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WBraun
climber
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May 17, 2011 - 10:35pm PT
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When one puts on their coat one is "one with their coat" but simultaneous independent of that coat.
When your coat wears out and you discard it are you dead?
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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May 17, 2011 - 10:41pm PT
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Nice Werner
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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May 17, 2011 - 10:44pm PT
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Beliefs need no objective support.
Maybe not yours, certainly many of mine do, esp if they have to do with either (a) how the world works or (b) how life works.
If any of my beliefs in these two categories - a and b - didn't have objective support via science and/or scientific wisdom, I'd discard them quicker than you could say... mene mene tekel upharsin.
What a curious definition of belief you have there.
.....
Only working out of a religious frame makes a mess of "belief" - both the word also the concept.
I believe in many things, too numerous to count, that have objective support.
For starters, my climbing rope.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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May 17, 2011 - 10:49pm PT
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In the late 1930s, the Guru of Yogananda allegedly resurrected in the flesh and told his student the yogic view of the nature of the many "heavens" and the journey of the soul. Yogananda wrote it down in his autobiography, a very unique book.
Read it with an open mind and at least you'll have an expanded view of what we're possibly talking about, as the Bible says very little on the subject
http://www.ananda.org/autobiography/#chap43
Peace
Karl
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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May 17, 2011 - 10:53pm PT
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There would be essentially no suicide bombers if you take away the belief in heaven (the kind with virgins)from them. It's been a great concept for authoritarian rulers. In my opinion, it seems like a pretty infantile concept for educated people in the 21st century.
Hear, hear.
Not to mention the billions upon billions saved that's now used to combat them - that in turn could be directed to other paths or projects in the interest of better practices.
No belief in traditional heaven. No belief in any militant deities (e.g., Jehovah) that require you to smite the infidel to please Him. No teaching these beliefs to children anymore anywhere. Step up to the plate, require yourselves as au courant citizens of Earth Island to reject theologies or theisms that promote these bronze age maniacal dysphoric memes. That's the new modern 21st century enlightened freeman's stance.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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May 17, 2011 - 10:59pm PT
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Poor Go-B. Poor Karl.
Invested thoroughly in archaic worldworks models. In for a penny, in for a pound.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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May 17, 2011 - 11:09pm PT
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"Stephen Hawking: ‘There is no heaven’ (OT) "
 And just so that everyone is clear and well informed.... No Hell and No God either.
All were invented by man in the desert
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.
--Ayaan Hirsi Ali (from How (and Why) I Became an Infidel)
Imagine There is No Heaven: A Letter to the Six Billionth World Citizen -By Salman Rushdie
Dear little Six – Billionth Living Person: As one of the newest members of a notoriously inquisitive species, it probably won’t be too long before you start asking the two $64,000 questions with which the other 5,999,999,999 of us have been wrestling for some time.How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?Oddly – as if six billion of us weren’t enough to be going on with – it will almost certainly be suggested to you that the answer to the question of origins requires you to believe in the existence of a further, invisible, innefable Being “somewhere up there”, an omnipotent creature whom we poor limited creatures are unable even to perceive, much less to understand.That is, you will be strongly encouraged to imagine a heaven, with at least one god in residence.This sky god, it’s said, made the universe by churning its matter in a giant pot. Or, he danced. Or, he vomited creation out of himself. Or, he simply called it into being, and lo, it Was. In some of the more interesting creation stories, the singly mighty sky god is subdivided into many lesser forces – junior dieties, avatars, gigantic metamorphic “ancestors” whose adventures create the landscape, or the whimsical, wanton, meddling, cruel pantheons of the great polytheisms, whose wild doings will convince you that the real engine of creation was lust; for infinite power, for too easily broken human bodies, for clouds of glory. But it’s only fair to add that there are also stories which offer the message that the primary creative impulse was, and is, love.Many of these stories will strike you extremely beautiful, and therefore seductive. Unfortunately, however, you will not be required to make a purely literary response to them. Only the stories of dead religions can be appreciated for their beauty. Living religions require much more of you. So you will be told that belief in “your” stories, and adherence to the rituals of worship that have grown up around them, must become a vital part of your life in the crowded world. They will be called the heart of your culture, even of your individual identity.
It is possible that they may at some point come to feel inescapable, not in the way that the truth is inescapable, but in the way that a jail is. They may at some point cease to feel like the texts in which human beings have tried to solve a great mystery, and feel, instead, like the pretexts for other properly anointed human beings to order you around. And it’s true that human history is full of the public oppression wrought by the charioteers of the gods. In the opinion of religious people, however, the private comfort that religion brings more than compensates for the evil done in its name.
As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn’t get it right. There was no celestial churning, no maker’s dance, no vomiting of galaxies, no snake or kangaroo ancestors, no Valhalla, no Olympus, no six-day conjuring trick followed by a day of rest. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
But here’s something genuinly odd. The wrongness of the sacred tales hasn’t lessened the zeal of the devout in the least. If anything, the sheer out-of-step zaniness of religion leads the religious to insist ever more stridently on the importance of blind faith.
As a result of this faith, by the way, lt has proved impossible, in many parts of the world, to prevent the human race’s numbers from swelling alarmingly. Blame the overcrowded planet at least partly on the misguidedness of the races spiritual guides. In your own lifetime, you may witness the arrival of the nine billionth world citizen.
(If too many people are being born as a result, in part, of religious strictures against birth control, then too many people are also dying because religious culture, by refusing to face the facts of human sexuality, also refuses to fight against sexually transmitted diseases.)
There are those who say that the great wars of the new century will once again be wars of religion, jihads and crusades, as they were in the Middle Ages. I don’t believe them, or not in the way they mean it. Take a look at the Muslim world, or rather the Islamist world, to use the word coined to describe Islam’s present day “political arm”. The divisions between its great powers (Afghanistan against Iran against Iraq against Saudi Arabia against Syria against Egypt) are what strike you most forcefully. There’s very little resembling a common purpose. Even after the non-Islamic NATO fought a war for the Muslim Kosovan Albanians, the Muslim world was slow in coming forward with much needed humanitarian aid.
The real wars of religion are the wars religions unleash against ordinary citizens within their “sphere of influence.” They are wars of the godly against the largely defenceless – American fundamentalists against pro-choice doctors, Iranian mullahs against their country’s Jewish minority, Hindu fundamentalists in Bombay against that city’s increasingly fearful Muslims.
The victors in that war must not be the closed-minded, marching into battle with, as ever, God on their side. To choose unbelief is to choose mind over dogma, to trust in our humanity instead of all these dangerous divinities. So, how did we get here? Don’t look for the answer in story books. Imperfect human knowledge may be a bumpy, pot-holed street, but it’s the only road to wisdom worth taking. Virgil, who believed that the apiarist Aristaeus could spontaneously generate new bees from the rotting carcess of a cow, was closer to a truth about origins than all the revered old books.
The ancient wisdoms are modern non-senses.
Live in your own time, use what we know and, as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you and put aside childish things. As the song says, “It’s easy if you try.”
As for mortality, the second great question – how to live? What is right action, and what wrong?- it comes down to your willingness to think for yourself. Only you can decide if you want to be handed down the law by priests, and accept that good and evil are somehow external to ourselves.To my mind, religion – even at its most sophisticated – essentially infantilizes our ethical selves by setting infallible moral Arbiters and irredeemably immoral Tempters above us; the eternal parents, good and bad, light and dark, of the supernatural realm.
How, then, are we to make ethical choices without a divine rulebook or judge? Is unbelief just the first step on the long slide into the brain death of cultural relativism, according to which many unbearable things – female circumcision, to name just one – can be excused on culturally specific grounds, and the universality of human rights, too can be ignored?(This last piece of moral unmaking finds supporters in some of the world’s most authoritarian regimes, and also, unnervingly, on the editorial page of the Daily Telegraph,UK.)
Well, no, it isn’t, but the reasons for saying so aren’t clear-cut. Only hard-line ideology is clear-cut. Freedom, which is the word I use for the secular-ethical position, is inevitably fuzzier. Yes, freedom is that space in which contradiction can reign, it is a never-ending debate. It is not in itself the answer to the question of morals, but the conversation about that question. And it is much more than mere relativism, because it is not merely a never-ending talk show, but a place in which choices are made, values defined and defended.
Intellectual freedom, in European history, has mostly meant freedom from the restraints of the Church and not the state.
This is the battle Voltaire was fighting, and it’s also what all six billion of us could do for ourselves, the revolution in which each of us could play our small, six-billionth part; once and for all we could refuse to allow priests, and the fictions on whose behalf they claim to speak, to be the policemen of our liberties and behavior. Once and for all we could put the stories back into the books, put the books back on the shelves, and see the world undogmatized and plain.
Imagine there’s no heaven, my dear Six-Billionth, and at once the sky’s the limit.
From A Farewell to God, A Personal Word, and Questions to Ask Yourself
Is it not likely that had you been born in Cairo you would be a Muslim and, as 840 million people do, would believe that “there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet?
If you have been born in Calcutta would you not in all probability be a Hindu and, as 650 million people do, accept the Vedas and the Upanishads as sacred scriptures and hope sometime in the future to dwell in Nirvana?
Is it not probable that, had you been born in Jerusalem, you would be a Jew and, as some 13 million people do, believe that Yahweh is God and that the Torah is God’s Word?
Is it not likely that had you been born in Peking, you would be one of the millions who accept the teachings of the Buddha or Confucius or Lao-Tse and strive to follow their teachings and example?
Is it not likely that you, the reader, are a Christian because your parents were before you?
If there is a loving God, why does he permit - much less create - earthquakes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, and other natural disasters which kill thousands of innocent men, women, and children every year?
How can a loving, omnipotent God permit - much less create - encephalitis, cerebral palsy, brain cancer, leprosy, Alzheimer’s, and other incurable illnesses to afflict millions of men, women, and children, most of whom are decent people?
How could a loving Heavenly Father create an endless Hell and, over the centuries, consign millions of people to it because they do not or cannot or will not accept certain religious beliefs? And, having done so, how could he torment them forever?
Why are there literally hundreds of Christian denominations and independent congregations, all of them basing their beliefs on the Bible, and most of them convinced that all the others are, in some ways, wrong?
If all Christians worship the same God, why can they not put aside their theological differences and co-operate actively with one another?
If God is a loving Father, why does he so seldom answer his needy children’s prayers?
How can one believe the biblical account of the creation of the world in six days when every eminent physicist agrees that all living species have evolved over millions of years from primitive beginnings?
Is it possible for an intelligent man or woman to believe that God fashioned the first male human being from a handful of dust and the first woman from one of the man’s ribs?
Is it possible to believe that the Creator of the universe would personally impregnate a Palestinian virgin in order to facilitate getting his Son into the world as a man?
The Bible says that “the Lord thy God is a jealous God.” But if you are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, and the creator of all that exists, of whom could you possibly be jealous?
Why, in a world filled with suffering and starvation, do Christians spend millions on cathedrals and sanctuaries and relatively little on aid to the poor and the needy?
Why does the omnipotent God, knowing that there are tens of thousands of men, women, and children starving to death in a parched land, simply let them waste away and die when all that is needed is rain?
Why would the Father of all mankind have a Chosen People and favor them over the other nations on earth?
Why would God who is “no respecter of persons” prohibit adultery and then bless, honour, and allow to prosper a king who had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines?
Why is the largest Christian church controlled entirely by men, with no woman - no matter how pious or gifted - permitted to become a priest, a monsignor, a bishop, an archbishop, a cardinal, or a pope?
Jesus’s last words to his followers were “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. And, lo, I am with you always.” But, despite this and to this date - some two thousand years later - billions of men and women have never so much as heard the Christian Gospel. Why?
The Philosophy of Atheism
by Emma Goldman
First published in February 1916 in the Mother Earth journal.
To give an adequate exposition of the Philosophy of Atheism, it would be necessary to go into the historical changes of the belief in a Deity, from its earliest beginning to the present day. But that is not within the scope of the present paper. However, it is not out of place to mention, in passing, that the concept God, Supernatural Power, Spirit, Deity, or in whatever other term the essence of Theism may have found expression, has become more indefinite and obscure in the course of time and progress. In other words, the God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in- proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science pro- gressively correlates human and social events.
God, today, no longer represents the same forces as in the beginning of His existence; neither does He direct human destiny with the same Iron hand as of yore. Rather does the God idea express a sort of spiritualistic stimalus to satisfy the fads and fancies of every shade of human weak- ness. In the course of human development the God idea has been forced to adapt itself to every phase of human affairs, which is perfectly consistent with the origin of the idea itself.
The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all super- stition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.
Very aptly, the world-renowned atheist and anarchist, Michael Bakunin, says in his great work God and the State: "All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Conse- quently, the religious heaven is nothing but the mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovered his own image, but enlarged and reversed - that is divinised. The history of religions, of the birth, grandeur, and the decline of the gods who had succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind. As fast as they discovered, in the course of their historically- progressive advance, either in themselves or in external nature, a quality, or even any great defect whatever, they attributed it to their gods, after having exaggerated and enlarged it beyond measure, after the manner of chil- dren, by an act of their religious fancy. . . . With all due respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious idealists, philosophers, politicians or poets: the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice."
Thus the God idea, revived, readjusted, and enlarged or narrowed, according to the necessity of the time, has domi- nated humanity and will continue to do so until man will raise his head to the sunlit day, unafraid and with an awakened will to himself. In proportion as man learns to realize himself and mold his own destiny theism becomes superfluous. How far man will be able to find his relation to his fellows will depend entirely upon how much he can outgrow his dependence upon God.
Already there are indications that theism, which is the theory of speculation, is being replaced by Atheism, the science of demonstration; the one hangs in the metaphysical clouds of the Beyond, while the other has its roots firmly in the soil. It is the earth, not heaven, which man must rescue if he is truly to be saved.
The decline of theism is a most interesting spectacle, especially as manifested in the anxiety of the theists, what- ever their particular brand. They realize, much to their distress, that the masses are growing daily more atheistic, more anti-religious; that they are quite willing to leave the Great Beyond and its heavenly domain to the angels and sparrows; because more and more the masses are becoming engrossed in the problems of their immediate existence.
How to bring the masses back to the God idea, the spirit, the First Cause, etc. - that is the most pressing question to all theists. Metaphysical as all these questions seem to be, they yet have a very marked physical background. Inas- much as religion, "Divine Truth," rewards and punishments are the trade-marks of the largest, the most corrupt and pernicious, the most powerful and lucrative industry in the world, not excepting the industry of manufacturing guns and munitions. It is the industry of befogging the human mind and stifling the human heart. Necessity knows no law; hence the majority of theists are compelled to take up every subject, even if it has no bearing upon a deity or revelation or the Great Beyond. Perhaps they sense the fact that humanity is growing weary of the hundred and one brands of God.
How to raise this dead level of theistic belief is really a matter of life and death for all denominations. Therefore their tolerance; but it is a tolerance not of understanding; but of weakness. Perhaps that explains the efforts fostered in all religious publications to combine variegated religious philosophies and conflicting theistic theories into one de- nominational trust. More and more, the various concepts "of the only tree God, the only pure spirit, -the only true religion" are tolerantly glossed over in the frantic effort to establish a common ground to rescue the modern mass from the "pernicious" influence of atheistic ideas.
It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe. To accomplish this end, the crudest and vulgarest methods are being used. Religious endeavor meetings and revivals with Billy Sunday as their champion -methods which must outrage every refined sense, and which in their effect upon the ignorant and curious often tend to create a mild state of insanity not infrequently coupled with eroto-mania. All these frantic efforts find approval and support from the earthly powers; from the Russian despot to the American President; from Rocke- feller and Wanamaker down to the pettiest business man. They blow that capital invested in Billy Sunday, the Y.M.C.A., Christian Science, and various other religious institutions will return enormous profits from the subdued, tamed, and dull masses.
Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell; reward and punishnient, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and content- ment. The truth is that theism would have lost its foeting long before this but for the combined support of Mammon and power. How thoroughly banlrupt it really is, is being demonstrated in the trenches and battlefields of Europe today.
Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preach- ments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race. Confucius cares not for the poverty, squalor and misery of people of China. Buddha remains undisturbed in his philosophical indifference to the famine and starvation of outraged Hindoos; Jahve continues deaf to the bitter cry of Israel; while Jesus refuses to rise from the dead against his Christians who are butchering each other.
The burden of all song and praise "unto the Highest" has been that God stands for justice and mercy. Yet injus- tice among men is ever on the increase; the outrages com- mitted against the masses in this country alone would seem enough to overflow the very heavens. But where are the gods to make an end to all these horrors, these wrongs, this inhumanity to man? No, not the gods, but MAN must rise in his mighty wrath. He, deceived by all the deities, be- trayed by their emissaries, he, himself, must undertake to usher in justice upon the earth.
The philosophy of Atheism expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we can call it philosophy, is static and fixed. Even the mere attempt to pierce these mysteries represents, from the the- istic point of view, non-belief in the all-embracing omnipo- tence, and even a denial of the wisdom of the divine powers outside of man. Fortunately, however, the human mind never was, and never can be, bound by fixities. Hence it is forging ahead in its restless march towards knowledge and life. The human mind is realizing "that the universe is not the result of a creative fiat by some divine intelligence, out of nothing, producing a masterpiece chaotic in perfect operation," but that it is the product of chaotic forces operating through aeons of time, of clashes and cataclysms, of repulsion and attraction crystalizing through the prin- ciple of selection into what the theists call, "the universe guided into order and beauty." As Joseph McCabe well points out in his Existence ot God: "a law of nature is not a formula drawn up by a legislator, but a mere summary of the observed facts - a 'bundle of facts.' Things do not act in a particular way because there is a law, but we state the 'law' because they act in that way."
The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean content- ment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.
It may seem a wild paradox, and yet it is pathetically true, that this real, visible world and our life should have been so long under the influence of metaphysical specula- tion, rather than of physical demonstrable forces. Under the lash of the theistic idea, this earth has served no other purpose than as a temporary station to test man's capacity for immolation to the will of God. But the moment man attempted to ascertain the nature of that will, he was told that it was utterly futile for "finite human intelligence" to get beyond the all-powerful infinite will. Under the terrific weight of this omnipotence, man has been bowed into the dust - a will-less creature, broken and sweating in the dark. The triumph of the philosophy of Atheism is to free man from the nightmare of gods; it means the dissolution of the phantoms of the beyond. Again and again the light of reason has dispelled the theistic nightmare, but poverty, misery and fear have recreated the phantoms - though whether old or new, whatever their external form, they differed little in their essence. Atheism, on the other hand, in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a super- natural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.
The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race from all God-heads, be they Judaic, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhistic, Brahministic, or what not. Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder: Man must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon earth.
Only after the triumph of the Atheistic philosophy in the minds and hearts of man will freedom and beauty be real- ized. Beauty as a gift from heaven has proved useless. It will, however, become the essence and impetus of life when man learns to see in the earth the only heaven fit for man. Atheism is already helping to free man from his dependence upon punishment and reward as the heavenly bargain- counter for the poor in spirit.
Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partiy with self- righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not, conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself. To what heights the philosophy of Athe- ism may yet attain, no one can prophesy. But this much can already be predicted: only by its regenerating fire will human relations be purged from the horrors of the past
Thoughtful people are beginning to realize that moral precepts, imposed upon humanity through religious terror, have become stereotyped and have therefore lost all vitality. A glance at life today, at its disintegrating character, its conflicting interests with their hatreds, crimes, and greed, suffices to prove the sterility of theistic morality.
Man must get back to himself before he can learn his relation to his fellows. Prometheus chained to the Rock of Ages is doomed to remain the prey of the vultures of dark- ness. Unbind Prometheus, and you dispel the night and its horrors.
Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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May 17, 2011 - 11:13pm PT
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I care about Hawkings belief in 'no heaven' about as much as I care about Klimmer's belief in the bible code. They are both speculating about an unknown. Seems like a waste of time to me.
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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May 17, 2011 - 11:29pm PT
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Do you find it so hard to accept the fact that Hawking understands more about the universe than those who wrote the Bible that you insist on twisting the argument into something it is not?
Why not just accept the fact that Hawking understands more about how the universe works than they did, and move on? It is a simple, factual statement, why confound it?
I have no problem accepting that Hawking, as well as you and I, probably understand more about how the universe works than those that wrote the Bible. When I asked you what evidence you had that Hawking knew so much more, implying that his contention about no such thing as heaven is accurate, you chose to use Biblical examples and references to make your point.
I haven't suggested that my own beliefs suggest that "heaven" is a biblical heaven. My simple contention is that simply because a brilliant man suggested there is no heaven (or more broadly "life after death" [of some sort]) does not mean to me: "oh well Stephen said so, so it must be..oh well".
Yes, we hold science in high esteem, as we should, but for me the true core of science has always been an unrelenting curiousity to keep asking questions...to keep wondering...to keep exploring...maybe that is "heaven". It is our beliefs that drive us to continue to ask and search and learn...a belief that there is more to know than is known. Susan
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Topic Author's Reply - May 17, 2011 - 11:37pm PT
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Getting back to Albert Einstein and what he truly believed, and he would hint at in public at times ...
PhD Gerald Schroeder relates this story in his book, The Science of GOD: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, on pg. 6 . . .
"My wife , the author Barbara Sofer, was privy to the notes of a private meeting held at Princeton between the late prime minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion and Albert Einstein. Their conversation might have turned toward the politics of the young State of Israel. Instead, immediately they focused on what really intrigued them, whether there was evidence for a higher force directing the universe. Both agreed there was such a force, a central power. Yet neither Ben-Gurion nor Einstein had a feeling for formal religion.
The spark is there in all of us. Still, we may intellectually reject the very explanations our emotions tell us are true."
Also:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
"The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one.' I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."
"I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
Edit:
The point that I'm making is that Einstein did think that "something" or "someone," "he," exists and this "central power" directs the Universe.
Some would call him "GOD," as Einstein himself called him.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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May 17, 2011 - 11:47pm PT
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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)
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
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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May 17, 2011 - 11:49pm PT
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Jingy, most excellent. Thanks for posting that.
Edit to add: I see you just added more. The Rushdie piece was spot-on.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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May 17, 2011 - 11:59pm PT
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I just wrote a long post and then deleted it when I looked up and saw the Thread Title one more time.....Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven'
I laugh.....way back there were no America's either....til Columbus or whoever discovered them...hehehe. lynnie
Never say Never....
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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May 18, 2011 - 12:09am PT
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There would be essentially no suicide bombers if you take away the belief in heaven (the kind with virgins)from them.
When the Japanese Fighter Pilots crashed their planes into our Ships in WW2, were they promised virgins and heaven?
And plenty of atheist leaders have led their armies to untold death and destruction (Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, and more)
Our depravity is in the darkness of Human Ignorance, religious or secular. Politics, Religion, Race, and class are just excuses to create the duality needed to oppress and hur people
Pure arrogance to claim something like Heaven or God doesn't exist and also pretty arrogant to think believers concepts of Heaven or God are very accurate. Fact is, we are babies in the universe and should acknowledge our limitations, living in meat suits on a planet only having civilization for a few thousand years.
PEace
karl
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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May 18, 2011 - 12:13am PT
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One thing that has always puzzled me...does someone need the concept of heaven and hell to do the right thing? Would you live your life differently?
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PAUL SOUZA
Trad climber
Clovis, CA
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May 18, 2011 - 12:44am PT
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Is it possible that the human soul has mass? Perhaps approximately 21.0g of mass? Is it possible that at the very moment when a human dies this amount of mass leaves the body?
SOUL HAS WEIGHT, PHYSICIAN THINKS:
From your wiki link:
His results have never been reproduced.
Hmmmm....if results can't be reproduced, that means it's probably BS.
See, the beauty of science is that theories are based upon experiments that can be replicated by anyone and that produce the same results.
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beef supreme
climber
the west
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May 18, 2011 - 01:07am PT
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just because he's saying heaven doesn't exist doesn't mean that he is saying spirituality is null (or perhaps void is the more appropriate verbage)
heaven? really? I think we had it here on earth a few times and hopefully we'll figure it out again- there is no 'out there dreamland heaven place' (as much as we want to think that there is)
or so say I.
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