"Hoax," the man cries. His very work here is a hoax. Either he is bone dumb about Einstein's career, or he knows that Einstein believed the precision and majesty of the universe showed that there was a "prime mover." No, Einstein did not believe in or adhere to any organized religion or stated creed. But he did believe in what is now called "intelligent design."
Dennett is perpetrating a hoax not to mention this fact, that the greatest scientist who has yet lived, believed in intelligent design.
Congressman Billybob
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No he didn't.
Dennett is perpetrating a hoax not to mention this fact, that the greatest scientist who has yet lived, believed in intelligent design.
Once again, we hear the opinion of someone who knows precisely zero about science comment about how real scientists think.
Nice try.
But the simple fact is that Einstein never would believe in "Intelligent Design", any more than he would believe in ID's intellectual equivalents of astrology or alchemy.
Congressman Billybob mistakenly implies that the existance of a prime mover means that Intelligent Design is as an alternative to evolution. There's no problem believing that God created everything. The problem is when belief in God is taken as refuting evolution.
Take gravity for example. Scientists don't fully understand the underpinnings of gravity. But, it would be non-scientific to dispute the law of gravity with the argument that God (or an intelligent designer) makes things fall. It's equally non-scientific to dipute evolution with the argument that an Intelligent Designer created the universe.
ID is faith, not science.
My understanding of "intelligent design" is that it is a particular theory, advanced in opposition to evolution, that contents there must have been some a priori intelligent designer of supreme intelligence for much of what we find in life, as opposed to it all having evolved by the accident of mutations and natural selection.
My understanding of Einstein's belief is that he deeply believed in something profound beyond our practical or scientific knowledge. This quote from Einstein captures this:
A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and this alone, I am a deeply religious man.I am quite unable to get from this 'something we cannot penetrate' (Einstein's terms) to 'postulating an a priori designer of supreme intelligence' (intelligent design, as I understand it).
A prime mover need not be intelligent nor a designer.
I am not persuaded that Dennett is dumb, not that he is perpetrating a hoax. I doubt that either is the case.
ID has been taken over by the creationists. It is no longer compatible with evolution.
I'm not aware of any evidence for this contention, and I've read a good bit of Einstein's correspondence on issues philosophical. While Einstein was a theist, everything I've seen from him indicates that he believed in a seamless continuity of natural law. By contrast ID asserts that there are "seams" in what is explainable by natural law which must have been stitched together by the "Intelligent Designer". (Although they'll never say when or how the "stitching" occurred.)
Dr. Einstein attempted to disprove Quantum Physics by saying "God does not play dice with the Universe."
Einstein was wrong.
Indeed. Unfortunately it was his belief in Intelligent Design that led him to reject Quantum Mechanics. In practical terms, his beliefs were a scientific handicap.