Posted on 05/12/2008 6:22:59 PM PDT by Aristotelian
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between believers and non-believers wanting to claim the greatest scientist of the 20th century as their own.
A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument - or at least provoke further controversy about his views.
Due to be auctioned this week in London after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, the document leaves no doubt that the theoretical physicist was no supporter of religious beliefs, which he regarded as "childish superstitions".
Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.
In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel's second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God's favoured people.
"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
But I'll happily admit that I could be wrong and Albert was some sort of Deist. I just don't think the evidence leads there.
“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
This comprehensibility fits right in with the Judeo-Christian, Abrahamic view of God.
God is good, consistent, and FAITHFUL. He is not capricious, as most other religions define their deities.
If He were capricious, it would be an exercise in futility to try to empirically discover the laws of the universe.
This is why all Modern Science developed in Western (Judeo-Christian based) cultures. It’s also why Islam completely stopped advancing in the 12th century - they had killed off or converted all that didn’t believe in Allah (”who must not be ‘chained’”).
Yes, he was that as well.
As RaMBa"M said, "Moses is the father of all wise men, both those that came before, and those that came after."
“It is the height of arrogance for man, Einstein or whomever, to claim that he, or any man, could understand the cosmos and all that is contained therein, given the time and capacity to observe and theorize.”
...and how dare Einstein even try to understand the world around him!!
“We cannot comprehend the incomprehensible.”
And for some the incomprehensible is even moreso....
jwalsh07, you wrote: "I could be wrong and Albert was some sort of Deist. I just don't think the evidence leads there."
The evidence would have to include his statement, above.
It is a completely non-doctrinal statement, unaffiliated with any particular religious creed. On that basis, I wouldn't try to "classify" Einstein in terms of any particular religious confession at all, or even Deism.
We do know that he often referred to "The Old One," and strongly identified with "The Tribe." It seems to me the spiritual impulse goes very deep in Einstein, and that he did believe in a Creator (that he does not define, perhaps being aware that to do so would be an exercise in anthropocentrism). I believe he just had little use for "religion" as we usually think of it, as being, perhaps, too human and thus subject to foolishness.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me jwalsh!
I so agree. Thank you so much, Mr. B, for your excellent post!
as=ask (sorry)
For the same reason Susan Sarandon is an authority about Iraq.
Who exactly do you two consider to be an "authority about God"?
Is one person's opinion more valid than another?
I wonder what he thinks now.
Einstein, Heisenberg, and Tipler, after equal invariant intervals in purgatory, find themselves before the Throne of God.
As a man, they exclaim, “What did I do to merit an eternity down (brrrrr) there”?
God thought for a moment; when you're omnipresent in spacetime there's no need for haste. He turned first to Einstein.
“Albert,” he said, “you showed your species My creation in its most elegant form, law without Law. Then, inflamed by wartime passion, you urged the transformation of your discovery into a weapon of mass destruction.”
Einstein shuffled his feet and nodded subtly. He resisted the temptation to stick his tongue out. God turned His omniscient Eyes toward Heisenberg.
“Werner, you discovered that I do play dice, and you glimpsed that I have to if anything interesting's going to happen—your last words were, ‘I will ask Him why there is turbulence’. I will answer you, ‘So there can be Heisenberg’. But you stayed in Germany, Werner! You worked on a reactor for Hitler; you taught physics to brown-shirted Nazi thugs. You'll recall that my Son is Jewish.”
“Frank, Frank, Frank,” God continued, “didn't you read my book? I read yours, you know. Does the phrase `Thou shalt have no other gods before me' ring a bell? How about `I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending'? You not only wanted to have another God before Me, you wanted to be Him. And the money, Frank…do you know how piddling an advance I got for the Bible? And you assumed causality—you Frank! You should know me better than that.”
Tipler, almost defiant, raised his head and fixed God with a cold stare. “Why are there singularities in Your universe?”
“Because there are things I don't want you to know,” God responded calmly.
Heisenberg, his dying question answered, remained silent, pondering the choices he'd made during his life on Earth.
Einstein seized the moment, “Look, Old One”, he said, “physics is local. You made it that way; I figured it out. But why is there that spooky action-at-a-distance nonlocality in quantum mechanics?”
God chuckled. Even experiencing all of spacetime at once, such events were rare. “Albert, your greatest talent has always been not finding the right answer—anybody could do that—but asking the right question. Your generation learned physics assuming I was a great watchmaker; you destroyed that notion, but most of you died off before it became evident what I was. I create abstract systems from pure information, Albert. I'm a programmer.
“Quantum nonlocality is a bug.”
God turned to Saint Peter. “Einstein and Heisenberg go to Heaven. Send Tipler to the massive rotating cylinder to try again. Next case.”
God hated these Judgement Days; he couldn't wait (to the extent that's possible for an omnipresent being) to get back to his craps game with Wotan, Jove, and Shiva. Saint Peter looked up from his infinite scroll, “Fourth Commandment: blasphemy—eternal damnation. Send in Lederman and Hawking”.
What was it about these physicists, God wondered, as they approached the Throne.
That was great. BTT.
Einstein's opinion on matters not relating to physics is probably no more valid than anyone else's. But we often take an authority or expert in one area and believe that anything they say is more important. So if I made a pronouncement on God, it would not show up in the news, but the opinions of Einstein and Sarandon, because of their fame, are newsworthy. That is what I was refering to.
Bill Gates died and found himself in purgatory being sized up by St. Peter.
"Well, Bill, I'm really confused on this call. I'm not sure whether to send you to Heaven or Hell. After all, you helped society enormously by putting a computer in almost every home in America, yet you also created some ghastly and buggy software. I'm going to do something I've never done before in your case: I'm going to let you decide where you want to go."
Bill replied, "What's the difference between the two?" St. Peter said, "I'm willing to let you visit both places briefly, if it will help your decision."
"Fine, but where should I go first?"
"I'll leave that up to you."
"Okay then," said Bill. "Let's try Hell first."
So Bill went to Hell. It was a beautiful and clean. Bill saw a sandy beach with clear waters and lots of bikini-clad women running around, playing in the water, laughing and frolicking about. The sun was shining, the temperature perfect. He was very pleased.
"This is great!" he told St. Peter. "If this is Hell, I really want to see Heaven!"
"Fine," said St. Peter, and off they went.
Heaven was a place high in the clouds, with angels drifting about, playing harps and singing. It was very nice, but not as enticing as Hell.
Bill thought for a quick minute, and rendered his decision. "Hmmm. I think I'd prefer Hell," he told St. Peter.
"Fine," retorted St. Peter, "as you desire." So Bill Gates went to Hell.
Two weeks later, St. Peter decided to check on the late billionaire to see how he was doing in Hell. When he got there, he found Bill shackled to a wall in a dark cave, screaming amongst hot flames, being burned and tortured by demons.
"How's everything going?" he asked Bill.
With his voice filled with anguish and disappointment, Bill responded, "This is awful! This is nothing like the Hell I visited two weeks ago! I can't believe this is happening! What happened to that other place, with the beautiful beaches and the scantily clad women playing in the water?"
"That was a demo," replied St. Peter.
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
— Albert Einstein
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 egotism.
— Albert Einstein
A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
— Albert Einstein
Einstein — someone I recognize as a deeply spiritual person — is “rationalizing” here.
"The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is."This is what I meant when I said that Einstein was a deeply spiritual person.-- Albert Einstein, "My Credo," presented to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, Autumn 1932, cited in Einstein: A Life in Science, by Michael White and John Gribbin, ed., London: Simon & Schuster, 1993, p. 262.
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