Albert Einstein

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Categorization Exercise: Einstein's God

Einstein has made many quotes that include theist and atheist views (though he wasn't atheist). Since he has never been consistent either way, there are questions of how to categorize Einstein views.

These questions go beyond facts found in encyclopedic entries since it covers a lot of present and past original research (See: Einstein 2006, p. 33-37: "Religion and Science"; p. 37-38 "The Religiousness of Science"; p. 38-39 "The Plight of Science"). We can learn or discover potential prescriptive categorizations, such as theist, atheist, pantheist, agnostic, paganist, polytheist, and others. Other potential descriptive categorizations would follow much deeper into philosophical views, unlike the prescriptive categorizations. For descriptive examples we can research the philosophies of Berkeley, Spinoza, Kant, Nagel, Penrose, Lacan, and others.

Here is an exercise to compare views for research and categorization.

Proposition

Einstein's quote: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Erasmus's quote: "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king."
Support or oppose: Einstein's quote implies Erasmus's quote.

Answer below in consensus section.

Dialog

Both Einstein and Erasmus are found to have similar views on war. They found war to be inhumane. Some of their descriptions of war would relate soldiers as just machines, lifeless, soulless, or without consciousness. Their phraseology is meant to deprive human characteristics.(Holmes 1989, p. 21-22) In such contrast, it may provide some insight for your answer in this exercise.

Add research and rhetoric dialog here. Please keep discussion of the dialog or of this exercise on the talk page.

Consensus

If you support that Einstein's quote did imply Erasmus's quote, add Support; if he did not, add Oppose; if you have considered this exercise and feel it requires further study and improvement to this page, add Neutral. If you like to show participation but you haven't fully considered the exercise, just sign, ~~~~, without the support, oppose, or neutral tags. As this study progresses, you may change your answer.