Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
The most well known scientist in the West from the era of renaissance is none other than Isaac Newton. Many do not know that he was a Unitarian and opposed the dogma of Trinity.
Encyclopedia Britannica says about Newton and Trinity:
Newton found time now to explore other interests, such as religion and theology. In the early 1690s he had sent Locke a copy of a manuscript attempting to prove that Trinitarian passages in the Bible were latter-day corruptions of the original text. When Locke made moves to publish it, Newton withdrew in fear that his anti-Trinitarian views would become known. Reference.
Generally, I am for pluralism and talking about common goals and objectives, but, once in a while I want to highlight the differences if those are of some high academic or other value.
My trigger for this article was an Islamophobic comment by a well known atheist scientist Richard Dawkins, who came out swinging for Christianity and against Islam, despite his clear and loud proclamations for atheism:
The scientists that I have particularly in mind today are those who are member of the Intelligent Design Movement (ID).
I became one of the early members of an online discussion group for ID around 2000. After I quoted a Quranic verse in line with the theme of discussion, I was silenced that it was in bad taste because of some other fairly benign comment in the same paragraph. I understood, I was not welcome there with my Muslim faith in the Quran.
I have, nevertheless, periodically followed their activity and kept pace with their work. I believe their work is good theology in as far as they present a Creator for our universe and ourselves. Unlike their concepts I believe that their work is good metaphysics, but not good science. Their work is in line of the following verses of the Quran:
He is Allah, the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner. His are the most beautiful names. All that is in the heavens and the earth glorifies Him, and He is the Mighty, the Wise. (Al Quran 59:24)
We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this Quran is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything? (Al Quran 41:53)
Such is Allah, your Lord. There is no God but He, the Creator of all things, so worship Him. And He is Guardian over everything. Eyes cannot reach Him but He reaches the human consciousness. And He is the Incomprehensible, the All-Aware. (Al Quran 6:102-103)
In their ambition for their political and other agenda they forget that human eyes cannot reach God in a scientific or any other paradigm, unless He chooses to reveal Himself to the prophets and the saints through different veils.
ID has an institute called Discovery Institute. Their online store has a dozen or more books on sale that are very helpful for understanding the metaphysics of God the Creator of Judaism, Islam and Unitarian Christianity, once we understand the limitations and misunderstandings that all of them have.
The members of ID sometimes hide their true colors but at others it is completely apparent that they want to promote the Triune God of Christianity as the Intelligent Designer or the Creator. For example, William Dembski is a leading member and in December 2007, he told Focus on the Family that “The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.”[90]
As a final thought every thing good that the Jewish, Muslim, Unitarian Christians and Jehovah Witnesses have written against Trinity becomes a powerful argument for my thesis that any good religious work by the Trinitarians in fact is only for the sake of the One God, Who has no father or any son or daughter.
We also have a fairly large collection of articles about Trinity.
He is the First and the Last, and the Manifest and the Hidden, and He knows all things full well. (Al Quran 57:3)
Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
Why is Intelligent Design Movement (ID) bad science? I will leave that discussion mostly to the contemporary scientists. They have said enough in defense of modern science. I will start off with introducing ID, its scientific lack of merit and then describe two broad categories of reasons why it is bad theology.
ID is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins”.[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.[7][8][9] The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.[n 1]
If my articles are boring to you, it may be that you need to read more of them, as was suggested by John Cage, an American musician, “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
ID presents two main arguments against evolutionary explanations: irreducible complexity and specified complexity, asserting that certain biological and informational features of living things are too complex to be the result of natural selection. Detailed scientific examination has rebutted several examples for which evolutionary explanations are claimed to be impossible.
One should consider the latter as equivalent to atheism. So, as a devout Muslim, who believes in transcendent Unitarian God of the Abrahamic faiths, I cannot accept metaphysical naturalism, but I fully believe and endorse methodological naturalism. In fact I often use it not only to deny pseudoscience but also bad theology. It is my main weapon against bad theology.
So what are these terms that distinguish me from ID on the one hand and from the atheist scientists on the other?
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe.[1] In its primary sense[2] it is also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, pure naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism. “Ontological” refers to ontology, the philosophical study of what exists. Philosophers often treat naturalism as equivalent to materialism.
For example, philosopher Paul Kurtz argues that nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles. These principles include mass, energy, and other physical and chemical properties accepted by the scientific community. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no “purpose” in nature. This stronger formulation of naturalism is commonly referred to as metaphysical naturalism.[3] On the other hand, the more moderate view that naturalism should be assumed in one’s working methods as the current paradigm, without any further consideration of whether naturalism is true in the robust metaphysical sense, is called methodological naturalism.[4]
The term “methodological naturalism” is much more recent, though. According to Ronald Numbers, it was coined in 1983 by Paul de Vries, a Wheaton College philosopher. De Vries distinguished between what he called “methodological naturalism”, a disciplinary method that says nothing about God’s existence, and “metaphysical naturalism”, which “denies the existence of a transcendent God”.[23] The term “methodological naturalism” had been used in 1937 by Edgar S. Brightman in an article in The Philosophical Review as a contrast to “naturalism” in general, but there the idea was not really developed to its more recent distinctions.[24]
ID seeks to challenge the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science,[2][16] though proponents concede that they have yet to produce a scientific theory.[17] As a positive argument against evolution, ID proposes an analogy between natural systems and human artifacts, a version of the theological argument from design for the existence of God.[1][n 2] ID proponents then conclude by analogy that the complex features, as defined by ID, are evidence of design.[18][n 3] Critics of ID find a false dichotomy in the premise that evidence against evolution constitutes evidence for design.[19][20]
Before we go any further, let me suggest to the open minded readers, to read on and in the words of Sir Francis Bacon, “Read not to contradict … but to weigh and consider.”
Now, moving to the second part of my article as to why ID is bad theology. It is bad theology for they often present God of the gaps. Which means inserting God in gaps of knowledge that are not yet understood by science but over time we begin to have better understanding of these domains. Secondly, they violate a principal tribute of the Unitarian God of the Abrahamic faiths, namely that He is Al Baatin الْبَاطِنُ or the Hidden as documented in the verses quoted as epigraph of this article.
The transcendent God of Abrahamic faiths is beyond time, space and matter and we cannot find his fingerprint or hand in a scientific paradigm.
The mistakes of ID are very evident in the biography of one of its pioneers William Dembski, otherwise a very knowledgeable scholar and his work I can use in Monotheistic metaphysics. Please note my emphasis in metaphysics not in science or physics.
Dembski has written books about intelligent design, including The Design Inference (1998), Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology (1999), The Design Revolution (2004), The End of Christianity (2009), and Intelligent Design Uncensored (2010). The second and revised edition of his first book has appeared in 2023. All his books can be useful for the Abrahamic or the Muslim metaphysics.
Why is he a bad scientist and a bad theologian, while qualifying in my opinion as a very good metaphysician and philosopher?
Dembski objects to the presence of the theory of evolution in a variety of disciplines, presenting intelligent design as an alternative to reductionist materialism that gives a sense of purpose that the unguided evolutionary process lacks[85] and the ultimate significance of ID is its success in undermining materialism and naturalism.[32] Dembski has also stated that ID has little chance as a serious scientific theory as long as methodological naturalism is the basis for science.[86] Although intelligent design proponents (including Dembski) have made little apparent effort to publish peer-reviewed scientific research to support their hypotheses, in recent years they have made vigorous efforts to promote the teaching of intelligent design in schools.[87] Dembski is a strong supporter of this drive as a means of making young people more receptive to intelligent design, and said he wants “to see intelligent design flourish as a scientific research program” among a “new generation of scholars” willing to consider the theory and textbooks that include it.[88]
In December 2007, Dembski told Focus on the Family that “The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.”[90]
So, if he is going to be an apologist for the Triune God of Christianity then every thing I have written against the dogma of Christianity, resurrection, vicarious atonement is a demonstration of his bad theology. Nevertheless, I am an apologist for God of Judaism, Unitarian Christianity and Islam and for Afterlife. I present my arguments as theology, philosophy or metaphysics and never as science and in that domain I would borrow from his scholarship.
I am a firm believer in a quote attributed to the 16th century Christian martyr Michael Servetus:
Dembski is also presenting bad theology because he probably considers miracles as violation of the natural law and I do not. He believes that he can catch the fingerprint or hand of God in the workings of our universe, while I believe in the Most Subtle and the Hidden الْبَاطِنُ God of the Quran, whom eyes cannot reach. But, He chooses to reach human consciousness, when He wills, through veils.
Dembski also knows bad religion or bad theology when he sees it. He once took his family to a meeting conducted by Todd Bentley, a faith healer, in hopes of receiving a “miraculous healing” for his son, who is autistic.[100][101] In an article for the Baptist Press he recalled disappointment with the nature of the meeting and with the prevention of his son and other attendees from joining those in wheelchairs who were selected to receive prayer. He then concluded, “Minimal time was given to healing, though plenty was devoted to assaulting our senses with blaring insipid music and even to Bentley promoting and selling his own products (books and CDs).” He wrote that he did not regret the trip and called it an “education,” which showed “how easily religion can be abused, in this case to exploit our family.”[101]
Shall we say that he has not woken up to the limitations of some of the dogma of Christianity? Let me, very respectfully, suggest additional reading materials:
It is He who created the heavens and the earth for a true purpose. On the Day when He says, ‘Be,’ it will be: His word is the truth. All control on the Day the Trumpet is blown belongs to Him. He knows the seen and the unseen: He is the All Wise, the All Aware. (Al Quran 6:73)
Also see 3:59, 16:40, 36:82 and 2:117 regarding the Divine fiat Be! and it is. يَقُولُ كُن فَيَكُونُ
He says about Intelligent Design:
Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories, that ascribe the great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes, should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They implicitly revive the old manicheistic error postulating the existence of two forces acting against each other: God and an inert matter; in this case, chance and intelligent design. There is no opposition here. Within the all-comprising Mind of God what we call chance and random events is well composed into the symphony of creation.
His whole presentation is very important to avoid presenting God of the gaps and for the best correlation between religion and science.
The 17th-century German mathematician and philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, is my philosophical hero. I am proud (but not quite happy) that I share with this great philosopher at least one feature. He was a master in spreading, not to say dissipating, his genius into too many fields of interest. If he had a greater ability to concentrate on fewer problems, he would have become not only a precursor but also a real creator of several momentous scientific achievements. But in such a case, the history of philosophy would be poorer by one of its greatest thinkers. This is not to say that in my case the history of philosophy would lose anything. This is only to stress the fact that I am interested in too many things.
Amongst my numerous fascinations, two have most imposed themselves and proven more time resistant than others: science and religion. I am also too ambitious. I always wanted to do the most important things, and what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us Knowledge, and religion gives us Meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence. The paradox is that these two great values seem often to be in conflict. I am frequently asked how I could reconcile them with each other. When such a question is posed by a scientist or a philosopher, I invariably wonder how educated people could be so blind not to see that science does nothing else but explores God’s creation. To see what I mean, let us go to Leibniz.
In one of his essays, entitled Dialogus, in the margin we find a short sentence written by Leibniz’s hand. It reads: “When God calculates and thinks things through, the world is made.” Everybody has some experience in dealing with numbers, and everybody, at least sometimes, experiences a feeling of necessity involved in the process of calculating. We can easily be led astray when thinking about everyday matters or pondering all pros and cons when facing an important decision, but when we have to add or multiply even big numbers everything goes almost mechanically. This is a routine work, and if we are cautious enough there is no doubt as far as the final result is concerned. However, the true mathematical thinking begins when one has to solve a real problem, that is to say, to identify a mathematical structure that would match the conditions of the problem, to understand principles of its functioning, to grasp connections with other mathematical structures, and to deduce the consequences implied by the logic of the problem. Such manipulations of structures are always immersed into various calculations since calculations form a natural language of mathematical structures.
It is more or less such an image that we should associate with Leibniz’s metaphor of calculating God. Things thought through by God should be identified with mathematical structures interpreted as structures of the world. Since for God to plan is the same as to implement the plan, when “God calculates and thinks things through,” the world is created.
We have mastered a lot of calculation techniques. We are able to think things through in our human way. Can we imitate God in His creating activity?
In 1915 Albert Einstein wrote down his famous equations of gravitational field. The road leading to them was painful and laborious – a combination of deep thinking and tedious work of doing calculations. From the beginning Einstein saw an inadequacy of time-honored Newton’s theory of gravity: it did not fit into a spatio-temporal pattern of special relativity, a synthesis of classical mechanics and Maxwell’s electrodynamical theory. He was hunting for some empirical clues that would narrow the field of possibilities. He found some in the question: Why is inertial mass equal to gravitational mass in spite of the fact that, in Newton’s theory, they are completely independent concepts? He tried to implement his ideas into a mathematical model. Several attempts failed. At a certain stage, he understood that he could not go further without studying tensorial calculus and Riemannian geometry. It is the matter distribution that generates space-time geometry, and the space-time geometry that determines motions of matter. How to express this illuminating idea in the form of mathematical equations? When finally, after many weeks of exhausting work, the equations emerged before his astonished eyes, the new world has been created.
In the beginning, only three, numerically small, empirical effects corroborated Einstein’s new theory. But the world, newly created by Einstein, has soon become an independent reality. Yet in his early work, the field equations suggested to Einstein the existence of solutions describing an expanding universe. He discarded them by modifying his original equations, but in less than two decades it turned out that the equations were wiser than Einstein himself: measurements of galactic spectra have revealed that, indeed, the universe is expanding. In the subsequent period, lasting until now, theoretical physicists and mathematicians have found a host of new solutions to Einstein’s equations and interpreted them as representing gravitational waves, cosmic strings, neutron stars, stationary and rotating black holes, gravitational lensing, dark matter and dark energy, late stages of life of massive stars, and various aspects of cosmic evolution. In Einstein’s time nobody would have even suspected the existence of such objects and processes, but all of them have been found by astronomers in the real universe.
Perhaps now we better understand Leibniz’s idea of God creating the universe by thinking mathematical structures through. We should only free the above sketched image of creating physical theories from all human constraints and limitations, and take into account a theological truth that for God to intend is to obtain the result, and to obtain the result is to instantiate it. Einstein was not far from Leibniz’s idea when he was saying that the only goal of science is to decode the Mind of God present in the structure of the universe.
And what about chancy or random events? Do they destroy mathematical harmony of the universe, and introduce into it elements of chaos and disorder? Is chance a rival force of God’s creative Mind, a sort of manicheistic principle fighting against goals of creation? But what is chance? It is an event of low probability which happens in spite of the fact that it is of low probability. If one wants to determine whether an event is of low or high probability, one must use the calculus of probability, and the calculus of probability is a mathematical theory as good as any other mathematical theory. Chance and random processes are elements of the mathematical blueprint of the universe in the same way as other aspects of the world architecture.
Mathematical structures that are parts of the composition determining the functioning of the universe are called laws of physics. It is a very subtle composition indeed. Like in any masterly symphony, elements of chance and necessity are interwoven with each other and together span the structure of the whole. Elements of necessity determine the pattern of possibilities and dynamical paths of becoming, but they leave enough room for chancy events to make this becoming rich and individual.
Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories, that ascribe the great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes, should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They implicitly revive the old manicheistic error postulating the existence of two forces acting against each other: God and an inert matter; in this case, chance and intelligent design. There is no opposition here. Within the all-comprising Mind of God what we call chance and random events is well composed into the symphony of creation.
When contemplating the universe, the question imposes itself: Does the universe need to have a cause? It is clear that causal explanations are a vital part of the scientific method. Various processes in the universe can be displayed as a succession of states in such a way that the preceding state is a cause of the succeeding one. If we look deeper at such processes, we see that there is always a dynamical law prescribing how one state should generate another state. But dynamical laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, and if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the Great Blueprint of God’s thinking the universe. The question on ultimate causality is translated into another of Leibniz’s questions: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (from his Principles of Nature and Grace). When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes.
When thinking about science as deciphering the Mind of God, we should not forget that science is also a collective product of human brains, and the human brain is itself the most complex and sophisticated product of the universe. It is in the human brain that the world’s structure has reached its focal point – the ability to reflect upon itself. Science is but a collective effort of the Human Mind to read the Mind of God from question marks out of which we and the world around us seem to be made. To place ourselves in this double entanglement is to experience that we are a part of the Great Mystery. Another name for this Mystery is the Humble Approach to reality – the motto of all John Templeton Foundation activities. The true humility does not consist in pretending that we are feeble and insignificant, but in the audacious acknowledgement that we are an essential part of the Greatest Mystery of all – of the entanglement of the Human Mind with the Mind of God.
Templeton Prize 300 Conshohocken State Rd., Suite 500 West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania 19428, USA
We have created the heavens and the earth and all that is between the two in accordance with the perfect truth (mathematics) and wisdom. (Al Quran 15:85)
Say, ‘O People of the Book! come to a word equal between us and you — that we worship none but Allah, and that we associate no partner with Him, and that some of us take not others for Lords beside Allah.’ But if they turn away, then say, ‘Bear witness that we have submitted to God.’ (Al Quran 3:84)
Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
Richard Dawkins’ book, the God Delusion, a treatise of atheism, opens with him applauding God of Einstein, while vilifying all the Abrahamic faiths. When I first read his book some fifteen years ago, I thought it was Dawkins’ hyperbole or dogmatism and an attempt at avoiding to be on the wrong side of the scientists with Jewish heritage. But, now as I go deeper into trying to understand pantheism, I appreciate that Dawkins did have a point. Nevertheless, Einstein was not a hardline pantheist and definitely not an atheist like Dawkins. One could argue that he was more aligned with deism and with optimism and some poetic license, one may dare say that with better theology of Abrahamic faiths, he could have been brought to theism. I think.
Understanding pantheism will give us a better understanding of many of the top scientists’ and mathematicians’ faith and a lot more.
The Pew Research Center poll of scientists found that levels of religious faith vary according to scientific specialty and age. For instance, chemists are more likely to believe in God (41%) than those who work in the other major scientific fields. Meanwhile, younger scientists (ages 18-34) are more likely to believe in God or a higher power than those who are older.
Source: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey, conducted in May and June 2009. For complete question wording, see survey topline.
In this survey those who do not believe in God, but do believe in universal spirit or higher power could be best equated with pantheism and those who do not know as agnostics.
This recent survey of scientists tracks fairly closely with earlier polls that gauged scientists’ views on religion. The first of these was conducted in 1914 by Swiss-American psychologist James Leuba, who surveyed about 1,000 scientists in the United States to ask them about their views on God. Leuba found the scientific community equally divided, with 42% saying that they believed in a personal God and the same number saying they did not.
More than 80 years later, Edward Larson, a historian of science then teaching at the University of Georgia, recreated Leuba’s survey, asking the same number of scientists the exact same questions. To the surprise of many, Larson’s 1996 poll came up with similar results, finding that 40% of scientists believed in a personal God, while 45% said they did not. Other surveys of scientists have yielded roughly similar results.
Albert Einstein reportedly said: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
So, let us learn about Spinoza’s God.
Spinoza’s metaphysics consists of one thing, substance, and its modifications (modes). Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He calls this substance “God“, or “Nature“. In fact, he takes these two terms to be synonymous (in the Latin the phrase he uses is “Deus sive Natura”). For Spinoza the whole of the naturaluniverse consists of one substance, God, or, what is the same, Nature, and its modifications (modes).
Following Maimonides, Spinoza defined substance as “that which is in itself and is conceived through itself”, meaning that it can be understood without any reference to anything external.[107] Being conceptually independent also means that the same thing is ontologically independent, depending on nothing else for its existence and being the ’cause of itself’ (causa sui).[107] A mode is something which cannot exist independently but rather must do so as part of something else on which it depends, including properties (for example colour), relations (such as size) and individual things.[108] Modes can be further divided into ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’ ones, with the latter being evident in every finite mode (he gives the examples of “motion” and “rest”).[109] The traditional understanding of an attribute in philosophy is similar to Spinoza’s modes, though he uses that word differently.[108] To him, an attribute is “that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance”, and there are possibly an infinite number of them.[110] It is the essential nature which is “attributed” to reality by intellect.[111]
Spinoza defined God as “a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence”, and since “no cause or reason” can prevent such a being from existing, it therefore must exist.[111] This is a form of the ontological argument, which is claimed to prove the existence of God, but Spinoza went further in stating that it showed that only God exists.[112] Accordingly, he stated that “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God”.[112][113] This means that God is identical with the universe, an idea which he encapsulated in the phrase “Deus sive Natura” (‘God or Nature’), which has been interpreted by some as atheism or pantheism.[114] Though there are many more of them, God can be known by humans either through the attribute of extension or the attribute of thought.[115] Thought and extension represent giving complete accounts of the world in mental or physical terms.[116] To this end, he says that “the mind and the body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension”.[117]
After stating his proof for God’s existence, Spinoza addresses who “God” is. Spinoza believed that God is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator”.[118] Spinoza attempts to prove that God is just the substance of the universe by first stating that substances do not share attributes or essences and then demonstrating that God is a “substance” with an infinite number of attributes, thus the attributes possessed by any other substances must also be possessed by God. Therefore, God is just the sum of all the substances of the universe. God is the only substance in the universe, and everything is a part of God. This view was described by Charles Hartshorne as Classical Pantheism.[119]
Pantheists deny God being a person and equate Him with the whole of the universe in a poetic sense. Just like agnosticism, we can also think of pantheism as a hedge between theism and atheism.
Pantheists, like deists or theists do admire the creativity and creation of God, in a poetic language. Here are few pithy quotes of Einstein as he stands in awe of the Cosmic Creator:
That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
That humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, which in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man.
A belief bound up with deep feeling in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God.
The above video gives us many insights into pantheism. It is a belief in impersonal God and impersonal immortality. In other words pantheists do not believe in accountability of Afterlife. Robert Lawrence Kuhn gives a line towards the end of the above video that some scientists lean towards pantheism to make science sacred. Was that the case for Einstein? At least some of his quotes will suggest that:
Scientist’s religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work.
When I see nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of ‘humility’. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.
Even though Einstein did line up with Spinoza in a few of his quotes, nevertheless, as I said before, he was not a hardline pantheist and definitely not an atheist. Now let me present a few quotes about him being a deist:
Firstly, his most famous quote: “I, at any rate, am convinced that [God] does not throw dice.” This speaks of a deist God and not a pantheist mystery.
Secondly:
I’m absolutely not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things.[1][2]
He wanted to focus on the biggest question of all—from where this universe came. By age 12, Einstein had decided to devote himself to solving the big riddle of the universe. He wanted to occupy himself with the question that if he were God, how he would create the universe. In a later conversation with Esther Salaman, a student of Physics, he said:
I want to know how God created this world. I’m not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.[3]
At this time I must applaud Einstein’s pluralism, as he is reported to have said:
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
If some of Jews and Christians theists, be they scientists or not, give up their Islamophobic or parochial tendencies and the Muslims stop basking in their sectarian quibbles, they can join their academic forces to guide atheists and pantheists towards a common understanding of theism, in line with the verses quoted as epigraph of this article. Let me conclude with a few verses of the Quran:
It was We who created you: will you not believe? Consider [the semen] you eject––do you create it yourselves or are We the Creator? We ordained death to be among you. Nothing could stop Us if We intended to change you and recreate you in a way unknown to you. You have learned how you were first created: will you not reflect? Consider the seeds you sow in the ground––is it you who make them grow or We? If We wished, We could turn your harvest into chaff and leave you to wail, ‘We are burdened with debt; we are bereft.’ Consider the water you drink––was it you who brought it down from the rain-cloud or We? If We wanted, We could make it bitter: will you not be thankful? Consider the fire you kindle–– is it you who make the wood for it grow or We? We made it a reminder, and useful to those who kindle it, so [Prophet] glorify the name of your Lord, the Supreme. (Al Quran 56: 57-74)
The Quranic Compassion 