Share your favorite science quotations

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Your quote reinforces that Einstein didn’t believe in a personal God who is knowable, but a deistic God that created everything and went on permanent vacation.

No, Einstein's god was Spinoza's god, which was nature itself rather than a deity in its own right. You can check for yourself - see Spinoza's Ethics - Part I: Concerning God.

When Einstein rejected quantum mechanics uncertainty, and quantum entanglement, which he called ‘spooky action at a distance’ and said that god does not play dice, he’s not referencing Mother Nature.

You could say he's referencing the quantum mechanical model of Mother Nature. I already explained his position - he was instrumental in developing quantum theory, after the photoelectric effect he developed the quantum theory of ideal gases, and predicted Bose-Einstein condensates. He thought QM was logically consistent and successful, but incomplete. If you want to verify what I told you, DYOR.

You could do worse than start here.

 

[essentialsaltes]

"Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists."

FWIW, most of Spinoza's contemporaries thought he was an atheist.

 

[chad kincham]

No, Einstein's god was Spinoza's god, which was nature itself rather than a deity in its own right. You can check for yourself - see Spinoza's Ethics - Part I: Concerning God.

You could say he's referencing the quantum mechanical model of Mother Nature. I already explained his position - he was instrumental in developing quantum theory, after the photoelectric effect he developed the quantum theory of ideal gases, and predicted Bose-Einstein condensates. He thought QM was logically consistent and successful, but incomplete. If you want to verify what I told you, DYOR.

You could do worse than start here.

You missed the point that Einstein believed in a god who is a cause of the universe and it’s laws of physics that are structured and can be known, and not a universe of chaos, so that “god does not play dice” and you focused on whether he accepted quantum theory - which he was resistant to at one time, as he and Niels Bohr used to have vigorous debate about entanglement, calling it spooky action at a distance as a term of derision and skepticism of it.

 

[Shemjaza]

You missed the point that Einstein believed in a god who is a cause of the universe and it’s laws of physics that are structured and can be known, and not a universe of chaos, so that “god does not play dice” and you focused on whether he accepted quantum theory - which he was resistant to at one time, as he and Niels Bohr used to have vigorous debate about entanglement, calling it spooky action at a distance as a term of derision and skepticism of it.

Can you point out a single reference for him distinguishing God from the natural laws and the universe itself?

He wasn't a theist in any conventional sense of the word.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You missed the point that Einstein believed in a god who is a cause of the universe and it’s laws of physics that are structured and can be known, and not a universe of chaos, so that “god does not play dice” and you focused on whether he accepted quantum theory - which he was resistant to at one time, as he and Niels Bohr used to have vigorous debate about entanglement, calling it spooky action at a distance as a term of derision and skepticism of it.

Einstein said he believed in Spinoza's God, so I take him at his word (you posted the quote). Spinoza's God was a deification of nature, with "neither intellect nor will". Its 'thoughts' are basically the deterministic laws of nature in action.

As I said before, his invocation of the Spinozan god in those quotes was his way of asserting that the universe is a product of the laws of nature, and that they are deterministic.

Einstein clearly wasn't happy with entanglement or probabilistic uncertainty - he was convinced they reflected the immaturity and incompleteness of QM and that they could or would be resolved with further developments, e.g. hidden variables. With Podolsky, and Rosen, he proposed the 'EPR Paradox' to explicitly argue that QM was incomplete (in particular, the wavefunction description of reality).

 

[chad kincham]

Can you point out a single reference for him distinguishing God from the natural laws and the universe itself?

He wasn't a theist in any conventional sense of the word.

Do you understand about deism and belief in god as first cause of the universe?

You’re apparently insisting o n defining god belief as only about a knowable and personal god, which is not so.

And while on the subject of quantum physics and belief in God, there’s a well known Hindu professor of physics that says quantum physics proves the existence of God (Amit Goswami)

 

[Shemjaza]

Do you understand about deism and belief in god as first cause of the universe?

You’re apparently insisting o n defining god belief as only about a knowable and personal god, which is not so.

Yes I understand what deism is... and Einstein wasn't deist.

His descriptions of God and religion were never distinct and separate from the Universe itself.

The term is pantheist.

And while on the subject of quantum physics and belief in God, there’s a well known Hindu professor of physics that says quantum physics proves the existence of God (Amit Goswami)

Many have made that claim about many fields of inquiry demonstrating many different religions... I've never seen a convincing objective piece of evidence along those lines.

 

[Gottservant]

I liked that quote, possibly miscredited to Einstein - how did it go?

If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will go its whole life thinking it is stupid

 

[Gottservant]

Also, its interesting that people complain that Einstein was not religious, so religiously - God not playing dice with the Universe, obviously helped Einstein keep his focus on his science.

It would not be the first case, where faith in God saw Him retain a presence in the background (for the good of those in the foreground).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I liked that Einstein quote - how did it go?

There is no substantive evidence that Einstein made this statement.

 

[Mountainmike]

Many others focus on einstein with reference to apparent quotes about God. People use them to support their own world view. Hard to know what he actually thought...

I prefer some of his others.
That common sense is the net sum of prejudice.
Reality is an illusion albeit persistent.

But I think extracting a quote from hawking says it best of all.

"we will adopt a view that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations."

It correctly subordinates science to trying to find patterns in observations to create a model of them. It is a world picture, it is not the world.

It renders the God of the gaps as the falasy it is. Since science observes much , but explains nothing of what "is" in a fundamental sense just what it normally "does".

We have no reason to believe that the world is not far more complex than our model of it can ever be, and our observations of it are only a limited projection in our senses. What it actually is science cannot say. But science IS mighty useful at exploiting the patterns we do observe.

 

[Ophiolite]

He’s a famous SCIENCE philosopher, and I’m very familiar with his back-pedaling remarks he was forced into by the full fury of the science establishment falling on him for daring to tell it like it is - same thing happened with Gould having to back-pedal remarks he made about Punctuated Equilibria.

The Stephen J. Gould I know through his writing was not one to back-pedal. Please cite the publication(s) in which this alleged back-pedalling occured. (I'd also be interested in some representative examples of the "full fury of the science establishment falling on him".) Was Niles Eldredge also force to back pedal? (If so, further citation please.)

 

[Astrophile]

'All one can really say about these curious folk [believers in the Apollo moon hoax] is that if ignorance is bliss, they must be very happy!' - Patrick Moore, Venus.