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The Religious Beliefs of Albert Einstein: "I am not an atheist."

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"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." --A famous saying of Albert Einstein I'd never heard about.

Although never coming to belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe. The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed.

The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religion. --Einstein said ("Einstein, Albert" in The Enlightened Mind, ed. Stephen Mitchell; New York: Harper Collins, 1991):

[Albert] Einstein's theism, such as it was, was his faith that God does not play dice with the universe -- that there are elegant, eventually discoverable laws, not randomness, at work. Saying "I'm not an atheist," he explained:

"We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is." --George F. Will, "The Mind That Changed the World" in The Washington Post, 6 January 2005; Page A19 (URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51884-20...

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God... --
Another quote from Einstein, dated 18 April 1955 (source: James B. Simpson, Simpson's Contemporary Quotations, Houghton Mifflin, 1988; URL: http://www.bartleby.com/63/11/4111.html; URL: http://bartleby.school.aol.com/63/12/4112.html):

In a letter to V. T. Aaltonen (7 May 1952), Einstein explained his opinion that belief in a personal God is better than atheism. Einstein said, "Mere unbelief in a personal God is no philosophy at all." [Einstein Archive 59-059]

In a letter to Hans Muehsam (30 March 1954), Einstein said: "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever... This is a somewhat new kind of religion." [Einstein Archive 38-434]
echoz

14 responses // The Religious Beliefs of Albert Einstein: "I am not an atheist."

  • The graphic links to some other interesting Einstein quotes. The address link points to this article.

    "All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."

    "The important thing is not to stop questioning." ;D
    echoz
  • Einstein was wonderfully eclectic and, if not religious, at least deeply spiritual. Lots of quotes for and against the existence of God are there and surely many will be posted here.
    Here's something different: when asked directly if he was an atheist, he always replied angrily. Some quotes:
    "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human understanding, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
    -Towards the Further Shore (Victor Gollancz, London, 1968), p. 156; quoted in Jammer, p. 97

    It bugged him that people quoted him for or against religion; he did comment heavily on both sides, against blind atheism and organized religion mostly.
    By Anonymous Acoyauh on May 19, 2008 5:02 PM
    http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2008/05/was-eins...
    echoz
  • Another from Einstein:
    ...
    "You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or an eternal mystery. Well a priori one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by the mind in anyway. One could (yes one should) expect the world to be subjected to law only to the extent that we order it through our intelligence. Ordering of this kind would be like the alphabetical ordering of the words of a language. By contrast, the kind of order created by Newton's theory of gravitation, for instance, is wholly different. Even if the axioms of the theory are proposed by man, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the "miracle" which is being constantly re-enforced as our knowledge expands.

    There lies the weaknesss of positivists and professional atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only successfully rid the world of gods but "bared the miracles." (That is, explained the miracles. - ed.) Oddly enough, we must be satisfied to acknowledge the "miracle" without there being any legitimate way for us to approach it . I am forced to add that just to keep you from thinking that --weakened by age--I have fallen prey to the clergy" ...

    ??? From a letter to Maurice Solovine; see Goldman, p. 24
    By Anonymous Acoyauh on May 19, 2008 5:05 PM
    echoz
  • "Here's the problem with faith: that which are articles of it can't be proved. (According to our dictionary, faith is firm belief in something for which no proof exists. In other words, if such validations were possible, those concepts would stop being matters of faith and start being matters of fact.) Those who are convinced of the existence of God, therefore, have no incontrovertible, irrefutable answer to anyone who challenges them to provide evidence of the veracity of their belief systems' tenets. They are left unable to squelch the nay-sayers, to demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt that their inner direction is the right one, and so have to endure the catcalls and jeers of those who insist on independently verifiable proof of that which can't be proven."

    Nope, he didn't like atheists any more than organized religion. An interesting mind...
    By Anonymous Acoyauh on May 19, 2008 6:29 PM
    echoz
  • How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it...[I guess he's acknowledging the limitations of his own views here??? no notion of God? Yet he seems to say he loved to discover God's handiwork in life and nature...like it inspired him or something =P lol =D Albert was more complicated because he knew that's how life really is...]

    --Religion and Science
    By Albert Einstein, New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4. It also appears in Einstein's book The World as I See It, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, pp. 24 - 28.)

    he did constantly acknowledge a sense of utter wonder at the totally awesome and profound beauty and utterly crazy complex order of the universe as we experience it; though it's obvious the demands orthodox organized religion did not inspire him nearly as much. Although I don't think I've included them here, Albert had seemingly positive things to say about other religions as well, such as Buddhism. And he supported a few religious educational efforts as well! The Hebrew University at Jerusalem is one example. Albert went to the U.S. in 1921 largely to raise funds for the creation of the school. When they opened in 1925 they offered courses in Judaism, chemistry, and microbiology. He was one of the founders.
    echoz
  • "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." (Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955)

    Well...feeble seems rather harsh. He always did seem kinda grumpy =P I think he died like a year later. (oops! relative to a reprint that is: The following article [quote excerpted from] by Albert Einstein appeared in the New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4. It has been reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, Inc. 1954, pp 36 - 40. It also appears in Einstein's book The World as I See It, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, pp. 24 - 28.)

    And now only he knows for sure one way or the other how wrong or right he really was...I think it's important to remember that although Einstein didn't have a personal God, he was NOT an atheist and he was not a religious bigot either.
    echoz
  • And here I thought you were all like "phuck Einstein."
    Humdrum
    4 responses to this
  • *shrug* although an interesting "free-thinker" as far as any genuine faith and/or religion goes, who needs him, except some phuktup atheist-agnostic lying his ass off? --probably, exactly my point in making that statement at the time...albeit in heated exchange for the plethora of intentionally misleading and smug attitudes of religious indifference and intolerance; and then reaching so far to smear Einstein's name to justify that frank stupidity...it's despicable to me. If the truth hurts a$$holez like that, I don't feel too sorry...at least initially =P

    But no one really needs Einstein to justify faith in God.
    echoz
  • "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. 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." From a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954.
    esiesfg
  • that's retarded, and stunted thinking. yeah, esiesfg, it's the typical aggregate bunch of insignificant bs skirting the issue like a true whoosie would. he's talking about "religious convictions," you know? like going to church and taking the sacrament and all that. Not belief in God, per se.

    "I am not an atheist," then simply would mean, he is NOT an atheist. WTF. so what he didn't believe in a "personal" god. he still insisted to his dying day "God" does not play dice. The idea, being that even if he chose not to approach religion with any personal significance, sincerity, or diligence, he didn't inherently disbelieve in the possibility of God. Why would he then make mention of God in the manner that he did if he had absolutely no presumption of possibility to say the least?--no matter how inconvenient it is for you personally "possibly" to acknowledge it? And if you can at least, take possibility into account, then "I am not an atheist" should actually mean wtf it exactly says, anti-religioius political/scientific climate or not.
    echoz

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