Posted on 12/04/2018 1:51:13 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
A letter written in German by Albert Einstein in 1954 is going under the gavel on Tuesday. Experts at Christie's auction house in New York estimate the so-called "God letter" could sell for up to $1.5 million (€1.3 million).
"This remarkably candid, private letter was written a year before Einstein's death and remains the most fully articulated expression of his religious and philosophical views," said Christie's in a statement.
The missive is referred to as the "God letter" because it addresses how Einstein felt about the characterization of God and Judaism in a then-recently published book on the subject by Eric Gutkind. Gutkind, like Einstein, was a German-born Jew who had fled the Nazis to the United States.
"The Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and in whose mentality I feel profoundly anchored, still for me does not have any different kind of dignity from all other peoples," writes Einstein.
"The word God is for me nothing but the expression of and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends,” Einstein tells Gutkind. "No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this."
Specifically, Einstein did not believe that if there was a God, he answered individual prayers and intervened directly in human affairs.
The "God letter" passed into the hands of Gutkind's heirs, who kept the letter until it was sold at auction in 2008 for $404,000.
Notes from Einstein routinely fetch high prices, the most expensive of which was a 1939 letter to then-US President Franklin Roosevelt. In that letter, Einstein described "the construction of extremely powerful bombs," thought to denote the beginning of the Manhattan Project. It sold in 2002 for $2.1 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.dw.com ...
That’s too bad.
Einstein was a strict determinist. He didn’t even believe that God had free will.
I guess he knows now.
I enjoyed a scene in the Einstein series it had him meeting the King of Austria or Germany for an appointment at the university, the king asks him: are you afraid of God? Einstein said, I am terrified of him.
It would take a mind far greater than Einstein’s to find an equation that describes God.
Yep, Einstein now knows that while light imaging in the visual world is relative, God’s truths are eternal.
I hope he and Hawking are enjoying their retirement from fame and fortune.
He was obviously educated beyond his ability to think................
And professing themselves as wise, they became as fools.
A copy of the Bible can be had for free, and adherence to it built the civilization in which Einstein prospered.
Too bad. Other scientists have gotten criticized for saying the very existence of the Earth with oceans and land, animals and humans, the perfect distance of the sun and moon all point to intelligent creation.
Agree with ol’Einstein. Belief in a supernatural being is a sign of weakness and self delusion. But, if it keeps you from killing me and my family...believe on!
The error of human hubris is not in the belief that we know such a great amount of knowledge, but the belief that all knowledge is within our reach, on our own, no matter how distant in time it may take us to acquire it.
It is the imperfect being, the human, with an eqo that thinks perfection is within its reach, and thus that eqo must deny a perfect being to whom all knowledge is already known and much may always be a mystery to the human. The arrogant ego can’t take feeling so small and insignificant.
Well, ‘ol Albert’s a little disappointing, isn’t he?
As someone has already pointed out, he knows better now.
Einstein was a strong socialist. Atheism comes with socialism.
and yet, one of Einstein’s most famous quotes is, “God does not play dice with the universe...”
Don’t take the Mark. And good luck at the White Throne of Judgement.
Einstein was a brilliant physicist, a mediocre theologian.
I once had a university English professor who categorically forbade us on day one to write an essay touching on Christianity or Christ.
He later assigned not one but two essays by Ol’ Al on religion - including commentary on Christianity. I considered that egregious hypocrisy and fighting words.
I defiantly wrote a point-by-point rebuttal of Einstein’s sophistry without first seeking permission. I was prepared to flunk.
I got an A. The teacher was honest in his way, and acknowledged that my essay was brilliant, and that his assignment invited protest.
I was debating theologians at 16, and attending pastoral conferences at 19 (by special invitation).
Although I garnered multiple awards in the physical sciences, including physics, in my youth, I admit that Einstein was far my superior there.
On theology, I was far Einstein’s superior; he was just another overrated hack. (Take that as bragging as you like; I am through affecting false modesty after everything I have witnessed in secular society and the institutionalized church.)
I am so infernally sick and tired of seeing leftist icons heralded as experts on conservatism and Christianity.
Did Einstein think his brothers were forced to go into the business of selling coffee and bagels?
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