The other day I saw an image of Einstein with one of his quotes on it. “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. – Albert Einstein” Obviously the quote is nonsense since Einstein died decades before the internet was invented. But it reminded me of something that I heard somewhere. That is, that Albert Einstein is the person with the most false quotes. I have no idea if that is true, but I have read a lot of wrong quotes that were said to be from Einstein. Or things he really said are paraphrased to sound better. One example would be “God does not play dice.” The original was more along the lines of “and therefore I believe that the old man (this is how he called God) does not play dice.” He used that as an argument against quantum mechanics, in which he did not believe. Scientists proved that this was the one major point he got wrong. And to his somewhat poor argument involving God the Danish physicist Niels Bohr had a wonderful reply saying “But it can’t be our business to tell God how He should do His job.” Another half-quote is the well known sentence “Everything is relative.” Even though Einstein never said that, it can be used to summarize his theory of relativity. But I heard it far beyond that context.
I often wondered why he became the victim of false quotes, but maybe people try to surf the wave of his credibility. I mean, it has to be true when Einstein said it, right? And except for his “little mistake” with quantum physics it is pretty much the case. But again, Einstein was far to clever to state absolutes when he knew for sure that they are not accurate. (With the gambling God he was sure, yet within his argument wrong.) And the master of relativity knew, that everything in this universe is effected by the bending of time and space yet not everything is relative.
I guess nobody ever tried, but it would have been an interesting discussion, to go to Einstein and tell him, that the laws of his theory are only relatively true. He probably would have blown up in your face. For the laws of nature (and this is how he rightfully saw his theory) are absolute. Time and space are relative, the physics behind it is not.
Already the Greek philosophers some two thousand years ago discovered, that problems arise when we think to much of ourselves. With a little bit less me and a little bit more everybody else, we can get a long way. We now call that kind of behavior humility. And we don’t need any religion to tell us, that it is good. But the Greeks began to take this idea to extremes. And throughout the centuries it became the philosophy of relativism. From “don’t think to much of you” they passed “maybe nothing should be valued to highly” and ended with “therefore nothing is absolute”. And now they can quote Einstein again, unaware that he would disagree.
This idea of relativity is woven into the fabric of our society. The common meaning of tolerance is grounded on the absence of right and wrong. With no absolutes nobody’s perspective is better and we can tolerate and even accept other points of view. But it leads even further. For one of the common convictions in the western world is that faith should be private. It’s great to have one and you can be proud of it, but you should not let it effect the lives of others. If it makes you happy, great for you, but let everyone else find their own happiness. Yet the underlying believe is, that there is no god. For if there were a god, his existence would be a fact. And the question wouldn’t be “Do you believe in God?” but rather “Do you follow Him?”
But hold on, are you saying that we should force our religion on other people? No, I don’t. Not even Jesus, who was God in the flesh, did that. Coming from The Father He knew for a fact. And having all His power he never made anybody do anything. But he never disguised his knowledge of God either. Because making faith a private matter is making it irrelevant altogether. If it can only exist privately it should not exist at all. For it would be groundless. But with a kernel of truth in it, it has to be a public matter. For a god who only exist when people believe in him is not a god at all. The existence of God has an effect on everybody. And it doesn’t matter if we believe in Him or are even aware of Him. So let us stop pretending we would do anyone a favor by keeping our faith private. For the truth about God is not relative at all, but the most absolute there is. And from all I know, even Einstein would agree with that.