Belief in God 'childish,' Jews not chosen people: Einstein letter

LONDON (AFP) - Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.

The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.

As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other people".

"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," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.

The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house's managing director Rupert Powell.

In it, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become Israel's second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.

"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."

And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are 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."

Previously the great scientist's comments on religion -- such as "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" -- have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.

Powell said the letter being sold this week gave a clear reflection of Einstein's real thoughts on the subject. "He's fairly unequivocal as to what he's saying. There's no beating about the bush," he told AFP.

The Vatican has acknowledged the possibility of alien life. Thanks for catching up with the rest of us. :P Now if we can only get all religious individuals to embrace what the Vatican's chief astronomer said:

"The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter."

One thing they may have overlooked thought: accepting this does seem to reduce the likelihood that Jesus was "the son of God and part of the trinity" by the sheer number of planets out there (roughly 1x10^13 I think).

Day Five: Eighteen levels complete. This is twice what I said yesterday and a very exciting number. I'd really like to release the game right now, but I'm going to hold off until at least 30 levels.

The game's difficulty has stepped up considerably. You will die several times before completing most levels. On the other hand, you have unlimited continues and the game records your progress automatically.

There was a transient bug where dying would rarely take you to the next level instead of restarting the current level; I think I fixed that.

That's enough for today. Whew! Tomorrow: even more levels.

Earlier last week I found a true find, something amazingly rare but which all opera cognoscenti drool after: The famed Lisbon Traviata. In March 27t (My birthday!) 1958, The god of all tenors Alfredo Kraus, having just recently made his operatic debut in El Cairo, Egypt, sang with the goddess of all sopranos Maria Callas in the Lisbon performances of Giuseppe Verdi's ''La Traviata.'' This was the only time these two legends of the musical world sang together: Kraus just beginning his 40 year career, Callas soon would start the decline of hers.

However, at this point Callas was still in great shape, and this performance quickly became legendary, considered to be "The Definitive" performance of this legendary opera. Sought by opera lovers everywhere as a recording, EMI records produced a pressing of it, but EMI's sound source was so bad that it was thoroughly underwhelming.

The Lisbon radio, however, had its own tapes and its own sound source-- which was superior in all aspects to the EMI recording. The Lisbon radio issued a limited collector's set of this LP, which quickly sold out and disappeared from the market.

In fact, it wasn't re-issued until recently through a label called PEARL. The problem? Getting the 2 CD set will cost you $45!

Well.. through some wise searching, I found a mint version of the original LP and bought it for 10 dollars!

I have it, and thanks to my voice teacher I've transferred onto a CD...and let me tell you, this is a treasure. It is more than a treasure, I would say this is my most treasured musical possession, ever.

I've uploaded an excerpt from the famous Toast so you can enjoy it. Here: http://www.box.net/shared/u8189y6g4w

The Rolling Rock "moonvertising" viralish parody-ad is funny. But it reminded me of something! Something I was TOTALLY SURE I remembered from, like, the 90s or something? But it was too ridiculous for me to have remembered it right.

No, Pizza Hut really did want to project its logo on the moon and settled for a big decal on a Russian rocket instead.

The cost, if I remember right, was going to be something like the GNP of a midsize country, way more than anything ever built and would require mad genius amounts of energy to project the Texas-sized (minimum) logo on to the moon. When apprised of this, the ad folks decided that shooting a Pizza-Hut emblazoned rocket into space would be a good consolation prize. Because who can forget the heady days of 1999 when Americans sat together around the television, as one nation, watching Russian satellite launches?

We were transfixed, I'll tell my grandchildren.

i have lived here for 9 years, anniversary today.
the day is almost over.

today
everything and nothing going on.
just like the last 9 years.

9 years
each, interesting

all i vaguely remember was something about an airport and a box and a duffle bag.
and then... i dont think i'm prepared to go into what happened next.

can't say "it seems like yesterday"
i definitely feel like i've been here
the whole entire time

i think its a good sign that i am not sure what has happened to the time though...
not exactly...
not precisely...

Strangeness

You're a strange bird, Maus Merryjest.
How many 29 year olds have, outside of all the music you own, a six CD collection of music form the 1920s? Heck, I know how to Charleston. That ain't right.


The Good News
I didn't want to keep Vince in suspense, so I'll tell you what the good news are: ( Read more... ). Aren't ya glad? :)

A car that runs 200km on compressed air

Let's hail a new technology, and the creative minds that bring it about: Monsieurs et Mesdames: The Air Car.



My Hero: Wafa Sultan

Wafa Sultan is an extremely courageous woman. Watch these videos and you will see why she is my hero.



( Read more... )

The Problem of Meta-Justification stems from the observation that all metaphysical systems (M) are two things:

1. Frameworks which specify the nature of all information in the universe, and
   
2. Themselves in need of justification, insofar as they are not obviously true.
   

(2) requires us to marshal some information in support of our metaphysical system M. If that information is acquired from outside M, M is automatically falsified. If that information comes from within M, vicious circularity ensues.

You see this commonly in empiricist or naturalist philosophies: they are commonly justified by empirical observations themselves (a circular justification), or via an appeal to the "success" of natural sciences (is "success" an empirical phenomenon? if not, there is at least one non-empirical piece of information in the universe. If it is empirical, we're still arguing in a circular fashion).

The viciousness of this problem points to a simple thesis: that any true metaphysical system must be utterly unknowable to us, and that we should just shut up about metaphysics, already. To see this, let's look at the best candidate response to the problem itself.

The classic modern response to this problem is transcendental. Kant believed that all experience presupposed certain a priori categories of perception. We save metaphysics by denying (2), and asserting that the metaphysical picture we're painting is obviously true in the strongest sense: it is logically presupposed by all operations of thought. Descartes' cogito has also been interpreted as a sort of transcendental move: doubting presupposes a doubter, and it is therefore impossible to doubt one's own existence.

This move is an extremely virtuous one, but it runs into serious difficulties. The one I'm interested in is this: any such move which specifies the content of the transcendental object (say Kant's "causality" or Thomas Reid's "simple perception") surely requires independent support for such specification. But that it requires this at all shows that we are at least capable of entertaining the proposition that the transcendental object is false (that we could experience the world a-causally, or that simple perception is radically mistaken). But if we can entertain such propositions, how can all human thought logically presuppose their opposites?

So, we're back at the problem of meta-justification despite our best attempts to banish it. Perhaps any true metaphysical system must be completely unknowable to us, for the simple reason that we could not "step outside" it to see what it is, to frame it against a background of extra information. All information we could possibly experience or entertain would fall within its scope, making it impossible for us to see it.

Global Warming Comments by John Coleman (PDF warning)

However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming are a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam.

There's 40 pages in the PDF to read, but it's 9 articles so it should be easily digestible.

Today I got approached some Mormons (and where'd they suddenly come from? Didn't think that they actually existed in Germany. Or at least not anywhere near me.)

Anyway. They did their usual 'don't you want to come to our meetings, we're pretty awesome and it's a lot of fun' spiel.

I refrained from laughing directly in their faces.

Now, I'm thinking of actually going next week, for the free food, the lulz and stirring up a bit of controversy. Besides, i've always wanted to be banned from somewhere.

I figured I need some good arguments (and facts) first and this seemed like a good place to ask.

So what are your specific issues with religion? Any links you could share?

Thanks in advance.

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president. [...] One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!" [...] One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people." [...] On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24588813

O_O

LONDON (AFP) - Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.

The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.

As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other people".

"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," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.

The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house's managing director Rupert Powell.

In it, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become Israel's second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.

"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."

And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are 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."

Previously the great scientist's comments on religion -- such as "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" -- have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.

Powell said the letter being sold this week gave a clear reflection of Einstein's real thoughts on the subject. "He's fairly unequivocal as to what he's saying. There's no beating about the bush," he told AFP.

source