Yes, I’ve said that an Einsteinian god is not certain. I’m still listening to the arguments. In my mind, there is not sufficient evidence to say one way or the other, plus the implications of the existence/non-existence of such a god for my life appear insignificant as you’ve said. I may end up to be deistic, pantheistic or atheistic…or I may never get to the point where I am satisfied with the available evidence/arguments. After spending far too long in the dogmatism christianity, I now tend to default on the side of peculating the evidence and arguments a bit longer than others might.

Einstein couldn’t bring himself to call himself an atheist due to something he sensed about the laws of nature. I’m no Einstein, but there does seem to be something about existence and the framework of existence that deserves my patient contemplation.

So far in my journey, I am realizing that I bought the design argument because I never saw the alternative, which was that complex life really could have evolved over time from slightly less complex life. I am starting to doubt my natural child-like conclusions. They would have led me to a designer of people instead of to evolution. So they would lead me to a designer of the universe instead of…something else?

The question of course becomes…if there is some deist god that set the world into motion, where did IT come from? That is a bigger problem than looking for the designer of the universe, right? Looking for the complex designer of a designer that could design such a complicated universe. LOL I don’t know.

More than anything, I don’t get the point of being a deist or really considering deism. Let’s say something god-like did set the universe in motion. It’s either long-gone, or we can’t really see it, or whatever the case may be. We are just left to speculate and wonder about it. That god certainly won’t help us to get “out of a hole” as in the video in the comment above. It doesn’t help us do anything, as far as we can tell. So why care one way or another if it filpped a switch and got the universe going? Anyone have an answer as to why we should care???

The only answer I can come up with is that we should care insofar as we should not claim there is no god beyond a reasonable doubt, because there is a chance that someone flipped the switch and set laws into motion. Is that the only reason to care about the idea of a deist-type god?

How about panentheists?

How does the child know that the books are arranged in some particular order? Because, again, they have some previous familiarity with adults going around organizing things. Perhaps they’ve even seen an adult know right where a particular book is, and figured out there must be something to the way the books are shelved.

We have no prior experience with universes or laws of physics being created or organized by a conscious entity. Nor are there any gods around we can tuck on the hem of and incessantly ask “Why?” questions at.

Finally: as poetic as Einstein is being here, poetry isn’t a particularly great method for critically exploring the nature of the observable world. For one thing, we’re still observing a complete lack of Jabberwockies, and I have yet to find a train schedule to take me to Xanadu.

Let me give the full quote.

“I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

Whatever Einstein means, he is not an atheist. He also uses the word “God”. I have the same curiosity about the source/meaning of the laws of nature that Einstein had. What would you like to call us? As long as the term you use reflects my actual beliefs, I take no offense.

and “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

But other quotes, like yours, really seem to imply some belief in some kind of god.

More on this on Wikipedia.

I’m not sure whether the laws of the universe have to originate from a deity, but Einstein says “We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. . . . That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human beings toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

This is not trivial in my mind.

This, I believe, is not merely poetic. He is suggesting the possibility of some form of deity that set out the laws of nature. Wouldn’t you agree, Pedro?