Christians: What do you think about these statements about Albert Einstein?
To set the stage here, consider the following quote from Einstein: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can change this." He was a pantheist and often said that he was religious in the sense of the awe he had for the universe, but found the idea of a personal God naive.
Now note what two Christians had to say to him about this.
A Roman Catholic lawyer told him: "In the past ten years nothing has been so calculated to make people think that Hitler had some reason to expel the Jews from Germany as your statement [criticizing the idea of a personal God]."
The founder of the Calvary Tabernacle Association in Oklahoma said: "Professor Einstein, I believe that every Christian in America will answer you, 'We will not give up our belief in our God and his son Jesus Christ but we invite you, if you do not believe in the God of the people of his nation, to go back where you came from.' [...] Professor Einstein, every Christian in America will immediately reply to you, 'Take your crazy, fallacious theory of evolution and go back to Germany where you came from, or stop trying to break down the faith of a people who gave you a welcome when you were forced to flee your native land.'"
Personally I was floored to hear this from two followers of the man who encouraged love and tolerance of all people. It seems to me that they are essentially saying "An ethnic Jew insulted my beliefs! I'll show him, I'll say the Holocaust was justified!" Even if they were in the right to condemn Einstein (which by the standards of Christ, they certainly were not), how can people like this sleep at night knowing they implicitly condone genocide as a lesser evil than blasphemy? How are people like this allowed to hold positions of respect in our society?
@adam: I didn't mean to imply they were. However, they weren't the first two people to ever say things along these lines and they won't be the last.
@Hope is certainty: I didn't fall to the floor; I was floored, as in, taken aback, baffled, etc. I do think my jaw literally dropped though.
@Random Man86: I can understand that, but I don't think the anti-Semitic comments were at all merited. The first one blatantly implies that a single person's actions can make it acceptable to expel their entire ethnic group from your country (should we ban Germans from entering America because of Hitler?). The second one tells him to go back to Germany, which effectively would have been a death sentence for him. Both carry the ultimate implication that Einstein's blasphemous statement merited the treatment that Hitler gave to Jews.
@imacatholic2: I don't mean to imply that these statements somehow condemn all Christians by association with these two. I have been on t
@imacatholic2: For some reason Y!A chopped off the end of my message to you. I was saying: "I don't mean to imply that these statements somehow condemn all Christians by association with these two. I have been on the receiving end of such sweeping generalizations too many times to make that error and I apologize if it came off like I was. I was just appalled to read this and wanted to see if R&S Christians would recognize it for as bad as it was or if they would try to defend it."
@ChildoftheKing: It's the principles behind what they said; the fact that they're dead now doesn't matter. And it's not as harmless as you make it out to be. As I said, both statements imply that Einstein deserved to be put through what Hitler did to the Jews because of his (relatively innocent) comments about God.