[lst]

Do you know Italian? If yes, it's a book I'd recommend to everybody:

Author: Antonio Socci (a really good and meticulous italian journalist)

Name: "Indagine su Gesù"

It's a plain scientific research about the life of Jesus (with many many citations from every direction, including many atheists).

The book sells very well these days...

[gravitycop]

Author: Antonio Socci

Name: "Indagine su Gesù"

Thank you.

Do you know Italian?

No. I know Google Translate. http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpaparat...

Socci continues in this introductory chapter showing the positions of the greatest contemporary scientists, from Einstein to Hawking, by scholars of the Big Bang to those of DNA: all agree that the most reasonable answer to the mystery and the great dell'infinitamente 'infinitely small, as well as in front of the surprise at the amazing complexity of even the most minute living organism, is to admit a Creator. In short, something we call God But if science and reason - more and more, contrary to what one wants to believe - leads to the recognition of the existence of a God, the more dense is the enigma if we try to go down ' existence the essence.

Could you please provide the evidence (quotes, etc.) that Socci cites?

[lst]

OK, in the first chapter of the book (page 19), there is this paragraph (I'm not good in translating to English, but I'll try):

"Einstein said that the natural laws are revealing such a superior reason, that all of human thinking and ordering are only an insignificant reflection, compared to them."

The next paragraph explains that Flew has been influenced decisively by the opinion of Einstein. It informs that many people said Einstein to be atheist or spinozistic pantheist. Then it cites Einstein again:

"I'm no atheist, and I don't think that I could define myself as pantheist. We are in the situation of a child which enters a huge library, full of books written in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written these books, but doesn't know how. And it doesn't know the languages the books are written in. The child suspects being a mysterious order in the disposition of the books, but doesn't know which. This seems to me the human position, even of the most intelligent ones, in front of God..."

(there follow some other sentences, but this should already be enough).

Happy now? The book is full of citations and annotations (they are counted, and the last one has the number 529). The author collected the material for the book in several years, and he's a really meticulous writer, I know him quite well.

[gravitycop]

in the first chapter of the book (page 19), there is this paragraph [...] "Einstein said that the natural laws are revealing such a superior reason, that all of human thinking and ordering are only an insignificant reflection, compared to them."

Thank you. I included the actual Einstein quote, which is taken from his book The World as I See It, in my other reply: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=462856

Here it is, again:

But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

The quoted text appears in Einstein's book immediately after the paragraph in which Einstein states that belief in God is naive and childish. Einstein's book is online at Google Books. This link leads directly to the page with the quote: http://books.google.com/books?id=JFXWosy8ywYC&pg=PA38&#3...

[gravitycop]

Then it cites Einstein again:

"I'm no atheist, and I don't think that I could define myself as pantheist. We are in the situation of a child which enters a huge library, full of books written in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written these books, but doesn't know how. And it doesn't know the languages the books are written in. The child suspects being a mysterious order in the disposition of the books, but doesn't know which. This seems to me the human position, even of the most intelligent ones, in front of God..."

Thank you. Here is the actual quote: http://www.google.com/search?q=einstein+child+library+books+...

http://www.deism.com/einstein.htm

(The following is from Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton University Press)

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

Here is the Google Books page for Einstein and Religion By Max Jammer: http://books.google.com/books?id=TnCc1f1C25IC&pg=PA48&#3...

The previous page of Jammer's book states:

Unrestricted determinism, Einstein argued, does not admit a "God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and whose purposes are modeled after our own."

Like Spinoza, Einstein denied the existence of a personal God, modeled after the ideal of a superman, as we would say today.*

On the next page, Jammer extends the above Einstein quote:

"[...] Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things."

Jammer attributes the Einstein quote to:

G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930), quoted by D. Brian, Einstein - a Life, p. 186.

This webpage advises: http://kirtimukha.com/Krishnaswamy/Einstein/on_atheism.htm

You might want to take this quotation with a grain of salt. According to Brian, the Americanized German Viereck became known as a "big-name hunter" after "capturing" Kaiser Wilhelm II; Premier Georges Clemenceau of France; Henry Ford; Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis; and the playwright George Bernard Shaw. Because of his desire to interview the great and because of his inordinate egotism, Freud accused him of having a "superman complex." Upton Sinclear referred to him as "a pompous liar and hypocrite," and George Bernard Shaw questioned his accuracy.

Is the quotation authentic? For what it's worth, here it is.

When asked whether he believes in the God of Spinoza, Einstein is supposed to have replied as follows:

  "I can't answer with a simple yes or no.
  I'm not an atheist and I don't think I
  can call myself a pantheist. We are in
  the position of a little child entering
  a huge library filled with books in many
  different languages. [...] Our limited
  minds cannot grasp the mysterious force
  that moves the constellations. I am
  fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but
  admire even more his contributions to
  modern thought because he is the first
  philosopher to deal with the soul and
  the body as one, not two separate
  things."

Did Einstein actually say this? The nonsense phrase "mysterious force that moves the constellations" troubles me. This seems much more likely to have been inserted by the scientifically ignorant Viereck than it does something that Einstein would say.

The Viereck interview with Einstein appeared first in the Saturday Evening Post (Oct. 26, 1929, p.17) under the title "What Life Means to Einstein."It is curious that Einstein's statement about Spinoza does not appear in that article. Did Viereck choose not include it? Did Einstein object to its inclusion in the article? Or was the Spinoza material removed by the editors? [...]

The quotation may not be completely inauthentic. It seems improbable that Viereck could have recorded Einstein's answer verbatim during an interview. Surely Viereck would have taken brief abbreviated notes that he expanded later. Or perhaps he jotted down the conversation at some time afterwards, putting down Einstein's answers from memory. In neither case would you expect 100% accuracy.

[lst]

Thanks, personally I never take any citation literally, both parts (agreeing and opposing) could have, even subconsciously, changed some parts.

As for the book I mentioned: it didn't influence or change my mind, it has only been a very, very interesting read (because there are opinions from a few christian people, but most are from non-religious people, who recognized the geniality of the New Testament, and the absolutely unique position of Jesus Christ in history (in both past and present).

Few people know how deeply the whole european history has been positively influenced by christianity. One of the best statements of the book is: christians don't ask people not to be rational, but to be it profoundly!

(If you only stay on the surface of the things, everything seems possible. Only a deep understanding shows the whole reality...)

[gravitycop]

Here is, apparently, Antonio Socci's blog: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.goo...

[Original Italian text sentences alternating with translated English sentences:]

Nel microscopico la grandezza della carica dell’elettrone ei rapporti col protone: “i valori di questi numeri” scrive Hawking “sembrano essere stati esattamente coordinati per rendere possibile lo sviluppo della vita”. In the microscopic size of the charge of electronics and proton relations with "the values of these numbers," Hawking writes, "seem to have been exactly coordinated to enable the development of life." E poi la velocità di espansione dell’universo: se un secondo dopo il Big Bang fosse stata un pochino superiore o appena inferiore sarebbe accaduta la catastrofe. And then the speed of expansion of the universe: if a second after the Big Bang had been slightly higher or lower would be just the disaster happened. Diceva Albert Einstein che nelle leggi della natura “si rivela una ragione così superiore che tutta la razionalità del pensiero e degli ordinamenti umani è al confronto un riflesso assolutamente insignificante”. Albert Einstein said that in the laws of nature "is one reason so superior that all rational thought and human systems is a reflection of a comparison is absolutely insignificant."

The rest of the blogpost is standard "the world is too perfect to be of natural origin" ID stuff. Are the quotes above what were in the book (Indagine su Gesù) regarding Einstein's and Hawking's alleged beliefs in God?

Apparently, the original Einstein quote in English was: http://www.google.com/search?q=einstein+%22utterly+insignifi...

But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

This page http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/einstein_religion.html says the quote is from:

Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1999, pp. 24-29.

That page includes the book's preceding 11 paragraphs, in which Einstein states that belief in God is naive and childish.

[lst]

...and sorry for this annotation:

The US certainly suffers 'superficiality' more than any other country. If you want to find really scientific stuff about religion, you often need to go back to good old Europe...