Talk:List of atheists in science and technology/Archive 3

Einstein: "I am not an atheist"
has reverted my removal of Einstein from the list. This is indicative of a desire by the fanatical atheists to claim the name of one of history's greatest geniuses for their cause. However, much as I hate to burst your bubble, Einstein is quoted in the article Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein as specifically saying "I am not an atheist" and "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."

The article goes on to say: "According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people. Einstein said in correspondence, "[T]he fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people'—cannot hear the music of the spheres." Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook.""

81.97.179.9 (talk) 23:41, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

The source cited in an attempt to support the erroneous claim that Einstein was an atheist is addressed in this article by the Guardian, which says: "Einstein says: “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.”

The sentence has been hailed as evidence that the physicist, one of the 20th century’s most esteemed thinkers, was an atheist. But Einstein at times said he was not an atheist, and resented being labelled as one."

81.97.179.9 (talk) 23:56, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

The "Cosmic spirituality" section of the Wikipedia article on "Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein" explains that

"Einstein characterized himself as 'devoutly religious' in the following sense: 'The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.'"

Your above quotations sell Einstein short as a thinker.

Nihil novi (talk) 01:18, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't recall ever claiming that Einstein was religious. I am not even a theist myself. He did, however, say: "Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious."


 * Of course using this quote to try and prove Einstein was religious would be disingenuous, but it is no more disingenuous than trying to use the "God letter" to justify inclusion of his name in a list of atheists.


 * The Guardian article I linked to goes on to explain:

"He said he believed in “Spinoza’s God” – referring to Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Dutch thinker – “who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind”.

On another occasion, he criticised “fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics”.

Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at the Christian thinktank Theos, said: “Einstein offers scant consolation to either party in this debate. His cosmic religion and distant deistic God fits neither the agenda of religious believers or that of tribal atheists.

“As so often during his life, he refused and disturbed the accepted categories. We do the great physicist a disservice when we go to him to legitimise our belief in God, or in his absence.”"


 * Yet this is exactly what you're doing by trying to pin a label on him which he explicitly rejected.


 * 81.97.179.9 (talk) 09:37, 25 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Einstein clearly used the expression "God" as a manner of speaking, as in his oft-quoted remark to Niels Bohr that "God does not play dice with the universe." And, like many a thinking person, including Charles Darwin, he did not want to make himself a target to bigots by acknowledging  atheism.
 * What Einstein repeatedly wrote of was his wonder at the mystery of a universe that man's limited faculties are inadequate to comprehend: a view identical with that of the atheist philosopher Herbert Spencer.
 * As to Einstein's admiration for Spinoza, Einstein was simply expressing his admiration for Spinoza's logical method of reasoning.
 * Nihil novi (talk) 22:18, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
 * None of that adds up to, or supports, the claim that Einstein was an atheist. Since he explicitly denied being an atheist, his name cannot be justifiably included in the list. 81.97.179.9 (talk) 22:42, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
 * When did Einstein deny being an atheist? Nihil novi (talk) 00:02, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
 * We are told in the Wikipedia article on the "Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein" that the German-American poet George Sylvester Viereck quoted Einstein as saying, "I am not an atheist", in Viereck's book, Glimpses of the Great, published in 1930; and that Hubertus, Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, according to Ronald W. Clark's Einstein: The Life and Times (1971), quoted Einstein as saying, "[W]hat really makes me angry is that [some people] quote me for the support of such views [as that there is no God]."
 * We are not told in that Wikipedia article when, or in what circumstances, Einstein may have said these things. Between the World Wars, he urged a fellow-physicist to claim a religious belief solely for the purpose of securing a job.
 * We do know that, 15 months before his death, Einstein, in a hand-written letter, wrote unequivocally: "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses... For me... all... religions [are] an incarnation of the most childish superstition."   He was clearly, by then, an atheist.
 * Nihil novi (talk) 22:56, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
 * If you read his reference to religion as "childish superstition" in context, it is clearly framed specifically as a rejection of the Jewish concept of chosen-ness. The bit about this applying to "all...religions" is only a parenthetical side-comment. The immediately preceding paragraphs of the article read: "In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, [only five years before his death] Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[5]"
 * If you read his reference to religion as "childish superstition" in context, it is clearly framed specifically as a rejection of the Jewish concept of chosen-ness. The bit about this applying to "all...religions" is only a parenthetical side-comment. The immediately preceding paragraphs of the article read: "In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, [only five years before his death] Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[5]"
 * The next paragraph, already quoted, explains how Einstein was more sympathetic to religious faith than to the position of fervent atheists. In any event treating the view expressed last chronologically as definitive will inevitably be arbritrary and controversial. If Einstein had been a convinced and vocal atheist his whole life before converting to Christianity on his deathbed, would that disqualify him from the inclusion criteria?


 * He never explicitly declared himself an atheist, while he did explicitly reject that label and refer to himself as an agnostic. If Einstein weren't such an intellectual giant, there's no way you'd go to such lengths to try and get his name in the list. I'm sorry your faith in atheism is so flimsy it needs propping up by having the name of a pre-eminent genius attached to it, but you can't have Einstein. Get over it. 81.97.179.9 (talk) 22:32, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

By definition, an atheist is "a person who does not believe in deities".

Such an individual, to qualify as an atheist, does not have to pronounce the magic formula, "I am an atheist." Some individuals in the "List of atheists in science and technology" are not at all quoted as saying they are "an atheist".

We do avoid calling a living person who does not believe in deities an atheist if he has not called himself that, for reasons of privacy and liability.

Self-avowed atheists who subsequently declared belief in a theistic religion have been removed from the Wikipedia "List of atheists in science and technology". A recent example, on 10 June 2019, was Stuart Kauffman.

In his last statement on the matter, a hand-written letter 15 months before his death, Einstein wrote: "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses... For me... all... religions [are] an incarnation of the most childish superstition."



It is not Wiki-etiquette to use ad hominem arguments as you have done here.

Nihil novi (talk) 06:29, 17 August 2019 (UTC)


 * It is not Wiki-etiquette to use ad hominem arguments as you have done here.


 * Are you simply unwilling to admit to yourself that you are trying to legitimise your non-belief in God? If you have to argue at such lengths that Einstein was an atheist, then he probably wasn't – or at least, his views cannot be ascertained with enough certainty to merit inclusion in the list. His statement is about the word "God" as it is used and religion as it is actually practiced. It in no way can be identified as a departure from any of his previously expressed views, or as a position distinguishing him from an agnostic. In his previous statements where he dismissed the idea of a personal God, he was still always quick to clarify that he was not an atheist, and preferred the term agnostic. The quote "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses" is no more supportive of the conclusion that he was an atheist than this remark made in 1949: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one."
 * Yet he immediately went on to say that: "You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."

- Letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997)


 * Of course a person doesn't have to have specifically said "I am an atheist" to be in the list, but if someone can specifically say "I am not an atheist" and still make it into the list, the inclusion criteria are so diluted the list becomes uninformative and meaningless.


 * "I am not an atheist" doesn't entail "I believe in God". Nor indeed does "I don't believe in God" entail "I am an atheist". The positions aren't exhaustive. Albert Camus once said "I am an agnostic. I do not ‘believe in’ God, but I am not an atheist, because I believe the statement, ‘There is a god’ does not admit of being either confirmed or rejected".


 * You may feel inclined to give them that label, but when they explicitly reject it, we should respect that. Surely if Einstein had been an atheist, you'd be able to cite a reliable source where he is specifically referred to as such, even if not from his own mouth. 81.97.179.9 (talk) 09:53, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Page expansion?
I apologize if I sound like I'm asking a stupid question, but should we give this page an expansion that also includes people who lack belief in god but identify as 'agnostics', or 'nonbelievers' instead of atheists? Or should there be a completely different list for that?

§ Kevin KHC 390
 * Separate pages for "List of agnostics in science and technology" and for "List of nontheists in science and technology" might be a good idea, especially for cases such as that of Albert Einstein (see discussion immediately above), who – though he wrote that "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses..." – some editors feel for some reason, do not qualify for the "List of atheists in science and technology".
 * Thanks for raising the question.
 * Notes are signed, using 4 tildes (~).
 * Nihil novi (talk) 19:21, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't see what purpose would be served by expanding the list to include all non-theists, other than to blur what many would see as an important distinction between agnosticism and atheism. There is already a separate "List of agnostics". some editors feel for some reason, do not qualify for the "List of atheists in science and technology" I guess when Einstein unequivocally stated "I am not an atheist", he was joking? 81.96.15.89 (talk) 16:53, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

David Hilbert
As stated in the lede,

"This is a list of atheists in science and technology. A mere statement by a person that he or she does not believe in God does not meet the criteria for inclusion on this list. Persons in this list are people (living or not) who both have publicly identified themselves as atheists and whose atheism is relevant to their notable activities or public life."

Does David Hilbert belong on this list? The only reference cited for Hilbert being an atheist is what appears to be an essay written by a student for a class, which itself does not cite a source for this claim. 99.199.172.40 (talk) 21:42, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I have removed David Hilbert, pending verification. 99.199.172.40 (talk) 22:08, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Pierre-Simon Laplace
As stated in the lede,

"This is a list of atheists in science and technology. A mere statement by a person that he or she does not believe in God does not meet the criteria for inclusion on this list. Persons in this list are people (living or not) who both have publicly identified themselves as atheists and whose atheism is relevant to their notable activities or public life."

Does Pierre-Simon Laplace belong on this list? The first reference cited is the famous apocryphal quote, a garbled version of the original interaction which Laplace himself sought to remove from circulation. The rest of the references on that page indicate that he was a deist (or perhaps agnostic), not an atheist, let alone someone who "both has publicly identified themselves as atheists and whose atheism is relevant to their notable activities or public life". 99.199.172.40 (talk) 21:50, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I have removed Pierre-Simon Laplace, pending verification. 99.199.172.40 (talk) 22:08, 29 December 2020 (UTC)