Albert Einstein: Views on God

There is confusion among some people as to what Albert Einstein's views on religion and God were. Yes, he sometimes used the term "God", but he meant something very different from what many religious people mean when they use that word.

Albert Einstein was not a follower of any organized religion, and he clearly did not believe in the kind of personal God that many religious people believe in. Consider the following quotes from Einstein:

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously."

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.”

How to Fix No default launcher running in Android system

No radiation needed on how to fix your Android Phone ICS without the control launcher running  in the system. You don't need to land on a mysterious field of planet Mercury to find the fix.

"Since I had a short break from my normal mode, I decided to experiment changing different launcher for my Android ICS device. More or less, I changed to 6 different launchers when finally I had  to chose one as default, then I saved it but the new set launcher was not running in the setting in fact, I clicked it and saved it as default.  In my aeronautical case due to my personal mental dysfunction, my device became useless without a launcher running. lol!

I rebooted my android but I got a blank dark screen! lol!! All I got left was the status bar but it didn't work basically, even if I received SMS. So how did I fix it?

Blind faith among Muslims and Christians

I once taught a Muslim high school student who was one of the brightest in the class. But the subject of the dinosaurs came up one day, and he flat out told me he didn't believe in them. Upon further questioning he said that he did, however, believe that giant humans roamed the earth several thousand years ago because the Koran says so. (Some Christians believe the Bible also has such references, as in Genesis 6:4).

When I pointed out that there's no evidence for the belief that giants roamed the earth, but there's a ton of evidence for the dinosaurs, he replied that it doesn't matter - the Koran cannot be wrong.

This was certainly not the first time I'd been exposed to this kind of mindless blind faith in a supposedly holy book. It reminded me very much of a lot of Christians in my home country, the United States.

"Christ Myth" Scholars Strike Back at Bart Ehrman

Ever since Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? came out in March 2012 arguing for an historical Jesus, the "Christ myth" scholars he criticized in his book have struck back hard. Their latest endeavor is a new book called Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth: An Evaluation of Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist", which is a collection of refutations from several different scholars including Robert M. Price, Richard Carrier, Acharya S (D.M. Murdock), Earl Doherty, and Frank Zindler.

When Ehrman's book was published it was almost immediately lambasted by scholars who hold the mythicist position, also called the Christ myth theory - the view that Jesus was not an historical figure, but was instead a mythical/fictional character who only later became historicized.

Historian Richard Carrier wrote a blistering critique of Ehrman's book on his blog titled "Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic" in which he says the book is "filled with factual errors, logical fallacies, and badly worded arguments. Moreover, it completely fails at its one explicit task: to effectively critique the arguments for Jesus being a mythical person."

Snake-handling Churches in America

Snake-handling is a religious ritual practiced in a small number of Pentecostal churches in the Appalachian Mountains and southeastern region of the United States. These Christians handle live poisonous snakes as part of their worship services.

The main scripture used to support the practice is Mark 16:17-18, which has Jesus saying:

"And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

Bart Ehrman's "Jesus, Interrupted": New York Times Bestseller

I recently came across a book that does an excellent job of explaining the enormous gap in knowledge that exists between Bible scholars and the rest of the population, which is Bart Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them). This is one of Ehrman's four New York Times bestsellers, which explains why he is one of the most well-known Bible scholars among the general public.

In this book Ehrman recounts his personal journey as a conservative evangelical Christian who went to Princeton Theological Seminary to earn a doctorate, and was determined to hang on to his belief that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God. But at Princeton he was exposed to the critical-historical methods of research into the writings that make up the Bible for the first time, and this experience would forever change his entire view of what the Bible actually is.

He explains in detail how and why he changed his views on the Bible. In short, when one is exposed to higher education in this field, you discover things you've never heard before, and the evidence is simply overwhelming. It also just makes far more sense than the simplistic approach to the Bible taught in fundamentalist churches. I can identify with Ehrman because I had the same experience 16 years ago when I first started doing this kind of research.

True/False Bible Trivia Questions For Kids

This is not just a Bible question for kids, adults also often raise these kind of questions online: "How do Christians know that the Christian Bible is actually their god's word?". I picked a few answers from Yahoo and I'll leave it all to you. How would you answer that question?

One person wrote, "I have read the bible day and night when I was a kid. It was a compulsory reading by my grand parents. Thank god I finished it before I learned my roman numerals and I know the story by heart. In fact I have several favorite characters in the Bible, like Moses the great leader of Israel, Samson- the long-haired strong man/ Jonah, famous for being swallowed by the whale and Satan, a good angel named Lucifer who turned evil by wanting to make himself into God. Of course the infamous character the mastermind of the killings and slaughtering people with a pseudonym "God" or "Lord" in the Old Testament."

Here is a random answer from someone: "We don't. In fact, I have become quite suspicious of the Bible recently. Actually, I first had issues with the Bible when I read a passage in the old testament as a teen on the issue of rape. It made me mad at God. I went through years of not even owning a Bible, because I never read it anyway. But I kept on with my prayers, and through many hard times could tell that God was with me. So now, I don't blame God, I put the blame on the humans where it belongs. There are some extremely crazy and hateful things in that book, and those hateful words are not the word of God. I do like the words in red. The man they say spoke those words was definitely a very wise and loving man."

Recommended scholarly books on the Bible

Here's a list of scholarly books I can recommend on the Bible.

These focus on the Christ myth theory - that Jesus was originally a fictional/mythical figure and only later was historicized:

1. The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems - Robert M. Price.
2. Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - Earl Doherty.
3. Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus - Thomas L. Brodie.
4. The Jesus Mysteries – Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.
5. Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All - David Fitzgerald.
6. The Jesus of the Early Christians: A Study in Christian Origins - G.A. Wells.
7. The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold – Acharya S.
8. The Pagan Christ – Tom Harper.
9. The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man – Robert M. Price.
10. The Jesus Puzzle – Earl Doherty.
11. Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled - Acharya S.
12. Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection - Acharya S.
13. Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of the Christ - Acharya S.
14. Jesus and the Lost Goddess – Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.
15. The Laughing Jesus – Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.
16. The Jesus Legend – G.A. Wells.

Robert M. Price: Why religions demand belief

On Bible scholar Dr. Robert M. Price's excellent podcast "The Bible Geek", he answers listeners' emailed questions. On one episode a listener asked why religions demand something as odd as belief. He noted that there doesn't seem to be anything moral or ethical about it, it doesn't feed the hungry or help the poor, etc. It just seems bizarre that faith-based religions revolve around this idea that belief is so important.

Dr. Price responded with this:

It does seem that they're asking for the one thing that will throw you off the path of any kind of critical thinking. If you start this way you're starting off on the wrong foot, on the path to intellectual dishonesty. If you believe the slate of things for which there is no evidence, well, if they can convince you they're authoritative on that, you'll believe anything they say. 

And just to take a step back, why is it that the whole thing is based on something for which there's no evidence? Why do you even need faith in this unless there's some kind of a scam being pulled? I mean, what's commendable about believing something when there's no evidence for it? Why is credulity a virtue?

Bible contradictions: A fundamentalist preacher reacts

Many years ago when I was a Christian, a friend of mine showed me an apparent contradiction in the Bible that a non-Christian friend of his had pointed out. I looked at the passages and it certainly appeared to be an obvious contradiction. 

The two passages are from Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9. These passages deal with the story of the sudden conversion of Saul of Tarsus to Christianity on the road to Damascus, who would later be called the apostle Paul. Saul had been persecuting Christians, and was headed to Damascus to do the same. Here's the passage from Acts chapter 9 (King James Version):

Thomas Paine: Quotes on Christianity

The American revolutionary Thomas Paine's common sense quotes on Christianity:

Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.

- Thomas Paine

The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles…is a parody of the sun and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, copied from the ancient religions of the Eastern world…. Every thing told of Christ has reference to the sun…

- Thomas Paine 

The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.

- Thomas Paine

Pope Leo X called Christ a "fable" and a "superstition"

In 1514 Pope Leo X raised a glass of wine at a Good Friday Vatican banquet and proposed a toast, saying:

"How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us and our predecessors." 

This is perhaps the most shocking admission by a pope in the long and bloody history of the Catholic church. That it was profitable to the Church is undeniable, for the Roman Catholic Church had gained enormous wealth and power, including political power, which it held throughout most of its history. 

But the fact that a pope would actually refer to the religion as a "superstition" and to the story of Christ as a "fable" is surprising. To those of us who have taken the time to research the evidence, it's obvious that it is indeed a superstition and a fable, and that the Church started out trying to hide the true origins of Christianity. They engaged in outright lies, forged numerous documents, and then destroyed the evidence of the religion's real beginnings - including countless manuscripts and the entire library of Alexandria which housed the wisdom of the ancient world. The result was that Europe was soon plunged into the Dark Ages of ignorance, from which Western civilization still has not recovered.

Robert M. Price: Debunking Christian apologetics and the "historical" Jesus

I recently saw a video of my favorite Bible scholar, Dr. Robert M. Price, in which he joked that he was working on a new book on devotionalism which he planned to title "Have You Accepted Jesus as Your Imaginary Playmate?".

Price started out as a Baptist fundamentalist and intended to become an apologist in the 1970s. However, during the course of obtaining a masters degree and two Ph.D.s from Drew University in theology and New Testament studies, plus having read many hundreds of scholarly books in the field, his views changed dramatically. He now says there's virtually nothing in the Bible that can be taken as "historical". He is well-known for embracing the Christ Myth theory as the most likely explanation for the supposed "historical Jesus".

The man is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge, and also a fascinating and humorous speaker - unlike many other scholars! There are numerous videos of him on youtube, and his website is filled with interesting books, podcasts, articles, reviews and video clips. The two podcasts are great. "The Bible Geek" discusses more complex issues, and "The Human Bible" is simplified and easier to follow. He takes listeners' emailed questions on both. I highly recommend his website.

He says Christian apologists are just "spindoctors for a dogmatic position" and the field of apologetics is just a "bogus sales job masquerading as historical study".

Will mankind continue to evolve with war and conflicts?

Today I posted another question on my Yahoo page about 'Mutation and evolution of humans', in spite of having my own concrete answer to it. I just wanted to know how humans would answer the question, but I have already laid out my unbiased conclusion to it considering the basic aspect of human behavior.

I'm referring to the question that I posted,. "Will mankind continue to evolve with war and conflicts?" How would you answer that question? The human evolution of reconstructing our ancestors to get concrete facts that could answer the elusive questions 'Who we are and where we come from' endlessly continues. This research allows scientists to work aggressively to gather scientific data, factual information and even follow up questions about human origins. But I am not going to talk about that because I think we don't actually need to further our research. All we need to do is just observe how we behave.

You can do your own scientific readings instead of going to church every Sunday to listen to one man telling you how to live your personal life according to him. Come on, be sensible humans! Try something more factual.

I once mentioned that to you Mr. Lee, about my radical idea of human origins, but I don't think you understood or weren't paying attention.

The evolution pre-programmed in our DNA with limited application was installed with specific functions to create and to destroy. You already know the rest of the installed applications, the human dramas, arrogance, love and romance, depression and grief, fear and war.

Thomas Jefferson: Quotes on Christianity and god

Many Christians today are so ignorant they imagine that any time anyone uses the word "god" they mean the personal Christian god that so many American Christians believe in. They seem to be unaware that the term "god" can have countless other meanings - some of which have nothing at all in common with their own rather extreme concept of god.

Not to even mention that there are millions of other gods in other religions throughout human history. Some religions, like Buddhism, have no god at all. Their concept of Ultimate Reality is basically Consciousness itself, not a being that is separate from you.

This confusion in the minds of many Christians has caused some of them to claim that men like Thomas Jefferson were Christians according to their own idea of what that should mean. But Jefferson was clearly NOT a Christian in that sense. His idea of "god" resembled that of the god of deism, or Nature's god. Here are a few quotes that clearly show Jefferson did not share the beliefs about god that the typical fundamentalist Christian does today:

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
- Thomas Jefferson

Brief Bible Study: Who Wrote the Holy Bible? Not who you may think!

Here's a quick Bible study on who wrote the Holy Bible - and it's not who you may think.

In my younger days I spent 12 years in a "Bible believing" church. I finally rejected those beliefs when I started doing my own research on the Bible and reading numerous books by Bible scholars. This research has continued for the past 16 years. One thing I quickly realized is that there's a huge gap between what real Bible scholars know about the book and what many Christians believe about it.

Even the most elementary facts known to scholars for centuries are unknown to many Christians. For example, very few (if any!) of the books in the Bible were actually written by the men whose names are attached to the books today. This goes for both Old and New Testament books. While many Christians are shocked when they first hear this, it has been common knowledge among scholars for a very long time.

Sorry, but the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not written by those men. How then did the gospels get those names attached? And who actually wrote the gospels?

What is Christianity? The bloodiest religion in history

"Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world." - Gore Vidal

What is Christianity? Well, for one thing it has been the bloodiest religion in all of human history. But what is it about this particular religion that has made it so bloody for so long? Allow me to briefly explain.

Declaration of Independence Day Fourth of July

Here comes the Fourth of July, the declaration of America's independence from England - commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Americans celebrate the Fourth of July with festive activities, explosive fireworks displays across the country, the reopening of the Statue Of Liberty, and the annual Nathan's hot dog eating contest.

The Congress approved a declaration of independence on July 2, 1776, and John Adams considered it to be the most important date in American history. In fact, the official declaration was approved two days after by a committee. The first printed copies published “In Congress, July 4, 1776.” and when it came out all over the country the name fourth of July or July fourth got tagged along. Abraham Lincoln used the Declaration as a rebuke and stumbling block to slavery. He wielded it as a rhetorical weapon, made it a rallying cry, and established it by the end of the war as national gospel - Declaration of Independence Day Fourth of July!

Education system

Our "Education"/Indoctrination System

Here's some big education news: the education system (worldwide) is basically just an indoctrination system. I worked in the education system for 14 years and have come to the realization that it's merely a branch of society's overall attempt to keep people shackled to a particular worldview. 

"The only thing that gets in the way of my learning is my education." - Albert Einstein

God versus Einstein and Science

This is a whole different  idea of making a blog with radical reasoning.  My friend Lee suggested the beautiful blog title "God And Einstein" -- taken from his all time favorite Pop Science wiz Albert Einstein! :P (Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics.)

My very own point of view - Einstein was a top science wiz who actually once existed.
Science - is almost everything you see.
God is never seen, and only appears in religious books like the Bible.

You can do searches on Albert Einstein and God and find lots of resources online.

One of the best Albert Einstein quotes is "Once you stop learning, you start dying."

What is the Zeitgeist?

What is the Zeitgeist? Zeitgeist is a 2007 movie that has gone viral on the internet. The film is divided into 3 parts: 1) the Jesus-myth theory, 2) the theory that certain elements within the U.S. government were involved in the 9/11 attacks, 3) theory that Central Banking largely controls the world.

The term "zeitgeist" is German for "spirit of the times". The film's basic premise is that people are, and have been for a very long time, hoodwinked by the powers that be. We're lied to by organized religion, government, and by the powerful and wealthy structures in society.

I spent 12 years in a Christian fundamentalist church in my younger years. Since then I've done a lot of reading on Biblical scholarship, including many books by scholars on the Jesus-myth theory. And I can say that the Jesus-myth theory has the strongest evidence backing it up, and makes more sense than any of the competing theories on what the "historical Jesus" was like.

If Christians think the "Da Vinci Code" was shocking stuff, well, if only they knew the real truth about early Christianity! The gospel story of Jesus is NOT original, unique or historical - but is clearly based on many older religious myths. And most likely, Jesus never existed as a human on earth at all, but was a mythical/fictional character in a spiritual allegory.