No 24. Einstein's Dilemma

Einstein Thinking.

The Greatest Scientist of the past Century ,the 20th century, for him, the toughest intellectual barrier to the Christian Faith was not the question of whether God created the World or not. He saw clearly that the Universe was designed and orderly and therefore there must be a mind behind everything, no mere chance bumping around of atoms in space. As he put it, the order of the Universe "reveals an intelligence of such superiority" that it overshadows all human intelligence. He believed vehemently in a causal order unifying nature from top to bottom.

What Stymied Einstein?

It was the problem of evil and suffering. Knowing there must be a designer, he agonized over the character of that designer. How could God be good yet allow terrible things to happen to people?

Because he could not reconcile the problem of evil and suffering with a good God, he turned away from the God of the Bible.

He was a determinist. He always said that we were complicated machines doing what we were programmed to do - like wound up toys. If a persons actions are determined then Einstein then believed "in God's eyes man cannot be held responsible." "God must be responsible." This results in a God who is evil. Thus he believed in an impersonal Cosmic Being who gives the world its rational structure. Were human beings merely robots? This argument is seriously flawed. He committed himself to a certain Philosophy which prevented him from reconciling the existence of suffering and evil with the existence of a good God.

Can we find a Biblical answer to the cause of Justice in a fallen world?

Comments

No.9. How did the whole Universe Begin?

Notes from Colson p.57 -67 Scientists have completely reversed their theories in the past few decades. They thought for ages that the Physical Universe was eternal and therefore needs no 'creator'. Now they postulate that the universe did have an ultimate origin and that it began at a finite time in the past - just as the Bible teaches. Many ancient cultures believed that the material from which the Universe came was eternal. However, today "the indestructibility or permanence of matter" is a scientific fact" wrote a 19th Century proponent of materialism. For many years that is how things stood. Any thought of a Creator and the earth having a beginning was just bare religious faith standing in lonely opposition to established science. Now in the 20th Century several sources of new evidence appeared : the implications from general relativity theory that the Universe is expanding; that some stars exhibit "red shift", implying that they are moving out...

No.10. The Birth of the Universe (cont.)

Notes from CREATION Magazine. Big Bang Universe by Jonathan Safati. The Currently leading Cosmogony (Gk. "birth of the universe") is the big bang theory. This basically says, ' Nothing exploded and became everything'. One part of this energy became matter as per the famous Einstein formula E=mc2. However, when this occurs, the standard laws of Particle Physics state that an equal amount of matter and antimatter must be produced. Yet our universe comprises overwhelmingly of matter, with only rare and fleetingly short-lived antimatter particles, produced for example in experimental high energy collisions. These are of the same mass but opposite charge (if the particle is charged) and magnetic moment as the corresponding matter particle . They soon interact and are mutually annihilated - anti-electron with an electron, anti-proton with proton, anti-neutron with neutron etc. How did matter survive annihilation from an equal amount of anti-matter....

No.26. The Problem of a Good GOD and the Presence of EVIL (cont.)

Notes Taken from Colson and Pearcey pps 209 and 210 #2 Deny that suffering and evil even exist. Some people try to solve the problem of evil and suffering on earth saying they are merely illusions created by their own minds. Christian Science Monitor At Christian Scientists' meeting, This is the strategy adopted by Christian Science and by some Eastern religions. Hinduism say that the physical universe is all an Illusion (maya) and that suffering of the body is just a misconception of the MIND. If we just train ourselves to think correctly, we can overcome all suffering through realising it does not exist. [Maya] According to many schools of Hinduism , the world is an illusion, a play of the supreme consciousness of God. It is a projection of things and forms that are temporarily phenomenal and sustain the illusion of onen...

Culture wars in the West.

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