Did Einstein believe in God?
Here's what Einstein meant when he spoke of cosmic dice and the "secrets of the Ancient One".
17 March, 2021
Credit: Getty Images
- To celebrate Einstein's birthday this past Sunday, we examine his take on religion and spirituality.
- Einstein's disapproval of quantum physics revealed his discontent with a world without causal harmony at its deepest levels: The famous "God does not play dice."
- He embraced a "Spinozan God," a deity that was one with nature, within all that is, from cosmic dust to humans. Science, to Einstein, was a conduit to reveal at least part of this mysterious connection, whose deeper secrets were to remain elusive.
<p>Given that March 14th is Einstein's birthday and, in an uncanny coincidence, also Pi Day, I think it's appropriate that we celebrate it here at 13.8 by revisiting his relationship with religion and spirituality. Much has been written about <a href="https://bigthink.com/did-einstein-pray-what-the-great-genius-thought-about-god" target="_self">Einstein and God</a>. Was the great scientist religious? What did he believe in? What was God to Einstein? In what is perhaps his most famous remark involving God, Einstein expressed his dissatisfaction with the randomness in quantum physics: he <a href="https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/what-einstein-meant-by-god-does-not-play-dice-2624894657" target="_self">"God doesn't play dice"</a> quote. The actual phrasing, from a letter Einstein wrote to his friend and colleague Max Born, dated December 4, 1926, is very revealing of his worldview:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">Quantum mechanics is very worthy of regard. But an inner voice tells me that this is not the true Jacob. The theory yields much, but it hardly brings us close to the secrets of the Ancient One. In any case, I am convinced that He does not play dice.</p>
<p>Einstein clearly had no qualms with the effectiveness of quantum mechanics as a tool to describe the results of laboratory experiments concerned with the world of the very small— the world of molecules, atoms, and particles. But his intuition (his "inner voice") would not gel with quantum physics as formulated then, that is, as a <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-quantum-probability-comes-from-20190909/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">probabilistic theory</a>: "The theory yields much, but it hardly brings us close to the secrets of the Ancient One." What could Einstein mean by the "secrets of the Ancient One"?</p>
<p>Taken at face value, this reads like the remarks of a mystic. The secrets of the Ancient One could well be the title of a documentary series on revelations from God. But to consider Einstein's quote literally would be misleading. Of course, no one knows what Einstein <em>really</em> thought (or anyone, for that matter); we are bound by his written and recorded words, and he could easily have kept his own "secrets of the Wise One" close to his heart. The more direct interpretation is that the 'Ancient One' was a symbolic representation of Einstein's own beliefs, which, in a telegram to a Jewish newspaper composed three years after the letter to Max Born, he related to a kind of all-pervading Spinozan God: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings." </p>
<blockquote>To Einstein, science's goal was to dig ever deeper into the causal machinery of the cosmos, unveiling its mechanisms one by one. </blockquote>
<p>This "harmony of all that exists" represents Einstein's profound and unchanging position that there is a fundamental and all-encompassing causal order in nature that affects all that is:</p>
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">Everything is determined… by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust—we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.</p>
<p>Einstein's worldview reveals a strange interplay between an over-arching causality that affects all that exists in nature (human beings, cosmic dust, vegetables, stars…) but whose deepest inner workings remain unreachable and mysterious to us and to science. The tune intoned in the distance by an invisible piper is barely audible by human ears. This reminds me of another quote, this one much older, from Democritus, the pre-Socratic philosopher from the 4th century BCE who came up with the notion of "atoms" as the building blocks of everything (with his mentor Leucippus.) Democritus wrote: "In reality, Truth is in the depths."</p>
<p>To Einstein, science's goal was to dig ever deeper into the causal machinery of the cosmos, unveiling its mechanisms one by one. In true Platonic fashion, to Einstein, every scientific discovery revealed a little more of this inner harmony of all things. No wonder he rejected the probabilistic nature of quantum physics! It went precisely in opposition to his worldview that nature was "rational," causal, and thus understandable as such by the human mind, even if imperfectly. If quantum physics worked as a probabilistic explanation, it was because there was a deeper one, underlying this randomness, that made sense from a causal perspective. Otherwise, nature wouldn't be harmonious, and the causal chain would be disrupted, deafening the tune from the invisible piper. To Einstein, an acausal world would be a senseless world, without harmony, without divine beauty. An acausal world would be lawless and godless.</p><p>Almost 100 years have passed since Einstein expressed his worldview, and we remain confused about the nature and interpretation of quantum physics. We have learned a lot since then, of course, and current knowledge indicates quite strongly that nature really is probabilistic at the fundamental level. It may be that the invisible piper is still there, but that, instead of one of Mozart's harmonious tunes that Einstein loved so much, the musical spirit of nature is keener on improvising, creating an unexpected harmony born out of dissonance.</p>
<div></div><ul class="ee-ul"></ul><div><br></div>
Keep reading
Show less
Turns out those aren't the apostle St James’s bones after all
Research shows that bone fragments of Jesus's (possible) brother belong to someone else.
17 February, 2021
Credit: zatletic / Adobe Stock
- New research in Rome has found that bones purported to be from St. James the Less are impossible.
- The femoral bone fragments date to somewhere between 214 and 340 CE—a few centuries off the mark.
- The analysis was conducted on bone fragments, oil, and mummy remains in the Basilica dei Santa Apostoli.
<p>The most psychologically riveting undiscovered archaeology in the Western world remains "proof" of Jesus and his disciples. Dan Brown's alternative religious history, "The Da Vinci Code," was denounced by the Church (even though it was admittedly fictional). Yet his book revealed something about human psychology, with this revival of the Holy Grail legend and Mary Magdalene selling 80 million copies sold worldwide.</p><p>Speaking of Mary, that was the name of James the Less's mother, making him the potential brother of Jesus. While he hasn't received the same veneration as James the Great (the patron saint of Spain), James the Less (aka the Younger) earned fame as one of Jesus's dozen disciples. His bones have been stored in Rome's Basilica dei Santi Apostoli for over 1,500 years—well, so people thought. According to a <a href="https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40494-021-00481-9" target="_blank">new research article</a>, published in the journal Heritage Science, the femur is a few centuries younger than advertised. </p><p>Researchers used a variety of dating techniques, including mass spectrometric detection, X-Ray diffraction, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to analyze bone fragments and mummy remains in the Basilica dei Santa Apostoli. Investigating the supposed remains of St James and St Philip, they discovered that James's femoral bone dates to somewhere between 214 and 340 CE. This skeleton certainly did not walk with Jesus. </p><p>The team also discovered rapeseed oil and a ceramic shard dating to roughly the same era, give or take a century. All samples, in fact, dated to at least two centuries after the time of Christianity's savior. </p><p>The 6th-century church dedicated to James and Philip has gone through numerous renovations, including a 16th-century facelift that shielded it from recurring floods. In 1700, the church was basically rebuilt. In the late 19th century, relics were discovered in the catacombs and shuffled around. Keeping track of so many changes on paper has proved challenging; it shouldn't be surprising that the fragments were caught in the mix. Superstition trumps reality—but not technology. </p>
<img
class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image"
data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY1ODk0Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3MDU5ODgwNn0.ojJojmjsjAua5f5pJ779pq6VKnmXddnTt-s8Yxx3x0M/img.png?width=980"
id="c4992"
width="2498"
height="1328"
data-rm-shortcode-id="5d70128427649672351b455efbfddff8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
a) Tibia of St Philip KLR-11036/C90 (femur of St James KLR-11030/C81); b & c) foot of St Philip KLR-12288/C18 and KLR-11029/C80
Credit: Rasmussen et. al
<p>The contention that St James the Less is Jesus's brother is also contested. As the researchers note, the Lord's brother, <em>Iakob</em>, is not mentioned in any list of the 12 disciples. Pivotal to the Church of Jerusalem, with 11 mentions in the New Testament, James was part of the council that decided whether gentiles should be circumcised. His influence remains part of us—well, deciding what remains part of us.</p><p>The team notes that the potential conflation of Jesus's brother with St James is a red flag. Calling a divine sibling "Lesser" doesn't make sense considering his outsized influence on the Church of Jerusalem. Jesus's brother is textually referred to as "Lord's brother" or "the Just." Some even consider St James the Less to be a cousin of Jesus, not a brother. </p><p>As mentioned, we love a good mystery. </p><p>Regardless, the bones in the Basilica are not of any James we know of. Lead author Kaare Lund Rasmussen, an archaeometry professor at the University of Southern Denmark, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/st-james-relic-someone-else.html" target="_blank">says</a>,</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Our dates, although disproving it was St. James, fall in a dark period, between the time when the apostles died and Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire."</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.sdu.dk/en/nyheder/forskningsnyheder/jesu-apostle-videnskabeligt-undersogt" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">statement</a> released after the publication of the study, Rasmussen continues, </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We consider it very likely, that whoever moved this femur to the Santi Apostoli church, believed it belonged to St. James. They must have taken it from a Christian grave, so it belonged to one of the early Christians, apostle or not."</p><p>The mystery continues. While we might never discover actual bones or grails, there's always a novel waiting around for Netflix to option. </p><p><span style="background-color: initial;">--</span></p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a>. His most recent book is</em> "<em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KRVMP2M?pf_rd_r=MDJW43337675SZ0X00FH&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy</a>."</em></p>
Keep reading
Show less
Is there life after death?
Is death the final frontier? We ask scientists, philosophers, and spiritual leaders about life after death.
18 December, 2020
- Death is inevitable for all known living things. However on the question of what, if anything, comes after life, the most honest answer is that no one knows.
- So far, there is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove what happens after we die. In this video, astronomer Michelle Thaller, neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris, science educator Bill Nye, and others consider what an afterlife would look like, what the biblical concepts of 'eternal life' and 'hell' really mean, why so many people around the world choose to believe that death is not the end, and whether or not that belief is ultimately detrimental or beneficial to one's life.
- Life after death is also not relegated to discussions of religion. "Digital and genetic immortality are within reach," says theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. Kaku shares how, in the future, we may be able to physically talk to the dead thanks to hologram technology and the digitization of our online lives, memories, and connectome.
<div></div><ul class="ee-ul"></ul><p class="media-headline"><br></p>
<div class="rm-shortcode amazon-assets-widget" data-rm-shortcode-id="ffc66e38beb98c0df04ae3e1476c991d" contenteditable="false">
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451636024?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41vETPBKk9L.jpg" class="amazon-assets-widget__image widget__image">
<div class="amazon-assets-widget__description">
<div class="amazon-assets-widget__title" style="display: block;">Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion</div>
<div class="amazon-assets-widget__by-amazon"><!-- <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451636024?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">by now at amazone</a> --></div>
<div class="amazon-assets-widget__list-price"><span class="grey">List Price: </span><span class="list-price">$14.79</span></div>
<div class="amazon-assets-widget__new-price"><span class="grey">New From: </span><span class="new-price">$12.35</span> <span class="grey">in Stock</span></div>
<div class="amazon-assets-widget__used-price"><span class="grey">Used From: </span><span class="used-price">$7.10</span> <span class="grey">in Stock</span></div>
</div>
</a>
</div>
Keep reading
Show less
Pattern recognition influences religious belief, according to new study
Christians and Muslims that pick out unconscious patterns are more likely to believe in a god.
11 September, 2020
Credit: Nadia Grapes / Shutterstock
- Georgetown researchers found strong implicit pattern learning implies belief in a god.
- The study included American Christians and Afghani Muslims, representing two different religious and cultural backgrounds.
- Further research on polytheistic religious believers could provide insights into a cognitive basis of religion.
<p>In Genesis 1:27, one of the writers of the Bible claims that "God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created them." The reverse is most likely true: man created a god with his attributes. Physical features are not the only qualities gods share with humans. Pattern recognition appears to be another.</p><p>A god that can make sense out of patterns in nature is certainly a powerful being. According to a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18362-3" target="_blank">new study</a> from Georgetown University, it appears that humans endowed with this skill are more likely to believe in a god. </p><p>The team, led by Adam Green, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, writes that religious variability is common. Universal themes might be extracted from disparate regions, but each of the hundreds of religious practices that came be known broadly as Hinduism espouse different ideas.</p><p>The same holds true for every religion: Buddhism has a "great vehicle" and a lesser one; Shia practices are wildly different than Sufis; Japanese Buddhists practice quite different rituals than California Buddhists; what's divine in one Christian sect is blasphemy in another. While the more fervent religious believe their views to be correct, open-minded believers are likely to see the possibility of communication. </p><p>To combat the problem of relativism, Green's team chose volunteers from American Christians and Afghani Muslims, two varied religious and cultural samples. They wanted to know if implicit pattern learning—"perceptual mechanisms evolved for predictive processing of environmental information"—is a predictor of belief in a god. </p>
Why religion is literally false and metaphorically true | Bret Weinstein | Big Think
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c5ed6493977a7d1b4bfff8aef6553113"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c0_J998UD9s?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>The answer, according to their research, is yes. As Green <a href="https://gumc.georgetown.edu/news-release/study-suggests-unconscious-learning-underlies-belief-in-god/" target="_blank">notes</a>,</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"This is not a study about whether God exists, this is a study about why and how brains come to believe in gods. Our hypothesis is that people whose brains are good at subconsciously discerning patterns in their environment may ascribe those patterns to the hand of a higher power." </p><p>Consciousness only provides a sliver of data that our brains pay attention to. Bottom-up processes operate below the conscious threshold, such as the biological operations that maintain our body's homeostasis. Threat detection and other forms of perception are also processed from the bottom-up, although, as the authors write, top-down processing is not an entirely separate domain. The two inform one another. </p><p><a href="https://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-does-intuition-work" target="_self">Intuition</a> is another example of bottom-up processing that appears in consciousness. We pick up signals from our environment and process it unconsciously all the time.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Because individuals are not aware of such bottom-up influences, intuitions drawn from unconscious processing may instead be consciously interpreted via explicit belief narratives that provide a rationalized context for beliefs and behaviors."</p><img
class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image"
data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDAwODIyMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY4MDQzMjMwM30.Fl7K78OajYG83U7KoP_ZPT3vvFXb9yRXXEkUJY2r-qU/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C166%2C0%2C328&height=700"
id="f000f"
width="1245"
height="700"
data-rm-shortcode-id="b5b35140b2231d7777e763537f3510a7" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="surfer on beach" />
<p class=""><br></p>A general view of the beach and a surfer as photographed on March 20, 2014 in Marina del Rey, California.
Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
<p>Face processing, implicit racial bias, and pathogen avoidance provide further context. In fact, cleansing rituals likely evolved from an unconscious fear of disease. Our ancestors applied a spiritual dimension to their bathing rituals to make sense out of unconscious drives.</p><p>For this study, 199 (mostly) Christian volunteers in Washington, D.C. and 149 Muslims in Kabul watched a sequence of dots on a computer screen. They were tasked to press a corresponding button every time a dot appeared. Participants with strong implicit learning abilities began to unconsciously recognize patterns in the appearance of the dots, preemptively hitting the corresponding button <em>before</em> they appeared. None of the volunteers claimed to have seen a pattern, suggesting their guesses were unconscious. </p><p>The team observed a link between the strongest implicit learners and religious belief. Recognizing patterns before they appear is correlated with belief in a god. The team was surprised to discover such a strong correlation between two disparate religious and cultural groups, suggesting the potential of a universal theme. As Green notes, </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"A brain that is more predisposed to implicit pattern learning may be more inclined to believe in a god no matter where in the world that brain happens to find itself, or in which religious context."</p><p>An interesting next step could be studying polytheistic groups, where pattern recognition is likely stronger. It's one thing to give credit to one god for everything, but quite another to assign a variety of divine figures for the relationships between natural phenomena. </p><p>The authors conclude that they cannot write off top-down processing as part of religious belief. Indeed, faith likes has multivariate influences. Still, this research details another cognitive basis of belief, highlighting common ground we all share regardless of the form of our deities. </p><p>--</p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://derekberes.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Substack</a>. His next book is</em> "<em>Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."</em></p>
Keep reading
Show less
Has science made religion useless?
Placing science and religion at opposite ends of the belief spectrum is to ignore their unique purposes.
15 July, 2020
- Science and religion (fact versus faith) are often seen as two incongruous groups. When you consider the purpose of each and the questions that they seek to answer, the comparison becomes less black and white.
- This video features religious scholars, a primatologist, a neuroendocrinologist, a comedian, and other brilliant minds considering, among other things, the evolutionary function that religion serves, the power of symbols, and the human need to learn, explore, and know the world around us so that it becomes a less scary place.
- "I think most people are actually kind of comfortable with the idea that science is a reliable way to learn about nature, but it's not the whole story and there's a place also for religion, for faith, for theology, for philosophy," says Francis Collins, American geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). "But that harmony perspective doesn't get as much attention. Nobody is as interested in harmony as they are in conflict."
Popular
