Prof. Weinberg on Religion and Physics

Interesting interview.

I find it odd how few HornFans regulars have responded to this thread. I wonder if an atheist physicist is, by his very nature, less threatening than an atheist biologist like Richard Dawkins?

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Religious people aren't offended because they (like most people) don't really understand physics. There's no easy target like evolution that they can relate to.
 
Thanks for the link.

I find the language quite strange. The idea of some finality is puzzling to me, as if this is the last piece of information that will form the super theory. That will never happen. We can only keep digging and learning about the world we live in.
 
I think it's more that hardly anybody knows what exactly "the breaking of the symmetry between the weak and the electromagnetic interactions" means.
 
Religious people aren't offended because they (like most people) don't really understand physics.
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Tell that to Einstein.
 
Einstein was not religious. To be religious he has to believe in a religion. He was a bit spiritual though. Big difference.
 
sak, I couldn't disagree with you more, as all people are equally religious. Also, Einstein was religious.... "I want to know God's thoughts, the rest are details." This is one of his most quoted thoughts. I don't know how that phrase alone could be called non religious.
 
I'm a physicist, I understand what Weinberg was talking about, and I disagree with the point that religious people like myself don't understand physics.
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The weak interaction is like the pi, in the sense that it is a physical property of the Universe. As such, it can only be tuned by God...

In no way is it proof or disproof of divine intervention, any more than the fact the sky is blue proves or disproves God exists. The real question, to me, is why He chose it to be that way. Also, could things work if it was any other way?

Also, this crap with calling the Higgs boson the "God particle" is something somebody came up with to make their funding proposal sound badass. You need it to make the Standard Model nice and consistent, that's all there is to it.
 
I'd wager that 90% of people (not just religious people) don't understand the theory of evolution either, even considering its simplicity.

and no, "i didn't come from no god damn monkey!" doesn't count as understanding it.
 
I want to point out that evolutionary theory doesn't say humans descended from monkeys, it says monkeys and humans as well as other primate descended from a common primate ancestor thousands of years ago.
 
Alum
Stipulating agreement, for the moment, to your characterizations of O'hair and Dawkins, what term would then apply to those religious folk who are ok with the idea of heaven and hell and judgement, and the implications for billions?
 
Ryan, thank you for those additional quotes. I had heard none of them.
I also see that he points out that although he might have abandoned the Judaism of his childhood, he seemed to have replaced it with what he saw as a deeper religiousity.
I have said this before, softly, to try to answer your question.
I would state that what we believe about God fundatmentally effects our decisions. I believe that belief to be fundamental to our decision making process. In fact, I would state that the basic matrix of core belief upon which each individual lives his/her life is religious, because these core beliefs are necessarily related to belief or disbelief in God.
The truth is all humans belief. It is just a matter of in what we believe. When we don't belief "A", we don't simply not believe "A", we necessarily belief something else. Our belief then is not simply a matter of believing or not believing, but rather if we believe "A" or "B".... now that is way too simplistic, and there are probably 10 basic things that we believe.
Marvin Olasky teaches a class at UT that covers ALL religions in the world by asking some very basic questions. I will try to find the article he wrote about the basic approach of that class in WORLD magazine. There are about 4 or 5 questions which are asked in that class. They are essentially either or questions. Not believing just really isn't a possibility.
 
I don't see the point of interjecting god/religion into the interview other then to gin up a controversy....or the interviewer has no clue about the subject and decided to go the low route.

BL
 
My question BottomLine is who named this elusive particle the "God particle" I admit I know nothing about this level of physics, but if this is a common term for the particle, then it seems to make sense that the interviewer would ask about religion.
 
I would like to think the only difference between an atheist and and a theist is a tilde or negation sign stuck out to the left of their philosophy. Sadly, rather, it is the letter 'a'.

Seriously, you've got to have an equal amount of Faith to be either an atheist or theist.
 
THEU, read the quote again. Einstein says that his "deep religiosity" came to an end at the age 12.

The myth of Einstein's belief in God is is well, just that, a myth. As such he has quoted using the word 'god', it always stood for a manifestation of universe.
 
interesting article. I believe in God, but also that he created the Universe to work with the physics he created. I don't think getting closer to understanding it will push people away from religion. I think it will probably get to the point where people have to ask, why is the Universe like this at all, no matter how it works?
 
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