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I thought I knew a lot about Albert Einstein, but this little article put me in my place.

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between believers and non-believers wanting to claim the greatest scientist of the 20th century as their own.A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument - or at least provoke further controversy about his views.

Due to be auctioned this week in London after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, the document leaves no doubt that the theoretical physicist was no supporter of religious beliefs, which he regarded as “childish superstitions”.

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: “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.”

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel’s second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God’s favoured people.

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. 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. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

Here’s a great article from NPR about evolution and scientist that actually studies it.

Short excerpt:

“I believe evolution. It’s easy. It’s my life. I’m a paleoanthropologist. I study fossils of humans, apes and monkeys, and I teach college students about their place in nature.

Of course I believe evolution.

But that is different from believing in evolution.”

Full article can be found here: I Am Evolution

While in my teens and good part of my twenty’s, I used to love B horror movies and reading different stories about ghosts, monsters and pretty much anything mysterious or haunting. I used to get high on that mysterious feeling you get from conspiracy theories or just simple feeling of the unknown. However, I am in my thirties now, and I’ve noticed that my tolerance for uhm.. bullshit is starting to wane. And quickly at that. Just by observing my father, my grandparents, and just the world around me, I concluded that this is a very normal characteristic in my family (and I think in most people). I cannot really explain it, but as I get older, I am becoming more and more skeptical, while at the same time, less and less tolerant towards the unexplained or what some call “mysterious”. This includes (but is not limited to) : Big Foot, Loch-Ness, Physics, faith healers, ghosts, fairies and yes… all of the gods of the earth, including Judeo-Christian Gods, Thor, Zeus, Vishnu etc… BTW: Full list of gods can be found here. Let me try to elaborate this little bit further.

Does something exist if we cannot: smell it, feel it, see it, touch it or detect it via any means? Have no any kind of interaction with it, and have no evidence of its existence. Would we still be able to say that something exist? I’d say that even if none of the conditions I’ve named are present, answer would be yes. However, what kind of existence would that be then? I would be no more concerned with that kind of entity, than with the existence of Santa Claus. The existence of such entity would be meaningless to us, and any claim of something like that existing, should be worthless or at least not to be taken seriously in our society - because if not, we’re opening doors to all kinds of lunacy and pseudo-science.

How can someone possibly ask me to “believe” in something without providing any evidence, or means of detection. I mean, come on. You have to give me something. At least tiny bity piece of something I can cling to. I really don’t ask for much. But nooo. Nothing can be provided, while at the same time, I’m still expected to believe in it. Not only that, but “they” will truly be surprised if I DIDN”T believe in it. With their eyes popping out their sockets, they would say something like “YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT YOU DON”T BELIEVE IN ALLAH???” As if believing in Allah is a default state of a human being or something, and the mare act of not believing would violate some cosmic law. I really have no way of knowing if Allah exists or not, but the burden of proof is not on me, so I will not even concern myself with his alleged existence.

I really have no doubt in their sincerity when they (whom I know really well) tell me that God spoke to them. They will say something like: ” I know that God exists because He spoke to me”. Or something like that. However, If they cannot provide any real evidence of that event happening, than to me, it’s meaningless. It might not be meaningless to them, but that’s not good reason to believe in it either. I am not saying God did not speak to them, but to convince me, or at least ignite my interest, they’ll have to do better then that. This would apply also to a best friend or a family member. It’s not that I don’t trust my best friend’s word. Of course I do, but he could be mistaken too, without knowing it. Schizophrenics see and hear voices all the time, and those voices ARE real them, but that doesn’t make it into reality. It’s not that I don’t believe them, but they could be delusional, hallucinating, tricked by brain, have brain lapses, have dreamt the whole thing, have carbon monoxide poisoning, optical illusions etc… There could be hundreds of different reasons why would a sincere and healthy person think they saw something that isn’t really there. It happens all the time. Therefore saying that Allah (don’t have to be Allah; just take your pick) spoke to them is not much different than saying “Santa Claus promised to bring gifts this year”. Brain is the best 3D software we know of. I personally see only three possible explanation for these kind of phenomena:

1. Brain tricks - Anything related to brain (not necessarily damage) falls into this category. Hallucinations, brain lapses, high fever, optical and audio illusions, carbon monoxide poisoning, drugs, dreams etc…
2. Intentional lying - Two types of people fall into this category: First, people who want you to believe something so bad, so they make stuff up. And secondly, conscience charlatans and deceivers. Pretty much all evangelical preachers on late night infomercials, most physics and mediums of any kind etc…
3. They trick themselves into believing - Emotions over reason is the key word here. You want something so bad so you make yourself into believing it. Happens all the time. Cult followers would fall into this category.

My point here is: even if you’re convinced, without the shadow of the doubt that something exists, there would be no way of knowing if what you saw is: made up in your mind, or real. Not without some kind of independent non-biased evidence. Scientifically controlled experiment would probably be the best thing, but sometimes that’s not really a practical thing, and the best thing to do is to be very skeptical, and to wait for new evidence. The moral of this story is to be skeptical. And I mean about everything. Even yourself. Because one of the worst things that can happen to us is to loose our ability to reason. One of the reasons I call this article Belief - Loosing our ability to reason is because that’s exactly what it is. We are taught through out our lives that belief or faith is a good thing. It can be. But belief without questioning will always lead to a total mind submission. Maybe you can live with it, but I certainly can’t.

I just thought I’d share a paragraph from Richard Dawkins Ancestor’s Tale. Mr. Dawkins proves mathematically that we all share same ancestors. His logic is truly remarkable and undeniable. See it for yourself.

“All your ancestors are mine, whoever you are, and all mine are yours. Not just approximately but literally. This is one of those truths that turns out, on reflection, to need no new evidence. We prove it by pure reason, using the mathematician’s trick of reductio ad absurdum. Take our imaginary time machine absurdly far back, say 100 million years, to an age when our ancestors resembled shrews or opossums. Somewhere i the world at that ancient date, at least one of my personal ancestors must have been living, or I wouldn’t be here. Let us call this particular little mammal Henry (it happens to be a family name). We seek to prove that if Henry is my ancestor he must be yours too. Imagine, for a moment, the contrary: I am descended from Henry and you are not. For this to be so, your lineage and mine would have to have marched, side by side yet never touching, through 100 million years of evolution to the present, never interbreeding yet ending up at the same evolutionary destination — so alike that your relatives are still capable of interbreeding with mine. This reductio is clearly absurd. If Henry is my ancestor he has to be yours too. If not mine, he cannot be yours.”

None of us (sane ones) are really surprised when we hear demeaning remarks from Fox News commentators, but the latest Fred Barnes comment kinda surprised me. Even heavy capitalist-hitter Brit Hume apologized and distanced himself from this fascist bigot. All I can say is: wow! See it for yourself.
In a normal and healthy society, this guy would be out in the streets long time ago, but we know that’s not going to happen.

Something really fascinating about largest creature that ever and still lives on.

Source: wikipedia

• The Blue Whale is believed to be the largest animal ever to have lived. Yes, even larger than any of the known dinosaurs.
• At up to 33 meters (110 ft) in length and 181 metric tonnes (200 short tons) or more in weight, it is believed to be the largest animal ever to have existed.
• The largest Blue Whale accurately weighed by NMML scientists to date was a female that weighed 177 tonnes (196 short tons).
• A Blue Whale’s tongue weighs around 2.7 tonnes (3 short tons) and when fully expanded its mouth is large enough to hold up to 90 tonnes (100 short tons) of food and water.
• Despite the size of its mouth, the dimensions of its throat are such that a Blue Whale cannot swallow an object wider than a beach ball.
• Its heart weighs 600 kg (1,320 lb) and is the largest known in any animal.
• A Blue Whale’s aorta is about 23 cm (9 in) in diameter. A small child could actually swim through it.
• During the first 7 months of its life, a Blue Whale calf drinks approximately 400 litres (100 US gallons) of milk every day. Blue Whale calves gain weight quickly, as much as 90 kg (200 lb) every 24 hours. Even at birth, they weigh up to 2,700 kilograms (6,000 lb) – the same as a fully-grown hippopotamus.

Here’s a good one from my recent trip to St Louis. My coworker pointed out that the actual sign looks like a traffic direction and it looks like it’s probably made to look just like a regular highway sign. Well, it sort of is direction, if you know what I mean. This way please (pointing finger to the sky).

Striking mannerisms and outstanding delivery by Jeremy himself.

Lets talk about something real. Atoms. Everything in the world that’s ever been, was and will ever be, is made of atoms. Period. You, me and everything else around us is made up of different kind of atoms. I remember standing in the middle of the mall the other day and thinking to myself: “Wow, all of this stuff came out out of the earth and ground?”. Everything we see is just collection of tiny entities call atoms. However, current atoms in your body are not the same atoms that were present in you, oh lets say 10 years ago, or even 10 days ago. That’s right. You’re only a temporary collection of assorted atoms. In other words, different kinds of atoms have to come together at some point in time just to form YOU; then to disband and be replaced by other atoms (at different times of course). Some scientists hypothesize that by the age of 30 all of the atoms in our body have been replaced by new ones; and that’s not even the strange part. Think of this: Atoms don’t age. They don’t just die. Radioactive atoms do decay but non-radioactive atoms are permanently stable as far as we can tell. After we die, atoms that make up our body are recycled. Some of them end up in ground, some in air while some end up in other objects. That would mean you might be made of same atoms as Hitler, Plato or even Jesus Christ was made of. You also might be containing same atoms that may have been in Great Wall Of China, bottom of the ocean, moon, dinosaurs and even Turkish hashish from Anatolia’s mountains. As a matter of fact, it’s a statistical certainty that you’re made of same atoms which some famous people were made of; or at least those atoms were part of you at some point in your life.

Question is: if atoms in our body are constantly getting replaced, then how come we don’t feel that kind of change? How come we don’t sense when our old atoms get replaced by new ones? Answer is two part I think. First, change is so gradual and slow that we really have no senses to feel this type of change. There are approximately 7*10²⁷ in a human body. That’s 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. That’s a whole lot of atoms. Second, atoms in our body have to follow certain rules and paths. Think of water that makes up rivers and streams. Water is constantly changing and cycling, but the river itself always stays the same. It’s always (more or less) of the same shape. So, it’s the interaction between atoms that’s important and not the atoms themselves.

We’re made of the same stuff as everything in our universe is made of. Stars, galaxies, rivers, mountains, and everything we can observe are all made of same stuff. It’s just order of the stuff that makes up different shapes, molecules, cells, tissue and everything else material. That would mean that when we observe (or consciously thinking) our universe, essentially we’re observing ourselves. Carl Sagan once said: “We are the way for The Cosmos to know itself.” Think of that next time you go to Wall-Mart and are surrounded by all of that stuff.

This was just too good not to be posted. it’s actually more sad than funny but I cannot help but laugh. I just feel sorry for his parents.
Before you read following article let me remind you of a quote.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. ~ Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in physics

Now read following article:

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) A teen accused of plotting to blow up his high school told police that he wanted to die, go to heaven and kill Jesus, federal authorities said Tuesday. Read full story here…