October 08, 2009

Einstein



The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people. 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. - Albert Einstein (from a letter recently sold at auction for £170,000).

10 comments:

Kirk said...

Is that Charlie Chaplin he's standing next to?

Lemmy Caution said...

Yes....you are correct sir!

Unknown said...

i never read that quote before. it's WONDERFUL

Lemmy Caution said...

In his public speeches and the like, Einstein tended to walk the agnostic line....but in his private letters he (obviously) let be known what he really felt about religion.

Raine said...

wow, sounds like a genius or something!

dumb, sorry :D

giggles said...

Wow!! Really!

Claudia said...

Awe, Albert.
And those same Jesus lovin' pricks used your own work against you....when you respectfully asked them not to.

Justine said...

"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."

"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

"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."

;-)

Justine said...

-Einstein

Lemmy Caution said...

Justine makes my point from my (and Cludia's) above comments.

Theists still try to cling on to Einstein as a follower, even though his private letters prove otherwise. Sigh.