[《In the letter, written in his native German, Einstein takes issue with the belief in God.
"The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses," he writes. "The Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends." It continues: "No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can [for me] change anything about this."》 The English translation of the portion of the hand-written letter in German dealing with the notion of God is as under: <<***The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses*** [emphasis added], ***the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish*** [emphasis added]. ***No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this*** [emphasis added]. 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 superstitions*** [emphasis added]. 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. 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 the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolization. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.>> (Ref.: <https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/archive/discussions/5472>.)] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46438116?fbclid=IwAR2mnrNtJ4yacgavD2cDW47CnAnhUkcgk2MWBbzIEmwMlG_7CniODaBXs7U Albert Einstein's 'God letter' sells for $2.9m 4 December 2018 Image copyrightREUTERS Image caption The letter is regarded as a clear statement of Einstein's religious beliefs A handwritten letter by Albert Einstein in which he grapples with the concept of religion has smashed predictions and sold for nearly $2.9m (£2.3m). The so-called "God letter" was written in 1954 and was expected to fetch $1.5m (£1.2m) at auction in New York. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, then 74, wrote the one-and-a-half page note to German philosopher Eric Gutkind in response to one of his works. It is seen as a key statement in the debate between science and religion. "This remarkably candid, private letter was written a year before Einstein's death and remains the most fully articulated expression of his religious and philosophical views," a statement from Christie's says. It fetched almost double the auction house's predicted price of between $1m-1.5m. What you may not know about Einstein In the letter, written in his native German, Einstein takes issue with the belief in God. "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses," he writes. "The Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends." It continues: "No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can [for me] change anything about this." Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES Image caption Albert Einstein pictured around the time he wrote the so-called "God letter" The physicist also muses on his own Jewish identity, writing that it is "like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition". "The Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and in whose mentality I feel profoundly anchored, still for me does not have any different kind of dignity from all other peoples," he writes. Einstein's quirky habits The strange afterlife of Einstein's brain It is not the first time Einstein's letters have been put up for auction. Last year, a note written to an Italian chemistry student who had refused to meet him sold for $6,100. It was sold alongside a number of other letters from Einstein, including a 1928 note that went for $103,000, in which he set out his thoughts for his third stage of the theory of relativity. In 2017, a note in which he gave advice on happy living sold for $1.56m in Jerusalem. A single sentence, it reads: "A calm and humble life will bring more happiness than the pursuit of success and the constant restlessness that comes with it." -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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