Atheists seem very eager to claim Einstein for one of their own. Richard Dawkins devotes a whole section to Einstein in The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' Portable Atheist is peppered with Einstein quotations seemingly rejecting all belief in God. Recently an Einstein letter surfaced which showed the great scientist scorning the idea that the Jews were in any sense God's chosen people.
But all that these quotations prove is that Einstein was not an orthodox believer. He rejected the idea of a personal God "who would directly influence the actions of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation." Einstein also rejeted the immortality of the soul, noting that "one life is enough for me."
At the same time, Walter Isaacson in his celebrated new biography Einstein provides ample evidence that Einstein not only believed in a higher or transcendent power, but also that Einstein despised atheists. Here are some quotations, drawn from Isaacson's book with full documentation, that I offer as a needed counterbalance to the one-sided list provided by Dawkins, Hitchens and the others.
On whether he considered himself religious: "Yes, you could call it that. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this foce beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion."
On whether he accepted the historical existence of Christ: "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."
On whether he considered himself an atheist: "I'm not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what that is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the most intelligent human toward God."
On the nature of God: "That deeply emotional conviction of a presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
On whether science leads to religion: "Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of nature--a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort."
On how religion motivates scientific inquiry: "The cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research."
On whether science and religion are at odds: "The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
On how he feels about atheist efforts to claim him as an ally: "There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views."
On how he regards atheists: "The fanatical atheists...are creatures who cannot her the music of the spheres. I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist. What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos."
Reader Comments ( Page 23 of 24)
331. #330 - Tom
There is rightly an incredible fear and hatred of Evolution and Science by a emotionally-challenged and undereducated people.
clueAll at 5:14AM on May 26th 2008
332. Einstein wrote the following in a letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind:
"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."
Here is a link:
http://www.physorg.com/news129885022.html
Here are two other quotes from Einstein on religion:
Here are two quotes from Einstein:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
"I am a deeply religious nonbeliever...This is a somewhat new kind of religion."
I believe that both of these quotes are from 1954.
Here is a quote from a letter Einstein wrote in 1945:
"I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist."
However, Einstein has other quotes that suggest that he might have believed in God. However, Einstein has other quotes that are more deistic, or at least pantheistic. For example, here is a quote of Einstein’s from the 1920s:
“I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
Maybe Einstein believed different things about whether there is a God at different times of his life. Many people do believe different thing about whether there is a God at different times of their lives.
Here is a link to various quotes by Einstein on religion:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_einstein.html
And here is another:
http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/
Wes at 1:16AM on May 24th 2008
333. Here is more from Einstein in that letter to Eric Gutkind:
"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.
"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."
Wes at 1:34AM on May 24th 2008
334. your such an ispiration for the ways that i will never ever choose to be. oh so many ways for me to show you how your savior has abbandend you. F%#$# your god your lord your christ for he is the one that did this to u. its not like u killed someone its not like u drove a hatefull spear into his side. talk to jesus christ as if he knows the reasin why. oh soo many ways for me to show u how your god has abbandonded you. maybe take it from a guy who watched his mother pray everynight even tho she was paralyzed. your god is a joke and so are you. no one lived in the belly of a whale. there is no such thing as talking snakes. u couldnt fit all the insects on earth on a boat. what about fresh water fish? did u put them in an aquarium? did noah ride a bike to put air into the aquiariums? guess what? your god is a lie. if u believe that talking snakes are real than u should be sterilized soo u dont pollute the gene pool. maybe u should die, die die die die die die no one wants yer bs. you think that light comes before the stars that make them. if god where real he wouldnt want idiots like u that are so ignorant to piss away there brains. people like u are the reason abortion is still legal. and u fight against it. its because we dont need anymore christian assholes with there holier than thou bs to contaminate the gene pool.anybody that believes in talking snakes should be sterilized so they do not contaminate the mass public.
darthaardvrk at 6:33AM on May 24th 2008
335. In his older and wiser years, Albert Einstein, as well as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison (who produced hundreds of brilliant inventions to his dying day) and other well-known thinkers, renounced religious fairy tales and superstitions, i.e., much of the bible, along with many of its lies and contradictions.
From a correspondence between Ensign Guy H. Raner and Albert Einstein in 1945 and 1949. Einstein responds to the accusation that he was converted by a Jesuit priest:
"I have never talked to a Jesuit prest in my life. I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist."
"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from religious indoctrination received in youth."
[Freethought Today, November 2004]
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." [From a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954. It is included in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, published by Princeton University Press.
"If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?" [Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), p. 27.]
"During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution, human fantasy created gods in man's own image who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate influence, the phenomenal world... The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old conception of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes... In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vase power in the hands of priests." [Albert Einstein, reported in Science, Philosophy and Religion: A Symposium, edited by L. Bryson and L. Finkelstein. Quoted in: 2000 Years of Disbelief. by James Haught]
"Thus I came...to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true....Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience...an attitude which has never left me." [The Quotable Einstein]
Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826) 3rd American president, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat. Deist.
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus told us indeed that 'God is a spirit,' but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter." [letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820]
"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites." [Notes on Virginia]
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes" [Letter to von Humboldt, 1813].
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." [Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823]
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own" [Letter to H. Spafford, 1814].
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."[in a letter to S. Kercheval, 1810]
"...an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, 'Jesus Christ...the holy author of our religion,' which was rejected 'By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.'" [ From Jefferson's biography]
James Madison, (1751-1836) American president and political theorist. Popularly known as the "Father of the Constitution." More than any other framer he is responsible for the content and form of the First Amendment.
also see 'First Amendment' section of the 'Law & Government' section
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
"In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people."
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." [April 1, 1774]
"...the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State" [Letter to Robert Walsh, Mar. 2, 1819]
"Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together" [Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822].
John Adams 1735-1826, 2d President of the United States
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." [ in a letter to Thomas Jefferson]
"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
"Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it."
"But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed."
"Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1500 years."
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles."
Charles Darwin, English naturalist (1809-1882)
From the age of forty he was, to use his own words, a complete disbeliever in Christianity. He professed himself an Agnostic, regarding the problem of the universe as beyond our solution,
"For myself," he wrote, "I do not believe in any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities."
Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865).
In 2000 Years of Disbelief by James A. Haught, Lincoln is mentioned on pages 125 through 127. From the material presented it would seem that Lincoln as a young man was an avid anti-christian and most likely an atheist. In his later years, he came to believe in God, but still was anti-religious in the sense that he rejected organized religion. Some selections from Haught:
John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law partner: "He was an avowed and open infidel, and sometimes bordered on Atheism...He went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I ever heard."
Joseph Lewis quoting Lincoln in a 1924 speech in New York:
"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln:
"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
As a young man Lincoln apparently wrote a manuscript that he planned to publish, which vehemently argued against the divine origin of the Bible and the Christian scheme of salvation. Samuel Hill, a friend and mentor, convinced him to drop it, considering the disastrous consequences it would have on his political career.
William H Herndon, a former law partner, wrote a biography on Lincoln titled: "The true story of a great life". In it Herndon discusses Lincoln's religious views extensively.
Gordon Leidner has collected some quotations from Lincoln's later years in which he invokes God, and he makes the argument that Lincoln became a sincere believer. It seems to me he did come to believe in God, but he never accepted organized Christianity.
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
Karl Marx, German political philosopher and economist (1818-1883).
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, & the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist (1835-1910).
"Faith is believing something you know ain't true."
"'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true."
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of."
"There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad." [Mark Twain in Eruption]
"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast" [Reflections on Religion, 1906]
"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it..." ["The War Prayer"]
"[The Bible is] a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology." ["Mark Twain and the Bible"]
"Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to
him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." [Letters from the Earth]
"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."
Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
"[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."
"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing." [Autobiography of Mark Twain by Samuel Clemens]
Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847-1931).
"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God."
"I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States."
"So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk."
Sigmund Freud, Austrian physician and pioneer psychoanalyst (1856-1939).
"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be."
"In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable."
"The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life."
Freud certainly regarded belief in God as an illusion that mature men and women should lay aside.
"The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind." [A History of God]
George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English playwright (1856-1950).
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."
"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means."
Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect (1869-1959).
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
Albert Einstein, German born American theoretical physicist (1879-1955).
Terry Madison at 8:00AM on May 24th 2008
336. JefFlyingV: "DoubleD, so how do your quotations lend credence to a christian god? It is a big stretch from the 'spirit of natural laws' to a christian god."
The only way to do that is A LEAP OF FAITH disconnected from reality.
DD claims his god isn't provable - as a way out of scientific testing - yet he claims to know oh so much about his god. How? A LEAP OF FAITH disconnected from reality.
Prove just ONE super natural claim about your god Dinesh D'Souza and, wow, you'll have changed thew world forever.
Peter at 10:56AM on May 24th 2008
337. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. Eph. 2: 8 - 9
Man_in_Wilderness at 2:27PM on May 24th 2008
338. Chris Aable, er, Terry Madison, didn't you notice that in the Einstein quotes you provided, he regualrly modifies the proper noun 'God' with the adjective 'personal'? Have you aksed yourself WHY he does this, or has your penetrating intellect missed this pertinent fact? And when he says he's an atheist with respect to the god of the Jesuits, or that he rejects the notion that man is in god's image, or that he finds the notion of a god who rewards and punishes us childish, isn't is obvious that what he's saying is that he doesn't believe in a personal god? Let's combine this with Einstein's assertions that he was not an atheist, and with his frequent remarks about an 'infinite spirit' and a 'superior intelligence.' What is the most reasoanble conclusion one could draw from this data? Why, it's the same conclusion that Christopher Hitchens has drawn: Einstein was a deist. This is PERFECTLY consistent with everything Dinesh said in his article, so your post is inexplicable, unless you meant to support Dinesh's position. Also, only a fool would want to get into the 'look at all these smart agnostics and atheists' debate, because the other side -- i.e. the smart believers -- would exceed yours, both in terms of number and in terms of intelligence, by an incredibly large margin.
Renzo at 7:45PM on May 24th 2008
339. "If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear."
Winnie the Pooh 2: 3-9
brandon at 7:47PM on May 24th 2008
340. "It was hard to read a single paragraph (or sentence) in the D’Souza piece without a refutation, often obvious, coming to mind. I was starting to lose count of the straw men alone."
http://thenonsequitur.com/?p=301
The above comment seems to apply to a great many - if not all - of Dinesh D'Souza's articles, books, debates, and television appearances.
Peter at 11:56AM on May 25th 2008
341. "How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones Against the rock." - Psalms 137:9
Killing innocent babies is an order by your mythical god. Hope you've not actually done that lately, oh, but you have... haven't you President Bush, Vice-President Cheney? Just following gods orders... revenge... against innocents... actualized... in the modern era... by dangerous delusional god freaks with their fingers on the button...
Einstein would be rocking in his grave if such a thing were possible... but then it's not so we'll just have to settle for the metaphor.
"E = m * (c * c)" - Description of a Natural Law in Our Godless Universe. This law actually proves that the probability of the possibility of any god existing is nil, nada, zero, zippo, nilch, 0, null, nothing, blatto, none. Gone with the wind. No more. Is no more. This god is no more. Eradicated from non-existence and existence combined. Could not be. Can not be. It's a well tested law you know... very well tested... hard proof of a zero probability. Really interesting concept zero, the roman catholic church tried, and failed, to keep it from use... merchants prevailed finally due to zero - nothing - having a huge importance in commerce accounting... funny that... nothing is important in commerce... nothing is equally important in objective reality. Nothing is important in the equation. If you put zero in for the mass you get nothing no matter what the speed of light is. IF your god is not-material then he's got zero mass... which means he has no energy which means that he can't influence any matter nor energy in our universe; it also means that he doesn't exist. Just a few ways the probability is zero.
Peter at 12:14PM on May 25th 2008
342. Original thinking brought to you by a freethinker eliminating belief and faith where ever it rears it's ugly hydra heads.
That's Einstein for your wonderful equations. Math, you gotta love it. Fuzzy multivalued logic for a fuzzy multivalued analog+digital objective quantum+classical reality, you gotta love it.
Binary thinkers like Dinesh D'Souza like to impose their black and white (or in the case of Dinesh, White or White) style of thinking on all aspects of objective reality even when those aspects are fuzzy multivalued aspects.
For example, there are not two binary sexes in humans. There are at least five discrete categories with a better model being a fuzzy multi-valued scale ranging from a few at the various extreme ends to the bulk being somewhere in the middle ambiguous ground of being.
IS can be fuzzy just as it can be binary; it is important to know which when you see it... otherwise you'll categorize a 51% towards one side when it's really in the middle 20% +- 3% of the range. Quite different. Very real. Very relevant.
However, at the extremes you do have people like Dinesh D'Souza who qualify as 100% nut job delusional Sweet Zombie Jesus flesh eaters and blood drinkers. Dinesh simply drank a whole lot of the cool aid they were serving, unfortunately he didn't drink enough... enjoy eating your god in an act of cannibalism lately Dinesh?
Peter at 12:26PM on May 25th 2008
343. How can it be moral to eat the body and drink the blood of a god even if it's only symbolic? Humans frown upon eating of their own kind as god is since he made us in his image as they claim.
Oh, yet another claim. Prove that man was made in god's image! Go on prove it.
Peter at 12:32PM on May 25th 2008
344. Peter: "If you put zero in for the mass you get nothing no matter what the speed of light is. IF your god is not-material then he's got zero mass... which means he has no energy which means that he can't influence any matter nor energy in our universe; it also means that he doesn't exist. Just a few ways the probability is zero."
Hmmm...Peter is displaying his middle school understanding of science again. Let's take his absurd premise seriously for a moment (i.e. that science has some purchase with respect to the 'god' question): is it the case that if x has no mass, x has no energy? Well, Peter, you should've thought -- for at least one second -- about Einstein's equation, which you obviously don't understand. Light -- or, more properly, photons -- have no mass (i.e. no rest mass); they have momentum. Yet, using your simplistic reasoning, since photons have no mass, they have no energy, so they don't exist (I'd add that it hardly follows logically from, "X has no mass, and so no energy, therefore x doesn't exist"; you're even worse at logic than you are at science, and that's saying something!).
Photons aren't the only 'massless' entities: scalar particle (Nambu-Goldstone boson), gauge bosons and gluons are also thought to be massless.
And think about this: Peter once claimed to be a scientist!
Renzo at 4:41PM on May 25th 2008
345. I think Renzo, errr....Dinesh is obsessed with my boss Chris Aable. Nobody brings him up more than Renzo does, and always with ad hominems to boot. Had he *really* read the website and conducted an archive search, he would know that I have been moderator for Aable's sites for about ten years now, so naturally I would quote him and many other people here. But as Dinesh / Renzo prove time and time again, they aren't interested in truth, their interested in ad hominems and obfuscation that have nothing to do with the facts.
Terry Madison at 2:48AM on May 26th 2008