No we NEVER do.


“His [Einstein] was not a life of prayer and worship. Yet he lived by a deep faith — a faith not capabIe of rational foundation — that there are laws of Nature to be discovered. His lifelong pursuit was to discover them...”

Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. vi.

What we have found out so far is just what we know. There are things we’re yet to find out.

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - Sir Isaac Newton.

The point of my attention in the earlier comment was that what we have found out, despite being only a little of what all can be found out, is true. It’s not the set of all the truths, but it is true and cannot be falsified.

For God is “an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who had the courage, imagination, and persistence to go on searching for them...”

The rules that God obeys is the set of all the truths that can be found out. We know only a little of it, but we know something. And that something is part of the set of all the truths. God has to obey this something.

That apples fall according to Newton’s laws, is part of this something. God is bound to obey it. God can’t disobey it. He can’t make apples “fall” upwards. Just as he can’t make nuclear weapons give up mc cubed energy if m is the mass fissioned. Coz mc squared is what God has to obey, he can’t make it mc cubed.

It’s a matter of opinion, as I already said in my first comment. We can give no authoritative answer, but only opinions.

In my opinion God couldn’t possibly think it to be the opposite and make the world a place where apples rise instead of falling. Coz God CANNOT disobey the natural laws.

“I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. As I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science.”

Albert Einstein; from Peter A. Bucky, The Private Albert Einstein, Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 1992, p. 86

You say that in your opinion God can disobey natural laws. The only thing prudent here is to respect each other and continue to AGREE TO DISAGREE, for none of us is presenting an authoritative FACT. We’re both just presenting opinions.

I’d, not in disdain but due to my firm beliefs, call you a gullible irrationalist. You can wisely accept that. Just as I accept that you call me a COSMIC RELIGION IDEALIST.

Are you trying to say that God can make apples “fall” upwards and nuclear weapons give up mc cubed energy if m is the mass fissioned? I think that being a believer of such a God will be nothing less than being a gullible irrationalist, if not superstitious.

I think so too. But this question has no authentic answer, only opinions.

Personally I’m an atheist from the viewpoint of priests, but I am a true pusher of theism deep in my core. I believe in what is celebrated all across the scientific community as Einstein’s COSMIC RELIGION.

“Einstein's God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who at the courage, imagination, and persistence to go on searching for them. It was to this past which he began to turn his mind soon after the age of twelve. The rest of his life everything else was to seem almost trivial by comparison”

Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, New York: World Publishing, 1971, pp. 19-20

“I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. As I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science.”

Albert Einstein; from Peter A. Bucky, The Private Albert Einstein, Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 1992, p. 86

“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.… This is a somewhat new kind of religion”

Albert Einstein, in a letter to Hans Muehsam, March 30, 1954; Einstein Archive 38-434; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 218

“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.”

Albert Einstein, upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, published in the New York Times, April 25, 1929; from Einstein: The Life and Times, Ronald W. Clark, New York: World Publishing Co., 1971, p. 413; also cited as a telegram to a Jewish newspaper, 1929, Einstein Archive 33-272, from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 204

Another attempt to fork a diversion. We’re here discussing asceticism being baseless. Don’t waste our time, especially even after I very lucidly explained how you incorrectly called your speculation as A FACT.

Read my earlier comment once again. If you continue to believe that I assumed person to mean male and not female, you need the help of any learned “person” who is capable of comprehending very simple lucid explanations.

I restate the crux: “since I am a male human, ‘a person like me’ may be taken as a phrase which implies that P cannot be a woman. For this reason I explicitly inserted another W”

First of all the above comment serves as a fork in this thread that invites a digression.

FYI, you made some assumptions about what I wrote and why I wrote. It’s not like what you assumed. No I never assumed person as a word that means male human in the manner in which the word woman means female human. Read the sentence that I wrote without making the assumption that P is not a woman. You’ll find meaning everywhere. P can be a man, or a woman, doesn’t matter. W has to be a woman.

Your speculation that I consider persons and women as two mutually exclusive terms was a childish hasty conclusion. Adding to the sorrow, you declared your incorrect speculation to be A FACT.

Initially I had written this:

“Let’s assume that person P is a normal person like me, and the human A is a true ascetic. Does this fact serve as a proof that P has never found a greater level of holiness in soul and spirit than the level attained by A?”

Then I noticed that since I am a male human, ‘a person like me’ may be taken as a phrase which implies that P cannot be a woman. For this reason I explicitly inserted another W, and wrote this:

“Let’s assume that person P and woman W are normal people like me, and the human A is a true ascetic. Does this fact serve as a proof that neither P nor W has ever found a greater level of holiness in soul and spirit than the level attained by A?”

You should be careful when you go on to use “the fact that...” in place of “my speculation that...”. Secondly, your comment in no manner contributes to the thread, it only forks a diversion.

"Is future unique??"

Or in other words, "are the days yet to come in our lives completely preordained, or can we shape them ourselves by our own deeds???"

You are missing the very pivotal point: is asceticism necessary for reaching the higher levels of holiness in soul and spirit? I THINK THERE'S NO CONNECTION. Do try to carefully read my previous comment once again, hope you'll then get my point.

Taking now on the diversion that you just forked above in this thread: The cause of AIDS is the HIV, AND NOT SEX; it's a different matter that AIDS gets sexually transmitted. "Unprotected Practice", "The Contaminated Ones Not Getting Quarantined", etc are the keywords here. On a similar note, there are diseases that get transmitted via injections' needles and syringe-content. Does this mean injections themselves are the culprit? Of course not. The problem lies with the keywords that I mentioned jus now. If a priest doesn't lie to us when he/she says that he's never experienced an orgasm for so-and-so many long years, he/she has very certainly tormented himself/herself. He/she may try to mislead us by not saying it, you may join him/her to echo his claims, ... WE ARE AS GOD MADE US and we know the truth, despite nice attempts being made by some lofty enthusiasts at pretending to be what they just aren't in actual truth!

Exactly! You just spoke my mind in a more fearless and outspoken manner. I can’t find any true connection. God has made us like that! Why would God want us to torment ourselves?

Let’s assume that person P and woman W are normal people like me, and the human A is a true ascetic. Does this fact serve as a proof that neither P nor W has ever found a greater level of holiness in soul and spirit than the level attained by A? Usually the ascetics are at a greater level, but is asceticism necessary? After all, if “Some ascetics are mathematicians”, and “some mathematicians have truly attained the self-realisation of Buddha”, then we cannot conclude that “some ascetics have truly attained the self-realisation of Buddha”. Hope you’ll get my point now!

True lust exists, we can’t deny that! Sex is an expression of love (I’m not talking about the instances where someone does it for money, I’m not discussing that presumably unholy thing AT ALL), and no true prophet has ever denied this! My question is: what is the point of asceticism? Why at all does anyone ever need to refrain from having orgasms in any manner, in order to be able to focus on his theological things in general???