Paul Dirac's quote on religion...

[PolyHedral]

Psalms: The fool says in his heart there is no God

But it doesn't say anything about the wise man.

 

[atanu]

A detailed discussion on Dirac's position, with Bohr included now.

Edge: SCIENCE AND RELIGION By Werner Heisenberg

 

[Photonic]

You asked me to read the quote and decide not to study his life. The quote is filled with assumptions and predictions all non-scientific.

His one quote on science I believe is completly wrong

"But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions"

What natural processes to we understand so fully?

Based on the quote I see a guy sputtering the same giberish a conservative religious zealot would do only opposite.

I think what you are doing is considering his history and not his words. Some people believe because a scientist was successful everything he says must be scientifically accurate and important.

Of course its my opinion of a quote but that is what you asked for.

Do you have any idea who Dirac is?

He's up there with Feynman, Einstein, and Hawkings.

It is foolish to say the man does not understand science.

 

[gnostic]

First off, Psychology would not agree with you but that aside my personal beliefs below.

People that blame god for the injustices of the world don't understand the concept of god. God is eternal, how long do you live here on earth. If you died at 2 years old and went to god in eternal happiness, how horrible was that death.

The god that is worshiped is about reward and eternal life. If you knew you would be rewarded and live forever with those rewards what is 77 years. The problem you have is that you can't see the reward or the eternal life. It does not exist so these people are just foolish.

Being an agnostic I can see both sides and admit neither is proveable so I can allow for reward and eternal life.

Besides all that, the truth is whether there is a God or Not the world is how it can only be. Humans not god cause all the problems so rather than fighting we should work together for the common good. Most religions do strive to make the world better, they do fail at times because they are run by humans. If you look at the statistics though(I hate statistics) without religion there is far less charitable humanity.

If you have read the Book of Job, then when God was rebuking Job, God claimed that He was the one who could do all these things. And what happened to Job and his family clearly was the result from God's wager, which I would consider to be very petty of a god, his portrayal in Book of Job to be no better than the myths of the Olympian gods.

That if you take the Book of Job literally, and believe in such nonsense.

And this could explain why some Christians, Jews or even Muslims are so superstitious. So your claim is a hollow and inaccurate.

And beside this, how do you know God is eternal? Or doing what he say or believing in this god that you would live forever.

Beside this, this "living forever" or "eternal reward" don't exist in all Abrahamic religions, or even in non-Abrahamic religion.

The "living forever" is a concept that is completely foreign to Judaism and to the Jews. It is Christian and Islamic concepts, coloured by the Hellenistic pagan religions before Jesus or Paul arrived at the scene. The idea of being rewarded in heaven is also foreign concept to the Jews.

I am also agnostic, but even I'd find the ideas of god(s), living forever in the afterlife and being "rewarded" to be doubtful ideology.

We certainly don't need to believe in god, to explain natural phenomena, like lightnings, earthquake, life. We don't need Neolithic or Bronze Age superstitions to uncover the truth about the reality around us. If anything, god(s) and the religions today, actually do more to hinder our progress to learn about our reality than science. We don't need religion to dictate how to understand the world around us. In fact, even many of the things it teaches in the scriptures, like laws and morality are outdated.

Perhaps, we are indebted to the scriptures of the past to some extents for universal wisdom, but it shouldn't be allowed to hinder our progress to further our knowledge.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

I'm sure some have you have come across this reasonably famous quote before from Paul Dirac, which was from a conversation with Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenburg, at the 1927 Solvay Conference.

The quote goes like this:

'I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.'

I was wondering what the more religious inclined on here think of this statement?

All comments welcome.

There never has and almost certainly never will be a golden age of understanding. Our understanding of the world around us PALES in comparison to what we do not understand. But to be fair there is a valid question in there: Do we need religion?


I may not need religion, but it requires a horrendously large error of attribution to make the leap from a personal lack of need for religion to all of society not needing religion. Most people are afraid of uncertainty. They value certainty more than they value truth. This is evident in our political processes the world over. We choose candidates who are certain on issues as opposed to ones that admit their "ignorance" on choice issues but that would attempt to research and develop a workable solution.


Moreover scientists are people too, and they are given to the same errors of rationality that humans have made for the spam of human existence. Being smarter they just have a tendency to make their errors of rationality harder to identify. Which is the more compelling case: Dark Matter which has never been found, detected, or even had a plausible location suggested OR an ET, which has never been found, detected, or even a plausible location suggested, visited earth in our past to hand down basic societal tenets?

If a scientist is as honest and dedicated to the truth as he or she claims to be, then they would be perfectly willing to admit that the level of evidence for both is not all that strong and that therefore their probabilities would not be all that high. Sweeping 92% of the universe under the rug doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence in other people, and if we are being honest nor should it. So why should the standards of evidence only be great for those ideologies that scientists disagree with, but not for their own beliefs?



The problem is that when many scientists venture off into the realm of probability exploration they have just as many prejudices as the common man just more cleverly covered up. Steven Hawking pointed out that a self-contained Universe (reality) requires no creator, but that if there were a definite beginning and termination point, then you may require one. This is the kind of honesty that is needed, and yet this is the sort of comment that gets swept under the rug by people who have a chip on their shoulder when it comes to religion.


There are bad and foolish people out there who do bad things in the name of every institution humanity has ever come up with. There have been horrible things done in the name of love, and science inspired Eugenics and the ethnic cleansings that followed its adherence. The question is not "Has religion ever done something to be deserving of critique?" but rather "Does religion inspire more than its fair share of activity deserving of critique?" & "Can we provide people an alternative to religion that works?"


I'm willing to admit that organized religion may well be doing more harm than good in a modern, highly interconnected, large scale society. But ruthlessly subjugating different beliefs because they are not your own is not a hallmark of an enlightened perspective on debate and human learning. All progress requires change, and that requires different beliefs. And it is always important to keep in mind that what answers we get from science are always ,and can only ever be, our best assessment given the evidence available to us. We could have gotten something wrong, and the only way to challenge that is for people to accept the possibility of something different being true.

No, this doesn't mean I am advocating that everyone should just believe their own thing and that every ideology under the sun is just as valid as any other. That is preposterous. We should all let the evidence inform us in forming our own personal best guesses about the world around us: that unicorns do not exist on earth is far more likely a proposition than the alternative of unicorns existing on earth. But just because I don't think it is likely (I'd probably give million to 1 odds against) that doesn't mean I go around blatantly throwing out words like "impossible" either. Black swans do happen every now and again, and as such it is important to be on guard against the more subtle intellectual biases that afflict us.

MTF

 

[bobhikes]

If you have read the Book of Job, then when God was rebuking Job, God claimed that He was the one who could do all these things. And what happened to Job and his family clearly was the result from God's wager, which I would consider to be very petty of a god, his portrayal in Book of Job to be no better than the myths of the Olympian gods.

That if you take the Book of Job literally, and believe in such nonsense.

And this could explain why some Christians, Jews or even Muslims are so superstitious. So your claim is a hollow and inaccurate.

And beside this, how do you know God is eternal? Or doing what he say or believing in this god that you would live forever.

Beside this, this "living forever" or "eternal reward" don't exist in all Abrahamic religions, or even in non-Abrahamic religion.

The "living forever" is a concept that is completely foreign to Judaism and to the Jews. It is Christian and Islamic concepts, coloured by the Hellenistic pagan religions before Jesus or Paul arrived at the scene. The idea of being rewarded in heaven is also foreign concept to the Jews.

I am also agnostic, but even I'd find the ideas of god(s), living forever in the afterlife and being "rewarded" to be doubtful ideology.

We certainly don't need to believe in god, to explain natural phenomena, like lightnings, earthquake, life. We don't need Neolithic or Bronze Age superstitions to uncover the truth about the reality around us. If anything, god(s) and the religions today, actually do more to hinder our progress to learn about our reality than science. We don't need religion to dictate how to understand the world around us. In fact, even many of the things it teaches in the scriptures, like laws and morality are outdated.

Perhaps, we are indebted to the scriptures of the past to some extents for universal wisdom, but it shouldn't be allowed to hinder our progress to further our knowledge.

I realize there are some cultures and religions that don't believe in eternal life or reward as christians do but they all have some sort of eternal life and reward.

As to Jews are there different beliefs because my friends actually believe they will one day be with God. I have been to several bries and am going to my first barmistva. Also I thought Moses and Abraham were taken up to god.

My understanding is that they have to wait on earth until there saviour comes and then they will all be able to meet god.

 

[bobhikes]

Do you have any idea who Dirac is?

He's up there with Feynman, Einstein, and Hawkings.

It is foolish to say the man does not understand science.

No what is foolish is too allow Einstein to disect your corspe or to allow Hawkings to develop an Anitbody.

Just because someone is good in one thing does not mean they are good in all things. You read the quote there are no errors in it.

 

[Photonic]

No what is foolish is too allow Einstein to disect your corspe or to allow Hawkings to develop an Anitbody.

Just because someone is good in one thing does not mean they are good in all things. You read the quote there are no errors in it.

Lol, you are so far out of your league in this one.

Your comments have already shown me you have little understanding of science in general.

 

[Riverwolf]

Lol, you are so far out of your league in this one.

Your comments have already shown me you have little understanding of science in general.

In all fairness, he is right in saying that just because someone is an expert in one thing, that doesn't mean he's an expert in something else, especially if it's unrelated.

 

[Photonic]

In all fairness, he is right in saying that just because someone is an expert in one thing, that doesn't mean he's an expert in something else, especially if it's unrelated.

So any person can make a comment as long as it supports a God. But the moment he doesn't he is deemed as "not an expert on the subject?"

That's the logic here.

Does.


Not.


Compute.

 

[Riverwolf]

So any person can make a comment as long as it supports a God. But the moment he doesn't he is deemed as "not an expert on the subject?"

That's the logic here.

Does.


Not.


Compute.

I said religion, not God. You can be experts on the various Gods worshiped and still find legitimate things to criticize, and in fairness, the same can be said about religion.

However, this particular criticism is indicative of having very little exposure to a variety of religions, which, considering the time period, makes sense. After all, in the 1920s, how many people really knew about Eastern religions, or other non-Christian religions, other than adherents?

 

[Photonic]

I said religion, not God. You can be experts on the various Gods worshiped and still find legitimate things to criticize, and in fairness, the same can be said about religion.

However, this particular criticism is indicative of having very little exposure to a variety of religions, which, considering the time period, makes sense. After all, in the 1920s, how many people really knew about Eastern religions, or other non-Christian religions, other than adherents?

That is ridiculous, you don't have to be an expert to see the effects of a system applied to reality.

This was one of the intellectual Giants of humanity making a comment about something he has clearly thought about.

I think it is pretty damn important that we take an open minded view to his comment. Paul Dirac did not simply make idle comments.

 

[Riverwolf]

That is ridiculous, you don't have to be an expert to see the effects of a system applied to reality.

This was one of the intellectual Giants of humanity making a comment about something he has clearly thought about.

Oh, it's clear he thought about it, but it's also clear he doesn't understand much about it.

Let me take apart his argument to illustrate this:

'I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality."

Religion is more than mythology, which isn't necessarily meant to be taken literally. Religion also consists of philosophy, ethics, ritual, music, etc. Therefore, much of what makes up religion isn't even assertive, and much of what is is still applied today because we recognize actual reasons for them. (I.E., thou shalt not commit murder.)

The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling.

Not all God-concepts are personified forces of nature. In fact, I'd argue that the most primitive form of theism took the form of a combination of ancestor worship(born of the strong desire to have dead loved ones back, which I might argue is stronger than fear of nature), and deified kings and wise men. Consider this situation: a person takes control of a tribe by claiming to control nature with various rituals, which he helps coincide with actual events. After he dies, his son stresses that he still lives in another world, and is still able to control nature (remember that afterlife-concepts, I believe, are as old as our species), and lo!a god is born.

But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions.

There's still a lot that we don't understand, and while I can understand the laziness of the "goddidit" argument, a God who's separate from the universe and controls everything in it isn't the only form God can take.

I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way.

Sanity maintenance for many, perhaps?

What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented.

The structure of this sentence makes it sound like that's all religion does nowadays, which I admit I don't think he meant, but surely he would realize that most religions already have their own possibilities as to why a supposed all-loving God would allow evil, and that not all of them are designed to control the masses; many are actually designed to liberate the masses.

If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people.

But if that was the case, why have so many rebellions throughout history still been religious in nature? Shouldn't we therefore expect that all religious people are quietly content and that all non-religious people are willing to rebel against oppressors?

Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.'

Well, that may have been the case in early 20th century England (and may still be, I don't know), but that certainly wasn't the case throughout the world, or throughout history. It really sounds like he's stating that all religion ever did was serve as a tool for the elite to keep the masses quiet. While there are plenty of historical instances of this happening, there are also equally as many instances of it not being the case at all. I direct you to India. In the years before the Buddha and Mahavira (founder of Jainism), the ancient Vedic religion had deteriorated into just such a state: with the priests taking all the power for themselves working with the kings to keep the workers and farmers in line. Along comes two new religions, Buddhism and Jainism, which were attempts to move away from such a thing. There's a lot of strife in the country until King Ashoka converts to Buddhism and institutes the first instance I know about of country-wide freedom of religion.

 

[Riverwolf]

I think it is pretty damn important that we take an open minded view to his comment. Paul Dirac did not simply make idle comments.

I don't doubt he thought about it a lot. But it's clear he did so while lacking important information about religion.

 

[Photonic]

I don't doubt he thought about it a lot. But it's clear he did so while lacking important information about religion.

We ARE talking about a man who did the following;

When Manci, his wife-to-be, wrote Dirac an angry letter asking why he had replied to none of the questions in her previous correspondence,he drew up, in tabular form, an explanation of why he could not use the endearments customary with lovers, since they were not literally true.

I don't think he would make a comment without understanding of what he is speaking about.

I personally advocate a little more open mindedness about religion, as long as it doesn't attempt to regress humanity.

 

[Riverwolf]

We ARE talking about a man who did the following;

...did what? I honestly don't understand.

 

[Riverwolf]

I don't think he would make a comment without understanding of what he is speaking about.

We often think we understand things, while continuously lacking that one piece of information that could change the entire thing.

 

[Photonic]

We often think we understand things, while continuously lacking that one piece of information that could change the entire thing.

I think if people had all the information about their religion there would be less followers.

 

[atanu]

Dirac was a scientist, rather a physisict ans a communist. Why should his opinion be given same status as his physics? His contemporaries: Pauli, Schrodinger, Heisenberg had different opinions.

 

[Riverwolf]

I think if people had all the information about their religion there would be less followers.

Or, they'd drop the bad stuff and keep the good stuff. Are you aware of syncretic religions? Revivalist religions?