Uwot
I looked up the link and the book. I couldn't get any biography on William Hermanns and the quotes attributed to Einstein just don't sound like him. I reckon it's a work of fiction. Can you find any quotes from another source that support your view? I’ve quoted simone Weil, Jacob Needleman, and Basarab nicolescu saying basically the same thing
How about this by Einstein which appeared in the NY Times. It may not read as you assume Einstein to be but he wrote it.
The development from a religion of fear to a moral religion is a great step in peoples lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based purely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on guard. the truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.
Common to all types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he want to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
-- Albert Einstein, Science and Religion, NY Times, November 9, 1930. <--
Nick_A wrote: ↑
Wed Apr 11, 2018 6:51 pm
You are concerned with idolatry...
What have I said that makes you think so?
You associate the idea of religion with a personal god which is really idolatry. You seem to deny that the essence of religion can refer to the Good as Plato described it or the ONE as Plotinus described it. You only concern yourself with idolatry while avoiding the deeper ideas in religion as they relate to the objective relative quality of human being in the context of universal meaning and purpose.
But you’re not as bad as Greta. Where Xena is the warrier princess, Greta is the queen of the ad homs.
I’m the one supporting the complimentary relationship between science and religion which is poison for her. Mentioning this relationship is like holding up a cross in the face of a vampire. They cannot tolerate it.
Simone Weil wrote:
I believe that one identical thought is to be found—expressed very precisely and with only slight differences of modality—in. . .Pythagoras, Plato, and the Greek Stoics. . .in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita; in the Chinese Taoist writings and. . .Buddhism. . .in the dogmas of the Christian faith and in the writings of the greatest Christian mystics. . .I believe that this thought is the truth, and that it today requires a modern and Western form of expression. That is to say, it should be expressed through the only approximately good thing we can call our own, namely science. This is all the less difficult because it is itself the origin of science. Simone Weil….Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, Random House, 1976, p. 488
You may just growl at her observation but Greta will go into a rage condemning all in sight who may agree with her.
