Einstein's God and the Hungry Spider

In the midst of his historic debate with Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein famously declared that god does not play dice with the cosmos.  Einstein was objecting to the then-new conclusions from quantum mechanics that the world was fundamentally probabilistic rather than deterministic.   The proposal that the world is inherently random offended Einstein’s sensibilities.  Niels responded by asking Albert, “Who are you to tell God what to do?”

Einstein also said when asked if he believed in the Almighty, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”  The intended irony of his belief in Spinoza’s “god” was lost in the reporting by people who apparently had never read Spinoza. 

With these multiple references to god, Spinoza’s or otherwise, we might come to believe that our famous cohort of physicists was a cabal of theists in disguise.  That would be incorrect.  True, Einstein often made reference to god, but in doing so created the mistaken impression that he actually believed in one.  His supposed faith is often cited by believers in discussions with rationalists along the lines of: "Einstein is smarter than you are and he believed in god; what makes you think you know more than he did?”

One serious flaw with that argument, in addition to the problem of appealing to authority for support, is that Einstein did not believe in god.  This conclusion is unambiguous if we simply listen to the man’s own words on the subject: 

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this…”  Lest there be any remaining doubt that Einstein did not believe, he also said, ““The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.”

For those who remain unconvinced by Einstein’s own words about his own views on religion, we could also point out that while Einstein never seemed to comb his hair we do not use that fact as an argument against personal hygiene and an occasional visit to the barber.

We know after more than 60 years of experimentation and advances in theory that Bohr was more right than Einstein.  Chance, luck and randomness play an essential, core, profound and deeply embedded role not only in physics but in all aspects of life, from its origins and evolution to the mundane and profound in our daily lives.  As an aside, that inherent randomness belies any notion of purpose or design.

In a truly random world, good and bad luck exist; luck is real.  A baby born into poverty and hunger to a broken home, burdened with a terrible disease and a negligent mother would universally be considered unlucky.  An infant coming into the world with robust health and embraced by loving parents in a home with no economic stress would be lucky by any standard.  The differential condition between those two children is of no fault of either, just a consequence of rolling life’s cosmic dice.

We demonstrably occupy a world in which randomness plays a role.  Some events in life, both trivial and grand, are simply beyond our control.  Getting hit by a drunk driver while strolling on a sidewalk cannot be avoided by careful planning or by becoming a better person.  Such a sad fate is not an act of god hiding some unfathomable purpose, but an act of randomness, without any meaning.  The dice rolled six instead of three. 

But the existence of luck, good or bad, offers no refuge from personal responsibility.  This central point is commonly misunderstood, with luck often being confused with fate.  “The dice made me do it” is not a viable defense. Luck is real but living in a contingent world offers no excuse for shirking duty, or for not taking control of, and responsibility for, our lives.  In daily life we routinely make decisions that affect ourselves, our family and friends.  The outcome from those many choices is much in our own hands, independent of surrounding circumstances: we can create opportunity for advancing our life and we can mitigate risk; we can choose to be moral; we ourselves can create meaning and purpose in our lives.  We have tremendous power to create our own path, within the limits of chance.  We are rulers of our own thoughts free from the constraints of a random background. 

To understand this complex relationship and interplay between luck and personal responsibility, consider an orb weaver spider.  Let’s call him Hairy.  As a student in web-weaving school, Hairy studied diligently until his eight eyes were red and blurry in order to master the delicate art of laying silk.  As a graduate student he studied micro patterns of wind and rain and devoted himself to understanding insect behavior so that he would know exactly where best to build his precious web to trap his daily meals.   Hairy did everything within his power, and within the limits of his biology, to become a professional builder and materials science expert extraordinaire.  He graduated with honors.

With his newly acquired expertise and Ph.D. in Web Design, Hairy set out on his own into the world to apply his new skills.  His mother meanwhile wondered why he did not become a real doctor.  Hairy suspects his mother may have eaten his father who has been suspiciously absent of late.  In any case, using all that he learned Hairy designed and built a beautifully constructed web that soon became the object of arachnid envy for its flawless blending of form and function.  Awards were surly to follow.  Using his knowledge of insect flight, Hairy positioned his artful web in the perfect location between two Blue Agaves offering just the right orientation to the sun and wind. 

Putting the finishing touches on his last strand of silk Hairy contentedly crawled back to the center of the web and waited for his first fly.  And waited.  And waited.

And the fly never came. 

While committees were established to assign blame for the failure, the paucity of flies was in fact not Hairy’s fault.  Instead the result was a consequence of life’s random nature.  Hairy did everything he could as a spider, building the perfect web in the perfect location based on all the available information about where the most flies would be most of the time.  He could do nothing else to affect the outcome.  The rest was up to chance and chance alone.  He could not will or make a fly stumble into his web.  He could only build the web to the best of his abilities to optimize the probability that a fly would hit.

We are all like Hairy, just with six fewer legs.  That means we have an obligation to maximize opportunity through personal responsibility, up to the limits of chance.  We each have the personal responsibility to create the best and biggest surface area we possibly can to optimally capture life’s opportunities.  Like Hairy, we will not always be successful in spite of our best efforts.  We have to build the best web we possibly can because we can do no more than that, and we do so with the full knowledge that we cannot force the fly into our carefully woven trap. 

Most events in our daily life are under our direct command.  But not all, and not all the time.  Luck is important but is alone not our master.  Einstein was right; there is no god.  Just a spider, a web and a random fly.

Follow Jeff Schweitzer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Jeff Schweitzer

Comments

[elmerfude]

"One does not need to believe in God to experience God." R. Rohr

[kwinter]

But, apparently one has to 'believe' that they've experienced God, in order to view the idea as credible.

[elmerfude]

Maybe they experienced God but did not recognize the experience as being God.

[kjstjohn]

MinimalistSyntax,

Yes, I became an atheist as a child because Anne Frank's death and the enormity of the holocaust was proof of the non-existence of a loving God. And because the holocaust was all too similar to the hell that Christianity imagined for the Jews and other infidels.

My thinking about God at that time was too immature to evolve without spiritual guidance. So I spent 30 years in the wilderness mediating the world through the initially liberating but ultimately (for me) arid and stifling poetry of "No God."

[melmoid]

I thought the German nazis perpetrated the holocaust. Why would an atheist blame God when God doesn't even exist?

[kjstjohn]

LOL. So did you sniff out something that I did not intend to communicate in my posts--that I was a heretical atheist for 30 years who continued to blame God?

I do not blame God for anything because I do not conceive of God as an object.

[JohnFromCensornati]

It does seem an awful lot like she said that she *became* an atheist because of the holocaust, that it signified the non-existence of a god. How is this blaming a god?

[kjstjohn]

JohnFromCensornati wrote:

The Church of the Cosmic Christ.
Infidels For Isa.

==========­==========­=

LOL. Infidels are my favorite people.

[minimalist syntax]

Infidels are in favor of the Independent Softball Association? Who knew.

[JohnFromCensornati]

Not ISA.

[Social Construct]

An excellent argument indeed. Thank you to all that participated.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

it ain't over till it's over :-)

thanks anyway.

[melmoid]

Well it is time to sign out. A person can just have so much fun--after all it is just a personal experience. I was exposed to a conservative religion during my formative years against my will, but most of you atheists seem to be as judgmental, rigid, inflexible and narrow as the bishops. The only difference is they worshiped scriptures particularly the OT while you atheists seem to worship your own bizarre logical structures. Put you both in a bag and I don't know which would fall out first. I may have to give god another look. Maybe GodIs has a point after all assuming he isn't a hoax. Have a random evening with no purpose or direction to it at all.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

Agreed. Let's sign out then.

[JohnFromCensornati]

GodIs always seems to have a point! It's usually randomly off-topic, contradictory & absurd, but he does have one.

[Jeff Schweitzer - Huffpost Blogger]

Refuting a narrow and ridig philosphy does not make me narrow. Because I am unconvinced that there is an invisible pink elephant in the room does not make me a fanatic. The absence of religion is not religion.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

you're right, of course.

But in the unlikely event that melmoid isn't a hoax himself, we should exercise some caution to make sure his experience of this comment thread doesn't turn into some kind of Rosemary's baby event.

:-)

If I could apply for a new huffpo pen name at this instant, it wouldn't be salomon, it would be 'The800Pou­ndGorillaI­nTheRoom'.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

Sorry to tell you, but I'm quite sure that GodIs is a hoax.

[kjstjohn]

Einstein would be the last person to say that God is a "hoax."

He believed that the metaphor of a personal (moral) God was a positive but ultimately flawed and transitional phase in the development of civilization.

In his vision of a more advanced civilization, he did not envision an abandonment of the metaphor of God; he envisioned a maturation of the metaphor of God.

[kjstjohn]

Got you on "GodIs."

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

Another piece of advice is: for all those who have been victimized by inflexible and narrow bishops, make sure you make yourself acquainted with Fellini's '8 1/2'.

[kjstjohn]

LOL. Einstein said he did not believe in a *personal* God. To equate that statement with atheism is a misunderstanding of Einstein, Spinoza, and billions of people of faith who do not believe in a personal God.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

I strongly urge those billions of people to have a little discussion with Evangelicals.

[kjstjohn]

LOL!

[Jeff Schweitzer - Huffpost Blogger]

Einstein's personal letters reveal much more than that, some recently published. His own words support the clear conclusion that he found the entire concept untenable.

I never used the word atheist by the way; I said Einstein did not believe in god.

[kjstjohn]

Nontheists such as Buddhists do not "believe in" god. That is a nonsensical way to frame the tenets of their belief system. All you are saying over and over is that Einstein did not believe in a personal God.

I believe your article could mislead a Western reader into believing that Einstein was an atheist.

[GodIs]

Universities have exchanged the truth of God our Creator for the lies of Einstein, Darwin, Marx, Jung, Freud, Dawkins, and many other foolosophers. They have exchanged the truth of theology for the vain imaginations of the secular humanists. It is impossible to have a clear understanding of truth without sound theology and rejection of theology is a rejection of knowledge.­The Lord does not demand blind faith, but commands us all to think deeply and make an enlightened decision to believe and obey the Truth based upon facts.
God is love.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

Did anybody here reject theology? I must have failed to notice.

[Jeff Schweitzer - Huffpost Blogger]

And you failed to address a single point made in the blog; you just make blind assertions of truth. Uninteresting. And you didn't answer if you mean by "God is love" that god is rape, torture, disease, hunger and suffering.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

as pointed out below by kwinter, GodIs appears to be some kind of permanent hoax.

[melmoid]

Last time I checked rape, torture, hunger and suffering are inflicted by humans on other humans with the possible exception of disease. Of course a wealthy country like ours cannot find the moral chops to provide medical care for all. Hunger could be eliminated if we recognized and managed per the principles of ecology.

[melmoid]

After reading these threads, I agree with you about the vain secular humanists. But they don't have imagination unless it pops up randomly. I don't agree with your list. Some of these scientists have greatly contributed to our understanding of creation and they were imaginative.

[minimalist syntax]

" Einstein was right; there is no god. "

Isn't that a bit of an appeal to authority for atheism?

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

Um, no. Why? I would view it as a compliment to Einstein. :-)

[minimalist syntax]

Isn't it just the inverse of: This genius says there is a God? :-)

Even why would intelligence give one special authority wrt spiritual knowledge in any direction-­-i.e., arguing for or against a particular spiritual p.o.v.? (I have to admit that my favorite genius, Noam Chomsky, is definitely an atheist.)

[Jeff Schweitzer - Huffpost Blogger]

Not at all; you've made a leap of logic that is not logical. God does not exist; it so happens that Einstein is one of the people who has noted that; I do not appeal to him at all for the conclusion. The conclusion stands with or without Einstein. I simply refute theassertion that he in fact believed in god, when in fact he did not.

[minimalist syntax]

I am teasing you a little bit in case you want to call me Grasshopper, in which case I can respond by calling you Master Schwo :-)

I can see that most of your article you are simply pointing out what Einstein really believed. Obviously, Einstein's opinion is actually not necessary to deciding anything about the issue. However, at the end, you do seem to invite us to conclude together with Einstein, that God doesn't exist, which does seem to appeal to Einstein's authority.

[melmoid]

I don't believe in luck--never have. My family was so poor my father had to poach deer to feed us. I was still able to get an education and have a career in science. Luck didn't have much to do with it--hard work and concentration did. To reduce everything to probabilities, chance, luck, randomness removes the mystery, splendor, enchantment, imagination and purpose that individuals and societies in their better moments can exhibit. A world of strict probability and randomness would be a sterile, uninteresting and barren world--one I would not care to live in. I think this thesis underestimates the direction of evolution towards a very diverse, fecund and creative universe that manages to populate every nook and cranny of creation with both beauty and terror--a universe of passion. Something is wrong with your argument--it just doesn't square with my experience and learning.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

You have every right to suspect an error in the argument based on nothing more than the observation that you cannot make it compatible with your life experience.

But what if you are simply Hairy in a world in which the fly happened to arrive?

I know perfectly well that this takes away from your appreciation of self. It even diminishes you to think of yourself in that way. And you're not forced to do it.

But those for whom the fly did not arrive are. And while you do not need to make sure that they fit into your worldview, it is still true that your worldview would be improved if you could.

[melmoid]

Can you read? It is not only incompatible with my life experience but my learning which is extensive. It doesn't take away my appreciation of my self but my observation of the way nature really is. You appear unable to respond to the larger points I raised and chose instead to make a condescending personal attack.

[melmoid]

Okay so you know the truth about my worldview based on a brief posting on the internet. You must have supernatural powers. You also seem to be the arbiter of values as to what constitutes an improvemen­t--godlike powers that you have taken on. I for one am not waiting for any flies. I am going to go find some and swat them.

[mbaty]

"the orderly harmony of what exists..." is what Einstein said. And Niels said the universe was "probabilistic rather than determinis­tic." That means that we can influence the probabilities that manifest within the ordered harmony of the universe. The spider has faith in it's ability to bend the probabilities and in the universe to provide for it's needs. Things are not so completely random.

[slarabee]

Awesome post I love it.

It may be comforting in times of trouble to believe that there are larger forces than nature, random chance and the best laid plans of mice and men influencing our daily lives however the logic of your analogy is undeniable. Scary but undeniable.

[GodIs]

God love us so He has given us many gifts. One of the most important gifts He has given us is free will. He gave us the free will to choose to love Him and not to sin against Him. If we choose not to love God, what else can He do? In His infinite love and justice, He must allow us the freedom to make and stick by those choices, but the consequence of wicked choices is eternal torment in Hell. There is no random component.
God is love.

[Jeff Schweitzer - Huffpost Blogger]

Does god himself have free will? If not, can god grant what he himself does not have? An all-powerful god is all-knowing, meaning god knows all of his future actions, and all of the choices he would make. Here is the rub: god could not change those choices, otherwise his earlier knowledge would have been wrong, meaning god would not be all-knowing! All omniscient god therefore has no free will to choose actions, since all actions must be preordained. God becomes an observer of his own omniscience since all knowledge of the future precludes any changes to that future. Any god with free will would have to be imperfect, and would by definition not be all-knowing. So an all-knowing god, who cannot possess free will, cannot grant something he himself does not have. But a bigger problem remains. Free will implies a future with no predestination. A god who knows all, about everything past, present and future, could not create any free will that would prevent that knowledge of the future; the very act of creating free will would destroy the fact of omniscience.

I assume by god’s infinite love and justice you mean rape, torture, genocide, hunger, poverty, disease, and suffering, right? Or does a baby born with horrible deformities, and then dies an agonizing death of hunger because he is abandoned all about love? I know – god works in mysterious ways. But one thing he could not do is grant free will.

[kwinter]

GodIs rarely ever replies to anyone. He usually just throws things out to be provocative or satirical.
But I certainly enjoyed your perfectly reasoned response. Thanks!

[slarabee]

You just theorized about the possible powers of a "God" using logic and reason.

However the very idea that a being exists that we cannot see, hear, touch or prove exists with any known method at all is itself illogical and the belief in such a being is unreasonable.

I guess what I am saying is I agree with your line of thinking however it seems a waste to reason logically with those that believe (or worse yet have faith in) the illogical and unreasonable. :)

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

Wait. You only demonstrated that he can not grant free will if he is also omniscient. And that in that case he cannot even himself have a free will. With that I agree - I think you proved it.

But there could still be a god who has granted us free will, but who is not omniscient and certainly not all powerful.

It would be a suffering and helpless god. How about that?

[melmoid]

Your logic is tightly wound but also boring and irrelevant to a real life. People will either show an altruistic tendency and help others in need or they won't. It doesn't have a thing to do with god who doesn't even exist. Now Jesus the man probably did exist and left behind some worthwhile parables and a sermon on a mountain. But the churches on every corner of my town ignore this.

[Social Construct]

Interesting read, thank you. The example of the spider using personal responsibility and how chance deprived his expectation of reward for his effort was inspired; however, there are usually other forces that may be considered as natural as human will and the luck of random chance. For we humans, I would add the inevitable desire of some to gather power over others, for better or worse. Abusive exploitation of another's positive actions, whether it be taking responsibility, a skill set or any other positive human trait, can severely limit one's opportunity to success or one's access to more chances at "lucky" outcomes. Even "Harry the spider" could only build his magnificent web where other, more powerful, spiders let him.

[elmerfude]

As a scientist I can agree with your point-of-view. I am an atheist most of the time. But then the poet kicks in and says there is something more going on -- a sacredness in nature that both the religious fundamentalists and and secular atheists often overlook. I call it the sacred substrate. I just listened to Fr. Richard Rohr who would call it the Cosmic Christ. I call this impulse in nature the numinous impulse. I think a number of thinkers have intuited it and called it different names. This sacred impulse has been described and named in various ways as Holy the Firm (Dillard), the Collective Unconscious (Jung), the Great Spirit (Native American), quantum mechanical entanglement (modern physics), the Holy Spirit (the Bible), the Great Integrity (Lao Tzu), the Cosmic Religious Feeling (Einstein), Natura Naturans (Spinoza), the Eternal Beauty (Hawthorne), the Forms (Plato), the Unmoved Mover (Aristotle), the Guest (Kabir), the Prayer of Union (Saint Teresa of Avila), the Divine Imagination (William Blake), Morphic Fields (Rupert Sheldrake), the Anima Mundi or World Soul (Paracelsus), the Mysterium Tremendum (Rudolf Otto), the Designing Fire ((Zeno of Citium), the World Spirit (GWF Hegel), Infinite Substance (Anaximander), the One (Plotinus), Spiritus Insertus Atomis (Democritus), the Self-Existent (the Therapeutae), shamanic ecstasy (Miro), Facultas Formatrix (Kepler). I understand this requires a poetic leap that most scientists may not like.

[kwinter]

No, it doesn't require a "poetic leap that most scientists may not like". It requires abandoning the scientific method, and just accepting a product of the imagination as reality.

Giving a name (or a multitude of names) to something imagined, does not make the 'imagined' any more real.

By your comment, it sounds like you're redefining the word 'poetic', to mean irrational.

[elmerfude]

The poetic realm is an entirely different kind of truth--a different epistemology altogether. It is not rational or irrational but that does not make it any less real or valid. Poetry also does not always come from the imagination. Mary Oliver--an astonishing poet--is a very competent. Her poetry is filled with natural observations but charged with the numinous impulse I talked about. You seem to think that the product of the scientific method is the only reality. I cannot imagine a life without art, poetry and transcendent personal experience for myself. It would be just too barren and sterile for me. I actually found your response to be very condescending.

[elmerfude]

Ooops . I forgot the word naturalist after the word competent.

[MerhabaAbi]

After I read the responses, I was struck by the similar replies that I've seen on other posts dealing with the question of god's existance. What never ceases to puzzle me is why those who think the world was created by a sentient being who is superior to humans feel compelled to argue for his exixtance. It's almost as if thier faith is dependent upon convincing others.

[JohnFromCensornati]

Ponzi schemes always depend on new recruits.

[minimalist syntax]

LOL. I thought you meant the responses of the atheists until I got to the last part of your post.