Both sides have claimed Einstein for themselves – the religionists and the atheists. A letter he wrote in 1954 sheds more light on his personal views on the matter.
"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. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them."
More here.
Accidental Blogger 
15 responses to “Albert Einstein on Religion”
The Guardian’s science correspondent predictably fudges. His thesis? A lone bit of Einstein’s private correspondence will either “settle the matter” or it won’t. This is exquisite logic, if also useless information.
The best this story offers is Prof. Brooke’s reflection that “what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion.” It complicates the matter to the seeming discomfort of the correspondent, but I admire his honesty in reporting it.
LikeLike
While I’m at it, let me point to this Slashdot post, relevant here at least because it, too, includes an image of Albert Einstein. (His daughter, by the way, lives not far from me. I met here with a friend who has been writing a book about Einstein’s family.) The comments, as always, are provocative. And as I post, the Canadian server is down, having been “slashdotted,” i.e., hammered to a bloody pulp by curious readers linking from the post.
LikeLike
“what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion.”
That’s the point, isn’t it? For all of us? It is the tyranny of organized religions and the dogmatic “last word” uttered by all which are problematic.
LikeLike
Yes, it is the point, to my mind. Presumably, “what is usually meant” is organized religion, nothing more. That concept imports notions of hierarchy, discipline, and quaint artifice (rites, canons, Einstein’s “primitive legends, etc.). In some popular discussion, I suppose it also easily connotes dogma and tyranny. At that point, however, we’re talking as much about the politics of religion as about its theology. Einstein was evidently tolerant of the latter, and rightly disdainful of certain ridiculous or destructive manifestations of the former. But he should have consulted OED on the word god—or instances from Shakespeare—where he would have observed a range of significances, including some produced by human weakness. (What word doesn’t share such a genesis?)
LikeLike
Another “genius” has <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/opinion/13brooks.html?_r=1&oref=slogin”>weighed in.
Brooks of course, in his ignorance equates refined cognitive explanations with spirituality (contra-materialism). That science itself does not consider the human brain a “cold machine” is beyond the comprehension of “squishy” spiritualists like Brooks. Also, that religionists unsurprisingly use “materialistic” explanations for god, heaven and soul is another contradiction they cannot handle with equanimity.
As I have mentioned here many times before, mystery, beauty, symmetry, harmony, leaps of faith and abstract thoughts are not contradictions in the scientific thought process – blind faith is. But who’s listening?
Anyway, why are you and I engaging in this “dead horse” debate? What happened to that Mystery Writer link I sent you where a crime is solved by synesthesia?
LikeLike
What does Eight Belles have to do with it?
Sorry. Bad joke. As are most of mine.
I don’t recall receiving the synesthesia link. Care to resend?
Meanwhile, Brooks’ ponderous musings are enough to make a hard-core materialist out of me. Epiphany is a function of what one eats for breakfast. You are right, Ruchira. There is no contradiction posed by the inexplicable, indescribable joy I glean from, say, a stirring performance of the Emperor Concerto, with the rigors of scientific method.
LikeLike
Since you mentioned the Brooks article about ‘science killing the soul’, I think this debate between Dawkins and Pinker bears rereading. Dawkins makes an interesting distinction between two different interpretations of the term ‘Soul’ and contends that while Soul 1 may be ‘killed’, Soul 2 has the opportunity to grow.
LikeLike
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
Unfortunately, most people go with a comfortable hybrid of pseudo-science and bad faith.
I grew up entrenched in right-wing evangelical thinking, so I’m more than happy to be reactionary: I loathe religion. Tolerance is always an important consideration…but mood is an important motivation (inverted faith, I guess you could call it).
“Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions”
Brooks is apparently becoming the poor man’s Kant. It’s embarrassing.
LikeLike
I don’t know about the Brooks genetic-disposition-for-goodness theory (from what I’ve seen of human nature, people simply don’t behave fairly or with empathy), but the idea that there is a universally shared intuition that morality itself exists (and is objective/universal) is a pretty interesting one to me.
LikeLike
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
I think it was this quote from Kant, about his categorical imperative, that Brooks’ statement brought to mind. Of course, Kant was re-working Hegel, so I guess it’s okay.
LikeLike
The categorical imperative, or that formulation of the categorical imperative, is a re-working of Hegel? I didn’t know that.
LikeLike
“I didn’t know that.”
Which is good! I confused Hegel and Leibniz. Hegel and the other German Idealists were working off of Kant. My sense is that the Monadology of Leibniz gave Kant a nice framework to build from.
“the idea that there is a universally shared intuition that morality itself exists (and is objective/universal)”
Monads! Leibniz posited the existence of invisible, interconnected…um…monad things, which were apparently the beginning of an attempt to accomplish this. I think. I never quite got monads. I think they were something like souls lacking individual personalities? Sort of?
Wait…does that mean Republicans are monads? Or are they personalities without souls? Hmm. I’ve never made a monad/Republican connection before.
LikeLike
I just looked at the wikipedia description of monads. I’m more confused now than I was before.
LikeLike
Sujatha:
The interview with Dawkins and Pinker is very interesting. But it is long. I have looked at just the first four or so pages. Will check out the whole thing later. Unlike Dean’s reaction (via e-mail), Dawkins so far has not impressed me as a “bonehead.” He makes sense – Soul 1 and Soul 2 notwithstanding. But then, I may be a bonehead when it comes to something so exultant as religion. I have a link stored somewhere about Carl Sagan’s excellent take on universal ethics and morality. Must dig it out.
Matt:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
How else can we delude ourselves with dogma?
Brooks is not Kantian, Hegelian or Nietzschian. He is just plain squishy, mushy, drooly Brooksian.
Joe:
That you are wondering about the genetic predilection for morality and altruism so late in the day, proves that you don’t read this blog regularly and carefully ;-)
LikeLike
Despite Ruchira’s early lament in these comments that the debate is trite, it seems to have generated lively interest. I took the deserved swipe at Dawkins, because his remarks and the way he fashions them suggest to me that he either isn’t thinking about the subject, or he’s only doing so strategically. Regarding the 1 and 2 business, I’ll only note that it’s a neat conceit that nevertheless diminishes the range of the OED entries he consulted. (But good for you, Dawkins, for looking it up in the first place!) His reading of the passage from Keats is more ridiculous, albeit not so much as the fact that it drove him to write a book in “reply” to it. It isn’t an expression of an “anti-scientific attitude,” as if poetry were nothing more than an account of one’s preference for chocolate over vanilla, but an expression of an emotional circumstance, the disturbance at rational explanation having evacuated something pleasantly or awesomely mysterious. Dawkins essentially announces that Keats somehow opposes science–which may very well have been a biographical fact that would affect the reading of the verse, but would not account for its manifestation as poetry–and then proclaims him wrong. Yet the evidence of the poem suggests that Keats and those who read the text empathetically do experience a deflation of awe. I can only imagine that Dawkins ignores this empirical datum to use the poem to represent nothing more than an anti-scientific ideology.
He similarly avoids any sort of argument or persuasive demonstration when he avers, “Religions are not imaginative, not poetic, not soulful.” He does so “cunningly” (his word respecting the title of the talk and its confusion of meanings of “soul”), by ascribing the opinion to Sagan. He, Dawkins, is merely reporting Sagan’s criticism. Rather than refute or correct or refine the words he puts in Sagan’s mouth, however, he alters course and proclaims the wise humility of science: “Now, there are, of course many unsolved problems, and scientists are the first to admit this.” The sweeping, almost meaningless remarks about religions (a term he might have thought to look up in OED, too) are there to be cited, but are otherwise not elaborated. This is another “cheap debating trick.”
LikeLike