Why some great scientists became atheist?

[David_Zampino]

Hi

Why some great scientists like Hawking and Einstein became atheist?

I don’t think that it would be fair to categorize Einstein as an “atheist”, at least not in any traditional understanding of the word. His philosophical and religious views were complex and shifted over time. I personally know of two scientists – devout Christians both – who worked with Einstein and stated categorically that he was no atheist.

I don’t necessarily believe that great scientists are atheists – history does not bear that out. However, the ones that are atheists seem to have a tendency to be quite vocal about it.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Because scientist study the natural world. God is supernatural and cannot be found in the natural world so some scientist conclude he does not exist.

Yes! It’s next to impossible to find God when one is all bound up in science. It is written in the Jewish Tanya that one is not allowed to study science unless it’s a part of one’s profession.

 

[steve_b]

Hi

Why some great scientists like Hawking and Einstein became atheist?

For the same reason anyone leaves God or won’t believe in Him. They have no supernatural faith

 

[Frankenfurter]

I think that this thread makes an assumption about who ‘counts’ as a scientist. The scientists in question here seem to be from academia. There is strong peer pressure in academia to be atheist.

saintsandsceptics.org/richard-dawkins-sneer-pressure/

pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/video/video-are-colleges-encouraging-atheism/13078/

Meanwhile, many great scientists work in industry. The fruits of their endeavors being profits and technological miracles. These much more down to earth scientists are not spending all of their time contemplated big ideas and stroking their own egos but are working in a niche of deep complexity and of direct value to society (for example new cancer drugs, new electronic marvels, etc.).

In the non-academic environment I see no bias towards atheism or a particular outlook. Folks are all over the map and it is really of no concern, we are focused on other issues. I’m sure that a poll of industrial scientists would show that they reflect the same distribution as the population as a whole. Academia is a different matter. Atheists have moved into the Ivory tower. Sort of fitting if you think about it.

 

[openmind77]

I don’t think that it would be fair to categorize Einstein as an “atheist”, at least not in any traditional understanding of the word. His philosophical and religious views were complex and shifted over time. I personally know of two scientists – devout Christians both – who worked with Einstein and stated categorically that he was no atheist.

I don’t necessarily believe that great scientists are atheists – history does not bear that out. However, the ones that are atheists seem to have a tendency to be quite vocal about it.

Here is some more information on Einstein’s beliefs - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein

He was pantheistic rather than an atheist.

 

[Frankenfurter]

Einstein was NOT an atheist (in his own words):
Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 214)*
In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 214)

What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos. (Albert Einstein to Joseph Lewis, Apr. 18, 1953)

When the answer is simple, God is speaking. (Albert Einstein)*

 

[ericc]

I don’t believe Hitchens was a scientist (you mean Christopher Hitchens, right?) He was a journalist and literary critic.

Dawkins has also not struck me as a particularly brilliant scientist. He is much more famous for his pop-science works, and his public-atheist persona.

Did any of these learned men/women ACTUALLY did research into the supernatural to debunk that such things don’t exist?

There are tons of reported events, around the world, from ghosts to voodoo, exorcism to charms from almost every society around the world. Did they actually conducted research to disprove it? If not, how did they come to the conclusion that such things don’t exist? By reading other people’s papers? Or dismissing it as an impossibility without effort?

 

[carn]

Did any of these learned men/women ACTUALLY did research into the supernatural to debunk that such things don’t exist?

Research has been done in some cases; always, it either came up empty or there was some non-supernatural reason for the observed events.

e.g.:
blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/us-and-soviet-spooks-studied-parano-2008-10-29/

Remeber, these were organizations ready to pour billions into having a small edge over the adversary and organizations knowing a few decades earlier when scientist showed up with a crazy idea cities were levelled and every dollar spent was at least to the standards of the organizations an awesome investment; so they would have grabbed at any straw to have a supernatural advantage; but they came up empty in the end, both sides, independently of each other.

There are tons of reported events, around the world, from ghosts to voodoo, exorcism to charms from almost every society around the world. Did they actually conducted research to disprove it?

One cannot conduct resarch to disprove some reported event. All one can do is to test whether under similar conditions the event happens again; no reported supernatural event ever passed that test and could be reliably repeated.

If not, how did they come to the conclusion that such things don’t exist?

Hence, the conclusion that at least much what is reported is bogus. Making the search for the “real” thing like finding a needle in a haystack with the added caveat that the haystack might not contain any needle at all.

Or dismissing it as an impossibility without effort?

One cannot call offering 1 Million not an effort:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge

I think the conclusion that no or nearly no realiably repeatable supernatural effects with statistically significant effects on the physical world exist at this moment in time, to be valid.

But the error is to conclude from this, that no supernatural effects exist, because the exclusion of non-reliably repeatable supernatural effects with statistically significant effects on the physical world does not exclude a host of supernatural effects; e.g. it doesn’t exclude that prayers are heard and answered, cause
usccb.org/bible/matthew/4
“Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’””,

which i interpret to also include “and do not put the Lord, your God, to the test, especially all those scientific test happening beginning in about 1700 years; especially no mountain moving just for show or writing a paper, cause it is both sinful and won’t work as God is no lab rat and will ignore labyrinth and cheese you want to force Him to submit to.” (hopefully, my interpretation is not too far off).

Especially, any intelligent supernatural entity interacting with this world could always avoid having scientist find scientific evidence for its existence; it just would have to be more clever than the scientists; which is not only true for God, but also Angels both Non-Fallen and Fallen.

 

[ericc]

Research has been done in some cases; always, it either came up empty or there was some non-supernatural reason for the observed events.

e.g.:
blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/us-and-soviet-spooks-studied-parano-2008-10-29/

Remeber, these were organizations ready to pour billions into having a small edge over the adversary and organizations knowing a few decades earlier when scientist showed up with a crazy idea cities were levelled and every dollar spent was at least to the standards of the organizations an awesome investment; so they would have grabbed at any straw to have a supernatural advantage; but they came up empty in the end, both sides, independently of each other.

One cannot conduct resarch to disprove some reported event. All one can do is to test whether under similar conditions the event happens again; no reported supernatural event ever passed that test and could be reliably repeated.

Hence, the conclusion that at least much what is reported is bogus. Making the search for the “real” thing like finding a needle in a haystack with the added caveat that the haystack might not contain any needle at all.

One cannot call offering 1 Million not an effort:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge

I think the conclusion that no or nearly no realiably repeatable supernatural effects with statistically significant effects on the physical world exist at this moment in time, to be valid.

But the error is to conclude from this, that no supernatural effects exist, because the exclusion of non-reliably repeatable supernatural effects with statistically significant effects on the physical world does not exclude a host of supernatural effects; e.g. it doesn’t exclude that prayers are heard and answered, cause
usccb.org/bible/matthew/4
“Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’””,

which i interpret to also include “and do not put the Lord, your God, to the test, especially all those scientific test happening beginning in about 1700 years; especially no mountain moving just for show or writing a paper, cause it is both sinful and won’t work as God is no lab rat and will ignore labyrinth and cheese you want to force Him to submit to.” (hopefully, my interpretation is not too far off).

Especially, any intelligent supernatural entity interacting with this world could always avoid having scientist find scientific evidence for its existence; it just would have to be more clever than the scientists; which is not only true for God, but also Angels both Non-Fallen and Fallen.

I’d have thought research into NDE’s by scientific folks would have at least open some closed mental doors. Probably conclusions are too reserved to generate any excitement. And probably there is no money in there as well. All these stuff would be non-copywritable or IPable.

 

[carn]

I’d have thought research into NDE’s by scientific folks would have at least open some closed mental doors. Probably conclusions are too reserved to generate any excitement. And probably there is no money in there as well. All these stuff would be non-copywritable or IPable.

First, there exist alternative suggestions why NDEs happen, e.g. due to lack of oxygen in brain. Second, with NDEs repeatable experiments are a bit of a problem, the only theoretically working option should remain a horror movie plot - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatliners.

 

[Jack_Common]

Modern science only cares about how to control the natural world. To that end, it is focused almost entirely on mathematics and measurement. It has lost all sense of the reverence and beauty of natural forms; in fact, modern science has blinded men to natural forms altogether and has for them reduced all the natural world to basic units like “atoms”, or “fields”, or “forces”, etc., really, these are mathematical abstractions. The danger with the ancient pagans was that they saw the beauty of the natural world so clearly that they ended up worshipping it instead of its Creator. The danger with the moderns is that they are so blind to the natural world’s beauty that they can’t even imagine why there would possible be a Creator.

The real breakdown in modern philosophy comes with the rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics in favour of Rationalism/Empiricism, both of which end up trapping a man inside his own head and denying him access to the contemplation of being, of the created world. BAD metaphysics, BAD philosophy. Modern science is kind of a perversion. It’s over-fixation on mathematics and measurement has lead to technological marvels, but at awful spiritual and intellectual costs.