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agnosticism vs atheism (Read 37827 times)
mozzaok
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #420 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:11am
 
I guess it is understandable that you may be a little confused on the subject of what Einstein believed about god, because hw was a man of great intellect, and one who always dreamed of and searched for new possibilities of how far we can develop man's understanding of his world and general existence.

With that in mind, he never definitively rejected the word god from his personal lexicon of life, because for so many it is a useful notion when trying to ponder certain possibilities of existence.
Like sci-fi fans who think of alternate universes we we live mirror existences with minor variations changing our fate, people can ruminate on such subjects without actually advocating any degree of probability for their existence, so to was Einsteins attitude towards the general god concept.

Now before you get too carried away and start claiming Einstein as a kindred spirit, you should appreciate that Einstein also completely rejected notions of an interventionist god, who answered prayers, or any of the other rigmarole that the religiously inclined accept as characteristics of god as they define him.

So I am afraid that while Einstein was a free thinking man of great vision, he most certainly was no fan of religion, or the religious, and to claim him as one of like mind to them is patently untrue.
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OOPS!!! My Karma, ran over your Dogma!
 
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muso
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #421 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:17am
 
Grendel wrote on Apr 5th, 2010 at 1:49am:
oNE MORE TIME...
iT ISN'T THAT DIFFICULT fd.

a theist believes
an atheist disbelieves
an agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves.

all hold different positions on the existence of a God or Gods.



Actually, that's correct.  Shocked
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NorthOfNorth
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #422 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:23am
 
Soren wrote on Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:09am:
Fine. You tell your wife on your wedding anniversary that you empathise with her....
Grin Grin

Well, I know she believed me when I told her.

Far better, I think, than "I love you only because god exists... Otherwise you'd be just another bipedal sack of meat.. So you better hope like bugger I keep up this faith thing, cos it's the only thing that keeps me here 'loving you' as I don't believe there's any mechanism inside my brain that could make me love you otherwise".

Watch "I, Psychopath" (part 4 of 5)
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« Last Edit: Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:47am by NorthOfNorth »  

Conviction is the art of being certain
 
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tallowood
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #423 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:23am
 
Einstein most definitely was not an atheist as Paella has claimed.

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mozzaok
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #424 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:31am
 
lol, muso, I note the look of surprise.

As someone who has argued with Grendel for a long time, he can still surprise me, and I like that.

I also have to grudgingly acknowledge that he may not always be as wrong about things as I sometimes infer, especially when we actually talk about politics, not that we tend to do that much anymore.

Which is an interesting topic in itself, why have we stopped caring enough about what politicians are doing, to the point where we hardly ever discuss their actions and policies  any more?

I am pretty sure we do not all think Rudd is doing such a great job we can just forget about it and trust him to do the right thing anyway.  Yeah that's likely, lol.
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mozzaok
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #425 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:37am
 
tallowood wrote on Apr 5th, 2010 at 11:23am:
Einstein most definitely was not an atheist as Paella has claimed.


PLEASE GOD NO!!!!
Don't start that again,  Wink Wink Wink.
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freediver
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #426 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 12:16pm
 
Well, was he an atheist? I think those who insist on the broadest possible interpretation of the word atheism do so out of laziness. They want to be able to give all their Gods - Dawkins, Darwin, Einstein etc the same label as themselves, and they can only do so by layering it in ambiguity. They don't want to get bogged down in trivialities like what those people actually believed, they just want to attack their personal devils and pretend to have an intellectual army at their back.
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NorthOfNorth
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #427 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 12:23pm
 
Quote:
I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.

Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism;
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #428 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 12:31pm
 
So was he an atheist who believes in God?
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NorthOfNorth
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #429 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 12:39pm
 
freediver wrote on Apr 5th, 2010 at 12:31pm:
So was he an atheist who believes in God?

It appears Einstein bounced from belief to disbelief throughout his life, although he certainly consistently disbelieved the notion of a personal, interventionist god his entire adult life.
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #430 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 12:44pm
 
Quote:
From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.


It sounds to me like he was just highlighting his rejection of the Jesuit dogma.
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NorthOfNorth
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #431 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 12:53pm
 
Quote:
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.


Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954

Quote:
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.


- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954),
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #432 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 1:20pm
 
I think a big part of the semantic problem is people's preference for using these labels to pigeon hole people, rather than ideologies. As we have seen in this thread, some people like to define Catholicism by the pope, rather than by the ideology he espouses. I forget who it was (Paella?) but we even had someone arguing that these words *should* be defined by the leaders rather than the ideologies.

It isn't such a problem with agnosticism, which is too subtle for the media whores. We did have someone try to define atheism with a list of celebrities. But what happens when an atheist changes his mind and become agnostic or theist? Or realises he was agnostic all along? It is easier to take the label with them. No-one wants to be a born again agnostic, especially on TV.
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #433 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 1:42pm
 
freediver wrote on Apr 5th, 2010 at 12:31pm:
So was he an atheist who believes in God?


Yes,  in the same way that I do.
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Re: agnosticism vs atheism
Reply #434 - Apr 5th, 2010 at 1:45pm
 
freediver wrote on Apr 5th, 2010 at 1:20pm:
It isn't such a problem with agnosticism, which is too subtle for the media whores. We did have someone try to define atheism with a list of celebrities. But what happens when an atheist changes his mind and become agnostic or theist? Or realises he was agnostic all along? It is easier to take the label with them. No-one wants to be a born again agnostic, especially on TV.


Yeah - it's a bit like Ricky Martin in that respect. The media say that he's gay. Bisexual is too subtle a term.
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