Einstein On God

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Jan Ardena, Jan 22, 2014.

  1. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    So where's the part about Einstein and God? Shall I wade into the debate? If Einstein and God got into a fight who would win?
     
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  3. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    The dice, obviously.
     
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  5. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Sure. There must be a hundred suttas that talk about the skandhas. Wynn knows this.

    Other than that, I'm not sure what you and Wynn are battling about.

    Did the Buddha say that the skandhas are the self? No. He specifically denied that they are pretty much every time he discussed the skandhas. Did he say that the skandhas are "the self", in the sense of being the things that typical people falsely believe to be their selves? Yes, he says or at least implies that in most of those suttas.

    (For those who don't know, the five skandhas were apparently intended in very early Buddhism to represent a full and complete inventory of all the possible objects of awareness and cognition. A later stage of early Buddhism expanded this analysis into the larger abhidhamma inventory, retaining the original goal of demonstrating that all possible objects of awareness and thought are all non-self.)

    Perhaps the most unequivocal statement that I know of is the famous and philosophically important Yamaka Sutta, where Ven. Sariputta responds to 'annihilationism' (the idea that one's self is annihilated at death) from an unexpected direction, and in so doing pretty much eliminates all the ways that the skandhas might be the self, individually or in combination, as well as the idea that a self separate from the skandhas can be discovered:

    http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.085.than.html
     
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  7. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly. Yet Jan Ardena said -
    Which is why I insisted that he provide an actual canonical reference for his claim, as opposed to sub-Wiki-level Buddhism.


    Anyway, the whole self / no self / not-self issue is one of the heavier and more disputed topics among many Buddhists themselves, and talking about it in any meaningful way requires a decent knowledge of the Pali Canon.
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Quoting a definition is automatic fail.
     
  9. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    allow me to ask a (probably obvious) question - spidergoat... what exactly are you asking Jan Ardena to provide/prove/do here? My understanding is that Buddhism does not "worship" a deity so much as revere the teachings of an enlightened man... and, honestly, those teachings can/should be applied to most any person/religion... in general, at least to my understanding, Buddhism could almost be condensed into one simple statement in which I will simply quote George Carlin's redefinition of the 10 Commandments:

    Don't be an asshole.

    *shrugs* But, again, that could be me misunderstanding the entire thing

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  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    You are misunderstanding it. If you're an asshole, be an asshole.
     
  11. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    Pretty shitty fight. Ethereal weight gloves with a card that includes a dead guy vs. a guy that doesn't exist.
     
  12. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Sarkus,

    He considered a personal god unbelievable and obviously unknowable, which means he could be termed agnostic if he were to be labelled. I imagine Einstein knows as well as the best of them that it is impossible for anyone to prove the existence of God (personal or not, pantheist or not, deist or not) and to speak of such an entity (personal god) as though he exists (by expressing belief) would render him a liar.

    It gives a reference point.

    ''The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. (Albert Einstein)''

    I think he does endorse it as a religion because he said ''The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self.'' . Given the quotes I provided, why would you think he wouldn't endorse Buddhism as a religion?

    You said... ''Sure, he was certainly against western organised religion, and agnostic with regard personal Gods. ''

    Having acknowledged human limitation, I doubt he needs to repeat himself by saying ''I don't know''.

    All I'm saying is I think he was a theist, not atheist and not agnostic regarding his own belief.

    If someone believes in God, then they believe that God is the origin of everything including the intelligence that lives by good moral codes. I think he meant that we define our moral principles and decide how we live, and the idea of accepting the morals of doctrines and dogma due to a concoction of God, either personal to you, someone else's ideas, we are acting out of blind faith and ignorance.

    We know what god he didn't believe in. A personal one. By that I think he means a concocted one. That being said, he believed in God.

    There are lots of clues in what he wrote.

    All religious philosophy contain elements of Deism and Pantheism, maybe not to the degree of those particular manifested ideologies, but they're there all the same.

    We're all agnostic about some things. But not everybody views their agnosticism important enough to label themselves.

    That's nothing special or remarkable (in real terms), because everybody is, to some degree or other.

    ...

    It sounds as if he knows that God created this world, and he's not even interested in this or that phenomena.
    He wants to know his thoughts (meaning that God is more than just a prime mover, or merely the sum total of the universe.

    This may well apply to you (or maybe not).
    It carries on...

    Who do you think the ''religious genius's are?
    Of all ages!
    We get a good idea of what he means by a ''personal god'' in this quote.

    To finish the quote...

    You imply otherwise, yes, by insisting that he had a specific God...

    Einstein works off the obvious principle that there is, and can be only one God. There aren't, nor can there be, any other God.

    While I don't see theist as having to support their position (as it just is), and therefore can't agree with your suggestion, I am quite okay with the idea of showing that greatest icon of science is a theist. You don't have a problem with that do you?

    It would seem so.

    On the contrary, he was interested in knowing God thinks, and regarded phenomena as simply detail.
    I still find it strange that he mentioned nothing about Darwin and evolution.

    When Darwin released his famous publication, it caused quite a stir among theists and religions. They felt it was a threat to their belief. Even today Darwinist's still claim that part the reason religious people reject Darwin's (and neo-darwinism) is due to this very reason. That being said, his outspoken belief in God, and his silence regarding evolution could constitute support of an alternative, namely theism.


    All we have to go off is what he said, and he said a lot more than you seem to think.

    No it's not. It is the platform from which you perceive things. You could believe in God, while thinking you don't believe in God, just like you could have love for somebody, but deny that you have love for them to the point of thinking it's real.

    There's no need of forgiveness. Why would you want to take my word for it? More importantly. How could you?

    I'm just stating something I think is true. I'm not playing any game.

    jan.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2014
  13. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Because what Einstein thought of as "Buddhism" doesn't pass as Buddhism according to the standards of what is generally considered to be the reference text for what the Buddha taught, namely, the Pali Canon.

    As far as I can tell, Einstein's ideas about Buddhism have either come from a particular Buddhist school, probably Classical Theravada or a Mahayana school, or, he was going with the fashion of the time and developed his own version of Buddhism.


    It's ideas like this:

    ''The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self.''

    that are suspicious.

    There is a widely-held belief among Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike that the Buddha taught "there is no self, no soul, ever." And yet so far, it is not possible to find an actual canonical reference for this.
     
  14. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    jan.
     
  15. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    My original description of the five skandhas (in buddhism the self is characterized...), was expressed from the point of view of what is regarded as the self in general. I realized it didn't come across as that so I ammended it to what it actually means.
    Einstein obviously knew the real meaning and stated that if man was to overcome, transcend the (perceived) self, the world would be a better place [conclusion mine].

    jan.
     
  16. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    More importantly, you reduce it to violence. I find that telling.

    jan.
     
  17. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    The pipe dream of every impersonalist ... and the realization thereof by so many tyrants and dictators ...

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  18. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Just think: Here we have Einstein, believing in no personal god and not believing in the immortality of man, and desiring to transcend the self and seeing such transcendence as the solution to the world's problems.

    What does that remind of?

    The fear of having a personal identity.


    /.../
    "As described above, it is very difficult for a person who is too materially affected to understand the personal nature of the Supreme Absolute Truth. Generally, people who are attached to the bodily conception of life are so absorbed in materialism that it is almost impossible for them to understand how the Supreme can be a person. Such materialists cannot even imagine that there is a transcendental body which is imperishable, full of knowledge and eternally blissful. In the materialistic concept, the body is perishable, full of ignorance and completely miserable. Therefore, people in general keep this same bodily idea in mind when they are informed of the personal form of the Lord. For such materialistic men, the form of the gigantic material manifestation is supreme. Consequently they consider the Supreme to be impersonal. And because they are too materially absorbed, the conception of retaining the personality after liberation from matter frightens them. When they are informed that spiritual life is also individual and personal, they become afraid of becoming persons again, and so they naturally prefer a kind of merging into the impersonal void. Generally, they compare the living entities to the bubbles of the ocean, which merge into the ocean. That is the highest perfection of spiritual existence attainable without individual personality. This is a kind of fearful stage of life, devoid of perfect knowledge of spiritual existence. Furthermore there are many persons who cannot understand spiritual existence at all. Being embarrassed by so many theories and by contradictions of various types of philosophical speculation, they become disgusted or angry and foolishly conclude that there is no supreme cause and that everything is ultimately void. Such people are in a diseased condition of life. Some people are too materially attached and therefore do not give attention to spiritual life, some of them want to merge into the supreme spiritual cause, and some of them disbelieve in everything, being angry at all sorts of spiritual speculation out of hopelessness. This last class of men take to the shelter of some kind of intoxication, and their affective hallucinations are sometimes accepted as spiritual vision.

    One has to get rid of all three stages of attachment to the material world: negligence of spiritual life, fear of a spiritual personal identity, and the conception of void that arises from frustration in life."
    /.../
    http://vedabase.net/bg/4/10/


    In Einstein's view, as you have presented it here, there is no room for a soul. For him, the material, the perishable, the skandhas, is the be-all and end-all of human existence.
     
  19. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Buddhism is the first stage of spiritual evolution, the initial comprehension of difference to matter.

    The first step in spiritual realization is to know that you are not the body. There is no spirituality without that realization.

    jan.
     
  20. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    The Buddhism of the Pali Canon is a lot subtler than many people give it credit for. Let's put it aside for the moment, as long as all participants in this discussion do not have at least a working knowledge of it.


    It looks like you are trying to present Einstein as some kind of advanced person.

    But as long as one believes, like Einstein, that the individual is not immortal, then there is no room, no possibility for the realization that one is not the body.

    It's not clear what Einstein meant with "transcending the self". And we cannot just make inferences based on what "transcending the self" means in some other systems of philosophy.
     
  21. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    It is quite likely that he presented things from the ground up, which would be quite fitting of his scientific background.
    It is also quite likely that his quotes did not represent the totality of his belief, choosing to reveal what he thought the people (who would undoubtedly pour over his every word) could comprehend. If that was the case, then he would have been an advanced person, IMO.

    jan.
     
  22. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    But not necessarily fitting the spiritual science.

    The Absolute Truth, Transcendence, is never subject to the understanding of imperfect sensory endeavor, nor is He subject to direct experience. He is the master of varieties of energies, like the full material energy, and no one can understand His plans or actions; therefore it should be concluded that although He is the original cause of all causes, no one can know Him by mental speculation.
    /.../
    The question may be raised, "Since there are so many varieties of philosophers theorizing in different ways, which of them is correct?" The answer is that the Absolute Truth, Transcendence, is never subject to direct experience or mental speculation. The mental speculator may be called Dr. Frog. The story is that a frog in a three-foot well wanted to calculate the length and breadth of the Atlantic Ocean on the basis of his knowledge of his own well. But it was an impossible task for Dr. Frog. A person may be a great academician, scholar or professor, but he cannot speculate and expect to understand the Absolute Truth, for his senses are limited. The cause of all causes, the Absolute Truth, can be known from the Absolute Truth Himself, and not by our ascending process to reach Him.
    /.../

    http://vedabase.net/sb/4/11/23/


    Of course we might not know the totality of his belief. And of course he may have weel been selective in what he said, out of consideration for how he migth be understood or misunderstood.

    But we do know that he maintained that the individual is not immortal, and that he didn't believe in a personal god. And there are a number of implications following from that, as I noted earlier.
     
  23. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Bah. You kind of remind me of Einstein. Einstein had his women do the math work because he wasn't up to it. And you have me do the work of looking up scriptures.
    Only good I'm not doing this for you!
     

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