inafoxhole (inafoxhole) wrote,

50 reasons (NOT) to believe in god

#42 Albert Einstein said: "A legitimate conflict between science & religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."

Theists seem to forget that I value what Einstein said about relativity because he had evidence to prove his theory. It jived better with observation and fact than did previous theories. Einstein is not, however, a kind of prophet, whereby I have to take everything he said on any subject seriously. I believe I addressed this before when our theist offered us a quote on Darwin. I am under no obligation whatever to accept everything either of them said because I accept their scientific work.

I should also point out that Einstein was a believer in "Spinoza's god" and basically a pantheist. His notions of god and religion were not exactly the kind of thing our theist friend is likely to subscribe to. His god was abstract and certainly impersonal.

Later on, we get another of these, so let's jump ahead and dispatch them both together...

#45 Stephen Hawkins has admitted: "Science may solve the problems of how the universe began, but it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist at all?"

I strongly suspect that our theist means Stephen Hawking. There are also two ways to take this quote. One can take it as our theist does and claim that this "why" question has an answer and that only religion can answer it. Or you can take it as the atheist does: that "why" questions are meaningless and this have no answer; or more generously, it is not a question we are capable of answering, so it serves no purpose to waste time wondering.

But we are brought back to the point I made before. Stephen Hawking is a great physicist, but I accept those things with sound math and sound observation and experimentation to back them up. And the rest is beside the point.
Tags: arguments for god, darwin, einstein, hawking, spinoza

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