Physicalism Redux

Wow, that's a long list of luminaries. Now this raises this question: How much weight should I give to a list of people expressing unscientific factless personal beliefs?  Btw, unbeknownst to the owner of that site, Einstein did not believe in God. If you would like to know what he thought read up on Baruch Spinoza.

But Physicalism itself then is a factless personal belief. And you are assuming there's no reason to doubt Physicalism based on evidence, but clearly not everyone agrees with you as per this essay in Nature by physicist Richard Conn Henry:

One benefit of switching humanity to a correct perception of the world is the resulting joy of discovering the mental nature of the Universe. We have no idea what this mental nature implies, but — the great thing is — it is true. Beyond the acquisition of this perception, physics can no longer help. You may descend into solipsism, expand to deism, or something else if you can justify it — just don't ask physics for help.

There is another benefit of seeing the world as quantum mechanical: someone who has learned to accept that nothing exists but observations is far ahead of peers who stumble through physics hoping to find out ‘what things are’. If we can ‘pull a Galileo,’ and get people believing the truth, they will find physics a breeze.

The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.

Spinoza was a pantheist, who believed God and Nature were equivalent. It's funny that you mention this though, since if we're talking Spinoza we're talking philosophy. I guess it's okay to bring in philosophy but only when it's convenient to your evangalizing your materialist faith?







Beyond that Einstein's ideas of God might be arguable, but we should also note that he was sympathetic to the reality of Psi and even wrote the introduction to Upton Sinclair's Mental Radio:



I have read the book of Upton Sinclair with great interest

and am convinced that the same deserves the most earnest consid-

eration, not only of the laity, but also of the psychologists by

profession. The results of the telepathic experiments carefully and

plainly set forth in this book stand surely far beyond those which

a nature investigator holds to be thinkable. On the other hand,

it is out of the question in the case of so conscientious an observer

and writer as Upton Sinclair that he is carrying on a conscious

deception of the reading world; his good faith and dependability

are not to be doubted. So if somehow the facts here set forth rest

not upon telepathy, but upon some unconscious hypnotic influence

from person to person, this also would be of high psychological

interest. In no case should the psychologically interested circles

pass over this book heedlessly.



[signed] A. EINSTEIN