Albert Einstein’s name has become synonymous with
genius, and a genius indeed he was. Einstein is
most famous for conceiving the general
theory of relativity. He also contributed a mathematical description of
Brownian movement and to the quantum theory. Because of his outstanding
contributions to physics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize 1921. His
scientific contributions are recognized as the most important of the
twentieth century and towers as a giant in science, together with
Galileo and Newton.
Einstein was born in Germany in 1889 in a
non-practicing Jewish family. His father was a businessman who was never
able to achieve any lasting economic success. Religion was discouraged
in the Einstein home and, therefore, Albert never received any
instruction in the Jewish faith by his immediate family. Furthermore, he
did not become Bar Mitzvah and never mastered Hebrew.[i]
Albert attended a Bavarian public school where he received
a Catholic education. At the same time, he was given a Hebrew religious
education from a distant relative who taught him “the elements of Judaism.”[ii]
When he was eleven, he entered a very intense religious phase, and became
quite committed to keeping the Jewish precepts he had learned. He also
“composed several songs in honour of God which he sang enthusiastically on
the way to school.”[iii]
This phase came to an end when in high school he
transferred his passion to a love for science, though he never lost his
fascination for God as Creator, and remained “by his own definition…a deeply
religious man.”[iv]
By age eighteen, he confirmed the presence of a
spiritual side to his life and a certainty that it would accompany him to
the end of his life: “Strenuous labour and the contemplation of God’s nature
are the angels which, reconciling, fortifying, and yet mercilessly severe,
will guide me through the tumults of life.”[v]
Einstein was faithful to this statement and indeed framed his whole
professional life with much labour and an obsessive determination to
understand the Force that was behind existence. In his mid-twenties he
“…felt compelled to comprehend what might have been intended for our
universe by The Old One (As he referred to his notion of God).”[vi]
Like his great predecessors, Galileo and Newton,
Einstein had no doubt in the fact that a Greater Power had created and
maintained the universe. Unlike them, though, his views were not Bible
based. In fact, though he faithfully read the Bible throughout his life, he
did not accept the miraculous events described therein, though he greatly
valued its moral precepts. At the age of fifty, he wrote to his former
religious teacher the following: “I often read the Bible, but its original
text has remained inaccessible to me.”[vii]
Nevertheless Einstein kept God at the centre of his
scientific endeavours throughout his life. He shared this ongoing passion
one day with a young physics student: “I am not a family man. I want my
peace. 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.”[viii]
As the Theory of Relativity was being scrutinized in
America, some erroneously concluded that Einstein was an atheist. Rabbi
Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled him and asked him whether or not he
believed in God. Einstein cabled back: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who
reveals himself in the harmony of all being, not in a God who concerns
himself with the fate and actions of men.”[ix]
This statement from Einstein himself summarizes the
essence of Einstein’s belief in the Divinity, but it has been misunderstood
by some to mean that Einstein’s God simply stood for “…an orderly system
obeying rules…,”[x]
that is a God who is the universe and manifests Himself within it, rather
than an intelligent mind that created the universe and whose brilliance
could be deduced by the intricacies and the laws found therein as Einstein
appears to imply.
Through the years, Einstein took the opportunity to
clarify his theological views on various occasions. We will now proceed to
summarize them based on some of his well-known writings and speeches.
In 1931 Einstein published an article in the magazine
Forum and Century titled, “The World as I See It.” After summarizing his
ideas on scientific and social issues, he proceeds to address his views on
true religiosity:
“A knowledge of the existence of
something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and
the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are
accessible to our minds—it is this knowledge and this emotion that
constitute true religiosity; in this sense and in this sense alone, I am a
deeply religious man.”[xi]
Einstein clarifies that he does not believe in a God
who rewards and punishes humans. Furthermore, he expresses certainty in the
view that there is no afterlife for humans, and that people who believe in
such a hope do so either because of “fear or absurd egoism.”[xii]
He instead was satisfied with the opportunity to exist and to marvel at the
wonders of creation: “I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of
life and with the awareness of and a glimpse of the marvellous structure of
the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a
portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
[xiii]
In 1930 Einstein wrote another article titled, “About
Religion,” for the New York Times Magazine. In this article he first
of all asserts three stages in the development of religion. Firstly, the
“primitive stage” which is the result of fear of hunger, wild beasts,
sickness, death. Humans at this stage create illusory gods that they can
turn to for their various needs. Various sacrifices are offered to appease
them and get favours from.[xiv]
The next stage is the creation of the “God of morality.”
According to Einstein, “This is the God of Providence, who protects,
disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who…loves and cherishes the life of
the tribe or of the human race, or even life itself; the comforter in sorrow
and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead.”[xv]
Interestingly, Einstein sees in the Bible an evolution
from a religion of Fear, in the Old Testament, to a religion of morals, in
the New Testament. The religions of civilized areas of the world are
predominantly moral religions, though all are a blending of both fear and
moral religions.[xvi]
What is common to most such religions is the “anthropomorphic” view of God,
that is a God with human features and qualities.
But there is one more stage that only people “of
exceptional endowments and exceptionally high-minded communities” that are
able to rise to any considerable extent above the second stage to the third
and highest stage: the “cosmic religion” stage, “which knows no dogma and no
God conceived in man’s image.” Democritus, Francis of Assisi and Spinoza are
some of the few that reached such a stage and of course, though unstated,
people like himself.[xvii]
The individual who embraces such a religion “has no use
for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion.”[xviii]
A god who rewards and punishes is unthinkable to him for the simple reason
that man’s action are dictated by internal or external necessity, so that in
God’s eyes he cannot be held responsible.[xix]
Thus human ethics should be based on sympathy, education, and social ties
and needs only, without any religious base.
It is this “cosmic religious feeling” that is the
“strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”[xx]
In fact, Einstein went a step further by declaring that in our materialistic
world “…the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious
people.”[xxi]
In this sense, he thus belonged to this category of the
“profoundly religious” who studied the universe to understand the mind of
its Creator.
The “religious” scientist was further described in
another article written in 1934 in which he is described as an individual
fascinated by the “sense of universal causation” and who’s religious feeling
“takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law which
reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the
systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant
reflection.”[xxii]
By 1939 Einstein became quite confident in propagating
his views against anthropomorphic religion. In a speech at the Princeton
Theological Seminary he forcefully proposed that the time had come for them
to take the lead in dismantling religions based on the view of a “personal”
God: “In the struggle for ethical good teachers of religion must have the
stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is give up the
source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast powers in the
hands of priests.”[xxiii]
They also should avail themselves of “the forces that are capable of
cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, in humanity itself.”[xxiv]
These “forces” are provided by scientific reasoning and research that can
help the human condition.
Einstein, therefore, invites religion to join forces
with science so as to work together to become positive forces in improving
the lot of humanity. They, in fact, “need” each other in this quest as
“science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”[xxv]
But to do so religion must first of all free itself from the “dross” of
anthropomorphism and embrace and teach a religiosity that is free of fear
and hope in the afterlife and focus instead on liberating humanity from
fears and egocentric cravings and desires.
In January 1951, Einstein stressed the importance of
religion in a letter to the Ethical Culture Society. Ethics, according to
Einstein, need
to be given special emphasis, as science alone cannot save
us.
He then proceeds to condemn
society’s focus on developing an “intellectual attitude often solely to the
practical and factual” which has produced an “impairment of ethical values.”
(xxvii)
And which has “come to lie like a killing frost upon human
relations.”
The cultivation of this very important element is not to be left to science
but to religion that is free of superstition. Religion should therefore be
an important part of education, though
it,
unfortunately, according to
Einstein, is receiving “too little consideration”
xxix] Einstein refers to this reality as a “sin of
omission” and concludes with the warning that without a religion-based
“’ethical culture’ “...there is no salvation for humanity.”(xxx)
Perhaps the ethical system that he supported may have
been that which he had proposed in 1934: “If one purges the Judaism of the
Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent
additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching
which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity.”(xxxi)
In spite of his great admiration for the ethical
principles found in the Bible, to the end of his days Einstein rejected the
view of a “personal God” in the Judeo-Christian tradition and continued to
embrace the view of that God is a creative mind that manifests Itself
in the wonders of nature. There was no change in this view as he approached
his sunset years, and he died holding on to it to
the very end.
POST SCRIPTUM (MAY 30, 2008)
DID
EINSTEIN CHANGE HIS MIND ABOUT GOD'S EXISTENCE?
Recently a British newspaper announced that a letter
by Einstein had been sold which contained “new revelations” about
Einstein’s views on God, the Bible and the Jews. In this letter the famous
physicist reportedly wrote to the Jewish philosopher, Eric Gutkind
the following:
“... 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)(xxxii)
The conclusion of some is that this
statement unequivocally proves that Einstein concluded his life as an
atheist. It is the view of this author that this conclusion
is premature.
In trying to understand Einstein’s statements, we must keep in
mind the following:
1. 1.
Einstein, for decades had
been clear and unequivocal about believing in “Spinoza’s God," and that
he did not believe in the “personal” God of the Bible, or that the Bible was
divine in origin.
2. 2.
His views were consistent over
many years, and there no
other evidence of any departure from such views.
3. 3.
The context of the letter appears to be Gutkind’s elevation of Jewish
"Monotheism," that is
a personal God.
4. 4.
It
appears reasonable to conclude, therefore, that in using the word “God”
Einstein may have simply referred to the concept of a Monotheistic Personal
God, which he had already
repudiated.
5.
Unless something drastic happened in his thinking at the end of his life, it
is the view of this author that Einstein’s pantheism may have remained,
therefore,
intact.
It is conceivable that more material may come forth in the future that might
further elucidate if there really was any evolution in Einstein’s
theological thinking. Until then, it is the view of this author that the
above-mentioned “revelation” may not be a revelation at all, but a
confirmation of views that Einstein had asserted and been faithful to for
decades.
Michael Caputo
WORKS CITED
[i]
Pais, Abraham, Subtle is the Lord…
The Science and Life of Albert Einstein. Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1982, 38.
[vi]
Bodanis, David, E=mc2. A Biography
of the World’s Most Famous Equation. Doubleday, Canada, 2000, 74.
9
Schillp, Paul, Arthur, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Volume
One. London: Cambridge University Press, 1969, 103.
[viii]
Clarck, Ronald, W. The life and
Times of Einstein. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1971,
18-19.
[xi]
Einstein, Albert, “The World As I See
It.” In Seelig, Cal (Ed.) Albert Einstein: Ideas and Opinions.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 1982, 11.
[xiv]
Einstein, Albert, “Religion and
Science.” In Seelig, Cal (Ed.) Albert Einstein: Ideas and Opinions.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 1982, 36-37.
[xxii]
Einstein, Albert, “The Religious
Spirit of Science.” In Seelig, Cal (Ed.) Albert Einstein: Ideas and
Opinions. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1982, 40.
Einstein, Albert, “The
Need for Ethical Culture.”
In Seelig, Cal (Ed.) Albert Einstein: Ideas and
Opinions. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1982, 53.
Ibid, 54.
(xxx)Ibid, 54.
(xxxi)
Einstein, Albert, “Christianity and Judaism.”
In Seelig, Cal (Ed.) Albert
Einstein: Ideas and Opinions. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1982, 184-185.
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