May 29, 2007

By the way, in arguments against atheist, Einstein did not believe in a "personal" God.

"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 but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." (1954 "Albert Einstein: The Human Side")

You are, of course, correct. This points out one of the problems we have when discussing atheism – there are a lot of definitions of god floating around there, but people tend to assume that the definition they use is the one everyone uses. The same kind of problem turns up with the word Christian – some people call Thomas Jefferson a Christian because he spoke of God and Jesus, but his beliefs (which were very close to atheistic) would not fit with those of any major Christian religion in the U.S. today.

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