“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Are these new quotes from Christopher Hitchens?
With that playfully cruel tone and those thick anti-religious sentiments, you would expect it to have come from the mouth of Hitchens himself. Wrong. These are three quotes from German physicist Albert Fucking Einstein in his newly revealed letter to be auctioned off tomorrow in London.
Works and letters like these have been the bane of every Christian and Jew who love to cherrypick Einstein’s works for allegedly religion-positive quotes to give credibility to the slip-shod argument that the (arguably) most genius person to have ever lived was one of their own. This letter leaves no doubt that Einstein was way too smart for the religious delusions of the stupid masses of hairless apes on this rock.
Religion works hard to find fragments of quotes that fit what they want history to tell. “Religion is the opiate of the people,” is one of the most famous improperly quoted statements of Karl Marx, designed by Christians to label Communism as Atheism and vice versa. The quote is deliberately out of context and all those who quote it know that it is and should be ashamed of themselves.
Einstein was the target of a similar campaign with his quote, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” This was spoken in the same vein as his 1940 paper in Nature where he speaks positively about the feeling of spiritual transcendence. This is not an endorsement of religion or theism. It is simply a victim of the hijacking of the vocabulary by religion. “Spiritual transcendence” doesn’t necessarily mean anything immaterial, knowing what we know about neurology. Sam Harris is of the same opinion of those feelings as Einstein was. No one would dare try and call Sam Harris a theist. After this letter, only an idiot would try the same trick on Einstein again.
On a side note, the letter is being sold tomorrow. My birthday is tomorrow. You know what you can get me.
Yeah, happy birthday you ole’ bastard.
Comment by Trey — 17 May 2008 @ 2:15 am
So we don’t come across as being neo-Nazis and what have you.
Let’s face it: when a poorly-chosen word partway through your argument causes thirty rabbis to start screaming and drown you out, it kind of makes your argument hard to finish.
Now, I don’t really give a tinker’s shit what people think, and I certainly wouldn’t let it alter what I had to say, or my message. But, I’d try and use words that wouldn’t piss people off *too* much. If it offends them a bit, then it’s tough shit.
But if it makes them insane with rage, that’s not good, given as you can’t finish your argument. In other words, I’d try and use words that get my point across (without diluting /altering it for appeasement), yet I would also try to not piss ‘em off so much that the debate/argument ends up cancelled.
HOWEVER, if you CAN’T get the best of both worlds, and you HAVE to dilute/alter your message to keep people from becoming (too) offended, then no can do. Obviously, your point of view takes priority over people’s own pet hates.
But if you CAN get your full message across without sending them in rage mode, then that’s the path to take (and the other upshot of this is that people won’t think you’re a Hebrew-hating Nazi type).
Comment by Tom (not Cruise!) — 22 May 2008 @ 7:44 pm
Why? My audience and those who know me know what I mean. I’m part “Hebrew” myself, dammit! I’m not above pissing people off to attract readers.
Comment by Rev. Reed Braden — 22 May 2008 @ 9:46 pm
I’ll respond to this later. Seems the site is a bit screwy.
Comment by Tom — 23 May 2008 @ 7:21 pm