FORA.tv - Einstein's God: Conversations About Science

Cool - it's important to realize that God is not a static thing - how we understand God has changed considerable through human evolution, and through the stages of development in individual human beings. See The Evolution of God by Robert Wright for the best look at this idea I've seen in a book.

Einstein has often been cited as an example of science and religion co-existing in the same mind. But Einstein's sense of God is very different than the God of a Southern Baptist. This discussion between Paul Holdengraber, Andrew Solomon, and Krista Tippett looks at the impersonal God of Einstein.

Einstein's God: Conversations About Science

The New York Public Library

Summary

Albert Einstein did not believe in a personal God. And his famous quip that "God does not play dice with the universe" was a statement about quantum physics, not a statement of faith. But he did leave behind a fascinating, largely forgotten legacy of musings and writings -- some serious, some whimsical -- about the relationship between science and religion and his own inquisitive reverence for the "order deeply hidden behind everything."

Bios

Paul Holdengraber is the director of Public Programs - newly created and now known as "LIVE from the NYPL" - for the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library.

At the NYPL, his stated goal is to make the lions roar.

Andrew Solomon is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill-Cornell Medical College. His first novel, A Stone Boat tells the story of a man's shifting identity as he watches his mother battle cancer, and is currently being developed as a film. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won him fourteen national awards, including the 2001 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2008, Mr. Solomon was awarded the Humanitarian Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry for his contributions to the field of mental health. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Artforum. He is currently writing Love Matters: Discovering the Horizontal Family and completing a PhD in psychology at Cambridge.

Krista Tippett - A journalist and former diplomat, Tippett came up with the idea for Speaking of Faith while consulting for the internationally renowned Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at Saint John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

She has hosted and produced the program since the Speaking of Faith project began as an occasional feature in 2000, before taking on its current form as a national weekly program in 2003.

Tippett is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and a former Fulbright Scholar. She has reported and written for The New York Times, Newsweek, the BBC, and other international news organizations. Tippett also served as special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to West Germany.

Tags: Religion, Science, development, physics, FORA.tv, Einstein's God, Conversations About Science, New York Public Library, Paul Holdengraber, Andrew Solomon, Krista Tippett, The Evolution of God, Robert Wright