Einstein's God

If you're not exploring iTunesU yet, you should be. LOVING public radio - been listening to a podcast called "Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett". Last night I listened to their segment on Einstein's Faith. It was really cool hearing Einstein's words describing his religion as being a cosmic spirituality.. and how it was more of a reverence for the intelligence, beauty and mystery of the universe. I also thought it was interesting how Einstein could not believe in a god who interfered with our deeds or who passed judgment on beings of his own creation. SO with him there...

Another interesting snippit (I highly encourage you to hear the podcast if this interests you): they were talking about how there is now room for god in science, in quantum physics - that because of the randomness of events in quantum physics - the rolling of the dice - that it was possible to conceive of god having a hand in the outcome of events... that there were those currently arguing that God is in fact loading the dice.

But when one gets to an indeterministic universe, if you allow quantum physics, then there is some sort of lassitude in the operation of these laws. There are interstices having to do with quantum certainty into which, if you want, you could insert the hand of God. So, for example, if we think of a typical quantum process as being like the roll of a die — you know, "God does not play dice," Einstein said — well, it seems that, you know, God does play dice. Then the question is, you know, if God could load the quantum dice, this is one way of influencing what happens in the world, working through these quantum uncertainties. Now, some people certainly have pushed that idea. John Polkinghorne is one who's spoken about it. Bob Russell for the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences in Berkeley likes that point of view of God not in any sense usurping the laws of physics, but working within the inherent lassitude that quantum physics provides. And it's a possible way of God to gain cause or purchase in the world without changing any of the laws that we know.
- Physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies from the transcript of Einstein's God on American Public Media, public radio

I still don't know what I think about a deity - but I do know that there was an interesting remark about how some scientists dismiss the magic of the existence of life and how Paul Davies had a great thing to say about that:

And if you imagine playing the role of God and having some sort of machine in front of you with a whole lot of knobs, and you twiddle the knobs and change things — twiddle one knob, make the electron a bit heavier; twiddle another knob and make the strong nuclear force a bit stronger — you soon discover that you have to fine-tune those settings to extraordinary precision in order for there to be life. And the question is, what are we to make of that? And, you know, really, these things, at the end of the day, boil down largely to a matter of personal choice, because we can't really test either. Or certainly not in our current state of knowledge.