It will be interesting to hear how Michael Savage opens his annoying nationally-syndicated newstalk radio show this afternoon. If the brazenly-inconsistent host were as intellectually honest as every newstalk radio audience expects its host to be, he'd begin today's broadcast with an apology, in light of the Einstein news this week.
It's come out that Time's Person of the [20th] Century, the man whose very name is synonymous with brains, was apparently not merely an atheist but even regarded belief in G-d as "childish superstition". That and other ungodly statements were made by the aging physicist in a heretofore unpublished letter going up for auction. Einstein penned it in German the first week of 1954, barely a year before his demise two Aprils later, and thus near the end of a career which featured numerous, if often ambiguous or even cryptic, musings about his religious belief.
For his typically half-informed part, Savage has on several occasions at considerable length claimed Einstein as a believer. Savage is hardly the first on his side of the religious divide to make that assertion; after all, if the figure almost universally seen as the acme of intelligence shared a given supernatural inclination, considerable weight is added to the argument for that faith. But Savage has also vigorously, if absurdly, painted those of us who had reason to be dubious about the icon's supposed faith as part of a larger secular assault on decency in general and conservatism in particular.
Not only do I not expect any retraction in light of this news, much less an apology, from the unprincipled Savage, but if he handles this as he does virtually every event which disproves his often reckless words, it won't even be mentioned during any of his three hours today.
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
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The name Einstein has unfortunately been linked with brains, big ones, and that is indeed unfortunate. He was a smart guy sure but study his life and you can't help but wonder if he was not a bit over-rated and somewhat full of himself in a senile sort of way in later life. There's plenty to suggest he owes much of the theories accredited to him to Mileva Maric. He was a better mathemetician but she may have been the more visionary mind and "jump started" the guy.
Although it will be some time before someone breaks his holy ground, he's wrong on the Speed of Light being the absolute speed in the universe. He's also wrong when it comes to the business of going out at the speed of light for x years and having xxx years pass back home. It simply doesn't work that way. There is no such thing as time as a natural component of the universe like, say, gas. We confuse space with it. It's an invention like the inch, the millimetre. Sure, time passes, water flows, a candle burns down but they are things we notice or we measure. The universe cares less. Think of this: the larger "infinite" universe beyond the mere boundaries of the big bang, beyond forever, is impossible, the universe is a physical impossibility and so we enter the realm of the metaphysical and "God"; something not even Einstein could fathom. So who cares about his religious views? They really aren't worth considering. He got a lot of other big stuff right and that's all that's worth thinking about.
Robert Norwood
Boston
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