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The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.”
Albert Einstein, letter to a Rabbi in Chicago; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 69-70.
It is the presumption of a simpleton to make statements about the religious feelings of others of this sort, whether your name is Albert Einstein or Jawbone Assininious. Elitism has many forms, some pecuniary, some religious, and some "intellectual". Intelligence, on the other hand, comprises the quality of truth in some degree above the common prejudice.
God: the essential concept
A cow could perhaps have a concept of "God" like that in the Einstein quote above. Maybe the response to say a magnificent bull whose presence clearly evokes the idea of a Supreme Bovine that must not be crossed. . . . Maybe the response to a mounted cowboy with a rope, a gun, and a stun stick, as well. Like most of us in our earliest encounters with authority we cannot challenge, the response is to "comply" just the way governments expect humans generally to "comply" in a manner seen as least troublesome to management.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the God contemplated is something very different. God is in that tradition, at least in the sacred texts, is something more "ideal", of a moral character that inspires rather than enslaves, of an intellect that transcends rather than confines, or a heart that embraces rather than despises. . . . In Jesus a Prince who gives Himself for his people, in Moses a God who is in Himself Holy in every regard where man is, without the effort to worship and obey Divine imperatives, just profane.
That God is above and beyond the human nature is what provokes us to imagine things like the Trinity, or if you are an old-style Mormon, perhaps a Father with accomplished education and character, and millions of years in the compassionate service of others.
A cow could perhaps have a concept of "God" like that in the Einstein quote above. Maybe the response to say a magnificent bull whose presence clearly evokes the idea of a Supreme Bovine that must not be crossed. . . . Maybe the response to a mounted cowboy with a rope, a gun, and a stun stick, as well. Like most of us in our earliest encounters with authority we cannot challenge, the response is to "comply" just the way governments expect humans generally to "comply" in a manner seen as least troublesome to management.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the God contemplated is something very different. God is in that tradition, at least in the sacred texts, is something more "ideal", of a moral character that inspires rather than enslaves, of an intellect that transcends rather than confines, or a heart that embraces rather than despises. . . . In Jesus a Prince who gives Himself for his people, in Moses a God who is in Himself Holy in every regard where man is, without the effort to worship and obey Divine imperatives, just profane.
That God is above and beyond the human nature is what provokes us to imagine things like the Trinity, or if you are an old-style Mormon, perhaps a Father with accomplished education and character, and millions of years in the compassionate service of others.
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Males and females are two sides of a teeter totter, and both have equal weight.
If the male moves to the female side what happens to the balance. If the female moves to the male side what happens?
As to the treatment offered what specifically are you talking about? Not agreeing on your cage idea, of course.
This is fun, TM. When I claim my wife has "equal weight" I have to dodge something hefty. . . .
"equality" is a qualifier term, and requires a careful statement of parameter(s), equation(s), or items deemed "equal". In terms of cognition, females have such different brain structures from men, and such different input portals as well, it is absurd to assert "equality". Same thing with musculature and skin. To me it is a nowheresville argument to discuss "equality" between men and women because I don't even think that's an "ideal" worth pursuing. Honoring others for their inherently different but awe-inspiring capacities is the better ideal.
I liked your teeter totter analogy, and the "ideal" of balance in that sense, though. Probably a lot of young men will always have the "might makes right" barbarism and/or arrogance, and probably a lot of women will rightly reject such "manliness" as an inelegant notion portending future abuses. . . . The guy who loves and respects and honors the woman of his choice is the one I'd hope does the procreating. . . .
and, for OB, no. . . . a sensible fellow will not make a cage of the roles, but merely a useful tool than can be efficiently applied to problems at hand, like how to best rear the kids. Clearly, women have some talents for caring for their children, and men have some talents for the workplace, particularly in jobs such as lifting heavy stuff, building fences. Some women might be able to do better at those things than many men, but probably it would still be better for the kids to have mom on diaper patrol and dealing with the mayhem of the toy jungle. I did some duty as Mr. Mom, and I confess Mrs. Mom is eminently superior. Mrs. Cowhand, however, never could "tote that bale".
I guess, knowing no better, it's a good thing to have some outfit out there on the net holding forth with "investigations" of fact like this. I worked for someone who knew Einstein pretty well, and could relate actual life experiences with the man. All in all, the things that make it into print, out of anyone's life, are a very few items out of a practical infinity of actions, words, ideas, and realities that comprise an individual's life. . . .
The reason I wouldn't bother to "investigate" a claimed "quote" like this is because it just rings true to things I know, or have heard, about the man. Henry E. Eyring liked to put Einstein down, with a sort of "small-man flourish", much in the same spirit that he would shock and awe his own students by pulling up his pantlegs and demonstrate his standing leap up to the table-top. Pretty impressive for a little man only five foot five. And being able to truthfully relate that "Einstein didn't know beans", and elaborating about a stroll across the Princeton campus with Einstein, where the unpresumptious genius stooped and pointed to some bean sprouts, and asked "what are these?" was a true experience.
Einstein was the sort of genius who had the humility to ask all the right questions. And by all accounts, he was a deeply religious soul as well, in his own way.
well, the way the story goes as I encountered it, Paul Bunyon and Babe were responsible for clearing about every forest there ever was, as well as stomping out the lakes of Minnesota, scraping up the debris that comprises Pike's Peak in an afternoon's tussle, and plowing the Grand Canyon on another. . . .
I suppose our notion of "pilgrim" usually entails some kind of faith/quest, but for a practical working man, getting the job done is just about as "sacred" as anything.
So, anyway, looking at the context of this quote, it would seem to me to be the important thing to consider the person he was writing to. And the time it was written, and putting that context around the quote. It would be like Einstein to respond to a contemporary issue in the rhetorical language of his time, as a way of presenting a reasonable response to what others are thinking.
One of the reasons some folks "get the press" is because they are willing to "play the game" as the day requires. I see this quote as an effort to move the discussion beyond the stumblingstones of the more common and less elegant notions of "God" towards something that could inspire a "second-glance" at faith in a more careful thinker. . . .
The statement here about the charged defect in faith, as being merely an anthropocentric knee-jerk, goes to the fact that he could see more to "faith" than that. . . . He clearly was going towards the concept that whether any of the common notions of "God" are correct or not, we humans have the capacity that transcends those notions and can approach actual truth, and form actual moral principles that will lift us out of the muck, so to speak, to achieve a better sort of life-basis. . . .. indeed, this is not the "usual" religious presumptions, but an enquiring and searching intelligence we can and must strive for. . . .
again. . . . . probably better "morals" than the usual froth trotted out by secular humanists as well. . . . . and certainly better "morals" than any set of laws made out by legislators or tyrants. . . .
Einstein was speaking for himself and people like him, not religious people. In context, he is responding to a man who who asked him whether his theories were evidence for God (or something similar), IIRC.