Day: January 11, 2008

Fellow Pensito Review editor Jon has made much of Mike Huckabee’s belief in a personal god, one who oversees the tiniest details of our lives and, when things aren’t going according to plan, intercedes. Huckabee, as Jon notes, explains his successes by claiming God wants him to be in the White House. He is not as quick to attribute his setbacks to the reverse.

All this coincides with my “reading” of the audiobook, “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson. Einstein rejected Huckabee’s idea of a personal god, believing instead in a more disinterested being, one with bigger fish to fry than say, who crosses the street when and what punishment to dole out for what screw-ups. Einstein took the position that such beliefs were both childish and superstitious.

“I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation…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.”

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”

“During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution, human fantasy created gods in man’s own image who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate influence, the phenomenal world.”

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one…I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously.”

“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.”

“Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history.”

Rev. Mike Huckabee, who claimed in late November that it was God’s will that his campaign for the presidency would succeed, has dropped to second place in the latest poll of South Carolina voters:

John McCain, 25 percent

Mike Huckabee, 18 percent

Mitt Romney, 17 percent

Fred Thompson, 9 percent

Rudy Giuliani, 5 percent

Ron Paul, 5 percent

Source is the Republican Party’s own Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll conducted Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2008.

God has really had poor Mike on a rollercoaster. First He delivered to Huckabee a miraculous win in Iowa, only to turn around and smite him with a third-place loss in New Hampshire. As recently as the day before yesterday, God seemed to be ready to deliver South Carolina unto Mike, only to scorn him with bad news today.

Maybe God wants Huckabee to stop consorting with adulterers like Dick Morris and former Sen. (and Baptist preacher) Tim Hutchinson.

George Bush toured the Holocaust memorial in Israel yesterday, and through tears, came up with a telling formulation about what his predecessor, Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, should have done to stop the horror at the German concentration camps:

It is impossible to imagine any other politician whose grandfather had profited from Nazi slave labor who could tour a Holocaust memorial with the media in tow and not be hounded for a comment on his grandfather’s role in the horror.

President George W. Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel’s Holocaust memorial and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial’s chairman said.

Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial today calling it a “sobering reminder” that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith.

Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims.

Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem’s chairman, Avner Shalev.

“Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes,” Shalev said.

At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said.

“We should have bombed it,” Bush said, according to Shalev.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, the saying goes, then every solution will look like a nail. Thus, in Bush’s primitive brain, the best way to have stopped the horror at the camps would have been to bomb the hell out of them.

Mainly, though, it’s hard to get past the cognitive dissonance of reading an honest, human utterance from Bush’s mouth that was not crafted by the White House political shop and then focus-grouped to ensure ambiguity.

It also reminds us of the unique kid-glove treatment George W. Bush receives from the media. It is impossible to imagine any other politician whose grandfather had profited from Nazi slave labor who could tour a Holocaust memorial with the media in tow and not be hounded for a comment on his grandfather’s role in the horror.

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