Lurie Redux\u2026Now With Einsteinian Proofs!<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t much of a reply, just this:<\/p>\nEinstein quote:<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.\u201d<\/p>\n
I never claimed that Einstein was religious or believed in a personal God, but he most certainly saw that there is a Creator.<\/p>\n
Alan<\/p>\n
My reply was less pithy.\u00a0 Here\u2019s my letter to him:<\/p>\n
Alan:<\/p>\n
There is no evidence that he believed in a creator.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t know where the universe came from any more than you or I do.\u00a0 He was obviously non-theistic.\u00a0 So what is the point of bringing him up at all?\u00a0 To show that he believed in some sort of creator?\u00a0\u00a0Even if we\u00a0suppose that he did, what\u00a0is the practical effect of this when he certainly did not believe in any kind of caring, involved, responsive, moral or ethical creator with even the slightest regard for the goings-on here on earth?<\/p>\n
If you want to argue that the universe has a moral direction of some kind, then demonstrate how that is true in the light of all of human experience and everything we know.\u00a0 Telling people that\u00a0some scientists think it\u2019s true is not an argument and it proves nothing more than that someone else agrees with you.\u00a0 Francis Collins is a very great scientist who believes in the literal resurrection of Jesus.\u00a0 So should we too?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a supporter of liberal religion, even when I quibble about its leaders\u2019 factual assertions.\u00a0 One of the things that I admire about it is that liberally religious people tend to accept the fact that since\u00a0there\u00a0can be\u00a0no proof of God, it is better to imagine him as the embodiment of goodness and as an inspiration for moral behavior than as the angry deity, lacking in compassion, that characterizes ancient and\u00a0\u00a0illiberal\u00a0modern approaches.\u00a0 God thus becomes an inspiration for goodness among those who believe.\u00a0 Since most people possess some kind of faith, that\u2019s a noble cause.\u00a0 But there are many others who do not have or desire faith and you know as well as I do that this does not, of necessity, make them less moral or ethical people.\u00a0\u00a0Such people\u00a0are committed to another principle articulated by Einstein when he said, \u201cI consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In rabbinical school (HUC) we ran through every proof for the existence of God that anyone has ever imagined.\u00a0 There was not one among us\u00a0or our teachers\u00a0who found any of them compelling.\u00a0 Science and modernity has utterly destroyed the God of our ancestors and we are will rid of him.\u00a0 The more compassionate God that has taken his place (at least for our non-Orthodox colleagues) may be a great source of inspiration, but this does not prove his actual existence or anything about the moral direction of the universe.\u00a0 It just proves that good people can make adjustments to bad beliefs.\u00a0 When liberal rabbis feel the necessity to make arguments for the provable existence of God, they are falling into the trap set for them by fundamentalists.\u00a0 It is a futile activity and does nothing to promote goodness.<\/p>\n
Shabbat Shalom,<\/p>\n
\u2013Jeff<\/p>\n
Maybe he\u2019ll reply and we can have an ongoing debate.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I certainly did not expect to hear from Alan Lurie about my recent post, \u201cLurie Redux\u2026Now With Einsteinian Proofs!\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t much of a reply, just this: Einstein quote: \u201cI want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,17,24,25,27,38],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-atheism","tag-humanism","tag-liberal-judaism","tag-liberal-religions-and-theologies","tag-morality","tag-science-and-reason"],"yoast_head":"\n
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