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

reply to post by osirus82


Um....
Free of means that they did not have it.
Other words they are to put in Catholic terms sinless.

reply to post by lee anoma


A human attempting to speak for such a being as a "god" as to what he/she/it would do is rather like an ant commenting on Shakespeare.

Which has always been my problem with people try to discredit the possibility of such a being with that THEY think it should/would do.

Really friggin silly and presumptuous don't you think?
And it goes both ways really.
To both sides of this silly debate.

[edit on 14-5-2008 by WraothAscendant]

Originally posted by osirus82
Sounds to me like that church is trying to cover there a$$es due to the on set of a grand awakening and they dont want to be left in the rain.

in what way do they need to cover their a$$es? The bible never says that there isn't life on other planets. Perhaps i'm missing the point?

reply to post by dominicus




Why did you say Agnostics? I'm agnostic and i agree with just about everything you said.

Im sick of uninformed people treating us agnostics like atheists. WE ARE FAR FROM IT! we just reject organized religion and any kind of messiah.

tell what the F@#$ is wrong with having one true God? and just leaving it at that and not trying to claim we know what God even is besides some Ultimate creator. Hes not some old guy with a long white beard you know.

and your post makes you sound agnostic too. to be honest i know more Agnostics that are more spiritually in tune with the world than ANY christian I have ever met. Want to know why? we listen to the proof of what science has to offer. Science is revealing to us that spirituality does matter. and is more mystical than any of today's BULLS$#@ religions can say.

Midtown5dw,
By saying "agnostic" I'm not lumping you together into a intellectual box the way athiests do God. I was just saying...not specifically generalizing.

Basically, as far as your above post goes, I agree with much of it. Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ"

But then again, go to a monastery or visit a Christian Mystic and you will find the opposite. Most of the time (without trying to generalize) you will find somebody who is Spiritually Enlightened, knows and experiences God directly daily, and Loves you without judgement and unconditionally.

I think as far as an agnostic goes, it's sort of like trying to comprehend God without using labels. I see nothing wrong with science, as a matter of fact, once I was given Spiritual Enlightenment from God, is when I got heavily into quatum everything, mechanics, strings, higgs bosons, and so forth. Can't get enough.

But to me, science only studies the physical, whereas we live and are half physical half spirit, so science is missing half of the equation. So if you make science your God, then you worship a false God. If you rely on science exclusively, you are missing half of the equation.

I will say the Bible has some awsome stuff in there, techniques, excercises, philosophical and metaphysical concepts, that you can practice daily that will get you closer to Enlightenment.

Still I view agonstics as somebody who doesn't yet "get it" spiritually. Obviously if you had Enlightenment and did "get it" I garuntee you wouldnt label yourself an agnostic anymore.

You are either living by faith, hope, specualtion or you are living by direct expereice and knowing the truth. By all means I'm not better than anyone here. I just claim that I do know God and have a personal relationship with him which is available to everyone, and upon achieving this realtionship you no longer operate in the minute limtedness of mere logic and reason.

The mere logic and reason which all people who do not walk with God, operate in. There are higher ways of existence that put the current limtedness of science, logic, and reson to shame.

Thats why I laugh at most of these posts in this board. 99% of these posts are specualtions comming from self concieved intellectual boxes...and add to that egotism and condemnations of others, assumptions, and judgements, mockery and looking down on those who believe in God.

Wait a minute.........it lokks as if.....as if.....as if you yourselves live a "religious" lifestyle and mode of being without even knowing. All the ways in which you speak and act is exactly the same as the religiosity of which you condemn. Even to go as far as saying you will go out of your ways to wipe religion off the face of the earth, is the same thing that religions have said about others.

Well, when we have divine intervention once and for all in the dealing sof this planet, then we will have a theocracy and there will be no religion. Only truth. Some of us are privy to that truth before everyone else knows it.

There is so much tension on these boards you can cut it with a knife. Kind of like the multiple beads of sweat on an athiests forhead laying on his deathbed. Intense!!!!

That sounds like Freud.
Somebody was borrowing from someone else, I think.

11. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud

And was Sigmund Freud wrong? YES.
Freud is dead

While Freud had an enormous impact on 20th century culture, he has been a dead weight on 20th century psychology. The broad themes that Westen writes about were present in psychology before Freud, or arose in more recently independent of his influence. At best, Freud is a figure of only historical interest for psychologists. He is better studied as a writer, in departments of language and literature, than as a scientist, in departments of psychology. Psychologists can get along without him.

So, was Einstein right?
By many accounts, NO.
Was Einstein right?

We see a pattern of 'science' versus faith.
Who would ever deliberately try to undermine faith?
Maybe this is a false quote, like so many others.
Joseph Stalin said;
"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold:
its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life.
If we can undermine these three areas,
America will collapse from within."

At the end of the day, who do you want to get your belief from?
Yourself, more than likely.
But, as one poster put it;
Faith comes from God.

Crusades, Inquisitions, slaughtering of hundreds of thousands of humans for the conquering of New Worlds then justifying all of this with logic such as "They are heathens and the males have long hair, God would shun us if we did not relieve them from their misery". What "morals" did your gods give you?

I personally believe that religion holds a LOT more than just a miserable and degrading history, but it puts people on a pedestal and gives them this "holier than thou" attitude which makes them blind to all the wrongs in our society and culture. We ALL suffer from this perspective but, in my opinion, religion helps perpetuate the lie and discourages the faithful from ever truly trying to acknowledge or come to terms with what we are doing in this world and the atrocities that occur every day.

When people accept morals which are derived from the society in which they live, they only ever perpetuate the evils of that society and do so both willingly and with the belief that their acts are good. This is why it is important for people to be rid of religion, God never gave anyone any morals. The deeds of evil men "in the name of God" are typically evil and misdirected. The idea of God giving people morals is completely contradictory to the belief of free-will. The idea that you can pray to God and s/he then intervene in your life is another example of God working against free-will.

The belief in religion is childish because it prevents people from growing. When you have your morals defined for you, when you have this idea that you are not solely responsible for yourself and that God will help you when you need it - you stop growing.

reply to post by dominicus


Well then, what do i call my self? I wish we could grab a cup of coffee and talk for hours haha. I started getting into my spiritual side when i started learning about Quantum mechanics and strings and what have you, I am a very spiritual person, and i see how god works in my everyday life. I am very close to god. However i cant trust or nor do i want to be lumped into a mass of people called organized religion. i think people should have religion but i think they should find it for them selves. i am agnostic because i dont claim to know all of the answers and that what i base it off. i dont worship science, but i do love it and all that it has to offer. One thing that is wrong with humanity is that we are so far advanced technology wise, but we are still in the stone age when it comes to our spiritual side (stone age people were prolly more in tune with there spiritual side than we are today)

Thats how i view it.

i think if people weren't told what to believe, they would be more inclined to search in there own hearts for the truth.

Originally posted by midtown5dw
reply to post by dominicus

 

tell what the F@#$ is wrong with having one true God? and just leaving it at that and not trying to claim we know what God even is besides some Ultimate creator. Hes not some old guy with a long white beard you know.

What? You can't have it both ways.

reply to post by Double Eights


Well lets just say i bet its a safe assumption

edit - (sorry about the one line response)

[edit on 14-5-2008 by midtown5dw]

Originally posted by Suspect_Sceptic
Are you attempting to use those arguments as proof? I distinctly remember them being quite successfully disputed in my AS Philosophy course a year ago..

they've been debated for a thousand years or so....the point of logical proofs is that it is logical... check this definition...

Noun 1. logical proof - proof of a logical theorem
proof - a formal series of statements showing that if one thing is true something else necessarily follows from it

.....so we must accept these or question some serious concepts we hold dear.

i'll be interested to read any info you have on serious challenges to these......

WOAH!!!!

Who says athiests can't be spiritual either?

If spiritual means an understanding of the earth, the people, the suffering, the love, the way to a better life....

then that's me.

I just don't need a religion or a god to tell me what is wrong or right!!!

I'm happy being nice to people, i treat others with respect, i love animals, i'd probably jump in front of a car to save a child or old person....

I'm an atheist, i'm open minded and I think i have a good soul.



[edit on 14-5-2008 by mr-lizard]

reply to post by Clearskies

So, was Einstein right?
By many accounts, NO.
Was Einstein right?

So we are going to booo Einstein and the majority of intellectuals on this planet in favor of some guy who wrote two paragraphs??? The author talks about "slowing time down" while suggesting Einstein's General Relativity Theory is garbage. Here's a newsflash:

GR has nothing to do with time slowing down. That was Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. I'm not sure what that guy is rambling about when he says:

His models have all the genius of suggesting that I can record a clock with my video camera, drive real fast around the block while rewinding the tape, then play the video back next to the clock and thus prove I have slowed time!

Makes no sense to me. What Einstein is saying is that time approaches zero as you approach the speed of light. This is because mass increases as you approach the speed of light and thus you warp space. To an observer (not in your spaceship or on your bike) the space is not warped and thus the time isn't either.

I think you're upset when your personal beliefs are challenged and your emotions have caused you to side with someone who wrote 2 paragraphs vs. all the intellectuals who have collaborated and studied this subject matter rigorously for their whole lives. And that is exactly why Einstein and some "non believers get turned off by hardcore religious folks.

reply to post by twisted-timothy


I am not trying to sound Anti-Semitic because I am not a racist or a prejudice person in any way. I love people based on their character, not skin color, religion, wealth, class etc...but you did make a great point. Why were the Jews deemed to be the chosen people of god in the bible? I mean supposedly after Jesus died on the cross god favored the Gentiles over the Jews (at least a pastor told me this once), but what is up with this Us vs. Them thing with god (and with all the different religions being US VS THEM as well?) Why does he favor certain sects or groups of people if he is supposed to love us all, even prior to Christ dying? I mean God sounds rooted in favoritism/racism trends to me as well, and religion has been used as a crutch to allow certain sects of people to ascend to a higher "pedestal" type of thing over others. Again maybe I just dont understand, but with the way things are going in this world in regards to religious crutches and killing each over it, I would rather stay far away from religion because of what I see to be very negative aspects of being involved in "my god is better than your because.....argument.

I am not trying to discount anyone and their religious beliefs, but I think I have a lot of good questions about religion that I am sure a pastor would be hard pressed to give GOOD rational and not loaded answers/excuses to.

reply to post by mr-lizard


Perhaps this is a simple faux pas of terminology.
Generally, in my experience, atheists don't believe we have a soul. They don't believe in anything beyond what they can touch, taste, smell and see. The physical senses that we use to percieve the physical world.
Spiritualism posulates that there is more than that. IMHO.

I could go on for hours about what that little word means to me but eh all well. Hope you get what I mean.

And it sounds to me like you just have a problem with what the Organized Religions of the world have to tell you.

The concept of a higher power/god/prime mover is not married to the idea of an old voyeur man on a throne judging everyone and punishing or rewarding accordingly. The sooner a lot of people getting over that silly misconception the better.

We are here to learn. And sometimes those lessons are those of pain. Not inflicted out of any malice or uncaringness. And we are meant to seek our own answers rather than have them all provided to us on a silver platter. Because knowledge like anything just given to you, has no value. You have to work for it in order for it to have any value.

Just my two cents.
Please excuse the tangent.

reply to post by Scramjet76


O.K., how about something from NASA?
Was Einstein wrong?

This is Einstein's Twin Paradox, and although it sounds strange, it is absolutely true. The theory of relativity tells us that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. Rocketing to Alpha Centauri—warp 9, please—is a good way to stay young.

Or is it?.............................................................
Some researchers are beginning to believe that space travel could have the opposite effect. It could make you prematurely old.

Or Wired( Where I believe the two paragraphs I first used came from)?


[edit on 14-5-2008 by Clearskies]

reply to post by Clearskies


Sure cosmic microwaves could be bad for you on a biological (cell damaging) level. That has nothing to do with general or special relativity though.

reply to post by Clearskies


also,

It may only matter when scientists are studying effects over billions of years or billions of light years.

They have been talking about varying c for some time now. So far no scientist has offered any other equations which work any better. Besides, if the speed of light changes slightly over billions of years (an unfathomable amount of time) are we simply going to label Einstein a failure? Of course not. His contributions to our understanding of nature are pricesless. But hey let's forget about his great accomplishments because some people are fixated on being The Creator's favorite pet.

[edit on 14-5-2008 by Scramjet76]

I'll respect Einsteins opinion for it is his right to believe what he wants to. I think religion has held us back too! Someone already said that earlier but it's true. Religion takes away individualism which is a threat to the ones in power. Religions were designed to make money and to put fear in any wrong doers. I think in my honest opinion that God is all around us and in us and is not just a deity. God is part of everything we experience whether it be good or bad. From the earth to the end of the cosmos God is stretching his mind and we're a part of it.

reply to post by Solarskye


Was the American revolution a scheme against tyranny BY Religionists?
I think so.
What about the renaissance-era mavericks who went against the roman church and paid for it with their lives, all the while spurring education for the peasant?