I was reading through a different blog the other night as well - Potomac Current. Interestingly, it's written by a woman who lives in the D.C. area - where I grew up. Anyway, she had a good post called "Global Warming: Who Should We Believe?". But the one I really liked was called "Einstein and the Mind of God" - the best excerpts here:
There are those who believe that it strains credulity to think that Einstein would have thought in terms of the "mind of God." These observers disparage such a thought as a religious anthropomorphism of the kind that Albert Einstein criticized and abhorred. The truth about Einstein, however, is more subtle and more intriguing, as the truth often stubbornly insists on being. In fact, Einstein famously said that his entire effort in physics was in order to know the mind of God. Einstein, to be sure, also said that he did not believe in a personal God in the traditional sense and was interested in design rather than theology. He saw true religiosity as knowing that "what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms." When he was close to death, Einstein said, "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details." Clearly, although he was not orthodox, he had no qualms about using religious phraseology to evoke the wisdom and beauty of the universe that is beyond measure ... [We should] teach children by example to respect both science, as the study of the measurable aspects of the universe for which we have physical evidence, and spirituality, as the appreciation of the awe, mystery, and meaning that lie beyond the grasp of our limited instruments and dull faculties.
I actually don't think science and religion are incompatible. The more I learn about the elegance math and science, the more I appreciate God. And even though you can't definitively prove or disprove the existence or nature of God (as you could with the validity of a scientific hypothesis), I don't think it diminishes religion or the role it can play in our lives. You can't definitively prove or disprove how someone is feeling, but it doesn't invalidate the existence or legitamacy of those feelings. It's just different from your traditional scientific inquiry.
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I have several quotes from Einstein in my quote book. I really like his comments on religion, spirituality, intuition, simplicity, creativity, science, and God. Here are a few more besides the one you included in your blog entry:
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.
What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he know not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow men - in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends 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 am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labor of my fellow men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.
I actually think that last quote relates back to the global warming issues we face. If we lived in a manner that respected God's earth as well as the "labors of other men", I feel like the perfect problem of global warming would no longer be so perfect and would remove a lot of that inertia. love you.
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