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The World As I See It - Albert Einstein
The World As I See It - Albert Einstein C A Watts 1935
I came across this copy in a second-hand bookshop and was heartened to read in the entry "Religion and Science" that Einstein had a very contemporary opinion on this subject.
He observes society moving from a primitive fear based "understanding of causal connections"
"I am speaking now of the religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilised by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis."
"Social feelings are another source of the crystallisation of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence who protects, disposes, rewards and punishes........"
He sees "the development from a religion of fear to moral religion as a great step in a nation's life. That primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilised peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that they are all intermediate types, with this reservation, that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates."
"Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. Only individuals of exceptional endowments and exceptionally high-minded communities, as a general rule, get in any real sense beyond this level. But there is a third state of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form and which I will call cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to explain this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it."
He expands on the historical conflict between science and religion ... "it is therefore easy to see why the Churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research."
"The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole."
He goes on to make a case for the scientist who "is possessed by the sense of universal causation... whose religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work .... it is closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages."
Robert de Vos, Cape Town, South Africa
Reclaiming conscious agency
This reviews a recent paper by Alexander Batthyany, which looks at the implications of experiments by Benjamin Libet and more recently C.S. Soon, for the existence or otherwise of freewill. Libet's subjects were asked to make voluntary finger movements. The experiments showed that a readiness potential was detected in the brain 350 milliseconds before a movement, while the subjects were aware of their conscious intention to act only 200 ms before the movement. Therefore, neuronal activity preparatory to movement happened 150 ms before conscious awareness of the intention to act.
Religious eclecticism and pluralism in America
A recent survey in the USA has suggested a high percentage of Americans hold 'non-traditional' religious beliefs in which eastern and western beliefs are mixed eclectically. Meanwhile, a very high percentage endorse the idea that many religions can embody truth. A survey by the polling organisation Pew, reported in USA today, highlights these surprising statistics:
Horizon: the challenge of population growth
There was a superb programme on last night, on the challenge of population growth for our survival as a species. It is viewable in full on BBC I-Player:
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