Religion, mammoths and dinosaurs,

Skashion said:
You are being too literal-minded. I'm an atheist and even I sometimes deploy God as shortland for natural laws and processes. That is not evidence that only his belief in a God stopped him from embracing quantum mechanics. Quantum physics is very messy and still unexplained like spooky action at a distance and very unintuitive. You didn't need to be religious to dislike something so unappealing to the scientifically minded.

You are attempting to create a causal link between two separate things that there is only the flimsiest quotes to sustain.
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That's not what he said

Einstein believed in Spinoza's Nature/God where everything is part of one deterministic whole
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His point was that Einstein was troubled by quantum mechanics because he believed the laws of the Universe fit together like a jigsaw and any element of randomness was a trick of ignorance. That's the belief that he referred to as hurting Einstein's intuition about quantum mechanics and it's a very famous example
 
He said his religious beliefs interferred with his scientific work. I have seen no evidence of that at all.

There were and still are valid scientific reasons to be cautious about the surety of our knowledge of quantum physics.
 
Skashion said:
He said his religious beliefs interferred with his scientific work. I have seen no evidence of that at all.

There were and still are valid scientific reasons to be cautious about the surety of our knowledge of quantum physics.
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Fast and loose with your quotes Skashion.

What I wrote was:
Whilst many great scientist were/are also religious this has been known to colour their work or cause them to lose their faith altogether.
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The key being "colour their work". It's fair to say this was the case with uncle Albert.
 
Skashion said:
What difference is there between coloured and interfered? Any kind of colouring implies necessarily interference.
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I would disagree.
To colour could well simply direct the work rather than impede. To interfere implies impedance. It's well known that Albert moved away from quantum theory rather successfully but this shift was due to his discomfort with probability which didn't fit his beliefs.
 
Gelsons Dad said:
Skashion said:
What difference is there between coloured and interfered? Any kind of colouring implies necessarily interference.
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I would disagree.
To colour could well simply direct the work rather than impede. To interfere implies impedance. It's well known that Albert moved away from quantum theory rather successfully but this shift was due to his discomfort with probability which didn't fit his beliefs.
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In this case his work would have been impeded because he was wrong as far as we know. However, I don't agree anyway, interference can be used in a neutral, positive or negative sense in order to express the idea that something has been changed that wouldn't have been changed had events been allowed to unfold naturally. But let's not wander off, what you are saying is that Einstein's religious beliefs led him to reject or shy away from quantum physics. You have not demonstrated that at all. Not even a little bit have you demonstrated that. You saying it's well known doesn't make it so. If this were a Wikipedia article you'd have a [by who?] after it. Not to matter that even if it were well known, being well known doesn't make it true anymore than Manchester United being the world's most popular football team makes them the world's best football team.

Even IF, and it's a big fucking IF for me, Einstein's 'God doesn't play dice' quote is to be taken completely literally and not as shorthand for the laws of physics and natural processes (or similar) doesn't play dice, it doesn't mean that his views were formed of or from religion. Einstein was raised in a world of deterministic classical physics. Until quantum physics came along everything was deterministic and lack of deterministic explanations simply meant we hadn't solved the problem yet. He cannot be blamed for thinking quantum physics were simply observations for which we didn't have full explanations for yet and randomness was merely illusionary. Given the amount of problems we still have with quantum physics, although you can't ignore the effects are real, we're perfectly entitled to ask, is there a big fundamental gap in our knowledge which means even though we can see the effects we're still a long way from a fully coherent explanation.
 
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