That's an understatement, dear spirited irish! LOLOL! I've been puzzling over that, too.
What's really puzzling is Einstein didn't always "adhere" to his ideas. The way he thought on the question of determinism vs. free will, and the way he actually "acted it out" in his life, were mutually exclusive. Intellectually, he was a determinist. But existentially, he was a free man. Perhaps he had a huge blind spot regarding this seemingly irreconcilable situation; or maybe felt he couldn't "see far enough" to know how to resolve it. So he just lived with the paradox, evidently entirely untroubled by it.
In short, he insisted on strict, deterministic causation in his physics. But he did not apply this rule to himself.
You wrote: "Newton unwittingly set the stage for mechanism, a sort of deterministic ‘quiet pantheism.’
That's a fascinating association, spirited irish! I hadn't thought of mechanism in those terms before. A mechanistic, deterministic reduction of man pretty much gets you to the same place as the pantheist doctrine of the illusion of personality. No one can help what they do, so somebody or something else must be to blame when things go awry.
I don't agree with Professor Jaki's characterization of Newton as a Christian, however. But if he was one, then definitely he was a heretic — for he utterly rejected the Holy Trinity, it is said on Occam's Razor grounds: He thought the Trinity represented an "unnecessary multiplication of causes."
In sum, Newton was a rock-ribbed Monotheist. He believed in God Pantocrator, the absolute Ruler of the Universe, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. He also called God "the Lord of Life, with His creatures." This latter point shows that Newton was not a Deist, as some have claimed. For Newton evidently believed that the operation of the mechanical laws over time would inevitably generate so much disorder in the natural system, that God would have to step in from time to time to set things right again.
Thank you oh, so very much, spirited irish, for your deeply perceptive and thought-provoking essay/post!
snip: What’s really puzzling is Einstein didn’t always “adhere” to his ideas. The way he thought on the question of determinism vs. free will, and the way he actually “acted it out” in his life, were mutually exclusive.
In “Demonic Nothingness, Liberalism’s Eternal ‘Equality’ in Hell,” the internal contradiction you have pointed to is addressed under the subheading: What is Wrong with Liberals?
Einstein held two antithetical truth-claims in his mind simultaneouly. One was really true while the other was really false. As pride is offended by true truth, it selectively rejects it and postulates the false truth-claim as truth. That is what Einstein did. In fact, all positivist materialists and idealist pantheists find themselves in this untenable position.
Such is the case with Steven Pinker. As a scientist he teaches, “The mechanistic stance allows us to understand what makes us tick and how we fit into the physical universe.” This is his false truth-claim proclaimed publicly.
Privately however, he confesses true truth: “When those discussions wind down for the day, we go back to talking about each other as free and dignified human beings.”
(quotes on p. 108, Total Truth, Nancy Pearcy)
One of the notable things about humans is our ability to hold contradictory ideas simultaneously. We resolve the contradiction over time, or blend the two over time into some third answer. Sometimes we never resolve the contradiction, but our behavior provides a practical means of blending the two that intellectually we were never able to resolve.
We are designed in such a way that we can bridge apparent flaws in the design, tears in the fabric, and we can continue operating with incomplete data.