Einstein's God
A little over a month ago, a 1954 letter from Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind sold at auction for quite a lot of money - 170,000 pounds ($404,000 US dollars) - largely because Einstein wrote candidly of his religious viewpoints in it. The letter sold for so much, in fact, that avid atheist and evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins had to drop out of the bidding.
At the time of the sale, Einstein's religion got quite a lot of press regarding the religious tone of the letter, such as the following line:
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
However, this article by Daniel Finkelstein over at The Jewish Chronicle makes an excellent point that Dawkins and others who try to adopt Einstein to enforce their ideology are doing the complexity of his religious viewpoints a disservice. Dawkins pays lip service to Einstein's spiritual side in his book The God Delusion, but he is simultaneously dismissive of it having any substance.
While it's certainly true that, as pointed out by Dawkins and our own Atheism Guide, Einstein denied belief in a personal God who answered prayers, his viewpoints on religion and spirituality were quite complex and evolved over the course of his life. They were rarely what I would call dismissive and any attempt to use him to illuminate a narrowly defined viewpoint on the matter is generally based on ideology more than actual historical accuracy.
Religion must have been on Einstein's mind quite a bit in 1954, as his book Ideas and Opinion featured two prominent essays on the topic. One of them, "Religion and Science," is available online. Another, "Cosmic Religious Feeling," is also quite illustrative, as he outlines his view of the transformation of spiritual thought over the ages and how, fundamentally, work in religion, the sciences, and the arts are profoundly motivated by a deep need to understand the mysteries of the universe.
Einstein is certainly not the only prominent physicist to focus on questions of religion. Newton, for example, had very deep (and somewhat heretical) viewpoints on religion, for example. In the book Quantum Questions, philosopher Ken Wilber presents not only these essays from Einstein's but also mystical writings from Erwin Schroedinger, Werner Heisenberg, Louis de Broglie, Max Planck, Arthur Eddington, Wolfgang Pauli, and James Jeans.
In modern science, there's a lot less of this sort of public musing on religion by scientists. The ones who do tend to be viewed as crack-pots, such as Frank Tipler for his book The Physics of Christianity and other work. A genuine, candid discussion rarely takes place any more ... and, in fact, there's a growing rift between science and religion which I'm hardly the first to comment on.
Cosmic Variance, for example, pointed out last week this study involving academic viewpoints on religion - specifically biases against different religious groups. I think his observation that academics distrust the religious groups that tend to be most antagonistic to academia is probably pretty accurate ... and his link to a 2005 study on distrust of atheism is quite intriguing.
Comments
I personally find the religion v science “battles” entirely uninteresting and fundamentally flawed. These are two very different approaches to achieving two very different kinds of truths, and to pit them against each other would be like trying to say that apples were the superior fruit vis a vis oranges. Yawn.
The problem that I have is when one domain tries to make conclusions for topics better suited to the other. e.g. The Physics of Christianity, or, Intelligent Design. C’mon, people. Really? BORING =)
p.s. What’s up AZJ!!!
As Einstein acknowledges in the quote supplied, he did not mean by “God” what most people mean by “God.” Examination of his writings will also reveal that he did not mean by “religion” what most people mean by “religion,” and he did not mean by “faith” what most people mean by “faith.” It is no wonder that he is frequently misinterpreted.
“In modern science, there’s a lot less of this sort of public musing on religion by scientists.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing. I think it’s good that many scientists are intelligent enough not to speak on topics which are outside their own field of expertise. Take for example the several physicists who think that quantum mechanics has something to do with consciousness, or that consciousness is somehow required for quantum “observation.” This is an archaic dualism which has been abandoned by most biologists.
My comment that it’s a “bad thing” is only in the sense that Einstein could at least engage in a discourse with people of faith without inherently alienating them from science. His viewpoints might not satisfy the hardliners, but they do seem to allow for a discussion of how these concepts can work together. I do think that, to the degree he can be cited on such issues, he is frequently misappropriated by both sides of the debate.
Here’s a collection of articles by Einstein on the topic of science an religion, religion and science, and such. The link takes you directly to an excerpt from Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941, in which Einstein wrote the quote mine fodder, “The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” To make my point I shall reproduce the entire paragraph in which that line appears:
Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Let’s examine:
A NOMA claim which does not hold up. Are the realms of science and religion really clearly delineated? Why then do religionists so frequently cross over to make scientific claims?
A claim that “aspiration toward truth and understanding” springs from religion. Plainly wrong, unless one realizes that by “religion” he actually means “axiology.”
A claim that confidence in physical law is based on “faith.” Plainly wrong, unless by “faith” he means confidence based on more than half a millenium of experimental observation.
To the extent that Einstein’s views on religion are interpretable, they are overly simplistic and not well thought out. I’m thinking that if he had not commented on the topic, the world would not have missed much of value.
Modern physicists that have commented on the topic of religion, and who are not crackpots: Sean Carroll, who you mentioned. Steven Weinberg. Victor Stenger. Carl Sagan. Unfortunately none of the non-crackpots seem to share your conviction about science and religion not being at odds.
In my mind, it is inconceiveable that when you view MAN (Men and Woman) with the design of the Human Body that it could have been done by any thing less than an Intellegent designer. The Human Brain, the Autonomic system, the Skeletal System, the Eye, Ear, Heart. All of the wonders we are just learning about the body have been there functioning for thousands of years. Such as Speach, Reproduction, Man’s discovery of how to know what to eat, the discrimination of a fraction of an inch of movement. The precision of muscular control. And were still trying to figure out how a thought or a picture is stored in the Brain. Maybe we better take a better look at the subject of Man.
i tell u all u bleedy nouisance Einstein is the god of physics and i think no one have the courage in this world to beat him it seem very easy to say what he had done but when u hv the corage to do then show me what u hv done