Jules - 05 May 2009 06:41 AM

Why should you read these books? Perhaps you should read again your first message on this forum, where you expressed curiosity on the subject and said that you sought to understand why someone would choose to be an atheist. I don’t understand why you would ask this question, and then when someone directs you to excellent books about the subject of which you inquire, you dismiss them.

I did ask the participants of this forum, to explain why they became atheists. I was and am interested in YOUR standpoint, not the one of some sort of book.

It seems you did not come here to learn ANYTHING at all.

thats simply not true. each questions bears a answer. Some questions are new to me. to search and find a answer, is always a learning process.

You came here saying you were curious about atheists, yet when people share personal experience and discuss the scientific evidence that led them to this life path you plug your fingers in your ears.

No. I simply question the conclusions, atheist take, after examine the scientific evidence and fact. Do you not question my faith the same way ?

You have no intention of learning anything about, or from, atheists.  It’s a shame, and it is frustrating. There are wonderful people here reaching out to you. It appears you came here to toy with them, perhaps out of boredom.

thats simply not true. I consider time a precious gift, and i try to use it as good as possible.

PLaClair - 05 May 2009 09:08 AM

Chicken - 05 May 2009 07:18 AM

Think about who you hate in your life.  Is there no one in your family that you hate?  Hate can be intrinsically linked to love.  I have a very big family, and I hate some of them, but it comes from hurt.  Hate isn’t the opposite of love; hate is one of many possible consequences of love.

“Chicken,” your post was excellent. I take issue with the above to this extent: I see Love in two dimensions: passion and harmony. When both are present, we have what most people would call Love.

Passion gives Love its power. Whether for my spouse, my child or anyone else, Love’s intensity is what motivates us to move mountains for the loved one. This is true whether one refers to agape or to eros.

Harmony gives Love its positive character. So, for example, a young man may be passionate about young woman but if he becomes jealous and “just has to kill her” because she prefers another man, that’s only the passion side of Love, turned ugly by disharmony. Only when one’s passion is attuned to the loved one’s welfare is Love a force for good.

People argue sometimes whether the opposite of Love is hatred or indifference; it’s both, each referring to one component. Hatred is Love’s opposite in the dimension of harmony; indifference is Love’s opposite in the dimension of passion.

Then there is Love as an experience. Its opposite is fear.

I have found this way of looking at it to resolve quite a few conflicts.

Hmm, I am not sure if you’re trying to sound poetic or philosophical, Paul, but I would personally stay away from terms like agape or eros when trying to make some sense of this complex behaviour. “Hatred is Love’s opposite in the dimension of harmony; indifference is Love’s opposite in the dimension of passion.” What does that mean? And why group love for your kids with love for your spouse? These are certainly two very different experiences. I really don’t know what to make of your post.

GdB - 05 May 2009 06:52 AM

So there should be empirical evidence: equivalents of your points, lines and squares. Tell us. Not from the bible, it is too easy to write a book that says ‘I contain the truth!’

We can only know who God is,  if he reveals himself to us. I believe he did it through the bible. Does, what the bible says, correlate with scientific data ?

Please do not ask me to write down by myself, when i can answer with a link to a homepage, which will give a comprehensive answer to your question. I’m sorry, but i do not have enough time to do so, and answer all posters that way.

Does Science Contradict the Bible? Accurate Biblical Descriptions of Scientific Principles

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencebible.html

“I was not sure about God anymore. But then, I met Santa Clause. And he said: “Yes, there is a God”, and my faith was restored for I knew Santa Clause would never lie to me.”

Tell us about your experiences with God. And how we can repeat these experiences.

GdB

about ” experience ” God, i suggest you give a read at this homepage :

http://www.erwm.com/Experiencing_God_by_Anton_Bosch.htm

dougsmith - 05 May 2009 07:04 AM

The essay on this site is confused, and irrelevant to the points I was making. You really should read what I write and respond yourself rather than lazily copying irrelevancies.

you continue to throw on me, that i copy and paste, despite i answered you already on this.
Again : if i can answer a question with a homepage , i will do it, since i have not enough time, do answer all questions by myself.

(1) “The God of the Bible is described as omnipotent.” : We have already discussed the problems with that claim, none of which have been adequately discharged. Viz., if God is omnipotent and omniscient, he is also not perfectly good.

why not ?

(2) “If God were confined to three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, then He could be in only one place at one time.” : I did not claim that God was confined to three dimensions of space. If you re-read what I said, I was talking only about time.

what was your point again ?

(3) “If God existed in only one dimension of time, then He would have had to have been created at one point. The Bible says God was not created, but has existed from eternity past to eternity future.” : This is sheer nonsense. If God has temporal properties, he could very well exist at all points in time; if time is infinite in length into the past and into the future, then God could have had all those temporal properties. But he would have to exist in time to do so.

sorry. i don’t understand .....

(4) “The Bible also suggests God created time and was acting before time began, confirming that God exists in at least two dimensions of time. In addition, the Bible states God can compress or expand our time line ...” At most this would imply that God exists at a higher dimensional timeline than ours (so called “hypertime”), however in order to act in our time he would have to have our temporal properties as well.

Why ?

(5) “The Bible says the universe cannot contain Him.” This is an incorrect gloss on the quote that Deem himself provides, viz., “the highest heavens cannot contain Thee”. There is nothing here about time or about spacetime. The only claim here is about “the highest heavens”. Where are they? Since they are “the highest” they aren’t all the heavens. This Deem man simply hasn’t read his Bible carefully. The science he is quoting is irrelevant to the quotes he provides.

the dimension God lives in,  extrapolates our dimension. It is not located here, or there, but transcends our reality.

It’s quite a pathetic webpage. I wonder if you actually read it over ...

i did, and actually learnd some new things throuh it.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 10:09 AM

(1) “The God of the Bible is described as omnipotent.” : We have already discussed the problems with that claim, none of which have been adequately discharged. Viz., if God is omnipotent and omniscient, he is also not perfectly good.

why not ?

Because he allows natural evils to occur. Because (at least in your view) he allows satan to exist.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 10:09 AM

(2) “If God were confined to three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, then He could be in only one place at one time.” : I did not claim that God was confined to three dimensions of space. If you re-read what I said, I was talking only about time.

what was your point again ?

... that if he did not exist in time he could not be a person. As I said HERE: Anything that exists without spatiotemporal properties cannot be a person; that is, it cannot be a conscious being. In order to be conscious, one at least (conceptually) needs to exist in time. Conscious experiences are, by their very nature, temporal. Persons have beliefs and desires, and perform actions. Beliefs, desires and actions all must occur in time.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 10:09 AM

(3) “If God existed in only one dimension of time, then He would have had to have been created at one point. The Bible says God was not created, but has existed from eternity past to eternity future.” : This is sheer nonsense. If God has temporal properties, he could very well exist at all points in time; if time is infinite in length into the past and into the future, then God could have had all those temporal properties. But he would have to exist in time to do so.

sorry. i don’t understand .....

The person who wrote that webpage (Deem) appears to believe that one’s existing in time implies that one had to be created. But no such implication follows. It is at least theoretically possible that there are uncreated things that have always existed, and that always will exist. Perhaps spacetime itself is one of them. But in order to exist for all time, one has to have temporal properties: existing at T, existing at T1, existing at T2, et cetera.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 10:09 AM

(4) “The Bible also suggests God created time and was acting before time began, confirming that God exists in at least two dimensions of time. In addition, the Bible states God can compress or expand our time line ...” At most this would imply that God exists at a higher dimensional timeline than ours (so called “hypertime”), however in order to act in our time he would have to have our temporal properties as well.

Why ?

Because to act in time one acts at a particular time: e.g., doing something on June 2, 1985. That’s a temporal property in our time. So for God to act in our universe, he must also exist temporally, that is, in our time.

If God exists outside of time, he cannot act in our universe.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 10:09 AM

(5) “The Bible says the universe cannot contain Him.” This is an incorrect gloss on the quote that Deem himself provides, viz., “the highest heavens cannot contain Thee”. There is nothing here about time or about spacetime. The only claim here is about “the highest heavens”. Where are they? Since they are “the highest” they aren’t all the heavens. This Deem man simply hasn’t read his Bible carefully. The science he is quoting is irrelevant to the quotes he provides.

the dimension God lives in,  extrapolates our dimension. It is not located here, or there, but transcends our reality.

“Transcends our reality” is a meaningless locution. “Extrapolates our dimension” is a meaningless locution; indeed, it’s not even grammatical. You have to be careful, because websites like the ones you rely upon work to confuse you by intentionally obscure and meaningless phrasing.

So in the case you’re discussing, the question is, first of all, assuming that there is something that lives in another dimension, it cannot interact with you causally. So how do you know anything about it at all? How do you know which dimension it lives in? How does it interact with you?

Insofar as it is able to interact with you causally, it must exist in your dimension.

Take the Bible. There are at least two possible explanations for it. First, there’s some wildly improbable and complex extra-dimensional being that channeled a bunch of long-winded, confusing and contradictory stories to a small group of earthlings in a completely different dimension, and that the story he sent sounds very much like a thousand other tall tales told around campfires throughout eternity. Or second, the Bible is a completely human creation by a bunch of people with overactive imaginations.

Clearly, explanation number two is much more plausible than number one. Just to begin with we don’t need to assume any silliness about extra-dimensional beings, or intra-dimensional causation, for which we have no evidence whatever.

It’s rather like saying, the Wizard of Oz could have been written by Frank Baum, a novelist, or it could have been transmitted by supraluminal N-rays from the planet Zorx by a group of hyper-intelligent polka-dotted aliens.

I think we both can tell pretty easily which is the more plausible of those two explanations.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 10:09 AM

i did, and actually learnd some new things throuh it.

I think you’d be better off checking to be sure what you think you learned is actually sensible and true, rather than swallowing falsehoods whole.

... and I should add, you could also just check back in the thread to see what I’ve written before, too ...

Adonai this site of yours is a hoot.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencebible.html

What a bunch of complete and utter garbage. It reads exactly like all the claims made about Nostradamus.  They pick out some specific event or idea in modern history and then try to tie it to some incredibly vague comment made hundred or thousands of years ago. Here are some examples of your “science facts” directly from the site you are relying on.

Scientific Principal: The earth is a sphere
Biblical Reference: “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.”(Isaiah 40:22)

First of all I don’t think I’m anythig like a grasshopper, but please explain how the bible got this very simple and obvious fact incorrect. As I read it the bible is describing the earth as the flat earth society sees it, a “circle” which is a flat disc NOT a sphere, with the sky above. This is how the people of the time would have seen earth not how a god would have seen it.  Seems god should have at least been able to get that one correct since he has a pretty good view. MAybe he should have bought himself a spot on the international space station.

Scientific Principal: Light is in motion
Biblical Reference: “What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside?” (Job 38:19)

Yeah, who needs Newton, Einstein and Galileo when the bible lays it out so clearly

Scientific Principal: At any time, there is day and night on the Earth
Biblical Reference: “I tell you, on that night there will be two men in one bed; one will be taken, and the other will be left. “There will be two women grinding at the same place; one will be taken, and the other will be left. (Luke 17:34-35) Obviously, some people will be working while others will be sleeping when the Lord returns.

Wow. The guy who wrote this is in the wrong business. He should have written an earth science textbook.

Scientific Principal: The earth is controlled by the heavens
Biblical Reference: “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens, or fix their rule over the earth?” (Job 38:33)

First of all “the earth is controlled by the heavens” is not factual and is NOT a scientific principal. The earth interacts in numerous ways with the atmosphere and the universe s but they do not “control” the earth any more then the earth controls them.

I could go on and on. There is so much jibberish on this site it would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that there are people ignorant enough of the basic sciences to fall for this stuff.

Still waiting for evidence Adonai. Any day now. Even something little. God’s old social security card, or maybe you could ask him to join us for a bar-b-que and spontaneously create life from nothing. That shouldn’t be too much to ask. At least the scientist are working on it. I don’t see god working on it. Looks like he rested on the seventh day and never got off the couch.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 09:59 AM

We can only know who God is,  if he reveals himself to us. I believe he did it through the bible. Does, what the bible says, correlate with scientific data ?

This is precisely why I rejected Christianity 30 years ago. No, what the Bible says does not correlate with scientific data. The Bible mentions nothing of other galaxies, or the light between the galaxies that allows us to study the ancient universe. I would find the Bible useful if it would explain Dark Energy and why the universe is accelerating.

I also rejected Christianity when I studied the Old Testament and realized the god presented therein is a genocidal sociopath. I refuse to worship such a horrible being.

The site claims to be about science but it is just a bunch of bible quotes.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 05:03 AM

btw. have you given a look at the video, i have linked to ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXFurmM49WI&feature=channel

I watched the video. Try to get at least some of your understanding of science from someone who is a true expert on the subject. Get a degree in cosmology at a university and then come back and listen to what this guy is saying. I doubt you’ll be impressed by him afterward. You can’t get a science education from a bunch of youtube yahoos with an ax to grind and expect to actually have learned something useful.

·  God created us in order to love Him, and for Him to love us.

you start from a false premise.

Romans 5:6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 5:7 (For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person perhaps someone might possibly dare to die.)7 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 5:9 Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous8 by his blood,9 we will be saved through him from God’s wrath.10 5:10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life? 5:11 Not11 only this, but we also rejoice12 in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.

That comment alone made me wonder.  I’m a mother, and I didn’t have a child so that he could love me.  I love my child despite whether or not he chooses to love me.

thats exactly how God acts with us. God loves us, despite we do not love him. And he does not require as well our love, in order to love us. He loved us and gave his son, when we still where his enemies. His love is completely selfless. Agape. Only God is capable to have this love, 100%.

·  The nature of love requires some sort of choice (to love or not to love); love can not be forced.
·  This choice gives us the capability to choose the opposite: hatred  By the logic provided in the first statement the nature of every verb is a choice, ie jump or not to jump, debate or not debate, the only point that it makes is that love can be a verb.  However, “love can not be forced” is odd coming from someone who believes in god.  Is god not all-powerful?  Didn’t god create love?  Love isn’t a force beyond god, is it?

God is all powerful. But he has choosen to limit himself, so he has given us space to make our choices, without interveen .

The second point is a false one.  Hatred is not the opposite of love.  I’m afraid a lot of ignorance went into that statement.  Think about who you hate in your life.  Is there no one in your family that you hate?  Hate can be intrinsically linked to love.  I have a very big family, and I hate some of them, but it comes from hurt.  Hate isn’t the opposite of love; hate is one of many possible consequences of love.

thats just your point of view. i see it differently. hate is very well the oposit of love.

1 John 4:20

If anyone says, I love God, and hates (detests, abominates) his brother [ in Christ], he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, Whom he has not seen.

·  Much of the suffering in the world comes from humanity’s misuse of the freedom God gave us.
·  When sin entered into the world, through man’s disobedience, it sent creation in a new direction of both moral and natural evil (diseases, earthquakes and accidents).
·  God can turn the evil choices we make into positive results.  The point that was made regarding free will and the suffering god allows is not satiated by your web link.  The heart of the issue is that you believe god is some type of innocent bystander allowing us to make decisions that will lead us toward him or away into pain.  I get what you are saying, and that is exactly why I reject it.  “Man’s disobedience” is a nice tidy term to explain that, according to your bible, god put Adam and Eve, arguably newborns in the stance of maturity, in a garden and said not to touch one particular tree.  If you put any kid, even a teenager, in a room filled with toys and said, “you can have every toy but this one,” you’re an idiot if you blame the kid for playing with the forbidden toy.  Not only did god blame Adam and Eve, he allowed his creation, according to your link and bible, to fall toward a “natural evil” because of it.  In what way does that make any sense?  How can an all-powerful, all-knowing god allow that?  And didn’t he see it coming? 

You are making a analogy between a kid, and Adam and Eve. But Adam and Eve where fully acountable for theis disobeyance . They were not innocent kids. They had full capability to make their choices. They had direct community with God, before the fall, and so had no reason to doubt about God’s sincerity. But what was Gods intention with humanity ?  God did not intend for us to be living in this amoral, fallen world. God intended for us to abide by His commandments, and if we chose to live in His will, we would not be afflicted with evil. The Adam and Eve story demonstrates the type of world we would have lived in if we did not choose sin.
Mankind’s reaction to temptation has been revealed to us in the Adam and Eve story. Adam and Eve failed to obey God. We lie, do take things that aren’t ours, do hate, and do commit various other sins. Sadly, we fall to temptation and give in to these sinful urges just as Adam and Eve disobeyed God. You, i , we are all not better than Adam and Eve were. We have no excuse whatsoever.

God warned of the judgment He would cast onto Adam and Eve if they disobeyed Him; similarly He warns us of the judgment He will cast onto us. We willingly choose to invoke His wrath by our decision to disobey Him.

This story has amazing explanatory power and offers clarity concerning our fallen world. However the story is also significant in that it amplifies the story of Jesus. Even though Adam and Eve rejected God, He did not reject them, but offered redemption. Through Christ’s sacrifice, God again offered redemption to a world who had rejected him. The penalty of sin is death, but that penalty has already been paid. We do not have to face God’s judgment; we can accept the payment for that judgment.

Next lets tackle Herbert Spencer.  It surprises me that a self-described evangelical would be paying any heed to the thoughts of Herbert Spencer.  His work was an attempt to find a compromise between religion and science.

how do you arrive to this conclusion ? his finding is in accordance with science, isnt ‘it ?

we are now aware (thanks to Einstein) that space and time are one.

thats new to me….. 

And what of force and action, in what way are these two separate things?  Is the force the actor and the action the result of his/her/its actions?

yes, correct.

 

Or is the action you speak of the choice of the force?  Is this as simple as noun and verb?  It gets dicey going back through scientific theories and trying to pluck those pieces which bolster your claim.  Irregardless, (that’s better) the claim can be updated to spacetime, matter (some would include dark matter), and energy (some would include dark energy).  The action is a verb chosen by us to describe the effects of the energy on the matter and is hardly necessary as a category by which to understand the reality of the universe.

so how is to be understood ?

That being said, what does this have to do with why there is a god? 

a lot. What would be the alternative ? ” nothing ” would be the origin of all created….    it takes a lot of faith to believe that.

It is as if you are looking at a Rorschach blob and you are trying to get us to see something that is not necessarily there.  Maybe try again, or not.

I don’t know what a Rorschach blob is….

could you point me out, where the bible says, that God does blame children for the sins of their ancestors ?

The point people are making to you is how unfair the original sin declaration is from god.  We are all damned by Adam and Eve, that seems wrong. 

Thats simply wrong. God today is calling you, me, us to believe in Jesus Christ. So its entirely your decision, to obey God today, or not, and based on the decision , you make in this regard, you will be judged.

Another point, what about in Genesis when Noah is drunk and naked in the vineyard?  Son A tells son B and son B goes to cover up his naked, drunken father.  Noah awakes and condemns son A into serving son B, but then goes so far as to require all of son A’s descendants to serve son B’s descendants.  The bible is full of stories like that were any unbiased reader would find fault with the morality of the lessons within it.

Question: “Why did Noah curse Ham / Canaan?”

http://associate.com/library/www.christianlibrary.org/authors/Grady_Scott/noahcurse.htm

I do not find you at all sincere with your inquiry here or your statement about not wanting to convert but just testify.  What is the point of testifying if not to convert?

We follow Christs mandment to go to all the world, and to tell other people the good news of the gospel, forgiveness of sins, god’s love and offer of eternal life. My focus at a atheist site is to show the comprehensive evindence, that hints to God, through science. What YOU do with the message given, is entirely YOUR business. That means, if you want to react positively to the gospel and my testifying , than YOU must convert from your sins, and your old life, to a new life in Christ. Its not ME to do that for you. That’s why i do not convert anyone, but each one has to convert by its own to Christ, if wish so. What generally is meant , when someone says : ” you try to convert someone ” - than someone wants to FORCE others to its own believe. That’s never my intent.

Chicken - 05 May 2009 08:05 AM

Mriana - 05 May 2009 07:30 AM

I’ve spent more years studying and researching various religions and mythologies than you have knowledge about your own religion in your little pinky and I can give you a list of non-apologists who I have either studied under or inquired of over the years. 

That is the perfect explanation for why this thread is like beating your head against a wall.  Most of us can say that we have arrived at our beliefs, because of all of the time we have spent in research mode. 

Angelo, what you don’t understand is that all of the websites you refer to and the bible are well know positions.  We have read and discarded them through actual debate and research.  You, however, say that you will not read any books to the contrary, because you do not want to become an atheist.

I converted myself , when i was 18, because i believed in the bible. What came afterwards, just confirmed my belief. Its maiby the inverse, as it should be, but thats how it worked. After my conversion, God began to work in my life and in my heart, and strenghtened my faith more and more. Science does confirm, what i believe. Debates with atheists has given me a indepth knowledge of their standpoints, and i discard them, since they don’t seem reasonable at all to me.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 01:09 PM

He loved us and gave his son

As far as I am concerned he could have kept his son and give us instead, say, a cure against cancer so that thousands of newly diagnosed children every year won’t have to suffer.

macgyver - 05 May 2009 12:09 PM

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 05:03 AM

btw. have you given a look at the video, i have linked to ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXFurmM49WI&feature=channel

I watched the video. Try to get at least some of your understanding of science from someone who is a true expert on the subject. Get a degree in cosmology at a university and then come back and listen to what this guy is saying. I doubt you’ll be impressed by him afterward. You can’t get a science education from a bunch of youtube yahoos with an ax to grind and expect to actually have learned something useful.

i would prefere you to go straight to the point, and show if there is any wrong scientific data in the video…

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”  Albert Einstein

PLaClair - 05 May 2009 09:08 AM

“Chicken,” your post was excellent. I take issue with the above to this extent: I see Love in two dimensions: passion and harmony. When both are present, we have what most people would call Love.

Passion gives Love its power. Whether for my spouse, my child or anyone else, Love’s intensity is what motivates us to move mountains for the loved one. This is true whether one refers to agape or to eros.

Harmony gives Love its positive character. So, for example, a young man may be passionate about young woman but if he becomes jealous and “just has to kill her” because she prefers another man, that’s only the passion side of Love, turned ugly by disharmony. Only when one’s passion is attuned to the loved one’s welfare is Love a force for good.

People argue sometimes whether the opposite of Love is hatred or indifference; it’s both, each referring to one component. Hatred is Love’s opposite in the dimension of harmony; indifference is Love’s opposite in the dimension of passion.

Then there is Love as an experience. Its opposite is fear.

I have found this way of looking at it to resolve quite a few conflicts.

Very interesting.  I have never considered love to be a “multicellular animal” for lack of a better term.  I can understand a disharmonious passion leading to thoughts of obsession like killing out of jealousy.  However, I would like to pose this to you, isn’t a person who has a jealous love really only exercising self-love?  Couldn’t you see a scenario in which you love and hate someone and the reason has nothing to do with jealousy or a disharmony, at least on your part?  Let me give a scenario, lets say you are a victim of abuse from a family member and you are young so you have a hard time separating yourself from the abuse.  What of that child’s love and hate.  Could not the child love and hate the family member, or even better, parent?  Does the disharmony in that scenario come from the parent or family member?  If so, does that make the child’s love for that parent or family member not true or their hate not real?  It is an interesting thing to ponder.

One thing further, I have always considered fear a response to ignorance not the opposite of love.  I think ignorance motivates fear of all types whether it be a fear of spiders or a fear of Communist invasion.

Adonai888 - 05 May 2009 02:17 PM

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”  Albert Einstein

“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. ... For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.” Albert Einstein