate - American poet, essayist and social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.[72]
Evelyn Waugh - British novelist who converted to Catholicism from agnosticism.[73]
Simone Weil - Raised by agnostic Jewish parents, and a Marxist for a time, she became a religious mystic.[74]
Fay Weldon - British novelist and feminist.[75]
A. N. Wilson - Biographer and novelist who entered the theological St Stephen's House, Oxford before proclaiming himself an atheist and writing against religion. He announced his return to Christianity in 2009.[76]
John C. Wright - A science fiction author and libertarian atheist[77] who later converted to the Catholic Faith.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fo ... _agnostics

I grew up with some Athiest-But I could never figure out why they cursed God and used His name in vain being that they didn't believe in God-
Another thing that I witnessed was some of them on their death bed even cursed God-I didn't get that.
My best friend in school was an Athiest and we were in a tornado one time and she started praying to God and saying Oh My God please save us-I was so laughing at her-Of course I wasn't saved at the time.
I'm thinking that maybe Einstein was such a Genius that he perhaps confused himself. However, Religion is probably what had him so confused.
Let my conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that I may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:6
Post Reply