The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-12-09
Page Four
&14;%.A-
"Cosmic" Nonsense
BY JORGE

However much we may have admired Lydia
Pinkham for making most effective pink pills
for pale people" is no reason for accepting her
word as to who really wrote the great dramas
known as, but also disputed as being, the work
of Shakespeare
We are moved to speak thus in introducing
few lines about the visitor nearing "our" Shores
Professor Albert Einstein. We may accept every
thing the old Prof says as to the rays of light
bending around planets whether we understand
the whole idea of relatively or not, but we pro-
test when, as recently, the eccentric old duffer
tries to blossom out as a sociologist or what
have you.
Most particularly were his remarks on religion
and science. as published in the N. Y. Times of
Nov g. open to criticism, nor has he improved
matters by Jumping fascism and Bolshevism to-
gether and then adding to these stupidities by
making fuss in support of British imperialism
against self-determination of the oppressed Arab
peoples, disguised as support of zionism against
Britain.
But Wen stick to religion and science Here
the professor. for reasons best known to himself
thinking it necessary to be polite to organized
and capitalized superstition, wandered out into
mysticism and was instantly snapped up by
whole pack of capitalist watchdogs as another
of those scientists who have made peace with
religion. A phenomenon, by the way, illustrat-
ing the reactonary trend of every phase of de-
cadent capitalism,
He should not have trifled with the word "re-
lieion" at all or should have denounced it for
what it. in essence is, a superstition which is,
as Marx Said-"the opium of the people" In
stead he tried to identify it as an ethical in
terpretation of life and thus venturing into So
GEOLOGY Topped around like a fish out of water,
but securely hooked by capitalist apologists who
have need to hide capitalisms reliance upon ig-
norance behind screen of scientific" JUS
LITIGATION,
Einstein identified his own concept as being
"cosmic religion" as distinct from either the re-
ligion of fear or the religion" of social feelings.
Defining "cosrnic religion" he says that: THE
individual feels the vanity of human desires and
aims and the nobility and marvellous order
which are revealed in nature and in the world
of thought He feels the individual destiny as
an imprisonment and seeks to experience the
totality of existence as a unity full of Signi-
ficance"
Now. we may not understand the Professors
theory of relatively but we do understand this
statement of his as so much mysticism. mys-
ticisn. moreover, definitely helping capitalism to
persuade the masses it brutalizes every day OF
their lives, that although their individual des-
tinv is. as he says San Imprisonment" there is,
DeNOQQ LllB grave DSyOI4U JIG NdAllOy VI Iiu-
man desires and aims" beyond this hell of
starvation and oppression, a unity full of sig
nificance" when the "totality of existence" is
summed up.
The vanity of human desires and aims" is
the hoary stock in trade of every skinflnt par
son who tries his hand at strikebreaking and
persuading the poor to be satisfied with that
condition in life ito which God, in His infinite
wisdom has assigned them"
And try as he might, by stating that men of
scientific research are "the only deeply reli-
gious people" and specifying as he did that "the
churches have always fought against science
and prosecuted its supporters" the old codger
had said "a" and so the whole hierarchy of
superstition. protestant, catholic jew; church
men both liberal" and fundamentals" took
up the "a" and said d. "c"-and the rest of it.
We might write a lot more, but space here
only allows us to sum up by saying that when
Ford gives his opinions on relatively, we'll say
he knows something about auto production; and
when Einstein talks about religion we'll have to
say that he is supposed to know a heap about
science but if he tries to identify the two, we'll
begin to suspect there's something phoney about
his science.