William Federer: American Minute: Albert Einstein

万得福

Albert Einstein was born in Germany on MARCH 14, 1879.
He began teaching himself calculus at age 14.
With a doctorate from the University of Zurich, Einstein wrote papers on electromagnetic energy, relativity, and statistical mechanics.
Einstein predicted a ray of light from a distant star would appear to bend as it passed near the Sun.
When an eclipse confirmed this, the London Times ran the headline, November 7, 1919:

Revolution in science—New theory of the Universe—Newtonian ideas overthrown.

In 1921, Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Describing the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein said:

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.

Einstein’s first visit to the United States was to raise funds for Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.
On his 3rd visit, 1932, he took a post at Princeton University.
When the National Socialist Workers Party took control of Germany, they barred Jews from holding official positions or teaching at universities.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaimed “Jewish intellectualism is dead” and burned Einstein’s works.
Commenting on redistribution of wealth, Albert Eistein stated:

I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause.
The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds … Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the moneybags of Carnegie?

Portrait of Albert Einstein taken in Princeton in 1935. (Wikipedia Photo)

Einstein stayed in the United States, becoming a citizen in 1940.
Einstein’s theory of relativity, E=MC2, is the basis for applying atomic energy.
His warning that Nazis could create the atom bomb led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to set up the Manhattan Project.
Albert Einstein stated:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

In November of 1952, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion asked Einstein to be Israel’s 2nd President, but he declined due to age, dying less than 3 years later.
Being “deeply moved” by the offer, Einstein replied:

My relationship with the Jewish people became my strongest human tie.

The periodic table’s 99th element, discovered shortly after his death in 1955 was named “einsteinium.”
Albert Einstein was quoted in The New York Times, November 9, 1930, saying:

I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.

Albert Einstein stated:

God Almighty does not throw dice.

and

Before God we are all equally wise—equally foolish.

As recorded by Helen Dukas in Albert Einstein, The Human Side (Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 66), Einstein stated:

My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God.

Albert Einstein in 1921 (Wikipedia Photo)

Einstein stated in an interview published in G.S. Viereck’s book Glimpses of the Great, 1930:

I’m absolutely 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 it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.
We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.

Walter Isaacson quoted Einstein in the article “Einstein and Faith,” Time 169, April 5, 2007, 47):

The fanatical atheists … are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional ‘opium of the people’—cannot bear the ‘music of the spheres’.

According to Prince Hubertus (Ronald W. Clark, Einstein:  The Life and Times, New York:  World Publishing Company, 1971, p. 425), Einstein said:

In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.

Einstein wrote to M. Berkowitz, 1950, (William Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet. In Search of the Cosmic Man, Brookline Village MA: Branden Books, 1983, p. 60):

‘God’ is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified.

Though not believing in a personal God, The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929, published George Sylvester Viereck’s interview with Albert Einstein. When asked “To what extent are you influenced by Christianity,” Einstein answered:

As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.

When asked “Have you read Emil Ludwig’s book on Jesus,” Einstein replied:

Emil Ludwig’s Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot! (witty remark)

When asked “You accept the historical existence of Jesus,” Einstein answered:

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.

Princeton University’s Fine Hall has inscribed Albert Einstein’s words above the fireplace:

Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht. (God is clever, but not dishonest.)

万得福

American Minute: Sir Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the same year Galileo died.
His mother was widowed twice, resulting in him being raised by his grandmother. He was sent off to grammar school and later went to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1661.
Sir Isaac Newton became a mathematician and a natural philosopher, discovering the laws of universal gravitation and formulating the three laws of motion, which aided in advancement of the discipline of dynamics.
Newton was a discoverer of calculus and helped develop it into a comprehensive branch of mathematics. During the Plague of 1665-66, Newton moved to Woolsthorp, Lincolnshire.
He was honored to occupy the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, 1669, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 1672. Newton was given the position of Master of the Mint, 1699, and in 1701, entered Parliament.
He constructed one of the first practical reflecting telescope. Using a prism, Newton demonstrated that a beam of light contained all the colors of the rainbow.
He laid the foundation for the great law of energy conservation and developed the particle theory of light propagation.
In 1703, Sir Issac Newton became the president of the Royal Society, and served in that position until his death.

Portrait of Isaac Newton in 1689 (age 46) by Godfrey Kneller. (Wikipedia Image)

Newton wrote one of the most important scientific books ever, Principia, 1687, in which he stated:

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being …
… All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the ‘Lord God’ …
… This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called ‘Lord God’ …
… The supreme God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity He exists always and everywhere.

Newton wrote in Principia, 1687:

From His true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent and powerful Being; and from His other perfections, that He is supreme, or most perfect.
He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, His duration reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity; He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done.

Newton was cited in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton by Sir David Brewster (Edinburgh, Thomas Constable and Co., 1855, Vol. II, 354):

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him, and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.
And by the same power by which he gave life at first to every species of animals, he is able to revive the dead, and has revived Jesus Christ our Redeemer,
who has gone into the heavens to receive a kingdom, and prepare a place for us, and is next in dignity to God, and may be worshipped as the Lamb of God, and has sent the Holy Ghost to comfort us in his absence, and will at length return and reign over us.

Sir Isaac Newton wrote in Optics, 1704:

God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.

American Family Bible
(Wikipedia Image)

Sir Isaac Newton devoted more time to the study of Scripture than to science (as cited in Tiner 1975):

I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.

Sir Isaac Newton stated:

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever …
Worshiping God and the Lamb in the temple:  God, for his benefaction in creating all things, and the Lamb, for his benefaction in redeeming us with his blood.

Captivated by Bible prophecy, Sir Isaac Newton wrote Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (published in 1733), in which he stated:

Daniel was in the greatest credit amongst the Jews, till the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. And to reject his prophecies, is to reject the Christian religion. For this religion is founded upon his prophecy concerning the Messiah.

He concluded his introductory chapter:

Daniel is most distinct in order of time, and easiest to be understood, and therefore in those things which relate to the last times, he must be made the key to the rest.

In his preface to The Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse (published 1733), Sir Isaac Newton quoted a letter to Richard Bentley, dated December 10, 1692:

When I wrote my treatise about our System I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.

Sir Isaac Newton’s “Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John” (Wikipedia image)

Sir Isaac Newton wrote in Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (published 1733):

The Book of Revelation exhibits to us the same peculiarities as that of Nature …
The history of the Fall of Man—of the introduction of moral and physical evil, the prediction of the Messiah, the actual advent of our Saviour, His instructions, His miracles, His death, His resurrection, and the subsequent propagation of His religion by the unlettered fishermen of Galilee, are each a stumbling-block to the wisdom of this world …
… But through the system of revealed truth which this Book contains is, like that of the universe, concealed from common observation, yet the labors of the centuries have established its Divine origin, and developed in all its order and beauty the great plan of human restoration.

In Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (published 1733), Sir Isaac Newton wrote:

The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things, by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt.
The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testaments, not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event; and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world.
For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence.

In Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (published 1733), Sir Isaac Newton wrote:

For the prophets and apostles have foretold that as Israel often
revolted and broke the covenant, and upon repentance renewed it, so there should be a falling away among the Christians, soon after the days of the Apostles, and that in the latter days God would destroy the impenitent revolters, and make a new covenant with his people.
And the giving ear to the prophets is a fundamental character of the true church …
… For as the few and obscure Prophecies concerning Christ’s first coming were for setting up the Christian religion, which all nations have since corrupted, so the many and clear Prophecies, concerning the things to be done at Christ’s second coming, are not only for predicting but also for effecting a recovery and re-establishment of the long-lost truth, and setting up a kingdom wherein dwells righteousness.
The event will prove the Apocalypse, and this Prophecy, thus proved and understood, will open the old Prophets and all together will make known the true religion, and establish it …
… An angel must fly through the midst of heaven with the everlasting Gospel to preach to all nations, before Babylon falls, and the Son of man reaps his harvest (referencing Revelation 14:6).

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy described Sir Isaac Newton:

Newton himself was a student of Old Testament prophecies and believed in the Scriptures as inerrant guides.

In his book Chronology, Newton studied the sequence of historical events and inserted a geometric diagram of Solomon’s Temple, giving the lengths of the Temple in relation to the measurement of time.
This was in accordance with the Renaissance view that the Temple was a microcosm of God’s creation embodying the order of the universe.

Economist John Maynard Keynes in 1933 (Wikipedia image)

Economist John Maynard Keynes purchased all of Newton’s known manuscripts and personal notes at auction. After studying them, John Maynard Keynes wrote of Newton:

He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty, just as he himself wrapped the discovery of calculus in a cryptogram …
He looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt …

Regarding the Bible, Newton wrote:

The system of revealed truth which this Book contains is like that of the universe, concealed from common observation yet the labors of the centuries have established its Divine origin.

Newton (as cited in Tiner 1975):

Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.

Newton was cited by Sir David Brewster in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (Edinburgh, Thomas Constable and Co., 1855, Vol. II, p. 347-348):

Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors.
Can it be by accident that all birds, beasts, and men have their right side and left side alike shaped (except in their bowels); and just two eyes, and no more, on either side of the face; and just two ears on either side of the head; and a nose with two holes; and either two forelegs, or two wings, or two arms on the shoulders, and two legs on the hips, and no more?
Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel and contrivance of an Author?
Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom, and the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside a hard transparent skin, and within transparent humours, with a crystalline lens in the middle, and a pupil before the lens, all of them so finely shaped and fitted for vision, that no artist can mend them?
Did blind chance know that there was light, and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures, after the most curious manner, to make use of it?
These, and suchlike considerations, always have, and ever will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, and has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared.
We are, therefore, to acknowledge one God, infinite, eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, the Creator of all things, most wise, most just, most good, most holy. We must love him, fear him, honour him, trust in him, pray to him, give him thanks, praise him, hallow his name, obey his commandments.

Sir Isaac Newton in a 1702 portrait by Godfrey Kneller (Wikipedia image)

Sir Isaac Newton stated:

There is one God, the Father, ever-living, omnipresent, omniscient, almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus …
To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him.
That is, we are to worship the Father alone as God Almighty, and Jesus alone as the Lord, the Messiah, the Great King, the Lamb of God who was slain, and hath redeemed us with His blood, and made us kings and priests.

Sir Isaac Newton died MARCH 20, 1727.
Newton stated (as cited in The Religion of Sir Isaac Newton, Frank E. Manuel, editor, London, Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 112):

And when you are convinced, be not ashamed to profess the truth. For otherwise you may become a stumbling block to others, and inherit the lot of those Rulers of the Jews who believed in Christ, but yet were afraid to confess him lest they should be put out of the Synagogue.
Wherefore, when you are convinced, be not ashamed of the truth, but profess it openly and endeavor to convince your Brother also that you may inherit at the resurrection the promise made in Daniel 12:3, that ‘they who turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.’
And rejoice if you are counted worthy to suffer in your reputation or any other way for the sake of the Gospel, for then, ‘great is thy reward’!

万得福

Leading the charge at the Battle of Trenton, a musket ball struck his shoulder, hitting an artery.

He recovered and continued to fight for General Washington, becoming friends with French officer Lafayette.

His name was James Monroe, born APRIL 28, 1758.

Home-schooled as a child by Reverend William Douglas, James Monroe was fellow-students with John Marshall, who became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Monroe graduated from the College of William and Mary, studied law under Thomas Jefferson, and was a delegate to the Continental Congress.

He served as U.S. Senator, Governor of Virginia, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State, where he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase which doubled the size of the United States.

Elected the 5th U.S. President, James Monroe acquired Florida from Spain, 1819.

He added Maine, Illinois, Missouri, Alabama, and Mississippi to the Union.

President Monroe proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, 1823, which forbade European powers from interfering with the independent nations of the Western Hemisphere.

In his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817, President James Monroe warned:

What raised us to the present happy state? …

The Government has been in the hands of the people. To the people, therefore … is the credit due …

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.

Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found.

The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin …

A Barbary pirate, Pier Francesco Mola 1650 (Wikipedia Image)

James Monroe continued:

If we persevere … we can not fail, under the favor of a gracious Providence …

My fervent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed in our favor.

When Muslim Barbary Pirates committed terrorist attacks, President James Monroe refused appeasement and instead deployed the U.S. Navy, as he stated, March 5, 1821:

Our relations with the Barbary Powers are preserved … by the same means that were employed when I came into this office. As early as 1801 it was found necessary to send a squadron into the Mediterranean for the protection of our commerce.

In his 5th Annual Message, December 3, 1821, President James Monroe reiterated:

A squadron has been maintained in the Mediterranean, by means whereof peace has been preserved with the Barbary Powers …

From past experience … it is distinctly understood that should our squadron be withdrawn they would soon recommence their hostilities and depredations upon our commerce.

In 1823, President James Monroe, with the U.S. Congress, ordered Decatur, Alabama, to be founded in honor of Commodore Stephen Decatur, the renowned U.S. Naval officer who forced the Muslim pirates to surrender, thus ending the Barbary Wars.

In his First Annual Message, December 2 1817, President James Monroe stated:

In grateful acknowledgments to that Omnipotent Being … in unceasing prayer that He will endow us with virtue and strength.

On November 16, 1818, in his 2nd Annual Message, President Monroe stated:

For these inestimable blessings we can not but be grateful to that Providence which watches over the destiny of nations …

When we view the blessings with which our country has been favored …

Let us then, unite in offering our most grateful acknowledgments for these blessings to the Divine Author of All Good.

James Monroe, 5th President of the United States (Wikipedia Image)

On November 14, 1820, in his 4th Annual Message, President James Monroe stated:

When … we take into view the prosperous and happy condition of our country … it is impossible to behold … without being penetrated with the most profound and grateful acknowledgments to the Supreme Author of All Good for such manifold and inestimable blessings …

especially … our most excellent system of government, the powerful instrument in the hands of our All-merciful Creator in securing to us these blessings.

On March 5, 1821, in his 2nd Inaugural Address, President Monroe stated:

The liberty, prosperity, and happiness of our country will always be the object of my most fervent prayers to the Supreme Author of All Good ….

With a firm reliance on the protection of Almighty God.

On December 3, 1821, in his 5th Annual Message, President Monroe stated:

Deeply impressed with the blessings which we enjoy … my mind is irresistibly drawn to that Almighty Being, the great source from whence they proceed and to whom our most grateful acknowledgments are due.

On December 7, 1824, in his 8th Annual Message, President James Monroe stated:

For these blessings we owe to Almighty God, from whom we derive them, and with profound reverence, our most grateful and unceasing acknowledgments ….

Having commenced my service in early youth, and continued it since with few and short intervals, I have witnessed the great difficulties to which our Union has been exposed, and admired the virtue and intelligence with which they have been surmounted …

That these blessings may be preserved and perpetuated will be the object of my fervent and unceasing prayers to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.

President James Monroe, who was a member of the Episcopalian Church, admonished:

The establishment of our institutions forms the most important epoch that history hath recorded …

To preserve and hand them down in their utmost purity to the remotest ages will require the existence and practice of the virtues and talents equal to those which were displayed in acquiring them.

James Monroe wrote (James Monroe Papers, New York Public Library, Miscellaneous Papers and Undated Letters):

Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury; … of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms …

If these rights are … secured against encroachments, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.