Much unfortunate confusion is caused by failure to distinguish what can be called Einsteinian religion from supernatural religion. Einstein sometimes invoked the name of God (and he is not the only atheistic scientist to do so), inviting misunderstanding by supernaturalists eager to misunderstand and claim so illustrious a thinker as their own. The dramatic (or was it mischievous?) ending of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, 'For then we should know the mind of God', is notoriously misconstrued. It has led people to believe, mistakenly of course, that Hawking is a religious man.
One of Einstein's most eagerly quoted remarks is 'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.' But Einstein also said,
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.
Does it seem that Einstein contradicted himself? That his words can be cherry-picked for quotes to support both sides of an argument? No. By 'religion' Einstein meant something entirely different from what is conventionally meant. As I continue to clarify the distinction between supernatural religion on the one hand and Einsteinian religion on the other, bear in mind that I am calling only supernatural gods delusional.
Here are some more quotations from Einstein, to give a flavour of Einsteinian religion.
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat
new kind of religion.
I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or
anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic.
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we
can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill
a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a
genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with
mysticism.
The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems
even naive.
In greater numbers since his death, religious apologists understandably try to claim Einstein as one of their own. Some of his religious contemporaries saw him very differently. In 1940 Einstein wrote a famous paper justifying his statement 'I do not believe in a personal God.' This and similar statements provoked a storm of letters from the religiously orthodox, many of them alluding to Einstein's Jewish origins. The extracts that follow are taken from Max Jammer's book Einstein and Religion (which is also my main source of quotations from Einstein himself on religious matters). The Roman Catholic Bishop of Kansas City said: 'It is sad to see a man, who comes from the race of the Old Testament and its teaching, deny the great tradition of that race.' Other Catholic clergymen chimed in: 'There is no other God but a personal God . . . Einstein does not know what he is talking about. He is all wrong. Some men think that because they have achieved a high degree of learning in some field, they are qualified to express opinions in all.' The notion that religion is a proper field, in which one might claim expertise, is one that should not go unquestioned. That clergyman presumably would not have deferred to the expertise of a claimed 'fairyologist' on the exact shape and colour of fairy wings. Both he and the bishop thought that Einstein, being theologically untrained, had misunderstood the nature of God. On the contrary, Einstein understood very well exactly what he was denying.
An American Roman Catholic lawyer, working on behalf of an ecumenical coalition, wrote to Einstein:
We deeply regret that you made your statement . . . in which you ridicule the idea of a personal God. In the past ten years nothing has been so calculated to make people think that Hitler had some reason to expel the Jews from Germany as your statement. Conceding your right to free speech, I still say that your statement constitutes you as one of the greatest sources of discord in America.
A New York rabbi said: 'Einstein is unquestionably a great scientist, but his religious views are diametrically opposed to Judaism.'
'But'? 'But'? Why not 'and'?
The president of a historical society in New Jersey wrote a letter that so damningly exposes the weakness of the religious mind, it is worth reading twice:
We respect your learning, Dr Einstein; but there is one thing you do not seem to have learned: that God is a spirit and cannot be found through the telescope or microscope, no more than human thought or emotion can be found by analyzing the brain. As everyone knows, religion is based on Faith, not knowledge. Every thinking person, perhaps, is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons: (1) I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow being; (2) because I agree with the writer who said, 'There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another's faith.' . . . I hope, Dr Einstein, that you were misquoted and that you will yet say something more pleasing to the vast number of the American people who delight to do you honor.
What a devastatingly revealing letter! Every sentence drips with intellectual and moral cowardice.
Less abject but more shocking was the letter from the Founder of the Calvary Tabernacle Association in Oklahoma:
Professor Einstein, I believe that every Christian in America will answer you, 'We will not give up our belief in our God and his son Jesus Christ, but we invite you, if you do not believe in the God of the people of this nation, to go back where you came from.' I have done everything in my power to be a blessing to Israel, and then you come along and with one statement from your blasphemous tongue, do more to hurt the cause of your people than all the efforts of the Christians who love Israel can do to stamp out anti-Semitism in our land. Professor Einstein, every Christian in America will immediately reply to you, 'Take your crazy, fallacious theory of evolution and go back to Germany where you came from, or stop trying to break down the faith of a people who gave you a welcome when you were forced to flee your native land.'
The one thing all his theistic critics got right was that Einstein was not one of them. He was repeatedly indignant at the suggestion that he was a theist. So, was he a deist, like Voltaire and Diderot? Or a pantheist, like Spinoza, whose philosophy he admired: 'I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings'?
Let's remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a nonsupernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.
There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms like 'God is subtle but he is not malicious' or 'He does not play dice' or 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' are pantheistic, not deistic, and certainly not theistic. 'God does not play dice' should be translated as 'Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.' 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' means 'Could the universe have begun in any other way?' Einstein was using 'God' in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense. So is Stephen Hawking, and so are most of those physicists who occasionally slip into the language of religious metaphor. Paul Davies's The Mind of God seems to hover somewhere between Einsteinian pantheism and an obscure form of deism - for which he was rewarded with the Templeton Prize (a very large sum of money given annually by the Templeton Foundation, usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion).
Let me sum up Einsteinian religion in one more quotation from Einstein himself: '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.' In this sense I too am religious, with the reservation that 'cannot grasp' does not have to mean 'forever ungraspable'. But I prefer not to call myself religious because it is misleading. It is destructively misleading because, for the vast majority of people, 'religion' implies 'supernatural'. Carl Sagan put it well: '. . . if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying . . . it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.'
Amusingly, Sagan's last point was foreshadowed by the Reverend Dr Fulton J. Sheen, a professor at the Catholic University of America, as part of a fierce attack upon Einstein's 1940 disavowal of a personal God. Sheen sarcastically asked whether anyone would be prepared to lay down his life for the Milky Way. He seemed to think he was making a point against Einstein, rather than for him, for he added: 'There is only one fault with his cosmical religion: he put an extra letter in the word - the letter "s".' There is nothing comical about Einstein's beliefs. Nevertheless, I wish that physicists would refrain from using the word God in their special metaphorical sense. The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miraclewreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason.
Last Christmas, I was so fortunate to receive an Einstein biography as a gift. In it there are quite a few pages devoted to Albert Einstein's view on religion. Here is one subchapter about the Cosmic religion.
Den kosmiske religion
(The preceding subchapter dealt with the Einstein ring and gravity lenses and their beauty...that explains the start of this one...)
Det er helt til at blive religiøs af. Og det blev Einstein da også. Eller rettere: Han var det i forvejen, hele hans forskning var drevet af en dyb, religiøs følelse af, at der var orden på verden, og at denne orden var tilgængelig for mennesker.
"Det evigt ubegribelige ved verden er dens begribelighed," skrev Einstein i 1936. Det ligger en dyb religiøs følelse i dette udsagn: En undren over, at sådanne fjolser som os kan begribe det store under og tumle verden i sin helhed. Men det er ikke en traditionel religiøsitet, der handler om person-guder, som blander sig i menneskernes liv og har vilje og vilkårlighed.
"Hvad jeg ser i naturen er en storslået struktur, som vi kun kan erkende ufuldstændigt, men som må fylde enhver tænkende person med en følelse af ydmyghed. Dette er en ægte religiøs følelse, der ikke har noget at gøre med mysticisme", skrev Einstein i sine seneste år.
På samme tidspunkt skrev han: "Jeg tror ikke på en personlig Gud, og jeg har aldrig benægtet dette, men heller ikke udtrykt det klart. Hvis noget i mig kan kaldes religiøst, så er det en ubegrænset beundring for verdens struktur, som videnskaben kan afdække den."
Allerede i 1919 havde han erklæret, at han troede på "en Gud, der viser sig i altings harmoni, men ikke en Gud, der beskæftiger sig med menneskers skæbner og handlinger."
Dette religionsbegreb er en meget vigtigt idehistorisk størrelse, som Einstein er den smukkeste repræsentant for: den kosmiske religion. Den insisterer på den ene side på, at der ikke er en person-gud, en skaber, der sidder og trækker i snorene. Men på den anden side insisterer den lige så stærkt på, at der er en form for orden og harmoni, som vi udforsker gennem videnskaben - og at videnskaben ville blive helt meningsløs, hvis vi ikke troede på, at der fandtes en sðdan harmoni.
"Den kosmiske religiøse følelse er det stærkeste og nobleste motiv for videnskabelig forskning," skrev Einstein i 1930 i en artikel om videnskab og religion in New York Times. Einstein beskriver, hvordan store religiøse personligheder - profeterne, buddhisterne, Schopenhauer - altid har talt om en upersonlig gud og "ikke kender til dogmer eller en gud dannet i menneskets billede". Det kan således "ikke være nogen kirke", der bygger på sådanne indsigter, og det er "lige præcis blandt kætterne, at vi i enhver tidsalder finder de mænd, der var fyldt med den højeste form for religiøs følelse," skriver Einstein og tilføjer, at "de i mange tilfælde af deres samtidige blev opfattet som ateister eller som helgener."
"Hvordan kan en kosmisk religiøs følelse så kommunikeres fra et menneske til et andet, hvis ikke den kan føre til et bestemt gudsbegreb eller en bestemt teologi?" spørger Einstein i New York Times: "Efter min opfattelse er det kunstens og videnskabens vigtigste funktion at vække denne følelse og holde den i live hos dem, der har følsomheden over for den."
Det er således helt misvisende, hvis man driver videnskab af hensyn til dens praktiske anvendelse og økonomiske betydning, mener Einstein i artiklen, der foregriber moderne forsøg på at formulere en religion uden Gud.
"Det er ikke helt forkert," skriver Einstein, "når en samtidig iagttager har sagt, at i denne vor materialistiske tidsalder er de hårdtarbejdende videnskabsmænd de eneste dybt religiøse mennesker."
Ein St. Ein
-------
From Einstein, Einstein by Tor Nørretranders.
I think this chapter clearly explains Einstein’s view on religion and also reveals why many â€conventionally-religios†people have misunderstood him. The key points are in my view:
1. His clear denial of any belief in a personal God that deals with the fates and actions of humans.
2: His strong belief in a cosmic entity that has provided structure to the world.
The 2nd point can often be confused with the Christian belief of Intelligent Design, though I believe Einstein’s idea to be somewhat different, considering the 1st point: His strong dismissal of any personal God.
I think that chapter further strengthens Dawkins's point that Einstein didn't believe in a supernatural god. This is a fundamental difference from "conventional" religion, and the key difference between Einstein's philosophy and ID.
But I have to agree with Dawkins that "religion" and "god" are not the best terms to use in this case, as they are usually used to describe the supernatural gods or the belief in them.
vuzman wrote:
I think that chapter further strengthens Dawkins's point that Einstein didn't believe in a supernatural god.
I think you're mostly correct, atleast by most definitions of supernatural. This paragraph atleast clearly states that his "religion" has nothing to do with mysticism.
"Hvad jeg ser i naturen er en storslået struktur, som vi kun kan erkende ufuldstændigt, men som må fylde enhver tænkende person med en følelse af ydmyghed. Dette er en ægte religiøs følelse, der ikke har noget at gøre med mysticisme", skrev Einstein i sine seneste år.
A letter written by Einstein in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind has resurfaced. It was sold a year after it was written and has remained in private hands since then, and the contents, and even existence, has been unknown to Einstein's biographers and the rest of the world.
It came into the public spotlight when it was sold at a public auction a couple of weeks ago. The document leaves no doubt that the Einstein was no supporter of religious beliefs, which he regarded as "childish superstitions" and the "product of human weaknesses".
From the letter:
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 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.
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
When I wrote that post, I re-read the previous post with the lengthy quote from Tor Nørretranders biography on Einstein, and I realized that he has made a substantial error in his quoting of Einstein. Consider this part (my emphasis):
Jeg tror ikke på en personlig Gud, og jeg har aldrig benægtet dette, men heller ikke udtrykt det klart. Hvis noget i mig kan kaldes religiøst, så er det en ubegrænset beundring for verdens struktur, som videnskaben kan afdække den."
The correct quote is actually as follows (my emphasis):
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.
This completely turns the meaning of the quote around. Where in Nørretranders' quote Einstein says that he has been unclear on the point of his belief in a personal God, in the original quote he states, on the contrary, that he has been quite clear on the point.
In fact, have a look at the preceding sentence of the original quote (my emphasis):
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.
The meaning becomes even more manifest. Nørretranders is either deliberately misquoting Einstein (which I doubt), or grossly incompetent at reading, comprehending, and/or translating.
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
vuzman wrote:
The meaning becomes even more manifest. Nørretranders is either deliberately misquoting Einstein (which I doubt), or grossly incompetent at reading, comprehending, and/or translating.
That is one glaring mistake. His motive for it is hard to understand, since you're right. He is either deliberately misquoting or grossly incompetent, either of which is is career ender for an intellectual writer (which Nørretranders tries to be).
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
