Einstein and Religion

So, a while back I had been talking to various people about a variety of topics related to theology and turned to the almighty internet to read up on some topics. I navigated through a plethora of items and happened upon a lot of quotes from Albert Einstein, and the funny thing was, they tended to support diametrically opposed views.  Now, there are a number of things in the world that I don't like, quotes taken out of context is one of those things. I thought to myself, "Self, Dr. Einstein is one of the smartest people in the world, I would be very interested to know what his thoughts on God are, particularly given the discrepancy between the differing groups that purport to represent them."  So, here I was, some time later wandering aimlessly through a Barnes & Noble when I happened upon a book entitled Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer.  This book examines Einstein's life history, writings and talks on religion, and how physics relates to his theology from a philosophical standpoint which is allegedly unbiased and removed from personal persuance.

From my understanding thus far the author, a philosopher and physicist, has done an admirable job presenting Einsteins views and a context for said views in properly journalistic fashion without the spin that normally accompanies his words.  This book has been quite interesting and has in fact pushed my thoughts to interesting places several times.

In summary, Einstein ascribed to a "cosmic religion" where the mystery of nature reigns supreme over the limited understanding of Man and had been set in motion by a god.   Einstein didn't really think that God was one that had any likeness or could be petitioned to because he ascribed to a strictly causal outlook where prayer would be futile and free will non-existent, events would be deteremined solely due to environmental concerns.

This pretty much opens the door to where serious thoughts have begun taking shape in my mind.  I have always wondered how free will could exist alongside of predestination.  How can humans retain their humanity in the face of God's omniscience?  This is a question that it seems Einstein answered without properly realizing it.  I have yet to finish the book, but this took me by such suprise that it really kindled a deep seated interest in me.

The basic problem that I had was that if God knows what choice I will make 243 days from now at 11:17 in the morning, why should I worry about it?  If He can't, then how can he be all knowing?

Well, as it turns out, I'm not the first person to be plagued by these thoughts, though no one that I've known prior to now has been able to offer much of an explanation.  Anyhow, this dude Beothus or something in like 1100 thought about it and Thomas Aquinas thought about it some and didn't really offer a logical explanation other than to say that events in time exist one way, and God exists outside of it in another.  This actually isn't that dumb, but I had always assumed "time" to be an immutable part of life experience, when in reality is simply a manufactured dimension that we use as a metric in the world.  But some philosophers have said that if God is always in the present because he is in eternity, then as I type this blog Rome is burning and thus Nero is outside playing his fiddle simeultaneously as I punch little plastic squares.  This makes no sense and so  something about theology must be amiss.

Well, the Theory of Relativity kind of shot a hole in the above line of reasoning.  Einstein used the example of a train traveling along an embankment that gets struck by two bolts of lightening.  Anyhow, the bolts happen at the same time with respect to the embankment, but differently with respect to the moving train due to its velocity.   I need to read more about the mechanics on this becasue I'm still a little hazy.  The overall premise though is that different frames of reference, the embankment and the train can have different definitions of simeultaneity and therefore time in general.  So God can exist in a frame where he can see essentially a zoomed out version of Google Maps of our lives.

I'll write more about this soon, but this idea really fascinates me as I've never actually stumbled upon a logical explanation of this, even though Einstein didn't carry this through to its end in this particular sense.  Also, Einstein was pretty hypocritical in that he believed that people shouldn't be rewarded or punished for good/bad deeds because they were causally determined but he was a big time philanthropist and hated the Nazis for the whole Holocaust thing.