[Motorcycleboy]

A recent book by Walter Isaacson has revealed that none other than Albert Einstein, the most revered scientist in history, actually believed in God!

Isaacson devotes a significant amount of his book to this undisputed fact, but most telling is a interview Einstien had with George Sylvester Viereck, a German Journalist, on the occasion of Einstein's 50th birthday.

Quote:

To the question "Do you believe in God?," Einstein replied,

"I'm not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws."

This from arguably the greatest scientific mind in history.

He goes on to profess a deep appreciation for Jesus and a devotion to his own Jewish faith.

Science is good at explaining "how". But it can never explain "why."

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Why are the laws of physics absolute?

Etc.

[sandorski]

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. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

Taken from here...also includes many other of his quotes concerning "god"

[Toro]

I heard an interview the other day with a prominent physicist that this has been mis-interpreted, and that Einstein was upset that people took what he said out of context.

[toothpick]

Toro wrote:

I heard an interview the other day with a prominent physicist that this has been mis-interpreted, and that Einstein was upset that people took what he said out of context.

Albert Einstein wrote:

I'm not an atheist.

Please, if you will. Re-interperit this to mean Albert Einstein *was* an atheist.

[ShepherdsDog]

What does a belief in God really have to do with being a brilliant scientist? Is it somehow detrimental to his credibility?

[Scape]

Only if he believed in global warming as well.

[sandorski]

toothpick wrote:

Toro wrote:

I heard an interview the other day with a prominent physicist that this has been mis-interpreted, and that Einstein was upset that people took what he said out of context.

Albert Einstein wrote:

I'm not an atheist.

Please, if you will. Re-interperit this to mean Albert Einstein *was* an atheist.

It is clear that Einstein's use of the word "god" is not the same as Religions use of the same word. He may not be an "Atheist", but he certainly isn't a "believer" either.

[ShepherdsDog]

agnostic might be a more appropriate term

[Toro]

toothpick wrote:

Toro wrote:

I heard an interview the other day with a prominent physicist that this has been mis-interpreted, and that Einstein was upset that people took what he said out of context.

Albert Einstein wrote:

I'm not an atheist.

Please, if you will. Re-interperit this to mean Albert Einstein *was* an atheist.

I didn't say he was an atheist.

If I recall the interview correctly - and I can go find it if you wish as an audio file - was that Christians were using his reference to God to validate their belief in a Christian God, which was not what he meant. Or so I believe the physicist said.

[toothpick]

Toro wrote:

If I recall the interview correctly - and I can go find it if you wish as an audio file - was that Christians were using his reference to God to validate their belief in a Christian God, which was not what he meant. Or so I believe the physicist said.

Right then. I can see that.

It seems I mis-interperited... what symmetry.

sandorski wrote:

he certainly isn't a "believer" either.

It seems he simply wasnt a believer in a religion-specific god, rather he believed in a more universal god.

[sandorski]

toothpick wrote:

Toro wrote:

If I recall the interview correctly - and I can go find it if you wish as an audio file - was that Christians were using his reference to God to validate their belief in a Christian God, which was not what he meant. Or so I believe the physicist said.

Right then. I can see that.

It seems I mis-interperited... what symmetry.

sandorski wrote:

he certainly isn't a "believer" either.

It seems he simply wasnt a believer in a religion-specific god, rather he believed in a more universal god.

No, I think you keep thinking about it in Religious terms. Einstein's "god" is not a being, it is a state of being(wonder, awe, etc).

[CanadianGigolo]

Hm...... I don't think Einstein believed that there was a god. But "time" was the factor to the creation of humans.
I know, I'm going to sound like a broken record {CD} , but Time and the warming of Earth created life. And I believe he knew this....

You can go to my blog, He's part of the theory, that I 've not yet added..... This religous view is goin to be very sticky subject, I think, depending how open minded people are!

good topic!

[Blue_Nose]

Motorcycleboy wrote:

He goes on to profess a deep appreciation for Jesus and a devotion to his own Jewish faith.

Bullshit, and exactly wrong.

Einstein wrote:

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. [Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.]

Einstein wrote:

I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiratation of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God. [Albert Einstein, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, p.66]

Einstein wrote:

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms. [Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955]

Einstein wrote:

I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. [Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism. Article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997]