Well. Let's start with the Wikipedia version of the quote as if it were canonical.
>Nevertheless, he also expressed his belief that "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."
The disjunctive arrives from the first comma and that there aren't any conjunctive prepositions linking your object1 and object2. Thus the disjunct statements combined in this form are
A) "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity".
Wherein I'm not sure which group of prophets are antecedent here. "The prophets" in Christian theology refers to the minor prophets of the latter part of the OT.
and B) "if one purges Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."
As I said I accept the alternate reading that these two teaching, those arrived at through A and B, combined should instead be used to create the ultimate teaching.
However you appear to believe that he said it didn't create any teaching, it created an absence of teaching. You've heavily modified the scope of his intent without there being any indication as to how it should be modified. You say the Gospels were "written by priests" and so should be purged. Yet they are primary sources of what "Jesus Christ taught" (and indeed were not written by priests). He claims this process leaves one with an ultimate teaching. But your bowdlerised version of the methodology leaves one with nothing.
You appear to want this to say "imagine no religion" (or words to that effect), that such a thing would cure humanity of all social ills - despite this being outside of Einstein's area of genius I still can't believe he was such a fool.
Primarily the point was that based on my reading Einstein and Russell take importantly distinct positions, both agnostic. That categorising their attitudes to religion, and hence the scope of agnostic beliefs, as indistinct is unhelpful verging on disingenous. I'll hold that position for now unless you have much better arguments than you've so far put.
>Try it yourself. //
Ha. I became an atheist as a child until I realised that position is scientifically unsound. Going forward I studied philosophy, maths and physics. Then I became a Christian based on personal experiences.
Studying - and being presented as trustworthy - Haeckl and Hubble at high-school taught me not to trust someone for their reputation; neither the teachers nor the purportedly eminent scientists.
I use scientific methods which rather preclude me "turn[ing] to the scientists" who are as likely as any priest to have a bias. Ultimately I'm a pyrrhonist but practically, beyond first axioms [trustworthyness of sensedata, continuity of time dimension(s), and such] I'm a Christian as that is the empirical conclusion.
So you write a lot of text attempting to hide the fact that you are not capable of even trying to see how the Christianity would look like when purged of all additions, especially of those by priests. Paul was a priest. Authors of Gospels were priests from Jerusalem, Caeserea, Antioch, each with his own biases, who mixed different souces: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-document_hypothesis
Do read a little of Biblical scholarship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_studies, there are a lot of people who work to figure all that out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_problem
You're projecting. The passage gives no hints as to the opinions of Einstein on Pauline influence on Christian theology and in particular on the verity of the record of Paul's report of Jesus wrt the later named Christianity.
It doesn't matter one jot about _your_ argument - the point in contention is something entirely different, it is what Einstein referred to in a single line statement as the "Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it".
You wish to say that Einstein considered all the religious sources to be false, no? Then you leave Einstein saying that all that is required to cure all of humanities social ills is to teach nothing of Judaism and Christianity (all other religions would be allowed of course within this statement). Do you genuinely believe that to be first something Einstein would say and second to be true. It's laughably naive.
Your condescension does nothing to further your argument.
I'm going to end with this:
>'In an interview published by Time magazine with George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein spoke of his feelings about Christianity.[21] Viereck was a German born Nazi sympathizer who was jailed in America during World War II for being a German propagandist. At the time of the interview Einstein had been under the impression that Viereck was Jewish. Viereck began by asking Einstein if he considered himself a German or a Jew, to which Einstein responded, "It's possible to be both." Viereck moved along in the interview to ask Einstein if Jews should try to assimilate, to which Einstein replied "We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform."[21] Einstein was then asked to what extent he was influenced by Christianity. "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."[21] Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, to which he replied, "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."[21]' [ibid] //
That doesn't sound like the response of a man who is trying to say the gospels are all false. Perhaps these points represent different views at different times. But nonetheless the onus still lies with you to demonstrate your presented interpretation of the previously mentioned quote is correct.
My interpretation is of a man who categorically denied the existence of personal god, held a Newtonian belief in mechanistic causality which appears to some extent to contradict his own scientific revelations, admired Christianity as presented in the gospels but hated the later religious authorities that he saw as perverting Jesus message. A man who denied being atheist and always had a nagging feeling that there was some form of deity an author of the 'laws' that we reveal through our scientific endeavour.
And yes a person who's agnosticism was categorically divergent from that of Russell, ergo my initial comment.
Again you stick to the quotes from 1930 written by others about him. Jesus is "the personal god" to Christians, not just a human with the attractive message who doesn't resurrect. Einstein writes in his own book which he authorizes in 1949:
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls."
and Einstein explicitly wrote in 1954:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated." (The texts written by others claiming that he was "believer" were published during his life too, just like Wikipedia does it now. The statement continues:)
"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly." (That obviously refers both to the God of Old Testament and Jesus as Christians understand him "a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves").
"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."
Further on, also in 1954:
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text."
>Nevertheless, he also expressed his belief that "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."
The disjunctive arrives from the first comma and that there aren't any conjunctive prepositions linking your object1 and object2. Thus the disjunct statements combined in this form are
A) "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity".
Wherein I'm not sure which group of prophets are antecedent here. "The prophets" in Christian theology refers to the minor prophets of the latter part of the OT.
and B) "if one purges Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."
As I said I accept the alternate reading that these two teaching, those arrived at through A and B, combined should instead be used to create the ultimate teaching.
However you appear to believe that he said it didn't create any teaching, it created an absence of teaching. You've heavily modified the scope of his intent without there being any indication as to how it should be modified. You say the Gospels were "written by priests" and so should be purged. Yet they are primary sources of what "Jesus Christ taught" (and indeed were not written by priests). He claims this process leaves one with an ultimate teaching. But your bowdlerised version of the methodology leaves one with nothing.
You appear to want this to say "imagine no religion" (or words to that effect), that such a thing would cure humanity of all social ills - despite this being outside of Einstein's area of genius I still can't believe he was such a fool.
Primarily the point was that based on my reading Einstein and Russell take importantly distinct positions, both agnostic. That categorising their attitudes to religion, and hence the scope of agnostic beliefs, as indistinct is unhelpful verging on disingenous. I'll hold that position for now unless you have much better arguments than you've so far put.
>Try it yourself. //
Ha. I became an atheist as a child until I realised that position is scientifically unsound. Going forward I studied philosophy, maths and physics. Then I became a Christian based on personal experiences.
Studying - and being presented as trustworthy - Haeckl and Hubble at high-school taught me not to trust someone for their reputation; neither the teachers nor the purportedly eminent scientists.
I use scientific methods which rather preclude me "turn[ing] to the scientists" who are as likely as any priest to have a bias. Ultimately I'm a pyrrhonist but practically, beyond first axioms [trustworthyness of sensedata, continuity of time dimension(s), and such] I'm a Christian as that is the empirical conclusion.