JW:
Was thinking about what you were driving at…
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“I really meant this thread to be about Einstein's religion and philosophy rather than science issues.
One thing I wanted to make clear was that when Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe" - he was absolutely NOT talking about an anthropomorphic creator like the JW "Jehovah".
He meant the cosmic order of the universe itself - the orderly progression of everything.
Einstein's god was neither a "creator" nor an "interventionist" in human affairs….
Classicly speaking (judeo-christian speak) - not every decision IS free will, but COULD BE free will.
For example - the New Testament hint that Eve's decision to eat the forbidden fruit was the result of trickery (thus NOT free will), but the suggestion that it COULD have been free will (like Adam's choice) if she had not been fooled.
On the other hand, it brings up the thorny question: Did Eve use FREE WILL in allowing herself to BE fooled? Or
was she genuinely fooled without reflective thought - was she even capable of reflective thought on the subject? Or was she just too dumb to figure out the temptation?...
Thinking along these lines is causing me to seriously question the entire religious concept of "free will". I am starting to think (like Einstein did) that it is really just a logical excuse made by religious tradition for God's decision to punish the humans for something they were pretty much destined (and tempted) to do anyway.
Time for another weird essay.
My take on this is that we are quickly losing Einstein’s Judaeo/secular perspective on these things. As soon as we start talking Adam and Eve, everyone has lost Jewish or Hebrew religious perspectives altogether. It is assumed that every Jew of his day was looking at Hebrew scripture and Deuteronomy like Paul.
I am not Jewish, nor have I studied Judaism at any great length, but my immediate impression is this is not true. The book of Genesis introduces a talking snake and an angry God and then drops the whole subject within a chapter and does not bring it up again. Judaism is about a covenant between God and a people and a promised messiah could just as well be a political leader to reverse 600 years of rule by a succession of Neo-Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans.
In the Old Testament, I don’t see evidence of anyone deliberating about how someone is going to reconcile a breech between God and man the result of Adam or Eve. That’s a Christian concept which in the NT is first brought up by Paul, or Saul of Tarsus. Imposing it on Einstein’s thinking is simply a cultural bias, much like E. M. Forster’s science fiction story about people living in abeyance of “The Machine” and deciding to teach the French Revolution like it occurred in its era. I would not rule out that Genesis has some bearing on Einstein’s thinking, but since it does not seem to have as much consequence to Judaism as interviews given to Abraham and Moses, I would not rule out Einstein’s notions about free will based as much on his views about classical mechanics and reservations implications of statistical and quantum mechanics. Natural philosophy: if you can’t predict which atom is going to do a beta decay, but the isotope decays at a fixed rate, how do you explain that?
When speaking of “God playing dice with the universe”, I believe that there is a certain amount of truth to you assertion above. If Einstein is corresponding with physicists that is the idea he wishes to convey, the underlying principles of nature, anthropomorphic or more likely otherwise, which make things run. Since a steady state and a big-bang universe were arguable issues in his life, it is hard to say whether he was hung up on first causes, since the issue seemed to be more a question of whether he introduced a constant into equations of cosmology. Had he left things with no constant indicative of expansion, as he sometimes thought he should have, his physical view would have argued for a universe that had been around forever. Lemaitre and Hubble seemed to have had some influence on him. Because I don’t think there were too many people who speculated on that scenario much save for Fred Hoyle and a couple of his colleagues.
But considering the fact that he might have been regarded as another Spinoza, a pantheist or an agnostic, Einstein was active in what could be loosely described as Zionist causes. Having an ethnic promised land but no one specifically to consult about the promise - That is a conundrum in and of itself.
Maybe the god of Spinoza stepped out of character now and then?
But if he did, it was not necessarily perceived in Christian terms. If we really are on topic, then perhaps we should back up or take a reading of what Judaism said to Einstein rather than re-interpret his sacred texts for him.
