Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 349 Editor's Choice: 43
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The god of Spinoza
[Read the article: The believer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd also add that Einstein was speaking about the god of Spinoza, as he himself indicated at least once, in a telegram to a rabbi who'd asked Einstein if he believed in god. In Einstein's own words, "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
In this philosophical system, god is the universe itself - it has no separate personality, and to understand god one must first understand the physical universe. Spinoza argued there's no such thing as free will, that the universe is deterministic, and that as we grow to understand why we act the way we do we become more like god.
It's easy to see how this philosophy influenced Einstein's work, but it turns out perhaps not for the better since, as was just pointed out, "god" does in fact play dice with the universe.
It's also important to note that this Spinoza concept of god has jack to do with the more primitive, contradictory Christian concepts of god floating about. Spinoza's universe god is pretty much the antithesis of the "big daddy figure in the sky who likes us better than everybody else" god concepts which seem to dominate the American scene these days. Pat Robertson couldn't solicit much in the way of contributions by appealing to Spinoza's god, although Stephen Hawking probably could.
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Observing unobservable phenomena?
[Read the article: The believer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]>In the end, scientists should stick to observable phenomena and what
>it actually does tell you about other observable phenomena, and leave
>the greater notions of unknowable higher structures to philosophers.
This assumes there are "unknowable higher structures". You've provided no evidence – zilch – that such structures exist. You might as well assert there's an invisible pink unicorn living in your garage.
And how would scientists observe unobservable phenomena? Your whole prohibition makes no sense.
>O.k. off the top of my head, although it's not really new, how about the
>laws of thermal dynamics?
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>Specifically that in a closed system (of which the universe may be considered)
>entropy only increases.
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>Since current belief on the origins of human life require a spontaneous
>organization of pre-organic chemicals into a living self replicating genome,
>it would seem to preclude this assumption.
This wins my vote for the most tired creationist argument in the book. I've been seeing this same idiocy spewed by creationists for 30 years now. Either they're stone stupid or they're just being dishonest, as it was easily refuted and has been refuted – over and over again – for decades.
The universe as a whole may be a closed system, but the Earth most certainly is not. See that bright glowing orb up in the sky? That's the SUN. It's a giant fusion reactor, and it dumps an incredible amount of energy on the surface of the Earth every single day – energy living organisms can exploit to combat entropy. Likewise, chemical and thermal energy has been upwelling from the crust of the Earth into the oceans since they first formed some 4.5 billion years ago. Again, life can use that to combat entropy as well.
You guys should really get some new material.
>Does is matter, as has been discussed in many letters today and
>thousands of scientific papers, that scientists STILL to this day
>have zero idea how life could EVER spring from non-life?
Scientists have lots of ideas about how life could arise from inorganic chemistry – a simple Google search would lead you to plenty of articles and studies. You're either being lazy or dishonest.
>Before the pre-universe world, there was nothing.
So you assume. The reality is, we know next to nothing about that state, although physicists have their theories and a smattering of evidence from high-energy particle collisions and astronomical observations. Stop confusing your assumptions with fact. It's becoming tiresome, and it's leading you to draw silly conclusions that are easily falsified.
>And if something had infinite duration past (a meaningless statement
>anyway when time and space came into existence only with the Big
>Bang), we would never have arrived at this point since it would have
>taken an infinite number of steps to arrive.
Methinks you should also take a basic math course while you're at it.