An Essay by Einstein

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

The World As I see It

by Albert Einstein

 

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

 

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

 

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."

 

 

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

 

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

 

Source

[Tuujiye]

LST.. Hada kohor aan aqriye warqadaan and I wondered how this guy never blieved in god... is so sad man....Ilahey qofkuu hanunsho ayaa hanuuna runtii..

 

Wareer Badanaa!!!

[Kool_Kat]

A good read...

 

LST, where have you been? A lot of people have been looking for you...lol

[Johnny B]

Tuujiyee, which is more saddening as you see it, that Einstein never believed in God or that God did not guide him to the right path?

[N.O.R.F]

^^Some will not be guided.

[NASSIR]

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense,

I am a deeply religious man

Libax, A friend of mine forwarded me this video. Impressive documentary that lists all the great scientists of both European and Islam as well as other civilizations and How religious they were.

 

[Caano Geel]

In frustration of quantunm mechanics, Einstein is famous for having said "God does not play dice with the universe". And virtually all of his latter research was concerned with ridding the physics he fathered of notions of `uncertainty'.

 

Much like Kurt Gödel (a hero of the 20th century whose philosophical ideas made it possible for you read what I'm writing here from a terminal anywhere in the world), he is said to have been a spiritual man. But and a big BUT, we must distinguish between conventional religion of a book, and what these guys believe, after all, they dedicated their lives to dismantling the orthodox and trying to unravel the building blocks of our world and mind.

 

When professor Einstein writes "it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity", his emotion is a reverence for the "mysterious" and the "knowledge" its unravelling to the *provably* obvious or evident. But these guys can definitely be said to have been spiritually orientated.

 

Interestingly, Gödel gave a formal ontological proof of Saint Anselm's ontological argument for God's existence. The argument says:

 

"God, by definition, is that than which a greater cannot be thought. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist."

 

Gödel's proof in english says (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_ontological_proof#Derivation):

if x is an object in some world, then the property P is said to be an essence of x if P(x) is true in that world and if P entails all other properties that x has in that world. We also say that x necessarily exists if for every essence P the following is true: in every possible world, there is an element y with P(y).

 

Since necessary existence is positive, it must follow from Godlikeness. Moreover, Godlikeness is an essence of God, since it entails all positive properties, and any nonpositive property is the negation of some positive property, so God cannot have any nonpositive properties. Since any Godlike object is necessarily existent, it follows that any Godlike object in one world is a Godlike object in all worlds, by the definition of necessary existence. Given the existence of a Godlike object in one world, proven above, we may conclude that there is a Godlike object in

In simpler eglish, if god exists in any imaginable world, then god must exist in all worlds.

 

In somali, war illaah ka baq,

 

and in picture format for JB

 

 

Note that this is merely an exercise in logic, nothing more, a major tenant of a religion as we understand it, is faith, not logical proof. Something people seem to forget, and thereby undermine their argument when they mix up religion and science that they often know little about, e.g. Harun Yahya style.

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

Originally posted by Kool_Kat:

A good read...

 

LST, where have you been? A lot of people have been looking for you...lol

Kool, inadeer I was in the underground forum. Not far from here.

 

Yaa i raadinayey?

[Johnny B]

CG, thanks for the enlightment , i really appreciated it the way u presented the ὅπερ ἔδει δει̂ξαι.

Despite LST's hands off approach we coulden't keep away , u know the flies around that coffe mug.

Camir's intensified assertion could of have maintained the blostred status quo to temporary Q.E.F, but forgot about the rigorous deduction,

and we were to settle down for a tongue-in-cheek kind of "ilaahaa ka cabso", a meager Q.E.D if u like, but absolutely possitively not a U+25A0 .

 

I've always been a great fan of the way Albert put it , dispite the out-of-context run-inns for the dedicated,

the solid point is made and rationallydelivered.

[Caano Geel]

^ dude, its flies around the no so proverbial $* and talk about yourself there , haven't read the essay before i found it very interesting, and seriously, no tongue and cheek, there is a lot to be said for "ilaaha ka cabso' (tho' personally i prefer messages of love as opposed to fear) -

 

I just find it hard to digest absolutes, and a lack of acceptance for the uncertainty in reality - from all perspectives, the religious to the atheist. Hence the point of faith and investigation. And dude, rationality is way overrated

[xiinfaniin]

Forget about Einstein’s superficial references to ideals and values whose primary sources he shirked to embrace, and enjoy William Buckley’s great essay in which he apprehends those who camouflage their firm doubt of God with Intellectuality and shallow use of logic! Clearly there are no mincing words for Mr. Buckley when it comes affirming the existence of God; I particularly find marvelous how he powerfully formulates his argument…read and enjoy yaa Jamaacah.

 

===============================================

 

How Is It Possible to Believe in God?

by William F. Buckley, Jr.

 

 

I've always liked the exchange featuring the excited young Darwinian at the end of the 19th century. He said grandly to the elderly scholar, "How is it possible to believe in God?" The imperishable answer was, "I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop."

 

That rhetorical bullet has everything -- wit and profundity. It has more than once reminded me that skepticism about life and nature is most often expressed by those who take it for granted that belief is an indulgence of the superstitious -- indeed their opiate, to quote a historical cosmologist most profoundly dead. Granted, that to look up at the stars comes close to compelling disbelief -- how can such a chance arrangement be other than an elaboration -- near infinite -- of natural impulses? Yes, on the other hand, who is to say that the arrangement of the stars is more easily traceable to nature, than to nature's molder? What is the greater miracle: the raising of the dead man in Lazarus, or the mere existence of the man who died and of the witnesses who swore to his revival?

 

The skeptics get away with fixing the odds against the believer, mostly by pointing to phenomena which are only explainable -- you see? -- by the belief that there was a cause for them, always deducible. But how can one deduce the cause of Hamlet? Or of St. Matthew's Passion? What is the cause of inspiration?

 

This I believe: that it is intellectually easier to credit a divine intelligence than to submit dumbly to felicitous congeries about nature. As a child, I was struck by the short story. It told of a man at a bar who boasted of his rootlessness, derisively dismissing the jingoistic patrons to his left and to his right. But later in the evening, one man speaks an animadversion on a little principality in the Balkans and is met with the clenched fist of the man without a country, who would not endure this insult to the place where he was born.

 

So I believe that it is as likely that there should be a man without a country, as a world without a creator.

[Kool_Kat]

Originally posted by Libaax-Sankataabte:

Kool, inadeer I was in the underground forum. Not far from here.

 

Yaa i raadinayey?

Undergound forum aa? How come I didn't get an invitation? lol...

 

Dad badan baa ku raadinaayey, see the Dear SOL Admin thread...

 

Eid Mubarak...

[Abu-Salman]

I just find it hard to digest absolutes, and a lack of acceptance for the uncertainty in reality - from all perspectives, the religious to the atheist. Hence the point of faith and investigation. And dude, rationality is way overrated

Definitely, our thinking as well as perceptions are conditioned by our own experiences, most notably the environment within which we grew up.

 

Hence, little wonder that humankind found easy to believe in an omnipotent Creator througout history before the new Western religion of "rationality" whereby truth is accessible solely through "pure reason" guided by "observable facts".

 

Likewise, many people of every race, not least distinguished academics and scientists, deeply believe in the omnipotent Creator, wether they call it Allah, Yahve, Jesus ect.

 

For these people, science and reason are only confirming tools which attest of this superior intelligence which planned and designed every detail of our universe to the perfection (from the extraordinary lubricant that is the synovial fluid in our joints to astrological movements synchronizing with our bio-rythms).

 

In that light, reason and scientific methods are merely interpreting one's deep beliefs from which they are inseparable, as no scientific ever worked in a total vacuum and it is established now that even the most basics scientifics assumptions and endeavors are closely linked with the prominent local culture.

 

Therefore, rationality (whatever that may mean) is indeed way overrated and subject itself to many divergent interpretations.

 

However, for those believers, and assuming here an unshakable belief, it only follows as a logical consequence some absolutes whereby rules and interpretative framework of the world are deducted.

 

Thus, Qur'aanic legislation complemented and precised by Ahaadiths or traditions of the prophet lay down practical guidelines for Muslims in every sphere, from personal intimal hygiene to politico-economic life, while providing the associated framework whereby our natural world is interpreted as Allah's sign of benevolence toward humankind and a space-time referential whitin which our worshiping mission is judged alongside the associated ethical standards, previously perfectioned through revelations as to prevent any ambiguity.

 

Naturally, it follows that absolutes are not only undispensable but also at the same time the quintessential evidence of mercy.

One could easily imagine our unfortune and the hypothetical havoc if as Muslim believers, we were left without prophets' guidance or only with vague notions of Tawhiid or Allah's uniqueness.

 

In fact, all these guidance are further complemented by many manifestations of Allah's benevolence in the Universe and within our body and selfs as stated in the Qur'aan.

For instance, how many times we are agreably surprised as sincere Muslims when our invocations are replaced by which is even better and found out that what we wished for was rather futile, if not directly harmful.

Likewise, when we find out that many guidelines optimizes not only one's health but our society's harmony even though medical or academic journals may publish it as new "discoveries", ground-breaking studies ect, necessarily in a partial and morally neutral form which hardly compel the Western world into amending their self-destructiveness, to begin with...

 

[ October 11, 2007, 06:25 PM: Message edited by: Djib-Somali ]

[Sophist]

Using logic in determine the existence of God does not only show the foolishness the humans but how arrogant we can be. To make logic the prince of all things is just ludicrous—a science that its principles formulated by another human mind; the mind which works in its fashion because of unpredictable neuron signals.

 

Physics deals withe realm of the physical, this is meta-physics chaps.

 

Aloow noo gargaar.

[Abu-Salman]

Logic, by definition, as conceived by Greek philosophers and their Western spiritual inheritors, could neither reveal profound, fundamental truths nor lay down coherent legislation which its validity could further be validated through the advancement of knowledge.

 

When Thomas Aquinas, considered by many Roman Catholics to be the Catholic Church's greatest theologian, and Augustine tried to "refinate" Christian doctrine and teachings through Greek philosophy, it only further confused what was already an opportunistic compromise between Greek mythology and Monotheistic belief.

 

In fact, "Christianity" as such was established by "St" Paul who expressed his creativity as well as opportunistic flair when he accomodated deeply rooted European Pagan beliefs in anthropomorph, cooperating Gods and Goddesses inherited from Greco-Roman mythologies (hence the Jesus-God-Mary trinity) with what was initially a prophetic message of monotheism.

 

Little wonder then that the oppressed masses who endured centuries of "blessed", arch-brutal slavery through the institution of serfdom, which greatly enriched few cruels princes and their conniving clerical associates, finally overreacted and rejected religion altogether, thus throwing the revelation baby with the bloodied water of self-serving superstitions (among them the trading of "Divine forgiveness" in return of cash and extravagant churches which frustrated Luther and Calvin, fathers of "protestanism").

 

Nevertheless, natural instincts and intuitions in all societies remained unchanged and that is why Islam is associated with delivrance from darkness and prodigious progress in Muslims countries, where the average individual still keep his faith in his Creator benevolence through an unalterated revelation, preserved in memories.

As Allah undertook the responsability to preserve the final revelation through the Qur'aan and countless Ahadiths on the prophet's practise of the Deen, it followed a continuous coherence which increasingly attracts Christian and other converts.

 

Finally, if "modern" arrogance brainwashed average Westerners through secular education, medias and societies unduly over-emphasizing necessarily temporal and imperfect scientific methods and knowledge although, most ironically, the vast majority possess only an ersatz of scientifis literacy, it remains obvious that this vicious circle could only be broken if they are to put their cognitive skills to a less prejudicied, less selective and more productive use; not least, by constantly reminding themselves of the rather limited scope of their "rationality"*...

 

 

*: Major causes of morbidity and diability in western countries are chronic diseases caused by a poor lifestyle and environmental pollution (alcohol, smoking, over-eating, inactivity, poor personal hygiene, sexual irresponsibility ect) whereas marriage, involvement in charity works or generosity, for instance, are correlated with better health (by preventing and mitigating depression, lowering stress levels ect) according to scientists.