Does God Exist? Video Campaign — Refuted

If you live inside Facebook, I’m pretty sure you’ve already seen someone posting this video, (or maybe you’ve posted it yourself to perpetuate the chain). However, on several occasions I’ve pointed out that the alleged account of a classroom encounter between young Albert Einstein and an atheist professor is FICTION. The exchanges never took place, and Albert Einstein, whom many deem the most intelligent person who ever lived, is not a Christian.

Moreover, we know it’s not true because Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th century responsible for the famous E=mc2 equation, was a careful thinker who would never have put forward the specious logic attributed to him.

Comparing Apples to Oranges

Does cold exist? or is it simply the absence of heat? Well, both heat and cold are actually labels physicists give to varying degrees in temperature. What exists is temperature. High or low. We call “cold” the lowest level of heat.

Does darkness exist? or is it simply the absence of light? Well, there are degrees of darkness as there are degrees of light, since light is made of sub-atomic particles called photons. Hence, a dark object reflects fewer visible photons than other objects, and therefore appears dim in comparison. (One example is Dark Matter. Astronomers theorize it makes up 25% of the known universe. This could be classified as darkness because it is invisible matter.)

Now, does evil exist? or is it simply the absence of good? Here is the heart of the problem, the previous two given contrasts — cold VS heat, dark VS light — concern physical properties of the universe, meaning material existence. Evil is not physical, because it has no mass, energy, etc., and it’s not quantifiable. So evil is not the same as cold and darkness, as the young student (not Einstein) wrongfully said.

Therefore the whole proposition of the video crumbles into pieces when you notice that the analogy is wrong. Saying evil happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart is no help either, since it’s basically a self-serving non-argument without the slightest foundation of fact.

The Real Albert Einstein

“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. “

-Albert Enstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. “

– Albert Einstein, “Religion and Science,” New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930

178 comments

  1. the funny thing is… people believed this video despite the fact that it's obviously fake! a philosophy class to a bunch of 8 or 9 year olds?? seriously…
    this only proves how irrational believers can get in embracing their dogma.

  2. Albert Einstein said: "Gott würfelt nicht!". This sentence doesn´t let any space nor doubts about the way he thought about god. He didn´t believe in a PERSONAL god. Instead, he believed on, -what vedic scriptures call- brahman, the unpersonal form of god.

  3. yes straden. einstein said somewhere that he believes not in the god of any religion but in spinoza's god who reveals himself in the harmony of nature. that god is nature itself, the universe, the whole, or, as the eastern mystic would have it, the brahman, the impersonal god.

  4. Heaven and Hell for me is another form of good and evil as you call it yin and yang to the chinese belief.It's one way of instilling fear to the believers,especially those who believe on something or someone without logical proof.If you do good you go heaven if not you go to hell, eveything is manmade and no proof that these places exist.It's just pure imagination.

  5. So Evil is absence of god. But why can god prevent this "evil"
    "Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able?
    Then he is not omnipotent(all-powerful).
    Is he able to prevent evil, but not willing?
    Then he is not malevolent(all-good).
    Is he both willing and able?
    Then where does evil come from?
    Is he neither able nor willing?
    Then why call him god"
    -Epicurus

    Theists will argue that the video shows that evil does not exist… very well…

    absence of god = evil, therefore==

    "Is god willing to prevent absence of himself, but not able?
    Then he is not omnipotent(all-powerful).
    Is he able to prevent absence of himself, but not willing?
    Then he is not malevolent(all-good).
    Is he both willing and able?
    Then where does absence of himself come from?
    Is he neither able nor willing?
    Then why call him god"
    -me

  6. the way Einstein thinks here is for a specific thing… and about the good and evil… for me, evil is natural to humans. what i mean is not really evil but bad attitude. for example, try to raise a child without a guide… then observe how he/she acts. you can't see any good deeds about that child because there is no people or things that can teach him/her how to be good. good is just a replacement for evil for you to associate with other people. and another thing… for me, good and bad don't exist. it is just a classification of motion according to our mind. if you think it is bad, then it is bad, if they think it is good, then it is good for them.

  7. Most Atheists are really Agnostics! In the profoundest sense, there's really no such thing as pure Atheism…

      • atheism has a wider scope than agnosticism…. agnosticism focuses only about denying the existence of deity. in short, being skeptic. while atheism is general. it denies the whole religions and beliefs about divine beings like god, spirits and others.

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