Einstein on Science and Religion

You cannot prove that God does not exist.

You cannot prove that God does not exist.

Of course not. Nor can I prove that fairies, mermaids, unicorns, minotaurs or werewolves don't exist.

But suffice it to say that I'm more sure that God doesn't exist than any of the aforementioned fantasy characters. Since I consider hating unicorns to be just silly, similarly hating God would be just silly.

Without religion we'd still be in the stone-age.

Without religion we'd still be in the stone-age.

Possibly. But in that case, religion is a relic that needs to be done away with.

I would disagree. As we've argued before, I feel that religion's positive effects on people in today's age outweigh the bad. For every few million that follow by the "book" and better their lives by it there are a few extremists that make it as a whole look bad. Freedom of thought and freedom to believe in whatever people want to should never be done away with.

Whether or not religion is a positive or negative force is irrelevant. When I say it's a relic I mean from a purely epistemological standpoint. The fact that after all we know people still believe "magic man done it" is pathetic. I will concede that I don't know how everything started. That does not mean that the God hypothesis has any real merit behind it. That does not mean we shouldn't excoriate such puerile beliefs. If you want to believe something it should be justified with evidence. Otherwise, society should ostracize you if you're over...five.

Of course, you know how I feel about this. I post these little articles because I find them amusing, and exhilirating, at times. But you don't need me to go over this with you again, I doubt, nor do you probably want me to. I am, however, interested in why you would continue believing. You're a fairly smart guy. What makes what I see as a delusion so persistent for you?

I choose to believe because man cannot now describe how everything started, and it will probably not be in my lifetime, nor will it ever. I feel that it is great you do not believe in God, we need to have people questioning everything if we are ever going to progress. Me personally, I do not loathe religion like I was brought up, I've become more self-spiritualized as I feel I don't need to go to church to pray, if I want some alone time to be spiritual, more so than not I need to be alone and solve my own problems.

I don't agree what you said. What you believe doesn't seem delusional to me, actually it's the opposite. But my personality I love to question things and i've been taught from a young age to always question everything and never agree until you know for yourself what is to be true. As for Religion, I agree there are plenty of probelms with it, but concerning God I still feel that our existance can not have just started from nothing, I feel there are different levels of conciousness that obviously we cannot see because they are on a different 'plane' of time itself, a plane where time does not exist.

I love a good majority of these articles you post as I feel I can get into them equally and love to find out viewpoints from other people as I form my own opinion. But basically, where i'm getting at is that being delusional isn't always a bad thing. It helps people get by, if they want to be afraid of death and use religion to justify living a good life, then be it. I don't think religion or religious people should be castricized because of them believing in something, because that would be hypocritical and very similar to different religions fighting with each other because the other person doesn't have the same beliefs as them, that's what it boils down to.

I know this seems very jumbled but I just peiced together a few thoughts at work, I'll try and re-elaborate once I get a moment.

Without religion we'd still be in the stone-age.

Just stumbled upon this and felt like replying to this specific message.

I would disagree, myself. We essentially ARE in the stone-age, compared to where we would be had it not been for the oppression of technology by religion. Not to mention the burning of the Library of Alexandria, which, while there's no proof was done by religion, many believe to have been caused by people in the name of religion.

I remember learning a while back about how we'd be 200 years ahead of where we are right now, technology wise, if the burning of the Library of Alexandria had never happened. Can you imagine? Cars would have been around for 300 years now, televisions for nearly as long, and nuclear weapons would have been invented before the Revolutionary War.

I suppose that might be a bad thing, though.

and vista would be gone computers would rule the world

Completely Unrelated Jamer. I think. Vista isn't on topic anyway. And computers Essintially RUN the world. The governments data is on computers.