Why in the world would Einstein suggest....

Well, Dale, that could be. but I don't see how it's relevant to my question. The question was about which one (between the earth and the train) is moving with respect to the other

Whether they are moving with respect to, for example, the Sun, doesn't enter into the question

A person who initially is stationary with respect to the Earth, but then accelerates for awhile, and then stops accelerating moving at a positive speed with respect to the Earth cannot be said to be "really moving." All you can say is that he is really moving with respect to the Earth.

This is false. That is exactly what he said.

Forgive me Lay but I still don't quite comprehend the q. I had thought in my reply that I had expressed the idea that the q is meaningless unless one assumes a stationary ref.

The question was about which one (between the earth and the train) is moving with respect to the other

When you move the atomic clock to an environment other than the one where it has been calibrated, the atomic clock will malfunction.

On March 25, 1984, Louis Essen wrote Carl Zapffe about Einstein's special theory of relativity:
My criticisms were, of course, purely destructive, but I think the demolition job was fairly complete.
I concluded that the theory is not a theory at all, but simply a number of contradictory assumptions together with actual mistakes.
The clock paradox, for example, follows from a very obvious mistake in a thought experiment (in spite of the nonsense written by relativists, Einstein had no idea of the units and disciplines of measurement).
There is really no more to be said about the paradox, but many thousands of words have been written nevertheless. In my view, these tend to confuse the issue.
One aspect of this subject which you have not dealt with is the accuracy and reliability of the experiments claimed to support the theory. The effects are on the border line of what can be measured.
The authors tend to get the result required by the manipulation and selection of results. This was so with Eddington's eclipse experiment, and also in the more resent results of Hafele and Keating with atomic clocks. This result was published in Nature, so I submitted a criticism to them.
In spite of the fact that I had more experience with atomic clocks than anyone else, my criticism was rejected. It was later published in the Creation Research Quarterly, vol. 14, 1977, p. 46 ff.

b]Louis Essen was the world champion of time measurement[/b] and introduced the new time standard based on the caesium clock rate. Essen understood that Einstein's special theory of relativity is empty of physical meaning and thus is no theory.

Essen passed away in 1972, but it is only a question of time before he will be revived and hailed as one of the few leading scientists who dared to express that relativity theory is empty, even at the price of spoiled career prospects.

http://claesjohnson.blogspot.nl/2014/01/louis-essen-relativity-not-theory.html

On March 25, 1984, Louis Essen wrote Carl Zapffe about Einstein's special theory of relativity:
My criticisms were, of course, purely destructive, but I think the demolition job was fairly complete.
I concluded that the theory is not a theory at all, but simply a number of contradictory assumptions together with actual mistakes.
The clock paradox, for example, follows from a very obvious mistake in a thought experiment (in spite of the nonsense written by relativists, Einstein had no idea of the units and disciplines of measurement).
There is really no more to be said about the paradox, but many thousands of words have been written nevertheless. In my view, these tend to confuse the issue.

Your statement that "many believe we now have discovered a motionless frame of reference" certainly doesn't apply to physicists. Maybe one or two crackpots, but certainly only the tiniest fraction of physicists.

We attribute the dipole anisotropy to the motion of the Earth and Solar System relative to the universal CMB radiation field and thus the distant matter in the Universe. This would seem to violate the postulates of Galilean and Special Relativity but there is a preferred frame in which the expansion of the Universe looks most simple. That frame is the average rest frame of the matter and CMB and from that frame the expansion is essentially isotropic....The CMB is then the standard frame of reference for cosmolgy work.

This view is shared by most, if not all, astrophysicists, from what I understand.

The theory of special relativity is based on the principle that there are no preferred reference frames. In other words, the whole of Einstein's theory rests on the assumption that physics works the same irrespective of what speed and direction you have. So the fact that there is a frame of reference in which there is no motion through the CMB would appear to violate special relativity! ....There clearly is a frame where the CMB is at rest, and so this is, in some sense, the rest frame of the Universe.

What question, Dale?

Quote:
The question was about which one (between the earth and the train) is moving with respect to the other

Would you say, Dale, that if no stationary reference point from which to judge "absolute motion" can be detected. then that means all motion is impossible?

It seems to me that both you and Brandon do not distinguish between relative and absolutely absolute motion. such thing

I had thought in my reply that I had expressed the idea that the q is meaningless unless one assumes a stationary ref.

Why in the world would Einstein suggest...that a man on a moving train does NOT know he is moving relative to the earth's surface, and not vice versa?

Do you consider Prof. George Smoot, of the University of California at Berkeley, who has, among other distinguished honors, won the "Einstein medal," to be some kind of "crackpot physicist?"

But for doing any physics experiment, any other frame is as good as this one. So the only difference is that in the CMB rest frame you measure no velocity with respect to the CMB photons, but that does not imply any fundamental difference in the laws of physics.

I see you specifically cut out part of the answer there.