On my way home from my 6-9 p.m. class on Tuesday nights, I've started listening to Krista Tippett's show, Speaking of Faith, which I initially didn't know what to make of. I'm deeply spiritual, but life experience has made extremely wary of religious manipulation. The show is actually not about preaching and more about understanding, whether it be from cultural or theological standpoints. Moreover, I was impressed to find that Tippett broaches--and invites guests who tackle--the very thorny issue of spirtuality's complex (and seemingly contradictory) relationship to science.
This link leads to a program dealing with Einstein's religious affinities, which--perhaps not unspurprisingly--didn't fit into a conventional church setting. Einstein didn't believe that God could possibly be concerned with human affairs. He also felt that God follows a fixed pattern of handling the Universe, meaning there could be no deviations from fundamental scientific rules. However, when the quantum physicists, who built on Einstein's discoveries, came along and found that sometimes subatomic particles shoot off in random directions for no reason, Einstein couldn't imagine these inexplicable and incalculable deviations from expectation (which to me proves that there is some predestination, but also 'free-will' or, in the case of non-sentient particles, chance within a generally consistent framework).
Anyway, fascinating concepts. Eventually, I plan to pick up her related collection of essays by subject specialists.
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