Tuesday, December 04, 2018

God doesn't play ... anything?


I see that the famous letter about "God" by Albert Einstein is up for sale and expected to clear a million bucks (at least) for it's owner. In this letter Einstein talks about his lack of belief in the normal Abrahamic notions of God as a real, tangible being that is capable of impinging on and affecting our reality,  he also expresses a view that the Bible is no more than "legend". Whilst not new  (atheists have existed as long as there have been theists), novel or in anyway unique these ideas and views do clarify a lie that religious apologists have been attempting to exploit for many years and it's driven by their aspiration of credibility by association. 

Famously Einstein once said (in relation to quantum uncertainty as described by theories of quantum mechanics) that "God doesn't play dice" meaning that he found it unbelievable that the physical laws of our universe should be such that uncertainty or probability lies at the core of everything rather than more comforting Newtonian absolutes. This phrase has subsequently been regurgitated ad-nausea by religious apologists of all stripes (out of context) as a "proof" that the smartest man ever (subjective) believed in their particular deity, their aim being transparently to gain credibility (by authority) for their unsubstantiated beliefs. This letter shows the true (and much more credible) beliefs of a 20th century scientist of the calibre of Einstein, it shows him (at least at the time of writing this note) to be an atheist or perhaps a deist and certainly not a card-carrying theist.

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