Some of Al's thoughts...
(some Einstein quotations)
"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony of the universe which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem--the most important of all human problems."
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
posted by That which is called Darren at 5:40 PM
2 Comments:
THANK YOU for posting this. It just so happened to fit in quite nicely with an ongoing debate I've been having on my blog, THE WICKED TRUTH. I've never seen this quote before.
Anyway, I cut it, pasted it, gave you credit. It's in the comments under this post, which you might find interesting. No spamming, no selling, but feel free to remove this if you don't want my links everywhere without fear of hurting my feelings.
al certainly is right - religious belief need not be the basis for an ethics. But a metaphysics is inescapable. For what then is "Justice" or "Rights" or, yes, even "Truth" without some metaphysical, foundational belief? i say belief because these "ideas" or "concepts" come to us only through a particular history of meaning that we inherit as foundational - they are not self-evident truths up there somewhere for us to grab at with disciplined reason. so sure, we may certainly keep God or Allah or some cosmic Zen energy out of ethics but i wonder how metaphysics will be side-stepped. metaphysics is difficult for some scientist - not for al - because of course once you acknowledge the ghost then it's free to roam, to haunt. Happy halloween!
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