First of all, I would like to respond to your statement about Einstein:
Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote:
> Oh, no! Many of the greatest scientists have been mystics. Einstein got
> his theories by mystical revelation. Most sophisticated religious people
> view Einstein's theories as religious insights into the mind of God and the
> workings of God's universe.
I have heard so much garbage about Einstein's beliefs that I feel it is
my responsibility to respond to this statement, in the interest of
stemming the dissemination of false beliefs.
It is clear that Einstein was an atheist in any reasonable sense of the
word. There abound many quotes of Einstein which might be used to
convince you otherwise (e.g., "I don't believe God plays dice", etc.),
but if you study his writings even a little carefully, there will be no
doubt remaining that Einstein was absolutely not a mystic. In fact he
was the standard to which all non-mystics aspire. I could go on at
length about this, but I will instead summarize by a quote from a letter
by Einstein to an admirer who was disappointed by the popular accounts
that Einstein was a religious man. (for more background on this letter
and sources see:
http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~lesikar/einstein/personal.html)
Einstein:
"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."
> I am after a dialogue among scientists of what to make of this God
> phenomenon that is so pervasive in our culture. There's so much s--- there
> has to be a pony in there somewhere.
To me, the reason that the theory of God is unacceptable from a
scientific point of view is that it possesses infinite degrees of
freedom.
In my mind, the primary goal of science is not to explain the data with
the most accuracy, but to explain it in the simplest way possible. Most
of the triumphs and paradigm shifts in the history of science occurred
when a theory explained observations in a much simpler way than was
previously done--even at the cost of accuracy. A noteable example is
Copernicus, whose heliocentric theory did not fit the data as well the
Ptolemic theory (because Copernicus insisted on using circles rather
than ellipses), but was nonetheless an overwhelmingly superior theory
owing to its simplicity.
The theory of God explains every phenomenon perfectly ("God willed it"),
and possess infinite complexity--that is why it must be rejected. Of
course, you have offered to modify the Christian definition of God so
that we can come to one (with fewer degrees of freedom) that is
acceptable to a reasonable scientist.
My suggestion therefore is as follows: An acceptable definition of
"God" might be "the superset of all physical mechanisms", a subset of
which comprises our existing scientific knowledge. If that is the case
then Science might be the "Bible", and ironically, the best way to know
God is to end mysticism and continue building on the legacy of Science.
Denver.
--
Denver Dash (http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~ddash)
