Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!psinntp!relay1!rsvl_ns!ernie!pja1.rsvl.unisys.com!pja1
From: pja1@rsvl.unisys.com
Subject: Re: Is there a spiritual force etc.?
Sender: news@rsvl.unisys.com (News Admin)
Message-ID: <pja1.5.01112E1D@rsvl.unisys.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 1994 18:50:52 GMT
Lines: 50
References:  <19940920.104632.334@almaden.ibm.com>
Nntp-Posting-Host: pja1
Organization: Unisys - Roseville, MN
X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B]

In article <19940920.104632.334@almaden.ibm.com> mpriestley@VNET.IBM.COM writes:
>From: mpriestley@VNET.IBM.COM
>Date: Tue, 20 Sep 94 13:38:08 EDT
>Subject: Re: Is there a spiritual force etc.?

>Mats Andtbacker writes:
>>>>Don't think Einstein was a Christian...
>>>
>>>I frankly don't know.  He certainly believed in God (as evidenced most
>>>famously in his attack on quantum mechanics: "God does not play dice with the
>>>universe").
>>
>>BZZT. RTFAQ. Not that simple.

>I'm following this from the comp.ai.philosophy group.  I doubt it's in the FAQ
>for that group (I could be wrong).  My impression, though, from vague memory,
>is that Einstein did believe in God.  Not a warm, loving, compassionate,
>involved God, but a supreme being nonetheless.  Something that made the
>universe, and then forgot about it, more or less. Am I wrong?

>Since Marvin Minsky's original attack on religion was wonderfully broad, it
>permits me to use any example of belief in God as a counterexample.  If
>he'd said "those born-again Christian types bug the $#% out of me", I couldn't
>have used Einstein as an example.  But instead he said, roughly, "anyone
>who believes in a god or gods is a complete idiot, and a dangerous one at
>that."  It's rather nice when someone _else_ sets up the strawman argument
>for me.

>Cheers,

>Michael Priestley
>mpriestley@vnet.ibm.com
>Disclaimer: speaking on my own behalf, not IBM's

The short shrift Minsky has given to religious belief is emphatically not 
scientific. I think that the study of man is a proper subject for science, and 
that, as religious belief is normative and pervasive today and throughout 
human history, it is a proper subject for the scientific method. The 
Ontological question, i.e., Does God exist?, cannot be resolved via the 
scientific method so that those publicly adhering to it must necessarily 
remain silent insofar as such belief does not contradict observation or 
experiment. I find Minsky's position contradictory in that he rejects theism 
on scientific grounds but appears to accept cartesian duality implicitly-it 
seems to me that the latter belief is equally dubious and unscientific.

Where is Hubert Dreyfus when you need him?

:-)


