Our Favorite Quotes

Checking the above story with Snopes.com (the rumor-checking website), to quote:

"For those looking for a quick answer to the question of whether this item (Einstein humiliating the professor) is literally true, we'll state up front that it is not. Nothing remotely like the account above appears in any biography or article about Albert Einstein, nor is the account congruent with that scientist's expressed views on the subject of religion. His name has simply been inserted into an anecdote created long after his death in order to provide the reading audience with a recognizable figure and thus lend the tale an air of verisimilitude."

And:

"This argument has been around for a long time, as has the legend about the pious student using it to squelch an atheist professor."

Here is the link for those who want to read more: http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp.

One can also turn the argument around and say that evil is the absence of God, cold is the absense of heat, and dark is the absence of light. Which are you going to believe?

 

Shrinking Human Brains . . .

"As to why is it shrinking, perhaps in big societies, as opposed to hunter-gatherer lifestyles, we can rely on other people for more things, can specialize our behavior to a greater extent, and maybe not need our brains as much,"

- scary though that sounds it explains why the evolutionary drive for a larger brain seems to have faltered, at the same time smaller skulls improve the odds of surviving birth got both mother and child. Good job the eugenics movement didn't hear about this . . .

 

Einstein etc.

The whole point on both sides of the argument seems to be, it doesn't matter what you believe. These days the professor could probably be charged with a hate crime.



Nuclear war is the absence of Einstein.
Good is the absence of atheistic professors.
Boats are the absence of water which has been displaced by money.

 

Yes, I believe I put the snopes link on my previous post.
Evil is the absence of God, cold is the absense of heat, and dark is the absence of light is the exact point the 'student' was making, not turned around.

 

Oh right: God is the absense of evil, heat is the absence of cold, and light is the absence of dark. Still works if you want to believe it that way.

 

Marvellous ! If you invented that, you should go down in the records of great quotations.

 

My parents taught me how to swim the hard way, I thought I'd never get out of that sack.


Most kids get a rubber duck to play with in the bathtub, all I got was the toaster.

Emo Phillips

 

I wish, but it was just a rephrase of something by Archimedes . . .

 

Wilf Lunn: You can learn something new every day if you’re not careful ...

 

If fear is cultivated it will become stronger, if faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery.
John Paul Jones

 

I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.

Rodney Dangerfield

 

“Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. ... Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated” - Christopher Hitchens

 

ABUSE
Have no one before me.
I know where you are.
I know what you're thinking.
Obey me.
You are unworthy.
Leave me and I'll punish you.
I do everything for you.
I love you.


Sound familiar?

 

Sounds logical if somewhat intemperate. Also, rather a tad uncharitable to the many who have little else in their lives. Logic isn't one of the virtues and didn't make the original list by that most logical of people, the ancient Greeks, although Temperance did.

 

"Faith prevents the mysteries from overcoming us with fear, and makes us brave. When Faith resists or replaces knowledge as false religion and superstition, it makes us fools " M.O.S.