Monday, April 22, 2013

Fear Mongers


That process invented by the media and our government and latched onto by its audience, where the glorified defects are being portrayed ad nauseum are (seemingly by default) regarded as the norm.

From there, the fear mongering leads the gullible masses around like a lobotomized dog on a short leash... To sleep in their own piss, eat whatever they are fed and fear the larger the larger than life defects they have been told to be scared of

Basing a standard upon a defect is unhealthy.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Was Einstein?

Found here originally:

Repost inspired by Baroukh Mendelsohn - Who insists that Al Einstein was a practicing Jew.


In January of 1954, just a year before his death, Albert Einstein wrote the following letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, 'Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt,' and made known his views on religion. Apparently Einstein had only read the book due to repeated recommendation by their mutual friend Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. The letter was bought at auction in May 2008, for £170,000. Unsurprisingly, one of the unsuccessful bidders was Richard Dawkins.

Translated transcript follows.

Recommended reading: Einstein and Religion.



Translated Transcript

Princeton, 3. 1. 1954

Dear Mr Gutkind,

Inspired by Brouwer’s repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me ... With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element ... unites us as having an “American Attitude.”

Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. 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.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision...

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluation of human behavior ... I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes,

Yours,

A. Einstein

And from here, the following:
http://log24.com/blog/0902a.html

Einstein’s view of God and Judaism.
Eric B. Gutkind (1877-1965), philosopher; author of Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt, 1952.
Albert Einstein - see also lot 497

Sold for £170000
Sale 649, 15th May 2008

Here is a close reading of the part of the letter itself that Bloomsbury gives in English, transcribed from the above images.

Line-by-line transcription of paragraph 2, starting at line 4 of that paragraph: (text linked to Google translate)                   
 ... Das Wort Gott ist für mich nichts als Ausdruck
und Produkt menschlicher Schwächen, die Bibel eine Sammlung
ehrwürdiger, aber doch reichlich primitiver Legenden. Keine noch
so feinsinnige Auslegung kann (für mich) etwas daran ändern.
Diese verfeinerten Auslegungen sind naturgemäß höchst mannigfaltig
und haben so gut wie nichts mit dem Urtext zu schaffen. Für
mich ist die unverfälschte jüdische Religion, wie alle anderen
Religionen, eine Inkarnation des primitiven Aberglaubens. Und das
jüdische Volk, zu dem ich gern gehöre und mit dessen Mentalität ich
tief verwachsen bin, hat für mich doch keine andersartige
Qualität als alle anderen Völker. So weit meine Erfahrung reicht,
ist es auch um nichts besser als andere menschliche Gruppierungen,
wenn es auch durch Mangel an Macht gegen die schlimmsten
Auswüchse gesichert ist. Ansonsten kann ich nichts "Auserwähltes"
an ihm wahrnehmen. 

The Guardian of May 13, 2008 stated that the following was "translated from German by Joan Stambaugh"--
... 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.
These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold
according to their nature and have almost nothing to 
do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion 
like all other religions is an incarnation of 
the most childish [German: primitiven] 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 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.
 

Phrases by Stambaugh that do not appear in the German text are highlighted.

(NOTE: This IS a re-post - I wanted to fix the URL ~ http://rich-laduca.blogspot.com/2012/04/found-here-originally-httpwww.html)

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