Albert Einstein

Why do I like this Gentleman!

9/2//2020,

I still remember when I first saw the above quote, a woman I worked with used it in her email signature. However, when I asked her what it meant to her, she had it wrong. To her, it meant you didn't need to receive an education to become super smart. It wasn't until I had moved to another state and began looking into religion and how people interpreted things that I finally understood this statement. I found it woefully taken out of context. It was initially from an interview that appeared on October 26, 1929. This interview, originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, through reporter George Sylvester Viereck. (Article PDF Link)

It has much more to do with Einstein's philosophy of life. Here is more of the part of the article where it appears:

The Measles of Mankind

"I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong."

"Then you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?"

"I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

"To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?"

"As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."

"Have you read Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus?"

"Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus" Einstein replies "is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot"

"You accept the historical existence of Jesus?"

"Unquestionably. No one can read the Gospel without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus. Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus."

"Ludwig Lewisohn, in one of his recent books, claims that many of the sayings of Jesus paraphrase the sayings of other prophets."

"No man," Einstein replied. "can deny the fact that Jesus existed, nor that his sayings are beautiful. Even if some of them have been said before, no one has expressed them so divinely as he."

"Gilbert Chesterton told me that, according to a Catholic writer in a Dublin Review, your theory of relativity merely confirms the cosmology of Thomas Aquinas."

"I have not," Einstein replied. "read all the works of Thomas Aquinas, but I am delighted if I have reached the same conclusions as the comprehensive mind of that great Catholic scholar."

" End quote.

So as I see this his response was more of his personal philosophy and his view of religion. My opinion is that he was more of a pandiest (Wikipedia link) than most people realize. There is more regarding his religious and philosophical views

views in Wikipedia. (Wikipedia link).

As I have previously stated, I have an affinity towards being a philosopher. I will tell you now that I view God's existence much as Christ did that he lives in his kingdom in heaven. My view of the bible is that people have told the stories to say that he had told remarkable things about God; however, I see it as having been taken out of context to sell their viewpoints. Are they true? I don't know, but I can see them as not being quite right because just one present disciple, not Christ, wrote only one single book. So just like in the court of law, which uses the Socratic method, hearsay information should not necessarily be counted as the absolute truth.