Einstein Manipulated Equations for an Atheist Agenda?

[Chris Connelly]

In a recent lecture, one of my professors (this is at a top 50 US university) taught that Albert Einstein was an atheist who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning. Is anyone familiar with this claim and its validity (or lack thereof)? I also recall de Sitter being mentioned - just wanted to see if anyone had heard this particular claim before or if it's a "new one."

Chris Connelly

 

[shadron]

In a recent lecture, one of my professors (this is at a top 50 US university) taught that Albert Einstein was an atheist who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning. Is anyone familiar with this claim and its validity (or lack thereof)? I also recall de Sitter being mentioned - just wanted to see if anyone had heard this particular claim before or if it's a "new one."

Chris Connelly

Yeah. The existance of his "cosmological constant^WP" that he threw into one of GR's formulae could be interpreted to say that the universe was expanding; the natural result of that is that everything must have come from some center of that expansion. Later he removed it from his paper, calling it his "greatest blunder". Hubble's acceleration figure has renewed interest in it. Einstein believed that the universe was static. Also see de Sitter Universe^WP.

 

[MG1962]

I dont think he had any athiest agenda, I think he simply didn't recognise the importance of what he stumbled across

 

[arthwollipot]

In a nutshell, Einstein found that his General Relativity necessarily implied that the universe was not static - it had to be either expanding or contracting. Since, as Shadron says, Einstein, along with every other serious physicist at the time, believed that the universe was static, he inserted the Cosmological Constant into the equations in order to forcibly make them describe a static universe. And yes, he later removed it.

This story could be interpreted by someone with severe right-wing evangelical Christian leanings as being due to atheist bias, but you'd have to be pretty seriously compromised to think that.

 

[Mojo]

In a recent lecture, one of my professors (this is at a top 50 US university) taught that Albert Einstein was an atheist who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning.

Well, he was an atheist (although theists often like to pretend he wasn't), and he manipulated an equation to predict a static universe, but what is missing from that statement is that the two facts are not necessarily connected. The lecturer could have just as easily described Einstein as a patent clerk who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning, or a Jew who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning. He seems to be using a non sequitur to try to establish an atheist agenda.

Does the lecturer also agree with the Conservapedian view of relativity?

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Einstein was also convinced that quantum mechanics wasn't random.

Let's face it, Einstein was a genius, but he was wrong about stuff, too.

 

[Michael Mozina]

In a recent lecture, one of my professors (this is at a top 50 US university) taught that Albert Einstein was an atheist who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning. Is anyone familiar with this claim and its validity (or lack thereof)? I also recall de Sitter being mentioned - just wanted to see if anyone had heard this particular claim before or if it's a "new one."

Chris Connelly

IMO that's not even a particularly logical premise since GR itself doesn't "deny" that that universe had a beginning, nor does it necessarily eliminate a need for a 'cause' of a bang. I don't see the connections implied by that argument. GR is used today to suggest that the universe has a "beginning" (all mass created in an event), whereas Einstein attempted at first to use GR to explain a 'static' (potentially eternal) universe, but set the constant back to zero once he realized the universe was expanding. GR can be used either way so I really don't see any 'agenda" in the formulas themselves. You might ask them to isolate the part of the GR formulas that contains his atheist agenda for you. I suspect you'll hear dead silence.

 

[Dinwar]

Or ask what the "atheist agenda" is. I've been an atheist for a number of years, and I've never seen any agenda.

Besides, the beauty of science is that if someone is wrong, we can find out that they're wrong and how. As Tubba said, we've found Einstein to be wrong a few times. He even published retractions to some of his papers, if I recall correctly (I don't have references, I'm going off of some of the books I've read--a few steps above "pop culture science", but certainly not peer-reviewed literature).

 

[fuelair]

Or ask what the "atheist agenda" is. I've been an atheist for a number of years, and I've never seen any agenda.

Besides, the beauty of science is that if someone is wrong, we can find out that they're wrong and how. As Tubba said, we've found Einstein to be wrong a few times. He even published retractions to some of his papers, if I recall correctly (I don't have references, I'm going off of some of the books I've read--a few steps above "pop culture science", but certainly not peer-reviewed literature).

If anybody has a spare copy of the agenda, could you forward it, please? I think I lost mine the last time we moved!!!

Thanks, fuelair

 

[Ysidro]

Or ask what the "atheist agenda" is. I've been an atheist for a number of years, and I've never seen any agenda.

Oh you know, go grocery shopping, walk a mile or two, set the DVR. It's like the Gay Agenda only less fabulous.

 

[Skwinty]

Or ask what the "atheist agenda" is. I've been an atheist for a number of years, and I've never seen any agenda.

The atheist agenda is:

Do not attend church services and do not believe in any other mumbo jumbo religious practices.

 

[GrandMasterFox]

*Sigh*
One day they say he's a theist the other they say he has an atheist agenda.

I really wish they would just make up their mind.

 

[autumn1971]

If it's a physics or math teacher, I would be genuinely concerned. Otherwise, simply point out that Newton manipulated friut to suit his occult view of the universe. Or give the prof a campus map with the math building circled.

 

[Mojo]

Or ask what the "atheist agenda" is. I've been an atheist for a number of years, and I've never seen any agenda.

1. Does anyone have any evidence for the existence of God?
2. AOB.

 

[FireGarden]

just wanted to see if anyone had heard this particular claim before or if it's a "new one."

From a thread which is much too long to read:

Einstein for one. That's why he added his fudge factor. Because it was difficult for him to accept that the universe had a definite beginning.

 

[Reality Check]

In a recent lecture, one of my professors (this is at a top 50 US university) taught that Albert Einstein was an atheist who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning. Is anyone familiar with this claim and its validity (or lack thereof)? I also recall de Sitter being mentioned - just wanted to see if anyone had heard this particular claim before or if it's a "new one."

Chris Connelly

That is wrong in several ways
Albert Einstein views on the existence or not of a god seems to have varied during his lifetime. A quick Google will show this.
A pertinent quote is
Einstein Quotes on Atheism & Freethought: Was Einstein an Atheist, Freethinker?

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
- Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2

But note the date - this does not state anything about his beliefs during the formulation of GR (1905-1916).

He did not "manipulate" his equations. Einstein was mathematically correct to add the cosmological constant since it is the equivalent of the constant that you can add to integration without affecting the mathematical result.

He then assumed that this constant was non-zero to allow for solutions that included a static universe. This fitted the scientific consensus of the time that the universe was static.

Oddly enough the de Sitter soultion for GR came after Albert Einstein published his paper. So I doubt that this had amything to do with any "manipulation" of GR by Einstein.

 

[sol invictus]

In a recent lecture, one of my professors (this is at a top 50 US university) taught that Albert Einstein was an atheist who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning. Is anyone familiar with this claim and its validity (or lack thereof)? I also recall de Sitter being mentioned - just wanted to see if anyone had heard this particular claim before or if it's a "new one."

Chris Connelly

As others pointed out above, at the time Einstein was formulating GR physicists believed the universe was static, despite the fact that this was problematic for various reasons and not supported by much evidence. I believe - although I'm not certain of this - that part of the prejudice in favor of a static universe came from the idea that the alternative implied a moment of creation and hence a creator.

Einstein added his constant because he wanted his theory to be able to accomodate a static universe, since that was the prevailing idea at the time, and he realized that this was impossible otherwise. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if he too was influenced by an aversion to the idea of a moment of creation.

In the end, it was Georges Lemaitre, a physicist who happened to also be a Catholic priest, that found the expanding solutions to Einstein's equations that appear to correctly describe the universe we live in.

From our modern point of view, the big bang doesn't mark a moment of creation, but instead a time before which the known laws of physics simply break down. What came before, if anything, is a matter of speculation, but there are plenty of theoretical models in which the big bang is not the beginning of time.

 

[sol invictus]

Oddly enough the de Sitter soultion for GR came after Albert Einstein published his paper. So I doubt that this had amything to do with any "manipulation" of GR by Einstein.

de Sitter space is a solution of Einstein's equations only in the presence of a non-zero and positive cosmological constant, or - equivalently - a positive vacuum energy.

 

[Towlie]

In a recent lecture, one of my professors (this is at a top 50 US university) taught that Albert Einstein was an atheist who manipulated his equations to deny that the universe had a beginning.

I wouldn't interpret it like that. Einstein was in denial that the universe was changing in size, which could have meant either expanding or contracting. This static view should actually have been been more palatable to Christian fundamentalists who believe that the universe was magically conjured up a few thousand years ago as an afterthought and then summarized in Genesis 1:16 as "He made the stars also." The view that Einstein finally accepted is that the universe is billions of years old and expanding, and I'm sure that hardly sounds comforting to Bible-thumping Christians. They probably preferred his first model.

 

[arthwollipot]

It was difficult for Einstein to accept that the universe had a beginning. It would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise. Hardly anyone accepted that the universe had a beginning back in 1915.