dartagnan wrote:Again, beastie doesn't believe a divine intelligence exists, whereas Einstein does. Period.
Again,
For Beastie --> Science doesn't reveal an intelligent creator of the universe
For Einstein --> Science does reveal an intelligent creator of the universe
This is important because atheists almost always rely on science to argue against God, and Einstein knew as much about science as anyone who ever lived.
No, beastie doesn't believe in an anthropomorphic God, but that goes without saying since she doesn't believe any God exists. Hence, her similarity with Einstein is as superficial and meaningless as my similarity with Dawkins.
The fact that Einstein despises the concept of the traditional gods doesn't change the fact that he does believe there is divine intelligence behind the creation of the Universe. So do I. That is the fundamental premise of any theist. Attacking theological theism does nothing to discredit natural theism. This is the problem so many of the New Atheists have, and it seems to drive some of them nuts, like Dawkins. So much so that they're willing to perform all sorts of mental gynmastics and even lie, to make it sound like Einstein is in any way a follower or supporter of their anti-theist arguments from science.
According to Richard Dawkins in
The God Delusion, “One of Einstein’s most eagerly quoted remarks is ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind’.”
Dawkins further states: “In greater numbers since his death, religious apologists understandably try to claim Einstein is one of their own.”
Dawkins continues: “In 1940, Einstein wrote a famous paper justifying his statement ‘I do not believe in a personal God.’ This and similar statements provoked a storm of letters from the religiously orthodox, many of them alluding to Einstein’s Jewish origins.” (Page 16
The God Delusion).
Dawkins continues: “There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms like ‘God is subtle but he is not malicious’ or ‘He does not play dice’ or ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?’ means ‘Could the universe have begun in any other way?’ Einstein was using ‘God’ in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense. So is Stephen Hawking, and so are most of those physicists who occasionally slip into the language of religious metaphor.”
In the next paragraph, Dawkins writes: “Let me sum up Einsteinian religion in one more quotation from Einstein himself: ‘To sense that behind anything than can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.’ In this sense I too am religious, with the reservation that ‘cannot grasp’ does not have to mean ‘forever ungraspable’. But I prefer not to call myself religious because it is misleading. It is destructively misleading because, for the vast majority of people, ‘religion’ implies ‘supernatural’. Carl Sagan put it well: ‘…if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying …it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.’” (Page 19
The God Delusion).
If Dawkins is correct, Einstein did not “believe in a divine intelligence” as you have claimed. On pages 16,17, & 18, Dawkins cites various religious pundits who expressed “regret” that Einstein rejected divine intelligence as religion asserted it then and as religion asserts it today.
The nearly 400 page book
The God Delusion is organized, rationally explicit, and does not rely on “…all sorts of mental gymnastics …” as you claim. It contains an extensive appendix and notes.