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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:29pm PT
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Bluering, you seriously misunderstand Einstein's views, which are philosophical (not scientific) on god... I believe had you the chance to have talked with him about it you would come away with a quite different opinion.
Misinterpreting his quotes are easy when you take them out of context with his entire body of work, as viewed from a philosophical view point.
Take Newton, who was probably actually religious in the sense you would understand, he had to push his god back to the role of a watchmaker, who created the universe much as a clock, wound it up and let it go... with no later intervention, a Deist idea where god does not intervene after creation...
But really, both Einstein and Newton believed in the authority of nature to resolve these issues.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 12, 2009 - 10:30pm PT
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"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 in Albert Einstein: The Human Side,
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
(Albert Einstein, Obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955)
The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously. (Albert Einstein, Letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946)
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:32pm PT
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Deist idea where god does not intervene after creation.
Yes, this is true to a degree. The President of United States generally leaves the handling of prisons to the wardens.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:32pm PT
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Gobee, I think we know where you stand on this matter, and you've pretty much said all the intelligent things you have to say on it....
..you can bomb the thread with pictures, or scripture, or whatever... what you are saying is believe in the christian god and be saved, deny that god and be damned.
We've got it, why don't you go off to some other thread now...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:34pm PT
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Werner, I believe that Deism states that God does not interact with the natural world in any way. It's not a delegation of authority...
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:35pm PT
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That's why I said; "to a degree"
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:37pm PT
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Jefferson was a Deist...
here is the bible he created from the New Testament
The Jefferson Bible
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:38pm PT
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Locker
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:40pm PT
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Ed, I think that was the point that Einstein was making. God is not 'personal'. He created and kinda walked away and watched it unfold. He may 'tweak' it once in a while, but doesn't personally oversee 'all of us individually'.
This is where certain sects of Hinduism and Christianity reference guardian angels or saints.
I know you think it's outlandish and ignorant to have faith, but the world seems o be full of bizarre stuff.
Hey, what about 'dark matter'? Is it possible that the matter represents, or is, our soul?
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:40pm PT
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A giant leap for Evolutionist,
A small step for God!
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:41pm PT
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:47pm PT
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Dark matter is measurable, it has a physical presence in the universe, as does dark energy about which we know even less, but which is even more of the universe.
We are studying both... the problem with both is the fact that they interact with our sector of the universe very weakly... and we know they are there mostly because of their gravitational interactions. It is probably true that we would not exist without that gravitational attraction, it seemed to have nucleated the clumping of matter, which later ignited as stars, etc...
The space that you occupy is filled with dark energy, 70% of it or so, and 25% with dark matter, we only fill 5% (in round figures)... yet the effect of those forms of matter are so subtle you don't actually perceive them.
This new cosmology has displaced us even further from the "center of the universe" to being truly trace elements of the whole...
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:51pm PT
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That's fascinating sh#t, Ed...really. I kinda already knew that, about it's preponderance, but I like the way you put it.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:55pm PT
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Thats not what any of my Physics books say
(bows head in preparation for an intellectual schooling on a Hartouni level)
Dr. F, unlike yourself, Ed is actually a pretty smart PhD...you're yanking the wrong chain...
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 12, 2009 - 10:56pm PT
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Let's be even CLEARER then about Einstein and "god"
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.
 Albert Einstein, in a letter responding to philosopher Eric Gutkind, who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt; quoted from James Randerson, "Childish Superstition: Einstein's Letter Makes View of Religion Relatively Clear: Scientist's Reply to Sell for up to £8,000, and Stoke Debate over His Beliefs" The Guardian, (13 May 2008)
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 12, 2009 - 10:58pm PT
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Norton, so Einstein contradicted himself??? When did all of the quotes take place? Before or after each other, sooner or later in his career?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C. Small wall climber.
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Nov 12, 2009 - 11:00pm PT
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The space that you occupy is filled with dark energy, 70% of it or so, and 25% with dark matter, we only fill 5%... Sometimes it seems like SuperTopo is 70% dark energy, 25% dark matter, and 5% worth reading.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2009 - 11:19pm PT
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Blitzo copping a peak?!
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TripL7
Trad climber
'dago'
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Nov 12, 2009 - 11:22pm PT
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Mighty!
Keep posting!
Your the only one making any sense here lately.
You just bumped that 5% up to 10%
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2009 - 11:37pm PT
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Which physics book is that?
A good one: Cosmology Steven Weinberg, 2008 ISBN 978-0-19-852682-7
check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
so I was wrong, it's 74% dark energy, 22% dark matter and 4% stars, etc ("baryonic" matter)
This is what makes up the mass of the universe. These other forms of matter occupy our same space, they are present in the universe, yet they only interact through gravity... dark energy is actually a negative pressure, pushing space apart, ushering in an age of expansion dominated by the dark energy.
Dark matter is thought to be a form of particle, many candidates exist and it is being searched for, an important search for "Axion Like Dark Matter" is running at the lab I work at... it is perhaps instructive to explain how that experiment works.
The axion is a hypothesized particle whose existence is not ruled out by our current "standard model" of particle physics. In one incarnation (excuse that usage) it actually breaks CP symmetry...
...which is to say it is the reason that "baryonic" universe is mostly matter, and not a balance of matter and anti-matter, the axion interacts differently with matter and anti-matter in such a way that the anti-matter never made it out of the big bang early history.
If there are axions, then they could also explain the dark matter part of the universe... the axions interact very weakly with normal matter, but they do interact. One way to look at them is through an "inverse decay" scheme, that is, the axion can interact with photons, it has a very long decay "half-life" to two photons, for instance. This means that an axion could interact with a strong electromagnetic field.
So we set such a field up in about a meter cube, building a strong superconducting magnet. We fill the magnet with an Radio Frequency field and watch for the axion to knock out photons, indicating a change in the power density in the cavity. The researchers had to invent an extremely sensitive radio receiver to do this....
The frequency of the RF for which the axion scatters is related to the strength with which the axion couples to the field, and the mass of the axion. So you sweep through the frequencies looking for a signal from the "dark matter universe."
Where do the axions come from? Well they're here, all around us, in us, occupying this volume of space as we do, and in the axion detector too... it's just that they don't interact much at all. To see their gravitation effect you need to fill up galaxy sized volumes, which is where Fritz Zwicky first saw their effect (in 1933) but didn't know what they were...
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