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InvisibleBlack -> RE: Einstein On God (8/27/2009 7:51:27 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mnottertail
I am curious, does anyone have any quotes by god on Einstein?
Escher
Einstein was a devout Jew for most of his childhood. In his teen years, as he became fascinated with the science he was learning in school, he began to develop serious issues with the contradictions and illogic he saw in the doctrines of his faith. Later on he rejected all formal religion and the concept of an anthropomorphic "personal" Deity. However, much as with Isaac Newton, as he progressed in his understanding of physics, he came to the conclusion that the Universe must have been designed - becoming effectively a Deist. Einstein was not a religious scholar and so often had difficulty with certain terms of the exact meaning of the exact differences between various theological philosophies.
Some of his quotes:
"My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with tile consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature."
— Letter to Beatrice Frohlich, December 17, 1952; Einstein Archive 59-797
"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."
— Letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive With our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe, forms my idea of God."
— Quoted in the New York Times obituary April 19, 1955
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human understanding, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
— Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein, Towards the Further Shore (Victor Gollancz, London, 1968), p. 156; quoted in Jammer, p. 97
"I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional "opium of the people"—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims."
— Einstein to an unidentified adressee, Aug.7, 1941. Einstein Archive, reel 54-927, quoted in Jammer, p. 97
Far more detail can be found at http://www.einsteinandreligion.com
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