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DoubleDutch wrote:A lot of you are writing about your opinions on religion vs science - indeed, most have probabily not lived long enough to have gathered an opinion that can be respected.

For those blindly saying that religion is wrong and science is right: If you respect opinions of great scientists (enough to believe what they tell you in the school text books) then maybe you should study them a bit more and learn from them.

Did you know that Oppenheimer studied hindu scriptures and truly believed that something "mysterious" was at the edge of science. "If the radiance of a thousands suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.... I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." - that's Oppenheimer quoting Bhagavad-Gita.

There are lots of scientists who respect religion and others with religious views, but should we let Albert Einstein have the last word (in case some of you don't know, he was a theoretical physicist who is widely considered to have been one of the greatest physicists of all time):

'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.'

Killswitch wrote:Marx said: "... It is the opium of the people."

Killswitch wrote:You can logically disprove the existance of the God of classical theism.

Killswitch wrote:
Marx said: "... It is the opium of the people."

he did say it.
and mind the words: he said "of" not "for".

You really sound like someone obsessed.

please note that catholic view isn't the only religious view.

and please remember that religion != faith

DoubleDutch wrote:'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.'

Richard Dawkins wrote: One of Einstein's most eagerly quoted remarks is 'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.' But Einstein also said,

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Does it seem that Einstein contradicted himself? That his words can be cherry-picked for quotes to support both sides of an argument? No. By 'religion' Einstein meant something entirely different from what is conventionally meant. As I continue to clarify the distinction between supernatural religion on the one hand and Einsteinian religion on the other, bear in mind that I am calling only supernatural gods delusional.

Here are some more quotations from Einstein, to give a flavour of Einsteinian religion.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

In greater numbers since his death, religious apologists understandably try to claim Einstein as one of their own. Some of his religious contemporaries saw him very differently. 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. The extracts that follow are taken from Max Jammer's book Einstein and Religion (which is also my main source of quotations from Einstein himself on religious matters). The Roman Catholic Bishop of Kansas City said: 'It is sad to see a man, who comes from the race of the Old Testament and its teaching, deny the great tradition of that race.' Other Catholic clergymen chimed in: 'There is no other God but a personal God ... Einstein does not know what he is talking about. He is all wrong. Some men think that because they have achieved a high degree of learning in some field, they are qualified to express opinions in all.' The notion that religion is a proper field, in which one might claim expertise, is one that should not go unquestioned. That clergyman presumably would not have deferred to the expertise of a claimed 'fairyologist' on the exact shape and colour of fairy wings. Both he and the bishop thought that Einstein, being theologically untrained, had misunderstood the nature of God. On the contrary, Einstein understood very well exactly what he was denying.