I remember one uncomfortable instance of Einstein worship, which took place right before my eyes in graduate school. The course was listed as physics, general relativity. The praise I heard from the professor for Albert Einstein made me feel like I was in church, except for the fact that I've never been in a Christian church that would worship Jesus Christ so deeply and passionately like this professor was praising and extolling the virtues of Einstein.

Have you ever read in a book or magazine or even seen in a PBS documentary some testimony that ascribed superhuman abilities to Einstein?

It is a simple matter of record that Time magazine emblazoned Albert Einstein on its December 31, 1999 cover, designating him "Person of the Century." Inside that issue he was called "first among the century's giants," "its greatest scientific genius," "the person who, for better or worse, personified our times and will be recorded in history as having the most lasting significance," "a symbol of all the scientists," "the world's first scientific supercelebrity," "the century's greatest thinker," and even "the patron saint of distracted schoolkids."

Another indisputable proof of Einstein worship is this frank admission by Einstein himself:

"It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular assessment of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque." From a 1921 interview with a Dutch newspaper, reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, p. 3 and The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, p. 8.