The universal enemy
Oh good. What a relief. How kind of Walter Isaacson to reassure us all on this very material point – Einstein hated atheists! Oh, whew! Hooray hoorah kaloo kalay, I was so afraid he might have thought atheists were okay but no, no, no, hallelujah, he made sure to say otherwise so that we in 2007 would not be put off our feed with worry.
But throughout his life, Einstein was consistent in rejecting the charge that he was an atheist…And unlike Sigmund Freud or Bertrand Russell or George Bernard Shaw, Einstein never felt the urge to denigrate those who believed in God; instead, he tended to denigrate atheists…In fact, Einstein tended to be more critical of debunkers, who seemed to lack humility or a sense of awe, than of the faithful.
Yay! Yay, yay, yay. That’s so good. Because the US is so teeming with atheists who are always denigrating theists while there are no theists at all who ever say a harsh word about atheists (or what they choose to call ‘Darwinists’ either). There is such a massive disproportion in US discourse between atheist denigration of theists or theism and theist denigration of atheists or atheism that it is 1) a miracle and 2) a very good thing that Time has published this gobbet of phlegm just in time for Easter.
Are you sure that the denigrating of atheists is something the writer of the article implicitly approves of?
Pretty sure. It’s in Time, for a start. It fits a pattern with Isaacson. And the way it’s written does manipulate things that way.
“Einstein never felt the urge to denigrate those who believed in God; instead, he tended to denigrate atheists”
‘Denigrating those who believe in God’ is automatically wrong and wicked, so the instead is (I think) a fairly obvious endorsement. And the whole thing is written that way. So, yes, I’m pretty sure.
‘Denigrating those who believe in God’ is also, as a matter of fact, quite often a tendentious way of describing, say, atheist argumentation. Did Shaw, Russell and Freud really denigrate those who believe in God, or did they merely offer reasons for thinking belief in God is mistaken or foolish? Those are not actually identical, but theists love to take them as identical and then get down to work denigrating atheists for a pack of elitist believer-trampling swine.
Have you found anything in the article that looks as if Isaacson doesn’t approve of the denigration of atheists?
“[…]debunkers, who seemed to lack humility or a sense of awe[…]”
That sounds like implicit disapproval of self-confident atheism to me, though it’s possible that Isaacson was just being careless here.
“Have you found anything in the article that looks as if Isaacson doesn’t approve of the denigration of atheists?”
The very usage of the word “denigrate” which has strong negative connotations. It implies going well beyond reasoned argument. Note that it is immediately followed by a quote supposedly exemplifying such denigration: “What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos”. I would gather quite a few atheists would protest at such a characterization of their views.
Most of the article, as it is, seems dedicated to contrasting the views of Einstein with the religious mainstream, and distinguishing his Spinozistic deism from mainstream theism. To tell you the truth, I think it’s a pretty good piece. I would balk however at the characterization of Russell as denigrating atheists: far as I know, Russell was quite able to be respectful of ideas he disagreed with. Including theistic ones. Not so sure about Freud and Shaw.
Now, of course, Einstein is often used as a poster-boy for the “religious scientist”. Which can lead to some kind of silly authoritarianism (“How can you disagree with Einstein?”) – I don’t think theists have a monopoly on this kind of poor reasoning. But I don’t see this particular article as an example of such.
Denigrate – in the context, Isaacson has simply used it to turn the tables on atheists. ‘He didn’t beat up on believers, he beat up on dogmatic atheists, so ha.’ He also didn’t bother to emphasize the fact that E. said most so-called atheists. And of course we would protest at that version of atheism, but that’s not why Isaacson quoted it.
No, I don’t see the article as an example of how can you disagreeism, I see it as an example of those pesky atheists, Einstein was better than thatism.
Maybe it helps to be a Murkan. To me it just yells ‘yet another dig at atheists’ – it’s not a rarefied genre over here.
I agree Ophelia – if that’s not what the article is for then why was it written? It says nothing new about Einstein or his views after all, and I can’t believe that Time’s focus groups discerned an overpowering desire in its putative readers for information about him.
IMHO it’s just another stick to beat atheism with at a time when the Religious Right feels itself under pressure.
Having read the article, I’m confused as to how Einstein could have reconciled his belief in the historical Jesus with his belief in a God of natural law who does not intervene in “the fates and doings of mankind”. The miracles flaut those laws, and the resurrection is supposed to be a redemptive moment for us all.
From the evidence in the article, Einstein seems to have the idea that God generates physical and moral law; hence his conclusion that religion is the proper arena for morality. But if God originated moral law, and everything is determined, then they should be as impossible to disobey as gravity.
Andy writes:
>I’m confused as to how Einstein could have reconciled his belief in the historical Jesus with his belief in a God of natural law who does not intervene in “the fates and doings of mankind”. The miracles flaut those laws, and the resurrection is supposed to be a redemptive moment for us all.< When Einstein said he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, I don’t doubt that what he meant was just that, not that he believed all the stories about him. Obviously he didn’t believe Jesus performed miracles or was divine, etc, etc.
Ophelia: You wrote of the Time article “It fits a pattern with Isaacson”. For those of us across the pond with little knowledge of the man, could you briefly expound on this.
“”[…]debunkers, who seemed to lack humility or a sense of awe[…]””
Aeroplane pilot (pointing to large aircraft in the background): “This is a Boeing 777, it flies from Gatwick to JFK and…”
James Randi (raising eyebrows): “Flies, you say?”
Pilot: “Yes, flies, we…”
Randi: “Can you make it fly now?”
Pilot: “Well not really. We’re not in it and…”
Randi (glancing to camera): “That’s very interesting. Would you be able to get this so-called 777 to fly if we got inside it?”
Pilot: “Well, no, we don’t have clearance but if you wait five minutes then…”
Randi (glancing to camera): “That’s very interesting. What if we could surround your fetish…”
Pilot: “Pardon?”
Randi: “Your 777, your flight ritual fetish, what if we could surround it with a farraday cage?”
Pilot: “Well it wouldn’t be able to take off then because apart from the fact that we wouldn’t be able to contact the tower we wouldn’t be able to move so…”
Randi (glancing to camera): “That’s very interesting.”
(And so on.)
Read carefully the sentence: “What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.” Isaacson calls this “denigrating atheists,” but it doesn’t sound like denigration to me. He’s just calmly stating what he disagrees with in what “most so-called atheists” think, as he interprets them.
Reading this sentence together with the other Einstein quotes in this article (and remember that ripping quotes out of their original context often makes it easy to misinterpret them), I think it’s fair to say that he was an atheist in the sense in which we usually use the term today. That is, he did not think that a “divine” personality of the sort described in Abrahamic texts exists. He simply found the word “God” useful on some occasions to convey his attitude toward the law-governed universe.
And of course he rejected the idea of miracles, as the last paragraph points out. “The fact that the world was comprehensible, that it follows laws, was worthy of awe.” This is not the view of any Christian/Jew/Muslim, or at most it fits very, very few of them.
“I think it’s fair to say that he was an atheist in the sense in which we usually use the term today.”
That’s another reason I think the Isaacson article is tendentious and manipulative along the predictable lines.
Allen,
I think some (much) of my idea of the pattern Isaacson fits comes from various passing comments over the years which I can’t remember now. However I can specify the first comment, the one the later ones fit with: it was when he was CEO of CNN and was something about the need to adapt or fit or shape the content of a news channel to the needs of the broadest possible audience (something like that – you know the sort of thing) and therefore not to make it too demanding or difficult or arcane or etc etc etc (you know the sort of thing) – just a classically smug patronizing bit of commercial practicality dressed up as concern for The Common People. I conceived a strong dislike for him on the basis of that comment (fair? possibly not – but then he was in a position to do a lot of harm to a branch of the mass media and hence to public education) and I’ve never yet seen anything that seemed inconsistent with it. It’s a classic US gambit: talking about commercial pressures as if they were democracy at its finest, and making the steady reduction of quality in mass media some kind of victory for equality. It makes me ill, that kind of thing.
“I think it’s fair to say that he was an atheist in the sense in which we usually use the term today. That is, he did not think that a “divine” personality of the sort described in Abrahamic texts exists.”
If that is indeed the way the term “atheist” is “usually” used today, then I would be an atheist. Quite a few modern theologists would be atheists. If atheism as a position can be widened to include the positive assertion of the existence of a Deity – even a non-interventionist, deistic or pantheistic Deity – then I would suggest the term “atheist” has lost all utility.
There are good reasons to distinguish deism, pantheism, process theism and other positions asserting a non-interventionist, non-miraculous God in some sense coterminous with nature from atheism. Because “nature” identified with (the revelation of) God in the pantheist position is not exactly the same as “nature” in the atheist position. In the former, it is potentially an object of worship and veneration – which goes beyond awe. There is an “I-thou” relationship implied with seems to me to be absent in a strictly atheist position.
Also, a deist or pantheist position potentially allows for God being more than the physical universe – which is precisely what Einstein hints at in Isaacson’s quotes. Though some forms of pantheism blend into atheism, this does not go for all varieties, and certainly not for deism.
Particularly, deism as well as (some forms of) pantheism allow for a spiritual/mental basis to reality. This in itself does not entail a negation of atheism: it is possible to be an atheist and an idealist. However, I would venture there is a strong correlation between some kind of ultimate idealism/spiritualism and theism/deism on the one hand, and materialism and atheism on the other.
There are some quotations which indicate Einstein held such a view – particularly in referring to God as “spirit”. But I am not confident in ascribing it to him: there are other passages in which Einstein declares himself an agnostic. To pinpoint something like “Einstein’s position” on the basis of remarks here and there in letters, interviews etc. is probably futile: people’s positions change during their lifetime, and Einstein was of course under no obligation to elaborately write down his metaphysics and stick to it ever after.
But I would insist that claiming Einstein as an “atheist” probably does violence to the position(s) he held, and to the distinctive philosophical position of deism in general. The same goes for claiming Einstein as a religionist by the religiously orthodox.
One may assert, of course, that Deists may posit the existence of a “God” but that it doesn’t matter as such a God does not intervene in the going-ons of nature, does not bother people with explicit moral precepts, much less orders them to kill infidels. Of course! I totally agree. But there is a difference between “does not matter in terms of political pragmatical consequence” and “does not matter”. A lot of progressive religionists have no intent to kill infidels, want Church and state to be seperated, and do not want creationism to enter the classroom. That does not make them atheists. What it implies, though, is that the political divides we face do not correspond in any kind of neat way to underlying philosophical positions. But this, to me, is nothing new.
There is something else that is missed in the whole religion vs. atheism dichotomy and the tugging-at-Einstein involved in it. Which is that there are probably philosophical differences (as well as political ones) which are of more interest than those implied by theism vs. deism vs. atheism. Philosophically, I would have more in common with an atheist indeterminist than with a deterministic theist/deist as Einstein may have been. Politically, I have a lot more in common with OB’s views than with the theocratic wet dreams of the theocratic right.
So: if the argument should be more about Einstein’s intellectual attitudes, his rejection of supernaturalism, his pro-science attitude, etc. having more in common with those of many atheists than with religious orthodoxy, then use one of the labels that is actually appropriate: “secularist” or “freethinker” – but do not pin a philosophical position on him he by all accounts did not hold.
Whew – a bit of an elephant gun to kill a gnat, there, Merlijn – especially since you omitted Jon’s qualifying opening clause.
Anyway, sure, fine, but to the extent that Isaacson is pretending that Einstein sort of kind of in a dim light belongs in the theist camp, he’s playing tiresome games.
“but to the extent that Isaacson is pretending that Einstein sort of kind of in a dim light belongs in the theist camp, he’s playing tiresome games.”
Agreed.
Come to think of it (having just re-read the post) I missed a reason for thinking Isaacson approves denigration of atheists that is right there in the passage I quoted – he says ‘throughout his life, Einstein was consistent in rejecting the charge that he was an atheist’ – classic example. It’s not a ‘charge,’ it’s not a crime, it’s not a vice, it’s not immoral. Isaacson just sneaks the idea in there as if it’s self-evident. Classic pandering, classic stealth. This is why I don’t like him – we get so much of this kind of thing here, and I just hate it.
It stealthily positions both him and all the readers among the good right people who think atheism is reprehensible, and it does it without taking the heat for saying so in so many words. Yech.
Well, Merlijn as usual gives us a very learned philosophicotheological essay, but it seems to me that Einstein was neither a philosopher nor a theologian. It looks as though he usually said or wrote things about “God” when other people stimulated him (or poked and prodded him) into expressing himself, and on those occasions he spoke as an ordinary (though very intelligent) person. He sometimes expressed an affinity with Spinoza, so perhaps one could consider him a 20th-century Spinoza. Whether that makes him an atheist or not is up to everyone to decide for themselves.
What he was was a physicist. Probably his most famous statement about “God” was that he did not think that God played dice with the universe. Here, of course, he was simply using metaphorical language to express his argument with quantum theory, which was a very precise physical argument as he laid it out on other occasions.
He also often expressed his awe at the scientifically-discovered order of the universe. If you think atheists can’t feel this sort of awe, you should read more atheists. A lot of them emphasize that they do. But that doesn’t lead them to conclude that the universe was created by a creating god. They remain atheists.
Strange – up to now I think I’d assumed that Isaacson was a secular humanist. he has written for Skeptical Inquirer, and wrote a very good biography of Benjamin Franklin in which (as I recall) he praised Franklin’s enlightenment skepticism of established religion.
Of course, being a secular humanist is no guarantee against being daft. Is Isaacson one of the many people out there who seem to think it’s OK to criticize organized religion, as long as you still hold some kind of belief in God?