These days it's actually more like "58 Years of Science" but I am going to continue to stick with the original theme anyhow. This is the ninth post in the series. You can find an index to all of the posts in the series at http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2017/04/50-years-of-science-links.html. I update that post every time I add a new entry to the series.
Anyhow, I take the Isaac Asimov book "The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Physical Sciences" as my baseline for the state of science as it was when he wrote the book (1959 - 60). In these posts I am reviewing what he reported and examining what's changed since. For this post I am starting with the chapter Asimov titled "Magnets" and then moving on to "Meteors". These sections are from his section entitled "The Atmosphere".
Asimov starts with where the word "Magnet" came from (a town called "Magnesia") and notes that "lodestone" is another name for a naturally occurring magnet. Magnets were only a curiosity until people figured how to impart magnetism to materials like steel. This made it relatively easy to float a magnetized needle in a bowl of water or mount it on a pivot. Either way it could now rotate freely. And one end generally pointed toward the north. It could be used as a compass when landmarks were invisible or not available. In 1600 Gilbert figured out that the earth itself had a magnetic field.
The earth's magnetic field made one end of the compass point toward the north. But a local source of magnetism could deflect the needle away from north. That's why I had to say "generally" above. But the method was pretty reliable as there were few competing magnetic fields about. It was certainly better on average than other methods available at the time. A critical observation that led him to this conclusion was that if a magnetized needle was allowed to revolve through three dimensions it did not stay level. Instead it pointed down into the earth.
Initially there was no satisfactory explanation for why earth had a magnetic field. Asimov attacks this problem by moving on to Faraday's observation that if you jiggle small fibers of iron on a piece of paper over a magnet they will line up. This makes the pattern of the magnetic field visible. From there imagining that a similar but much larger field was somehow created by the earth was a small step.
Faraday also intuited that if an electric field could make a magnetic field as Oersted had observed then it might be possible to reverse the process. He succeeded in showing that his intuition was correct. The result was the first demonstration of how to use a moving magnet to create electricity. This led directly to the electrical transformer and many other devices we now depend on.
This in turn led to the invention of the dynamo, a device for turning other kinds of power into electric power. From there it was a short step to the invention of the electric motor, a device for turning electric power into other kinds of power. This led directly to the "unification" of electricity and magnetism into what we now call electromagnetism.
A Scottish scientist named James Clerk Maxwell codified how electromagnetism worked into a set of laws he published in 1861 and 1862. We now speak of Maxwell's Equations, the mathematical embodiment of his laws. These laws have stood the test of time. Neither relativity nor quantum mechanics has required their revision or abandonment. And nothing that's happened since Asimov's book was published has changed this.
Returning to earth's magnetic field, by 1960 some early ideas were being developed as to what was going on. Elsasser, for instance, speculated about how slow eddies in molten Iron might produce the field. His and other ideas have been enhanced and elaborated on since. But there are still a lot of questions and not much in the way of solid answers as of now.
Understanding of solar magnetism, sun spots, and the like was just in its infancy. This is currently a field of very active investigation. Giant whorls of solar material periodically erupt from the surface of the sun. Magnetism is involved. There is a "solar wind" of charged particles that is launched from the sun and hits the earth. A strong enough solar wind can damage satellites, damage or knock out electric power grids, and by a number of methods generally wreck havoc on the earth and the lives of its inhabitants. And all of it is tied up with solar magnetism. In the interest of brevity I am going to leave it at that.
Asimov observes that the magnetic and rotational poles of the earth do not align. Besides confusing scientists this means that magnetic compasses don't necessarily point where we want them to. This discrepancy is called "compass deviation" and led to the development of the gyrocompass in 1911. Gyrocompasses depend on high tech tops spinning at very high speed to maintain a sense of direction.
Since 1911 gyrocompasses have gotten a lot better. They quickly became more accurate than magnetic compasses but they were also much more expensive. We now have even better alternatives. One, creating an even more expensive but also more accurate gyrocompass-like device by sending light through long coiled up fiber optic cables, was popular with the military and on commercial airplanes for a while. But mostly we now rely on GPS.
The idea of being able to detect and suitably process weak radio signals using small and relatively inexpensive hand held devices was unthinkable in 1960. It is now commonplace. And the other marvel necessary to make GPS work, the ability to easily measure time to the level of accuracy required to make GPS work in such a device, was also unimaginable in 1960. And yet your run of the mill smart phone now does it so effortlessly we no longer notice.
Asimov mentions the then controversial idea that the magnetic poles of the earth could flip completely. We now know that the poles have completely reversed their polarity a number of times over millions of years. The history proving this is written in the rocks that make up, among other things, the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
The orientation of the magnetic field can be measured by studying small particles of Iron in lava that has long since solidified. These particles measure the direction of the earth's magnetic field at the time the lava solidified. We have other ways of knowing when the lava solidified. These bands showing magnetism switching back and forth are written on the floor of the Atlantic. This discovery was one of the most important lines of evidence that led to the general acceptance of the idea of Plate Tectonics. In 1960 Plate Tectonics was inside knowledge known only to the few who were directly involved in the research. But the word spread quickly and the Plate Tectonics revolution was well under way by 1970, only a decade after the publication of this book.
Scientists were just starting to investigate solar weather, the causes and impact of the Aurora Borealis (northern lights) and the similar Aurora Australis (southern lights), sun spots (what they were and what caused them), and many "solar" subjects in 1960. A lot has happened since then. Several satellites have been launched specifically to study the sun. We now know that sun oscillates (ring like a bell) in various complicated ways that tell us a lot about what's happening under the surface. But the state of the art when it came to studying the sun previous to the publication of the book had made enough progress to produce a discovery about something much closer to home. A prediction was made and validated that something called the "ionosphere" existed and was part of earth's upper atmosphere.
Just before the book was published the "Van Allen" radiation belts that circle the earth and make space travel dangerous for humans had just been discovered. Space is "empty vacuum", right? Well, actually not. There are lots of different things in space at extremely low concentrations. Investigating this sort of thing was just starting in 1960. We have now mapped out a lot of this in some detail. Low concentrations of electrically charged particles are flying around in complex patterns. A lot of these particles come from the sun but some of them come from other sources. Moving electric particles mean moving magnetic fields. The earth swims in a complex set of continuously changing magnetic fields. These fields literally keep us humans alive by diverting lots of very nasty stuff away from the surface of the earth.
Before leaving this chapter let me make the following observations. Scientists have known for some time that earth's atmosphere has layers such as the ionosphere. By the time of Asimov's book they knew that sun's "atmosphere" also had it's own set of layers including the corona. We now know a lot more about these subjects than we did in 1960 but we are still just scratching the surface. But what about the post-atmosphere, the stuff above the regular atmosphere?
In the case of the earth I am talking about the Van Allen radiation belts, what we now call the "magnetosphere" (the structure of magnetic fields that surround the earth), etc. Since then we have gone from having just discovered the existence of one component to having a more complete inventory of components and knowing something about each component.
And we now know there is also a post-atmosphere around the sun. It consists of things like the solar wind. And in a manner analogous to the discovery of the Van Allen belts just before Asimov's book was published, we think we have just recently detected the edge of the solar system. A couple of years ago the Voyager I space probe got far enough from the sun to detect changes in the solar post-atmosphere. This seems to demark the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space.
Interstellar literally means "between suns". So the interstellar space we are talking about here is in actuality the "atmosphere" of our local galaxy, the Milky Way. It is possible there is a boundary that demarks the end of the Milky Way and the beginning of intergalactic space. We don't know and presently have no way of ever finding out the details or even if such a boundary exists. If it exists it is just too far away to study. But the Milky Way is part of a galactic cluster boringly called the "Local Cluster". This too might have a boundary. As might the local galactic super-cluster (which may or may not be called the Virgo super-cluster - I've seen it called a number of things) that our Local Cluster is a part of.
On to meteors. The Greeks gave them the nickname of "shooting stars" because they behaved like stars that shot across the sky. Stars are not supposed to do that, at least not according to the Greek cosmology of the time. (And this cosmology remained unchanged until the advent of the scientific revolution.) Instead, they are supposed to stay in one fixed place in the heavenly firmament for eternity.
The visible lifetime of a meteor is short, perhaps a minute. But Aristotle observed that the number of stars visible in the heavens seemed to remain the same even after a "shower" of meteors. The name meteor means "things of the air" because that's where Aristotle concluded they hung out. (This conveniently meant that the "unchanging heavens" part of cosmology could be retained as the air was not part of the heavens.)
We now know that meteors actually are things of the air. What we see is them burning up as the move through the air at incredible speed. And most of them burn up completely before they hit the ground. Confusingly, the odd meteor, or more likely meteor fragment, that makes it all the way to the ground is called a meteorite. I always found that confusing.
Very occasionally the ancients were able to connect debris on the ground (what we now call meteorites) with a particular meteor. This seemed like a rare and profound and important event, an omen if you will. So on a number of occasions an object of meteoric origin of significant size took on religious significance. So the Kabala, the most sacred object in Islam is a meteorite. A meteorite is mentioned in the Iliad. This also happened at other times and in other places.
The beginnings of science, at least in the western world, occurred in a place and at a time when the influence of the Catholic Church was great. Meteors and especially meteorites did not fit into Catholic cosmology. That spilled over into the behavior of western scientists in that they initially denied the cosmic origins of meteorites. This slowly changed in the early 1800's. A giant meteor shower (an event where a large number of meteors streak across the sky in a short period of time) in the US in 1833 was one of several events that caused scientists to decide to take a fresh look.
Careful study elicited the information that some meteor showers seemed to reoccur on a fixed schedule and the meteors associated with a specific shower seemed to be coming from roughly the same place in the sky. (A number of popular meteor showers that are easily seen with the unaided eye are now named for the constellation they appear to originate from.) This allowed astronomers to treat these events like observations of a heavenly body and see if they could calculate an orbit. Schiaparelli was the first to notice that these orbits looked like cometary orbits. We now know that in a number of instances a comet lost all its gas and ice and that the cluster of rocks and gravel that remained became a cloud. When the earth passes through that cloud a meteor shower results.
Once scientists believed that meteorites were a real thing and deserved careful study they initially concluded that most meteorites were made of Iron. This turned out to be an error caused by sampling bias. It's just that a chunk of meteor iron is pretty distinctive so it is easy to identify correctly so it is correctly categorized a high percentage of the time. A more careful study determined that most meteorites actually are "stony". They contain non-metallic elements that are "refractory", they have a very high melting point. This class of meteorites is easy to misclassify as something other than a meteorite.
Meteorites are rare. As of 1960 (I don't think this has changed since) no one was known to have been killed by one. But big ones have made a splash. Asimov lists a few like the one that landed in Siberia in 1908. Around the publication date what we now call Meteor Crater in Arizona was thought by only a few scientists to be of meteoric origin. Most scientists thought it was of volcanic or other non-meteorite origin. We now know for sure it was caused by a meteor impact. Interestingly enough, we now know that the opposite situation pertained to Crater Lake in Oregon. Many people used to think it was a meteor crater. We now know it was created when a volcano called Mount Mazama exploded about 7,700 years ago..
And we now know that the Dinosaurs were wiped out 67 million years ago by a large meteorite that hit the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. It and numerous other large but old meteorite craters have been discovered since 1960 with the help of satellites and other modern tools. Many of them are invisible to the naked eye.
The study of lunar craters was just beginning at the time of the book's publication. The Russian "Luna" space probe had just released pictures of the far side of the moon in 1958. And, as I discussed in a previous post in this series, telescopes (i.e. Hubble Space Telescope) and telescopic techniques (i.e. adaptive optics) that would deliver really sharp pictures of the surface of the moon (and whose coverage extended to the far side) did not exist in 1960. Nor at that time had the Apollo missions made it to the moon, collected samples from its surface, and returned them to earth for study.
We now have sophisticated methods for estimating the age of lunar craters. So we now know that most of the craters of the moon happened early in the life of the solar system. And we have been able to study other parts of the solar system in some detail. Pretty much everything has craters. Even Venus, which has a surface temperature of about 800 degrees and a fierce atmosphere, has a few (very few) craters. More informative are the craters on Mercury, Mars, and some of the moons of the gas giant planets. In the case of some of these moons, for instance, we know something is going on. If the surface has too few craters it is young. A number of these moons have areas almost completely devoid of craters so we know that fresh surface is being created right now. That's exciting.
At the time little was known about the origin of meteors and meteorites. There was the business about meteor showers I noted above. And, as noted by Asimov, the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter was known of and seemed like a likely source. There has been a lot of progress since then. We now know that some meteorites actually do originate in the Asteroid Belt. But most come from somewhere else. For instance, some meteoroids have been positively identified as coming from the moon and others from Mars. This has proved more useful in learning about the history and composition of the moon and Mars than it has been about meteors and meteorites. Scientists have also learned some tricks like prospecting in parts of Antarctica for meteorites. So they now have a lot more meteorites to study now than they did back then.
And the science of celestial mechanics has advanced quite a bit. So we know a lot about processes that are likely to sent things our way. This ties into something Asimov talks about. There are rocks passing close to earth all the time. Certainly the big ones are dangerous. That was recognized back then. But only the largest rocks like Eros were big enough to be identified, let alone studied. Eros presents no threat. But even the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs would have been hard to detect with 1960's technology. And if detected there was nothing at the time that could have been done.
We (in the form of NASA) now takes the business of looking for anything that is big enough to be dangerous and is also heading our way very seriously. And we have some capability that would allow us to deal with a dangerous one if we are given enough lead time. We are now confident we have spotted or will soon spot all of the very large (but still way smaller than Eros) rocks. And if it is small enough it will burn up in the atmosphere harmlessly. But there is still a group that is too big to burn up but too small to detect. Tools and techniques for handling these potential bad boys are getting better but they are not at 100% yet. They are, however, working well enough that every couple of years the news ponderously announces that some rock missed us by a million or so miles. This is truly a case of "a miss is as good as a mile".
Asimov notes the same thing I did above. Meteorites allow the study of things that would otherwise be out of reach. Some are thought to be "pristine", little changed since the early days of the formation of the solar system. Studying one of these is like studying the early solar system without needing a combination time machine and space ship. He notes that by using radioactive dating techniques age can be measured. One such measurement Asimov reports pegs the age of the solar system at 5 billion years. This is very close to the modern figure of 4.6 billion years.
Using various techniques we now know a lot about the sequence and timing of various events in the formation of the solar system. There are dating techniques that tell us approximately when it formed. But other techniques allow us to know with surprising precision how long various processes took. So we know that the sun formed and by a very short time later (perhaps a hundred million years or less) pretty much all of the planets, moons, etc. had also formed and evolved to pretty much their current form. It now looks, however, like the distance from the sun at the time of formation of the gas giant planets, for instance, was quite different than it is now. There is a lot that is not understood about where in the solar system various items were formed and how they got to where they are now. But that's a subject for another time.
Interesting enough, as Asimov informs us, there is a lot of stuff bombarding the earth on a daily basis. 4.6 billion years is a long time so it wouldn't take a very high rate of bombardment for the total to add up to a significant percentage of the current mass of the earth by now. But calculations done then (circa 1960) and calculations done now indicate that the amount of additional material being added to the mass of the earth by this process is insignificant. Most of what hits earth on a daily basis is truly tiny. 20,000 meteorites weighing at least a gram hit the earth each day. And at least 200,000 smaller meteors hit. But the fact that the total amount of mass is so small doesn't mean they pass unnoticed. There is a phenomena called "Zodiacal light". Zodiacal light is not very bright. But it is still bright enough that it can be used to make the above estimates with considerable confidence.
Next time: The Origin of Air.
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Einstein and God
It's been a while since I posted in this area. In 2016 (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2016/04/faith-versus-reason.html) I touched peripherally on this area. Before that you have to go back to late 2014 (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2014/12/faith-based-conflict-resolution.html) where I again touched on the subject peripherally. Before that you have to back to early 2014 (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2014/02/ken-ham-creationism.html). In that post I discussed Creationism at length. But you have to go all the way back to late 2011 (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2011/10/science-versus-religion.html) for a post that is directly on point. And I spent a lot of time on the subject back in November of 2010. (See http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/11/evolution-of-relationship-between-god.html and http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/11/scientific-perspective-on-religion.html and http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-science-religion.html). So it's time to revisit. And I have an excuse (actually two).
I was given a wonderful biography of Einstein ("Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson) for Christmas. People forget how articulate Einstein was. And over the span of his life he opined on many subjects. One of them was God and religion. I also got some other books for Christmas. I am currently most of the way through "The God Argument" by A. C. Grayling. You can get a good feel for the subject under discussion by consulting the subtitle: "The Case Against Religion and for Humanism". I'll get back to this latter book later. But let's start with this question: Was Einstein religious?
Most people would say no without spending much time thinking about it. He was a hard nosed scientist and everyone knows they are a pack of atheists, right? But "everyone" would be wrong. That is if you pay attention to what Einstein actually said about his religious beliefs. Isaacson scatters this information throughout his book. But he also devotes a chapter ("Einstein's God") to the subject. I am going to focus on the contents of that chapter. But, where appropriate, I am also going to bring in information from other parts of the book.
Let's start with the Big Bang. Jews, Christians, and Moslems share the Old Testament. And the first book of the Old Testament is Genesis. And Genesis contains the whole "and God created the world in six days" story. For "people of the book" this is the religious equivalent of the Big Bang. Boiling Genesis and the Big Bang down the world came into existence at a certain specific point. Genesis and a large contingent of Christian literalists say it was 6,000 years ago. Scientists say it was 13.7 billion years ago. But both takes on the question agree that there is a key question: How did it all get started?
There is a sound scientific answer to this question: insufficient information. There are lots of possibilities and not enough information to pick between them. One possibility is that the whole thing was kicked off by some very powerful space alien. So what do you call this space alien? How about God (with a capital "G"). People of the book cut straight to the chase. They go with God and do not admit the possibility of other explanations. But an unjustified leap is encapsulated in the above. I started with "space alien" and ended up with God. Where's the justification for that? The answer is: There isn't one.
But this is a leap that Einstein made. He knew the difference but decided to go with God instead of "space alien" (or some other formulation less strongly associated with religion) for convenience. It is true (see below) that he knew the distinction. But he was comfortable using "God" or not contradicting others when they used "God" on his behalf. And this sort of fuzzing the details is all too common in religious discussions.
Scientists have learned that it is extremely important to as a first step define your terms. The history of science is littered with examples of situations where one person is talking about apples and the other person is talking about oranges. This leads to unproductive disagreements. Once the confusion is sorted out there may or may not be a disagreement remaining. But even in the cases where a disagreement remains it is now possible to make forward progress.
Einstein was very careful, articulate, and thorough at various points to define what he meant by "God" and it wasn't at all the same thing as what religionists meant. And it resulted in a lot of initial confusion. People were happy to find out that Einstein believed in God. But later when what he meant by "God" became apparent many of these same people were all of a sudden very unhappy with him. So let me back up and briefly review Einstein's history with religion.
He was born a Jew. Being Jewish is an ethnic or cultural attribute. It can also be a religious attribute. He was born into a family that was not religiously active. And he was happy to think of himself as not even ethnically or culturally a Jew let alone religiously one. Unfortunately at that time (early 1900s) and in that place (Germany) it was not possible for Jews to avoid the ethnic/cultural connection. He was literally not permitted to ignore his Jewish identity. Over time he came to cherish his cultural identity and was at various times active in Zionism and the pursuit of a Jewish homeland in what eventually became Israel. But at no time in his life did he embrace the Jewish religion.
For a time he became intensely interested in Christianity. But he eventually became disenchanted and moved away from Christianity. He eventually extended that disenchantment to all forms of organized religion. But, when asked late in life, always characterized himself as religious. On several occasions he said "I am not an atheist". What's going on?
I threw that Big Bang stuff in earlier for a reason. The state of scientific ignorance around what preceded the Big Bang is completely compatible with a number of explanations. Einstein came to the belief that cosmology and pretty much every branch of science pointed to the existence of a "great architect". Einstein came to believe firmly in the existence of such an entity and he used "God" or some variant to refer to him. He also did what any good scientist would do. He took what he could see of how this entity operated and inferred some of his characteristics.
This led directly to the famous (he never said it exactly this way) quotation: "God does not play dice with the universe". He was not speaking metaphorically. He meant exactly what he said. His understanding led him to believe that the great architect, who he called "God", operated along certain principles. And those principles did not permit the kinds of probabilistic shenanigans that are a core attribute of Quantum Mechanics. This belief in "God" and his understanding of how "God" comported himself was a core component of Einstein's belief system. But Einstein's "God" was not the God of the bible.
So Einstein was a believer in some kind of powerful external entity. "Powerful" and "external" are attributes almost universally assigned by many religions, including all flavors of Christianity, to what they call "God". So Einstein and people who believe this way are in agreement so far. Where does the disagreement come in? The parting of the ways came on the subject of what is often called a "personal God".
Does "God" care about what individual humans do or don't do? Is he interested enough in their efforts to perhaps intercede on their behalf if asked? If asked does he sometimes actually intercede? In more conventional religious terms, does God care about good and evil? Does God care if we pray? Does God sometimes answer our prayers? A "personal god" answers "yes" to all these questions. Einstein's "God" answers "no" to all these questions. Most religions, and "most" includes Christianity, require the existence of a personal God to justify the religion's very existence. When various religious types found out that Einstein rejected a personal god they became very unhappy with him.
But perhaps I am getting this wrong. So let's see what Einstein actually said:
Interestingly, Einstein did not believe in free will. Based on his reading of how "God" operated he believed in what is often referred to as a "clockwork universe". The laws under which the universe operates are set up. Then the whole thing is kicked into motion. From then on the laws uniquely and specifically direct what will happen at each point in both space and time. This is technically called a "deterministic" universe. The conditions at any one point determine exactly what is going to happen next. And that means the behavior of each and every human being is predetermined at every point in their lives. And if everything is predetermined there is no room for free will.
This creates a fundamental problem. If everything is predetermined we never actually make choices. It just looks like we are making choices. If we never really have a choice then we really are not responsible for our actions. And that means guilt is an illusion and punishment is unfair. And that means there is no check on our behavior. If we do something bad it is not because we are a bad person or have been led astray but because it was always predetermined that we would behave that way.
Einstein did not really have a good answer for this. Instead he waved his hands. He said (paraphrasing) "I always act as if I believe I have free will. Everyone else should too. That is the way we get good and just people and good and just societies." It is not a persuasive argument but it is the only one he had.
And if only he had been willing to embrace Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the rest of Quantum Mechanics the problem would have disappeared. It provides the perfect mechanism for introducing free will back into the way the universe works. But he never did. He fought Quantum Mechanics to the day he died.
He did this honestly and ethically by coming up with theories and tests that could be put into competition with Quantum Mechanics. Scientists universally respected him. And the way he comported himself in his tussle with Quantum Mechanics only increased their respect for him. He fought fair. And the result eventually was a confirmation of Quantum Mechanics and a better and deeper understanding of it.
With that let me back up and take a wider perspective on all this. Einstein's conception of "God" is consistent with science. And his observation that the question of a personal God was key to the continuing conflict between science and religion is also spot on. But the fact that his position is consistent with science does not make it right.
The argument about whether there was a "master architect" who created the laws the universe operates under and then set it in motion is usually posited as a "one of two possible outcomes" argument. Either there was a master architect or there wasn't. I think this implicit assumption that there are only two possibilities is both wrong and demonstrates a failure of imagination. And the example I continuously fall back on is the tried and true argument about the nature of light.
For a couple of hundred years the assumption was that the nature of light was another one of those "one of two possible outcomes" arguments. Light was either made up of particles or it was waves. There were no other possibilities. Except it was Einstein himself who came up with a third possibility. Light is composed of something called photons. Photons sometime behave like particles. They sometimes behave like waves. They sometimes behave like both and they sometimes behave like neither. In other words, they are their own thing. This "third way" broke the log jam.
We literally don't know enough about the conditions before and during the Big Bang to be able to restrict the possibilities. So it is premature to say anything about the existence of or lack thereof of a master architect.
But interestingly enough there is something we can say about "God". If you study the bible you can adduce many characteristics of the entity Christians and others call "God". Then you can take that list of characteristics and ask "does such an entity exist in the natural world". The answer is a resounding NO! And that means there is no God where Capital "G" God means the "God of the bible" God. If you want to talk about lower case "god" gods then we can have a different discussion.
But you are likely to end up in the same place. This "god" doesn't exist. That "god" doesn't exist. That other "god" over there doesn't exist. The reason is a simple one. The gods that interest people and, therefore, result in successful religions are almost without exception personal gods. And science has studied the question of whether unnatural entities (entities that are capable of operating outside the natural laws as understood by scientists) exist and the answer is No! There just isn't any room for a personal god. If there were science would have come up with evidence of the existence of such an entity.
And, as I indicated above, Einstein adamantly denied being an atheist. He would cop to being an agnostic if pushed. But I think the problem is definitional. Einstein adopted the definition of atheist that says "an atheist must believe in no god nor any kind of higher power". This is a convenient definition for religious types. Because there are a lot of people like Einstein who didn't believe in God (i.e. the god of the bible) but do believe in some kind of higher power.
But in our society people generally mean "god of the bible" when they use the word "God" (capitalized) or even "god" (lower case). So my definition of "atheist" is "anyone who does not believe in the god of the bible". By that definition Einstein was an atheist. And it turns out that this is the exact same argument that Boston Cardinal William Henry O'Connell advanced in Einstein's time. He thought Einstein was actually an atheist too.
Finally, if you want to dig into all this business a lot more deeply I recommend Grayling's book. I have pretty much stuck to one issue. Religious people and people who are not have fought over a lot of things over the centuries. Grayling provides a much more complete list of these conflicts and outlines the non-religious take on all of them. He then spends a lot of time talking about "humanism" a non-religion based ethical and moral system which he thinks is superior to what religions have come up with. If you are interested, check it out.
I was given a wonderful biography of Einstein ("Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson) for Christmas. People forget how articulate Einstein was. And over the span of his life he opined on many subjects. One of them was God and religion. I also got some other books for Christmas. I am currently most of the way through "The God Argument" by A. C. Grayling. You can get a good feel for the subject under discussion by consulting the subtitle: "The Case Against Religion and for Humanism". I'll get back to this latter book later. But let's start with this question: Was Einstein religious?
Most people would say no without spending much time thinking about it. He was a hard nosed scientist and everyone knows they are a pack of atheists, right? But "everyone" would be wrong. That is if you pay attention to what Einstein actually said about his religious beliefs. Isaacson scatters this information throughout his book. But he also devotes a chapter ("Einstein's God") to the subject. I am going to focus on the contents of that chapter. But, where appropriate, I am also going to bring in information from other parts of the book.
Let's start with the Big Bang. Jews, Christians, and Moslems share the Old Testament. And the first book of the Old Testament is Genesis. And Genesis contains the whole "and God created the world in six days" story. For "people of the book" this is the religious equivalent of the Big Bang. Boiling Genesis and the Big Bang down the world came into existence at a certain specific point. Genesis and a large contingent of Christian literalists say it was 6,000 years ago. Scientists say it was 13.7 billion years ago. But both takes on the question agree that there is a key question: How did it all get started?
There is a sound scientific answer to this question: insufficient information. There are lots of possibilities and not enough information to pick between them. One possibility is that the whole thing was kicked off by some very powerful space alien. So what do you call this space alien? How about God (with a capital "G"). People of the book cut straight to the chase. They go with God and do not admit the possibility of other explanations. But an unjustified leap is encapsulated in the above. I started with "space alien" and ended up with God. Where's the justification for that? The answer is: There isn't one.
But this is a leap that Einstein made. He knew the difference but decided to go with God instead of "space alien" (or some other formulation less strongly associated with religion) for convenience. It is true (see below) that he knew the distinction. But he was comfortable using "God" or not contradicting others when they used "God" on his behalf. And this sort of fuzzing the details is all too common in religious discussions.
Scientists have learned that it is extremely important to as a first step define your terms. The history of science is littered with examples of situations where one person is talking about apples and the other person is talking about oranges. This leads to unproductive disagreements. Once the confusion is sorted out there may or may not be a disagreement remaining. But even in the cases where a disagreement remains it is now possible to make forward progress.
Einstein was very careful, articulate, and thorough at various points to define what he meant by "God" and it wasn't at all the same thing as what religionists meant. And it resulted in a lot of initial confusion. People were happy to find out that Einstein believed in God. But later when what he meant by "God" became apparent many of these same people were all of a sudden very unhappy with him. So let me back up and briefly review Einstein's history with religion.
He was born a Jew. Being Jewish is an ethnic or cultural attribute. It can also be a religious attribute. He was born into a family that was not religiously active. And he was happy to think of himself as not even ethnically or culturally a Jew let alone religiously one. Unfortunately at that time (early 1900s) and in that place (Germany) it was not possible for Jews to avoid the ethnic/cultural connection. He was literally not permitted to ignore his Jewish identity. Over time he came to cherish his cultural identity and was at various times active in Zionism and the pursuit of a Jewish homeland in what eventually became Israel. But at no time in his life did he embrace the Jewish religion.
For a time he became intensely interested in Christianity. But he eventually became disenchanted and moved away from Christianity. He eventually extended that disenchantment to all forms of organized religion. But, when asked late in life, always characterized himself as religious. On several occasions he said "I am not an atheist". What's going on?
I threw that Big Bang stuff in earlier for a reason. The state of scientific ignorance around what preceded the Big Bang is completely compatible with a number of explanations. Einstein came to the belief that cosmology and pretty much every branch of science pointed to the existence of a "great architect". Einstein came to believe firmly in the existence of such an entity and he used "God" or some variant to refer to him. He also did what any good scientist would do. He took what he could see of how this entity operated and inferred some of his characteristics.
This led directly to the famous (he never said it exactly this way) quotation: "God does not play dice with the universe". He was not speaking metaphorically. He meant exactly what he said. His understanding led him to believe that the great architect, who he called "God", operated along certain principles. And those principles did not permit the kinds of probabilistic shenanigans that are a core attribute of Quantum Mechanics. This belief in "God" and his understanding of how "God" comported himself was a core component of Einstein's belief system. But Einstein's "God" was not the God of the bible.
So Einstein was a believer in some kind of powerful external entity. "Powerful" and "external" are attributes almost universally assigned by many religions, including all flavors of Christianity, to what they call "God". So Einstein and people who believe this way are in agreement so far. Where does the disagreement come in? The parting of the ways came on the subject of what is often called a "personal God".
Does "God" care about what individual humans do or don't do? Is he interested enough in their efforts to perhaps intercede on their behalf if asked? If asked does he sometimes actually intercede? In more conventional religious terms, does God care about good and evil? Does God care if we pray? Does God sometimes answer our prayers? A "personal god" answers "yes" to all these questions. Einstein's "God" answers "no" to all these questions. Most religions, and "most" includes Christianity, require the existence of a personal God to justify the religion's very existence. When various religious types found out that Einstein rejected a personal god they became very unhappy with him.
But perhaps I am getting this wrong. So let's see what Einstein actually said:
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the activities of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation.He defined his religiosity thus:
My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we can comprehend about the knowable world.Here's his take on the power of prayer:
. . . a scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i. e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural being.On the conflict between science and religion he said:
The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God.He was a very perceptive observer of much, not all of it directly related to science.
Interestingly, Einstein did not believe in free will. Based on his reading of how "God" operated he believed in what is often referred to as a "clockwork universe". The laws under which the universe operates are set up. Then the whole thing is kicked into motion. From then on the laws uniquely and specifically direct what will happen at each point in both space and time. This is technically called a "deterministic" universe. The conditions at any one point determine exactly what is going to happen next. And that means the behavior of each and every human being is predetermined at every point in their lives. And if everything is predetermined there is no room for free will.
This creates a fundamental problem. If everything is predetermined we never actually make choices. It just looks like we are making choices. If we never really have a choice then we really are not responsible for our actions. And that means guilt is an illusion and punishment is unfair. And that means there is no check on our behavior. If we do something bad it is not because we are a bad person or have been led astray but because it was always predetermined that we would behave that way.
Einstein did not really have a good answer for this. Instead he waved his hands. He said (paraphrasing) "I always act as if I believe I have free will. Everyone else should too. That is the way we get good and just people and good and just societies." It is not a persuasive argument but it is the only one he had.
And if only he had been willing to embrace Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the rest of Quantum Mechanics the problem would have disappeared. It provides the perfect mechanism for introducing free will back into the way the universe works. But he never did. He fought Quantum Mechanics to the day he died.
He did this honestly and ethically by coming up with theories and tests that could be put into competition with Quantum Mechanics. Scientists universally respected him. And the way he comported himself in his tussle with Quantum Mechanics only increased their respect for him. He fought fair. And the result eventually was a confirmation of Quantum Mechanics and a better and deeper understanding of it.
With that let me back up and take a wider perspective on all this. Einstein's conception of "God" is consistent with science. And his observation that the question of a personal God was key to the continuing conflict between science and religion is also spot on. But the fact that his position is consistent with science does not make it right.
The argument about whether there was a "master architect" who created the laws the universe operates under and then set it in motion is usually posited as a "one of two possible outcomes" argument. Either there was a master architect or there wasn't. I think this implicit assumption that there are only two possibilities is both wrong and demonstrates a failure of imagination. And the example I continuously fall back on is the tried and true argument about the nature of light.
For a couple of hundred years the assumption was that the nature of light was another one of those "one of two possible outcomes" arguments. Light was either made up of particles or it was waves. There were no other possibilities. Except it was Einstein himself who came up with a third possibility. Light is composed of something called photons. Photons sometime behave like particles. They sometimes behave like waves. They sometimes behave like both and they sometimes behave like neither. In other words, they are their own thing. This "third way" broke the log jam.
We literally don't know enough about the conditions before and during the Big Bang to be able to restrict the possibilities. So it is premature to say anything about the existence of or lack thereof of a master architect.
But interestingly enough there is something we can say about "God". If you study the bible you can adduce many characteristics of the entity Christians and others call "God". Then you can take that list of characteristics and ask "does such an entity exist in the natural world". The answer is a resounding NO! And that means there is no God where Capital "G" God means the "God of the bible" God. If you want to talk about lower case "god" gods then we can have a different discussion.
But you are likely to end up in the same place. This "god" doesn't exist. That "god" doesn't exist. That other "god" over there doesn't exist. The reason is a simple one. The gods that interest people and, therefore, result in successful religions are almost without exception personal gods. And science has studied the question of whether unnatural entities (entities that are capable of operating outside the natural laws as understood by scientists) exist and the answer is No! There just isn't any room for a personal god. If there were science would have come up with evidence of the existence of such an entity.
And, as I indicated above, Einstein adamantly denied being an atheist. He would cop to being an agnostic if pushed. But I think the problem is definitional. Einstein adopted the definition of atheist that says "an atheist must believe in no god nor any kind of higher power". This is a convenient definition for religious types. Because there are a lot of people like Einstein who didn't believe in God (i.e. the god of the bible) but do believe in some kind of higher power.
But in our society people generally mean "god of the bible" when they use the word "God" (capitalized) or even "god" (lower case). So my definition of "atheist" is "anyone who does not believe in the god of the bible". By that definition Einstein was an atheist. And it turns out that this is the exact same argument that Boston Cardinal William Henry O'Connell advanced in Einstein's time. He thought Einstein was actually an atheist too.
Finally, if you want to dig into all this business a lot more deeply I recommend Grayling's book. I have pretty much stuck to one issue. Religious people and people who are not have fought over a lot of things over the centuries. Grayling provides a much more complete list of these conflicts and outlines the non-religious take on all of them. He then spends a lot of time talking about "humanism" a non-religion based ethical and moral system which he thinks is superior to what religions have come up with. If you are interested, check it out.
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