Einstein and a Basis for Progressive Morals

A strange thing just happened. I began constructing a new blog, as I am now doing, and after typing a few lines, the blog window, including the entire Firefox browser, *POOF*, just disappeared, and I found myself staring at my lovely screen saver of Fern at Redfish Lake. Yes, I chose to send an error report when prompted. Weird, huh? I'll blame the occurrence on a solar anomaly.

As I was going to say before this unfortunate nonevent, while doing my laundry this morning I took notice of an issue of Time on the laundromat's coffee table. Its cover displayed dog-tags dangling in front of a bare-white back ground. To the image's left was the articles title, "Why Our Army is At the Breaking Point." Interested, I picked up the magazine.

I have my own theory on why the military is at a breaking point. It involves the notion that war is a relic which is entirely unpalatable to modern, civilized people. Naturally, I would expect support for such a diabolical institution as the military to wane after the last few hundred years of modernization and the last several decades of advancing humanist values. I was curious to find out whether the author of the article in Time devoted any print to the idea of War in the progressive social context.

But before I could delve into the magazine, I was distracted by a side story advertised in the corner of the cover. This article was labeled "Einstein and God: A Spiritual Journey". If you know anything about me, you would guess correctly that I skipped the article about our ailing military and went straight to the piece on Einstein. I've had a growing fascination for the subject of Einstein And Religion for a while now. Lately, my interests were sharpened by reading Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. In it, Dawkins charges that religious believers have incorrectly drawn Einstein to their side by quoting the genius out of context. Dawkins sets the record straight by demonstrating that it is unequivocal: By his own admission, Einstein was agnostic on the subject of a supreme being, more like an atheist on the subject of the God of scripture, and only barely a deist on the subject of an all-powerful force in the universe.

Personally, I don't think Einstein belongs to either side-religion's or the atheists'. His views on God and Man are far more scientific, reasonable, and wise. His religion, if one could call it that, seems to have been a mixture of scientific devotion, humanistic concern, and humility-but bravery-in the face of the unknown.

I have been so impressed with Einstein's words, that I have joked that if there was a Church of Einstein, I would promptly join the congregation. And since I've recently shifted the focus of my intellectual project slightly away from the deconstruction of religious arguments and logic in favor of the formulation of the basis' or credo of a liberal/progressive/humanist morality/lifestyle (see later), I can't help but quote the man has so affected the world, and who defied the establishment (organized religion) and so eloquently expressed the ideas I myself find so profound.

Here are a few Einstein quotes printed in the Time article "Einstein and Faith":

"Through the reading of popular scientific books, I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of free thinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies..."

"Schopenhauer's saying, 'A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills,' has been a real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life's hardships, my own and others', and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance."

"I am compelled to act as if free will existed because if I wish to live in a civilized society I must act responsibly"

** (me) The subject of free will is extremely complicated and just as fascinating. I personally believe in truncated free will, or truncated individualism. It is possible to make intelligent, considered choices that are equally possible to become reality; but this only happens in a limited fashion, in the far more powerful presence of instinct, environment, and the limits of our species. Only someone who is omnipotent and perhaps omniscient could overcome these factors and have true free will, I think. **

The author of the article in Time noted that for Einstein, "The foundation of morality...was rising above the "merely personal" to live in a way that benefited humanity. "

Responding to a charge that he harbored religious beliefs, Einstein said, "Yes, you can call it that. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. to that extent I am, in fact, religious."

"Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind."

"I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they were written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws."

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly; this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."

"What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos."

I've got to admit that much of why I like what Einstein said is because it just sounds good. In fact, there are more than a few notions expressed here that I might have something to say about in opposition or amendment.

While I tend to gravitate towards a nihilistic view of human existence and thought and I pay a price for this habit, I fully recognize that a great passion must accompany any alternative to religion-born morality. I do feel that awe, that humility, that Einstein and countless others felt when observing the universe. I do not view an infinite good, but a thing that surely possesses more good than we could possibly imagine, intermixed with its neutral vastness and immense pain and suffering that undoubtedly coexists with all.

All that we might call good, and all the potential for lasting happiness, is with us within each moment. Potential, hope, infinite possession and time, is reaffirmed everytime we look towards the Milkyway or a cityscape on a clear night. Yes, the purpose and the good are our own creations. But there is nothing small about the universe of our collective minds--all that is bare and real, all that's deemed good, all that's extrareal, is quite boundless in this space. The language we use and the concepts we create are the walls and windows of our home. We frame our universe and lives by these intellectual constructs. There is nothing we cannot build. There is no saying to what degree our efforts may push out our present barriers.

This kooky rambling is meant to conceptualize a primary basis of progressive, scientific thinking. Its meant to express the excitement behind the ideology. The proposition I put forth is that with intelligence and passion, we are not only able to gain control over our physical environment (which we've already accomplished to a great degree), but enhance our self knowledge so much that we may begin possessing greater and greater free will with the aim of increasing our individual and collective joy.

Ok, I'm not super-thrilled with my writing here, and I'm sure not everyone will appreciate the heavy mindset, but I'll post the blog anyhow. What do you think? Have I said something here, or have I said nothing? Any thoughts?