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Moloth
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 Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:49 am Post subject: Einstein |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion/print
| Quote: | | In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." |
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Last edited by Moloth on Tue Feb 30, 2026 13:61 am; edited 426 times in total |
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Nimitz
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| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 8:59 pm Post subject: Einstein: Belief in God a 'product of human weaknesses |
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Last edited by Nimitz on Tue May 13, 2008 10:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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baddogma
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| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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I KNEW he was smart!
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Can omnicient god who knows the future find the omnipotence to change his future mind?
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Hit_me_up024
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| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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yeah that makes of alot of sense to me because its so much easier to say well its okay if my family dies because one day ill see them later in the afterlife, or its okay if i dont have that know because in the afterlife ill have anything i want.
Rather than well shit i better live it up while i can because when i die im plant food, or dont worry mom grandma will make good plant and worm food!!
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joshuas3521
Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!
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| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Hit_me_up024 wrote: | | Rather than well shit i better live it up while i can because when i die im plant food, or dont worry mom grandma will make good plant and worm food!! |
Tch, even humans managed to screw that up. Fuck embalming fluid.
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"What I'm saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job." --Carl Sagan
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In memory of George Carlin. May he rest in peace.
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Juno22
"Some Chicken—Some Neck!"
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| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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You don't have to be Einstein to figure out that belief in God is a “product of human weaknesses". That's obv!
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Wickedtruth
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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"John Brooke, professor emeritus of science and religion at Oxford University, told the Associated Press that the letter lends weight to the notion that "Einstein was not a conventional theist" — although he was not an atheist, either.
"Like many great scientists of the past, he is rather quirky about religion, and not always consistent from one period to another," Brooke said
Brooke said Einstein believed "there is some kind of intelligence working its way through nature. But it is certainly not a conventional Christian or Judaic religious view."
He doesn't believe in god/gods, but isn't an atheist either? What does that classify him as then? |
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ApostateLois
Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
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| Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 6:05 pm Post subject: |
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 That picture is fan-fucking-tastic!
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VietnamVet-Atheist
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| Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 6:57 pm Post subject: Einstein letter dissing "God" sells for + $400K |
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Einsten: “... the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”
| Quote: | Einstein Letter on God Sells for $404,000
From the grave, Albert Einstein poured gasoline on the culture wars between science and religion this week.
A letter the physicist wrote in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which he described the Bible as “pretty childish” and scoffed at the notion that the Jews could be a “chosen people,” sold for $404,000 at an auction in London. That was 25 times the presale estimate.
The Associated Press quoted Rupert Powell, the managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, as describing the unidentified buyer as having “a passion for theoretical physics and all that that entails.” Among the unsuccessful bidders, according to The Guardian newspaper, was Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist.
The price makes the Gutkind letter one of the best sellers among Einstein manuscripts. That $404,000 is only a little less than the $442,500 paid for the entire collection of 53 love letters between Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric, at an auction at Christie’s in New York in 1996. At that same auction a paper by Einstein and his best friend, Michele Besso, attempting a calculation that would later be a pivotal piece of his crowning achievement, the General Theory of Relativity, went for $398,500.
Diana Buchwald, a historian at the California Institute of Technology and head of the Einstein Papers project, said she was not surprised that the Gutkind letter, which was known to Einstein scholars, fetched such a high price.
“It is an important expression of Einstein’s thoughts and views on religion, on Judaism, on his views about God and religious texts,” she wrote in an e-mail message. She said the letter, which was not written for publication, was “concise and unvarnished” and more straightforward than the metaphors he usually turned to in public.
Gerald Holton, a historian of science at Harvard and a longtime Einstein expert, also was not surprised. He said Einstein’s marketability had been improved by the last few years of hoopla about the 100th anniversary of relativity, which included his selection as Time magazine’s Man of the Century in 2000, and several new biographies. Dr. Holton described the letter as “a feat of eloquent Credo in short form.”
Einstein, as he says in his autobiographical notes, lost his religion at the age of 12, concluding that it was all a lie, and he never looked back. But he never lost his religious feeling about the apparent order of the universe or his intuitive connection with its mystery, which he savored. “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is its comprehensibility,” he once said.
“If something is in me that can be called religious,” he wrote in another letter, in 1954, “then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as science can reveal it.”
Einstein consistently characterized the idea of a personal God who answers prayers as naive, and life after death as wishful thinking. But his continual references to God — as a metaphor for physical law; in his famous rebuke to quantum mechanics, “God doesn’t play dice”; and in lines like the endlessly repeated, “ Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” — has led some wishful thinkers to try to put him in the camp of some kind of believer or even, not long ago, to paint him as an advocate of intelligent design.
Trying to distinguish between a personal God and a more cosmic force, Einstein described himself as an “agnostic” and “not an atheist,” which he associated with the same intolerance as religious fanatics. “They are creatures who — in their grudge against the traditional ‘opium for the people’ — cannot bear the music of the spheres.”
The problem of God, he said, “is too vast for our limited minds.”
Einstein’s latest words offer scant comfort to the traditionally faithful.
In the letter, according to the A.P. account, he wrote that “the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”
As for his fellow Jews, he said that Judaism, like all other religions, was “an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.”
He claimed a deep affinity with the Jewish people, he said, but “as far as my experience goes they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/science/17einsteinw.html
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Wander
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| Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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Error 404: Letter not found
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Regarding creationists: Aren't these the same people who gave us alchemy and astrology, and who told us the earth, besides being flat, was at the center of the universe? Why don't we just kill these fucking people? ~George Carlin |
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Castaa
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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This letter is such slammed door in the face of those that love to mix Einstein and God belief. However, I'm sure they'll be undeterred in their arguments from authority/Einstein. 
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Vyrian
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 2:10 pm Post subject: |
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It is a sign of strength to go out and discover the answers of the world for yourself than to sit back and let someone else tell you how you should believe. God will always be a sign of human weakness.
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passrt2002
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:48 pm Post subject: |
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enstine is cool but stephen hawking is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better
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After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushes, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people. Huck Fin |
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Moloth
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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Last edited by Moloth on Tue Feb 30, 2026 13:61 am; edited 426 times in total |
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GodWarrior98
Royal Citizen
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:32 pm Post subject: |
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| passrt2002 wrote: | | enstine is cool but stephen hawking is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better |
Agreed, who needs theories that explain things and make predictions when you have white holes and popularization that also misinforms? |
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