Einstein's God

Einstein's God

Here's 7 minutes of `Einstein on God' (narrated by Richard Dawkins):


I've been reading this excellent book (which was kindly loaned to me by a friend)

 Einstein’s God:
Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit (Tippett 2010)It features interviews, mostly with scientists, about spirituality. These interviews came from Tippett's radio show `Speaking of Faith'. (See also her more recent podcasts, at On Being . Brainpickings also had an interesting post on the book.)

At any rate - below are some quotes I particularly liked from the book:

`Paul Davies: Einstein was the person to establish this notion of what is sometimes called block time - that the past, present and future are just personal decompositions of time, and that the universe of past, present and future in some sense has an eternal existence. And so even though individuals may come and go, their lives, which are in the past for their descendants, nevertheless still have some existence within this block time. Nothing takes that away... Your life is still there in its entirety.' (in Tippett 2010, p. 38)

Freeman Dyson: [Einstein] had a marvellous sense of humour, and that's a very important part of life. The fact is that scientists have, on the whole, cultivated a sense of humour because so much of science is a history of failures. If you're a creative person, you know it's true in other kinds of creative life, but more so in science as so much of science ends up to be wrong, You do something, you spend weeks and months, and finally the whole thing collapses. You need to have a sense of humour, otherwise you couldn't survive. And Einstein, I think, understood that particularly well. (in Tippett 2010, pp. 26-7)

Freeman Dyson: What really happens in the universe is that nature finds all these extraordinarily complex structures which have their own rules. So, for example, the whole of biology is an example of that. (in Tippett 2010, pp. 24-5) 

Tippett also notes in the Introduction to the book:

`The religious impulse is animated at its core by questions of purpose: What does it mean to be human? Where do we come from? Where are we going? How to love? What matters in a life? What matters in a death? How to be of service to one another and to the world?' (Tippett 2010, p. 8)

So, Religion gives the sorts of answers that people like to hear, Science - on the other hand - could care less about your feelings or your beliefs, as Reality (truth) is quite happy to crush you like a steamroller.
Basically, almost all of Nature totally wants to murder you.
(Jump into a lion-cage at the zoo if you want to test this out sometime.)

A skeletal mount of an African lion attacking a common eland
on display at The Museum of Osteology, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Image: Sklmsta at English Wikipedia [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons- It's a `miracle' you're alive, but not a religious miracle; a scientific miracle, namely it's just incredibly improbable, but still quite possible.

Frankly, you, personally, are a miraculous statistic.
One of 7 billion statistics (humans currently alive).
More, if you include all the other plants and animals currently alive.
There are also over 4 thousand Gods,
(They all want to murder each other too, read all their books,)

Anyway here's another quote from this great book (Tippett's) that agrees with what I just said, above:

Moore: [Charles Darwin] was a very shrewd guy, and he'd stared more deeply into the abyss, which is his view of nature at war, than perhaps any person of his day. And he brings you up short, bang, against the world as it really is in his vision, not the world that we would like it to be...' (in Tippett 2010, p. 120)  

See, that's what's so great about Science, it doesn't care what you think. It's always right.
Well until it isn't (i.e., until a better [read: more accurate] scientific truth comes along).

Science always gets better.
(Religion always gets worse.)
The Moral: You don't have to be a scientist to be deeply spiritual, but, it sure helps.

Religion is, basically, Spirituality For Dummies. It's (religion) also horrifically sexist, racist and homophobic. And outdated.
But - other than all that, it's great.
 - If you like that sort of thing. I guess.
Anyway - thankfully Science is winning the war against Religion (and other utter Non-Science) - and that looks like it will continue. (Well unless some religious suicide-bomber gets ahold of a nuke.)

Humans are good at being wrong about things.

Mainly as we tend to use intuition rather than reason and logic and evidence. Also we're not naturally good at understanding statistics, probability, algorithms, and evolution. (See the great book: Thinking Fast & Slow , Kahneman 2011) for why, and how to fix it in yourself.
We don't like seeing ourselves as statistics.
Evolution makes us intuitively think of ourselves as `wholes - that need to survive', regardless of the cost to anything else.
Intuitions are shortcuts for thinking rationally.

Levin: ...our intutions are based on our minds, our minds are based on our neural structures, our neural structures evolved on a planet, under a sun, with very specific conditions. We reflect the physical world that we evolved from. It's not a miracle.' (in Tippett 2010, p. 157)

On the whole, we're good at surviving and reproducing (and - at taking revenge, and sometimes, at forgiving) - but that's about it.
If you want to get specific, about 1% of the whole are really creative.
The other 99% needs: the creative 1%.
e.g. The scientists curing cancer. And the brilliant writers and artists,

And, the scientists are trying to warn Donald Trump about climate change.
(But Trump is stupid.)

Einstein famously said:

`Two things are infinite: the ... the universe, and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.' (Einstein)

Here's a cool exchange from the book: (it also agrees with everything I just said, i.e. this whole post. It also reflects my attitude to reality.)

Tippett: ...how does the messiness of experience, of all of us, not just what we can know but how life unfolds, how does that impinge on the ultimate reality of what we can know and achieve through logic and through science?

Levin: I would argue that we should never turn away from what nature has to show us. We should never pretend we don't see it just because it's too difficult to confront it. That's something that I don't understand about other attitudes that want to disregard certain discoveries just because they don't jell with their beliefs. 

One of the painful but beautiful things about being a scientist is being able to say "It doesn't matter what I believe. I might believe that the universe is a certain age, but if I'm wrong, I'm wrong." There's something really thrilling about being committed to that. (in Tippett 2010, p. 159)    

This is me, too:

Tippett: Does it make you react to simple things differently in your life, because you are closer to that cutting edge of knowledge right now?

Levin: Well I will often look at what people feel is very important, and not identify with what they think is very important. I have a hard time becoming obsessed with internal social norms, how you're supposed to dress or wear your tie or who's supposed to... for me, it's so absurd, because it's so small. It's this funny thing that this one species is acting out on this tiny planet in this huge, vast cosmos. So it is sometimes hard for me to participate in certain values that other people have... things totally constructed by human beings I have a hard time taking seriously. And things that seem to be natural phenomena, that happen universally, I take more seriously, as more significant... We're animals that organize in a certain way... a lot of the things we are acting out are animalistic, consequences of our instincts. They aren't... as meaningful to me as the things that will live on after our species comes and goes... I'm really pained by what's going on in the world. But my perspective is to look on it as animals acting out ruthless instincts and unable to control themselves - even though other people think that they're being very heady and intellectual... 

...stars burn and shine, and they make carbon in their cores and then they throw them out again. And that carbon collects and forms another planet and another star, and then amino acids evolve and then human beings arise. That, to me, is a really beautiful narrative. (in Tippett 2010, pp. 162-5)        

 See also, Janna Levin's novel:  A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines (Levin 2007).

McCullough: Anger in response to injustice is as reliable a human emotional response as happiness is to winning the lottery, or grief is to losing a loved one. And if you look at the brain of somebody who has just been harmed by someone - they've been ridiculed or harrassed or insulted - we can put those people into [fMRI] technology that allows us to see what their brains are doing. We can look at what your brain looks like on revenge. It looks exactly like the brain of someboy who is thirsty and is just about to get a sweet drink or is hungry and is about to get a piece of chocolate to eat.

Tippett: It's like the satisfaction of a craving?

 McCullough: It is exactly like that. It is literally a craving. What you see is high activation in the brain's reward system... The desire for revenge does not come from some sick dark part of how our minds operate. It is a craving to solve a problem and accomplish a goal. (in Tippett 2010, p. 178)  

And here's some more good stuff: (the book is full of good stuff. Read it! :)

Tippett: One of the things you seem to be talking about [in Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct, McCullough 2008] is reclaiming the normalcy of both revenge and forgiveness as part of human nature. I'd like to talk about revenge first, if we could - why revenge is in us and what purpose it has served even in evolutionary terms.

McCullough: Here's what you see all throughout the animal kingdom - and this is where I really got interested. One study that really got my attention was a study on chimpanzees, which showed that if a chimpanzee is harmed by an individual that it's living with, it has the ability to remember who that individual is and target aggression back at that individual in the ten minutes, twenty minutes, hour later. I was surprised to know that chimpanzees had those kinds of mental abilities. I had to learn more. I wanted to know where else you see this in the animal kingdom. It turns out that you see it in other kinds of primates, such as one type of monkey that I like a lot, a monkey called the Japanese macaque. Japanese macaques are very status-conscious individuals.

Japanese macaques nitpicking in a hot spring
By user:Fg2 derivative work: user:bukk
(JapaneseMacaqueM2262.jpg) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

`McCullough [cont.]: They're very intimidated by power, let's just put it that way. So if you're a high-ranking Japanese macaque and you harm a lower-ranking Japanese macaque, that low-ranking individual is not going to harm you back. It's just too intimidating. It's too anxiety-provoking. What they do instead, and this still astonishes me, is they will find a relative of that high-ranking individual and go seek that low-ranking cousin or nephew out and harm him in retaliation.

Tippett: That does sound like human behaviour, doesn't it? [JTV - It actually sounds exactly like: the mafia, LOL. Note that: movies about the mafia usually do very badly.]

McCullough: Right. And here's the kicker: when they're harming this nephew, most of the time they're doing it while the high-ranking individual is watching. They want the high-ranking individual to know that I know you're more powerful than I am. But rest assured, I know how to get at what you care about and what you value.' (in Tippett 2010, p. 176-7)           

Anyway - so the book (Tippett 2010) is excellent.

Also - if you don't like Science, you're being pretty stupid - as anyone or anything that is alive is doing science all of the time. Whether they're aware of it, or not.

i.e. Everything operates, via:

Expectation (or: `Theory'); then Trial and Error, and, (if needed) Error-correction. 

...Seriously.

Read Popper's All Life Is Problem Solving (1999). It's also: GREAT.

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Joe T Velikovsky

Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

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& Random Guy

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P.S. - And, if you don't believe in Evolution, it's not your fault that Evolution made you so stupid. All you needed to do was survive and possibly even reproduce, (and maybe take revenge now and then) for Evolution to let you off the hook. - It's actually a miracle.