In his autobiography Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein recounted that, at a charity dinner in New York, Einstein had remarked:
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.
This story was published in 1968, which was 13 years after
Einstein’s death, when he could not comment on the veracity of the
quote.
Löwenstein was a Catholic activist, decorated by the Pope for his services to the Church, and the autobiography’s title
“Towards the further shore”
indicates its apologetic intent. Was Löwenstein accurately reporting
Einstein? We don’t know, though he is hardly a disinterested party and
the quote is thus suspect. What we do know is that many people, as
shown by this example, want to deny that Einstein was an atheist.
Such claims also circulated when Einstein was alive. In 1945
Einstein received a letter from Guy Raner, saying that a Jesuit priest
had claimed to have persuaded Einstein to abandon atheism.
Einstein replied (letter to Guy Raner, 2nd July 1945):
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.
Another example comes from 1954, the year before Einstein’s death. A
correspondent had read an article about Einstein’s supposed religious
views, and wrote to Einstein asking whether the article was accurate.
Einstein answered:
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. [letter
24th March 1954, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by
Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, Princeton University Press. Hereafter
"AE:THS"]
Despite the above, many people point to Einstein as a rebuke to
atheists, a supposed example of a preeminent scientist flatly rejecting
atheism. People who are prepared to accept that Einstein lacked belief
in a
personal god, nevertheless insist that he was not an atheist, and that he did believe in a god of some sort.
This position is expounded by Max Jammer in his book
Einstein and Religion.
At the end of a chapter aiming to show that Einstein believed in God,
Jammer maintains that “Einstein always protested against being regarded
as an atheist”, giving Löwenstein’s supposed quote as evidence, and
states that: “Einstein renounced atheism because he never considered
his denial of a personal God as a denial of God. This subtle but
decisive distinction has long been ignored”.
Jammer continues, quoting Einstein’s phrase “science without
religion is lame, religion without science is blind”, which Jammer
regards as a “statement that summarizes [Einstein's] religious credo”,
and adds somewhat sarcastically that in saying it Einstein “did not use
the term ‘religion’ to mean ‘atheism’”.
Didn’t he? Well, actually, we have a very good idea of what Einstein
meant by “religion” in that phrase, since he had explicitly stated it
just before:
Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations
of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and
relationships between facts. [...] 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. [Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, 1954, reproduced here]
Thus Einstein’s word “religion” had a very non-standard meaning that
was nothing to do with any god, and thus has no bearing on whether he
was an atheist. Indeed by “religion” he explicitly meant only
“aspiration toward truth and understanding” and “faith in the
possibility” that the world is “comprehensible to reason”. I have never met an atheist who would not subscribe to those!
Few people who quote that
“science without religion is lame” snippet mention what follows immediately afterwards:
I must nevertheless qualify this assertion once again on
an essential point [...] This qualification has to do with the concept
of God. During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution
human fantasy created gods in man’s own image, who, by the operations
of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence,
the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods
in his own favour by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the
religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the
gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact
that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the
fulfilment of their wishes. …
… teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God.
This points to a problem in interpreting Einstein’s words. He often
used religious language and metaphors, but what did he mean by them?
Did they signify a belief in God, or not?
To answer that we need to consider what qualities an entity needs in
order to qualify as a “god”. These surely need to be god-like
qualities. That includes intelligence and purpose, and great capability
to pursue such purposes. An apophatic god that lacks such qualities
(and whose actual properties are left unspecified) hardly qualifies as
a “god”.
In particular, an apersonal, amoral universe that follows the
regularities of the laws of physics but has no awareness, purpose,
oversight, or capacity for caring, is not a “god”. To claim that it is
— in anything other than a weak and inapt metaphorical sense — is
simply an abuse of language, a desire to believe in God, any god,
sufficiently strong that one is willing to slap the label on anything.
So what did Einstein believe about “God”? Was his language purely
metaphorical or not? We can answer this question fairly
straightforwardly, provided we look below the surface metaphor and ask
what qualities Einstein believed the universe to have, since on that he
was quite straightforward and explicit.
Einstein on God
Einstein
was educated at a Catholic school, but his religiosity “reached an
abrupt end at the age of twelve” as he concluded that Bible stories
were untrue and that “youth is intentionally being deceived by the
state through lies”.
Let’s start with
Einstein’s own autobiographical account:
As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every
child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came — though
the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents — to a deep
religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of
twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached
the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.
The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled
with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the
state through lies; it was a crushing impression. [Autobiographical Notes, 1979]
As a result of this loss of faith, at age 13 Einstein declined to
undergo the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, a break from tradition even for
secular Jews. And when it came to the education of his own children,
and the religious education they would receive at elementary school,
Einstein stated:
I dislike very much that my children should be taught something that is contrary to all scientific thinking. [Einstein, his life and times, P. Frank, p.280]
In the last year of his life
Einstein wrote to the philosopher Erik Gutkind:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression
and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable,
but yet quite primitive legends. No interpretation no matter how subtle
can (for me) change this. [...] For me the Jewish religion like all
other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.
Other quotes include:
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his
creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves.
Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that
survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd
egoism, cherish such thoughts. [The World as I See It, 1949, Philosophical Library, New York]
There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. [The World as I See It, 1949, Philosophical Library, New York]
“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. [...] Morality is of the highest
importance—but for us, not for God.” [Einstein Archives, letter 5th Aug 1927 from a Colorado banker]
And in an interview with Professor William Hermanns, Einstein said:
I cannot accept any concept of God based on the fear of
life or the fear of death or blind faith. I cannot prove to you that
there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him I would be a
liar. [Einstein: the life and times, by Ronald W. Clark, World Pub. Co., NY, 1971, p.622]
In a letter to a Christian woman who had asked about souls, Einstein wrote:
Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and
combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a
body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning. [...]
The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in
the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for
me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. [1921 letter, AE:THS]
Einstein on the nature of the universe
The preceding quotes clearly demonstrate Einstein’s rejection of the
personal god of the traditional Abrahamic religions. But we should also
ask about Einstein’s view of nature; did it include some other type of
“god”? And what did Einstein mean by “religion”?
Einstein explicitly rejected life after death and any moral agency beyond humans.
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. [1953 letter, AE:THS]
How about a “purpose” or “goal” or “meaning” behind the universe? These, also, Einstein explicitly rejected. Here
Einstein clarifies a mistranslation:
The misunderstanding here is due to a faulty translation
of a German text, in particular the use of the word “mystical”. 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. [1955/55 letter, AE:THS]
Here is a letter from 1950 to a
19-year-old in despair at seeing no purpose to life.
Einstein argues that purposes derive from the desires of people. It is
therefore a conceptual error to think of mankind as a whole, or nature
as a whole, as having a “purpose”. That could only be the case if some
god or nature as a whole had desires, feelings and thought, a concept
that Einstein rejected:
I was impressed by the earnestness of your struggle to
find a purpose for the life of the individual and of mankind as a
whole. In my opinion there can be no reasonable answer if the question
is put this way. If we speak of the purpose and goal of an action we
mean simply the question: which kind of desire should we fulfill by the
action or its consequences or which undesired consequences should be
prevented? We can, of course, also speak in a clear way of the goal of
an action from the standpoint of a community to which the individual
belongs. In such cases the goal of the action has also to do at least
indirectly with fulfillment of desires of the individuals which
constitute a society.
If you ask for the purpose or goal of society as a whole or of an
individual taken as a whole the question loses its meaning. This is, of
course, even more so if you ask the purpose or meaning of nature in
general. For in those cases it seems quite arbitrary if not
unreasonable to assume somebody whose desires are connected with the
happenings. [letter, Dec 1950, AE:THS]
Running through Einstein’s thought is a thorough-going determinism,
an acceptance that human actions and choices are determined by physical
laws, and a consequent rejection of the notions of dualistic “free
will” that underpin much theology. For example:
“A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable for the
simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity,
external and internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible,
any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it
undergoes. [``Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930]
And
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of
all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left
by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different
nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will
exists as an independent cause of natural events. [Ideas and Opinions, Einstein, 1954, pp.41--49]
And in his 1932
“My Credo” speech he says:
I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer’s
words: “Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills”
accompany me in all situations throughout my life … ["My Credo", 1932]
This is also seen in the above-quoted
letter to the religious Jew Erik Gutkind, where Einstein refers to the notion of free-will as “self-deception” and an “intellectual prop”:
As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from
causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But
a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful
Spinoza recognized with all incision [...] With such walls we can only
attain a certain self-deception [...] What separates us are only
intellectual “props” and “rationalization” in Freud’s language.
In a letter to a colleague, Einstein wrote:
I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many
of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He
Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence
could excuse Him. [letter to Edgar Meyer, 2nd Jan 1915, Einstein Archives]
About his own attitude Einstein wrote:
I began with a skeptical empiricism more or less like
that of Mach. But the problem of gravitation converted me into a
believing rationalist, that is, into someone who searches for the only
reliable source of truth in mathematical simplicity. [letter to C. Lanczos, 24 Jan 1938, Einstein Archives, 15-267]
Einstein also insisted on an external reality, entirely independent
of humans, rejecting the solipsistic notion of reality or truth being
human constructions. This is seen, for example, in
Einstein’s dialogue with the Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore. They are discussing whether truth and beauty are independent of man:
EINSTEIN: If there were no human beings any more, the Apollo Belvedere no longer would be beautiful?
TAGORE: No!
EINSTEIN: I agree with this conception of beauty, but not with regard to truth.
TAGORE: Why not? Truth is realized through men.
EINSTEIN: I cannot prove my conception is right, but that is my
religion. [...] I cannot prove, but I believe in the Pythagorean
argument, that the truth is independent of human beings.
TAGORE: In any case, if there be any truth absolutely unrelated to humanity, then for us it is absolutely non-existing.
EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you are!
Another revealing piece is Einstein’s 1936 letter to an 11-yr-old,
who had been encouraged by her sunday-school teacher to ask Einstein
whether scientists pray. Einstein replied that they didn’t, though he
softened the message with some sympathetic language:
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything
that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this
holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist
will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a
prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.
However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws
is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the
existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of
faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the
success of scientific research.
But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the
pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the
laws of the Universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one
in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In
this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a
special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of
someone more naive. [letter, 1936, AE:THS]
So was Einstein an atheist?
Einstein explicitly rejected belief in a personal God. He regarded
these as anthropomorphic, saying that “human fantasy created gods in
man’s own image”, and that: “The word God is for me nothing more than
the expression and product of human weaknesses”. He regarded the Jewish
Bible stories as “childish superstitions”, and the teaching of religion
(as he himself had received on being sent to a Catholic school) as
“youth [being] intentionally deceived by the state through lies”.
Einstein thoroughly embraced materialism and determinism. He
insisted that reality existed entirely independently of humans. He
rejected the idea of an immaterial soul and the idea that an individual
would live on after death (saying that such notions were “absurd
egoism” for “feeble” people). He rejected notions of “purpose” or
“will” beyond the animal and human domain. He said that he had “never
imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal”. He rejected the idea that human
life had any purpose or goal.
He said that he could not conceive of a god who had “a will”, he
rejected the idea of prayer, and that there was any god who could
answer prayers, or who could “reward or punish his creatures”. He
considered that “there is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely
human affair”. He said that notions of gods, free will, and purpose to
life, were “only intellectual `props’ and `rationalization’”.
So, yes, Einstein was an atheist. The above amounts to a
thorough-going atheism in line with that of the most “strident” of New
Atheists. Did Einstein ever declare belief (in explicit, clearly
non-metaphorical language) in some property of the universe that was
incompatible with atheism? Not as far as I’m aware.
Max Jammer’s claim that Einstein was not an atheist seems to rest
(in his first two chapters) on a superficial reading of a few
sound-bites, and making interpretations motivated by a desire to
reconcile Einstein with Jewish theology. This is followed (in his third
chapter) by projecting his own theological ideas onto Einstein. I
suspect that Einstein would have rolled his eyes at the suggestion, for
example, that the age of the universe can be reconciled with a literal
Genesis by appealing to relativistic time dilation.
If Einstein was supposedly a deist, believing in some sort of “non
personal” god, what actual properties of the universe does such a
stance entail that are incompatible with atheism? If the answer is some
sort of universal awareness or intelligence with purpose and goals,
then Einstein explicitly denied any such thing.
Believing in an atheistic universe but choosing to call that
universe “god” does not negate the fact that you are still an atheist.
After all, atheism is about how one envisages the world actually to be,
not about mere choice of words.
Yes, Einstein did declare himself to be “religious”, but he also
told us explicitly what he meant by that. By religion he meant:
“unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it” and “aspiration toward truth and understanding”
and “faith in the possibility” that the world is “comprehensible to
reason”, and “humility” that we can comprehend nature only “very
imperfectly”, coupled with the belief that an external world and truth
about that world exist independently of human conceptions of it. By
that terminology Richard Dawkins is also highly religious!
As Einstein wrote to a friend about how he used the word “religion”:
I can understand your aversion to the use of the term “religion” to
describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself
most clearly in Spinoza, [...] [But] I have found no better expression
than “religious” for confidence in the rational nature of reality,
insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is
absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism. [Letter to Maurice Solovine, 1 Jan 1951; Einstein Archive 21-274]
And:
My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the
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]
And:
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever…. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. [Letter to Hans Muehsam March 30, 1954; Einstein Archive 38-434]
Yes Einstein saw value in what he referred to as “religion”, saying for example:
Religion is concerned with man’s attitude toward nature
at large, with the establishing of ideals for the individual and
communal life, and with mutual human relationship. [Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, New York, 1954]
Such concerns are indeed of the highest value to us, but in the
absence of any divine foundation (which Einstein explicitly rejected),
they can just as aptly be referred to as “humanism” instead of
“religion”.
In this context, it seems most reasonable to regard Einstein’s
references to “God”, such as in the following quotes, to be
metaphorical, referring to the ultimate nature of the universe, but not
referring to any agency with intelligence, awareness and purpose:
“I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe.”
“I want to know God’s thoughts… The rest are details.”
“When the solution is simple, God is answering.”
This interpretation is supported by the several times in which he
stated something in both metaphorical and non-metaphorical language, to
make the meaning explicit. For example:
What I am really interested in is whether God could have
created the world in a different way; in other words, whether the
requirement for logical simplicity admits a margin of freedom. [to Ernst Gabor Straus, quoted by Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p.124]
But didn’t Einstein call himself an agnostic?
Yes he did, for example:
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]
And:
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a
personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do
not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose
fervour is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters
of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of
humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual
understanding of nature and of our own being. [Letter to Guy Raner, 28th Sept 1949.]
Of course agnosticism and atheism are not incompatible, and most
atheists are also agnostics (suggestions that they are mutually
exclusive rest
on misunderstanding the terms).
Einstein seems to have adopted the term “agnostic” because it was less
“strident”, less confrontational to believers. He didn’t share the
“crusading spirit” sometimes associated with the term “atheism”.
This desire not to cause unnecessary offence is seen throughout
Einstein’s writing on the subject, particularly in the letters to
children and other believers quoted above, and should be borne in mind
when interpreting his meaning.
The article from which the “science without religion is lame”
snippet comes is a long argument that religions should abandon belief
in god and become atheistic, but it is phrased in a diplomatic and
conciliatory way. This non-confrontational style means that it is
possible to cherry-pick quotes from Einstein as being very sympathetic
to traditional religion, when reading more fully shows the opposite.
But wasn’t Einstein sometimes very critical of atheists?
Yes! Einstein did at times criticise atheists who attacked religion.
He disassociated himself from that attitude, saying (quote just above)
“I
do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose
fervour is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters
of religious indoctrination received in youth”.
Perhaps his most critical statement is in a 1941 letter quoted by
Max Jammer, about the response to his articles (more about this below).
In his first sentence he attacks defenders of religion, then he attacks
“fanatical atheists”.
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. [letter to unknown person, 7th Aug 1941, quoted by Jammer, p97, as Einstein Archive 54-927]
Similarly, in a letter to Maurice Solovine he is quoted as saying:
There lies the weakness of positivists and professional
atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only
successfully rid the world of gods but “bared the miracles.”
And he didn’t like the term “Freethinker” because he associated it with opposition to religion.
The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and
seems even naive. However, I am also not a “Freethinker” in the usual
sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude
nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My
feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of
the insufficiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of
the Universe which we try to formulate as “laws of nature.” It is this
consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. [letter 23rd Feb 1954, to A. Chapple. Einstein Archive 59-405]
Einstein also refused to attack popular religion. Despite the fact
that he himself rejected a personal God, Einstein considered that “the
majority of mankind” needed such belief. To Eduard Büsching, who had
written a book attacking religion, Einstein wrote:
It is a different question whether belief in a personal
God should be contested … I myself would never engage in such a task.
For such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any
transcendental outlook on life, and I wonder whether one can ever
successfully render to the majority of mankind a more sublime means in
order to satisfy its metaphysical needs. [letter to E. Büsching, 25 Oct 1929, Einstein Archive, 33-275]
A contemporary engraving of Baruch Spinoza, Einstein’s philosophical mentor. The Latin caption reads “… a Jew and an atheist”.
Does this criticism mean that Einstein was not an atheist? No it
doesn’t. Notice that Einstein disassociates himself from the “
professional atheist” and the “
fanatical
atheists” who attacked religion. Einstein insisted on humility and
recognition of human limitations in trying to discover reality, and he
rejected claims to certainty.
There is nothing inconsistent in both being an atheist and being
critical of those who criticize religion. Such attitudes are widespread
today. It is common to hear “I am an atheist but …”, followed by
criticism of the “militancy” of the “strident” New Atheists who want to
attack religion without seeing any good in it. Whether these criticisms
are fair is a topic for another article, but holding such views is not
a declaration of belief in a god, and does not disqualify someone as an
atheist.
Martin Rees is just one example
in the Einstein tradition, an eminent scientist who is an atheist
himself but who is sympathetic towards religion and who deplores the
tone of the “New Atheists”. Were Einstein alive today, he’d be a
shoo-in for the
Templeton Prize.
But didn’t Einstein believe in the God of Spinoza?
Einstein’s non-confrontational attitude to religion is shown clearly in one of his best-known remarks:
“I believe in the God of Spinoza”. The context is worth analysing.
Einstein was, of course, one of the world’s most famous Jews,
achieving near totemic status, for example being offered the Presidency
of the nascent state of Israel. Many people took note of his opinions.
And, throughout Einstein’s lifetime the status of Jews, even their very
existence, was under dire threat, leading to the Holocaust in
Einstein’s homeland Europe and, later on, threats to the existence of
Israel.
Einstein receiving American citizenship
In those times the Western world was still predominantly Christian
and atheists were at best regarded with suspicion. The communist USSR
was identified with atheism. In
Mein Kampf Hitler had associated Jews with atheism. In highly religiose America atheists were seen as unworthy of citizenship.
In 1940 the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell was denied a
teaching position at City College in New York City, after a law suit
asserting that, since he was an atheist, he was immoral and an
unacceptable influence on youth. “Atheist” was a pejorative word.
In this climate for Einstein to have pronounced himself as an
atheist would have hampered his own acceptance in his adopted America,
and would have been politically problematic for Jews.
Even the much milder statements that Einstein did make caused a backlash. In 1940, after Einstein had written his
Science and Religion article, with the suggestion that
“teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God”, the
Detroit Free Press wrote in a leader:
[Einstein] does his own people a grave injury by making
public such a statement. By doing so, he is giving the religious
bigots, especially the followers of Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan, fuel
for their fanatical fires. They will charge that he is presenting the
Jewish faith when, as a matter of fact, what he is presenting is an
utter denial of the whole Jewish concept of God. [Detroit Free Press, 14 Sept 1940, as quoted by Jammer]
Such responses were typical. A Catholic wrote to Einstein expressing:
Deep regret that you … ridicule the concept 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 foremost sources
of discord in America. [letter, 19 Sept 1940, Einstein Archive, 40-330]
Another correspondent said:
You are among those adding fuel to the fire, and believe
me Doctor Einstein, fuel is being added to the fire, and there is
definitely a growing spirit of anti-Semitism in the United States. [letter, 3 Oct 1940, Einstein Archive, 40-343]
While a Christian declared:
Professor Einstein, I believe that every Christian in
America will answer you … you come along and with one statement from
your blasphemous tongue do more to hurt the cause of your people … if
you do not believe in the God of the people of this Nation go back
where you came from. [letter, 12 Sept 1940, Einstein Archive, 40-372]
The following interview reveals how Einstein regarded himself. He’d
been asked whether he saw any “discrepancy between your previous
somewhat anti-religious statements and your willingness to be
identified publicly as a Jew?” and he answered:
Not necessarily. Actually it is a very difficult thing
to even define a Jew. The closest that I can come to describing it is
to ask you to visualize a snail. A snail that you see at the ocean
consists of the body that is snuggled inside of the house which it
always carries around with it. But let’s picture what would happen if
we lifted the shell off of the snail. Would we not still describe the
unprotected body as a snail? In just the same way, a Jew who sheds his
faith along the way, or who even picks up a different one, is still a
Jew. [conversation with Peter A. Bucky]
Earlier, in April 1929, the Catholic Cardinal O’Connell of Boston had made
a public attack on Einstein and his science as dangerous to religion, saying:
“Now, I have my own ideas about the so-called theories
of Einstein, with his relativity and his utterly befogged notions about
space and time. It seems nothing short of an attempt at muddying the
waters so that without perceiving the drift innocent students are led
away into a realm of speculative thought, the sole basis of which, so
far as I can see, is to produce a universal doubt about God and His creation.
I mean that while I do not wish to accuse Einstein at present of
deliberately wishing to destroy the Christian faith and the Christian
basis of life, I half suspect that if we wait a little longer we will
find he unquestionably will ultimately reveal himself in this attitude.
In a word, the outcome of this doubt and befogged speculation about
time and space is a cloak beneath which lies the ghastly apparition of atheism.
In response, and trying to defend Jews from this charge, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask:
“Do you believe in God? Answer paid 50 words”.
Einstein replied, famously,
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.
At one level this can be read as “Yes I believe in God”, rebutting
Cardinal O’Connell’s charge. Rabbi Goldstein took it that way, writing
in the
New York Times (25 April 1929) that Einstein’s reply “very clearly disproves … the charge of atheism made against Einstein”.
However, Baruch Spinoza’s “god” was really just a synonym for
nature, the “orderly harmony of what exists”. Spinoza had declared that
“neither intellect nor will appertain to God’s nature”, that the
universe contained only material, that it was deterministic, and that
morals were a concern only of humans. Einstein wrote:
We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists … [letter to E. Büsching, 25 Oct 1920, Einstein Archive, 33-275]
Spinoza himself had been
excommunicated for atheism. The writ of
cherem
issued by Amsterdam’s Jewish community ordered that owing to his
“abominable heresies” that “no one should communicate with him orally
or in writing … or read anything composed or written by him”.
Was Spinoza’s 17th-century pantheism much different from today’s
atheism? Or was it, like many deistic notions, more an intellectual
precursor of today’s atheism, a term used by those who had got most of
the way there but were not quite ready to go the whole hog, especially
in nations were outright atheism was socially unacceptable and often
outright illegal? Certainly it is not at all clear what property of the
universe either Spinoza or Einstein believed in that would disqualify
them as atheists.
Einstein’s ambiguous language was politically astute. If people
wanted to regard him as religious then they could do so, cherry-picking
his words, picking out phrases such as “science without religion is
lame”, while ignoring the surrounding context.
Often this desire to paint him as a supporter of religion led to
Christians embellishing his words. An example occurred in December
1940, when
Time magazine quoted Einstein as saying:
Only the Church stood squarely across the path of
Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special
interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and
admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence
to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to
confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
This statement was later broadcast nationally in full by the Catholic
Fulton John Sheen, later Archbishop of Newport (and now on the path to sainthood!).
Unfortunately for the Catholics, this is another quote that Einstein
didn’t say. In 1950 Rev. Cornelius Greenway of Brooklyn asked Einstein
to write out the statement in his own hand, and Einstein replied:
I am, however, a little embarrassed. The wording of the
statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to
power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about
these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and
exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience
write down the statement you sent me as my own. The matter is all the
more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly
critical concerning the activities, and especially the political
activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former
statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember
in detail) gives a wrong impression of my general attitude. [letter, 14th Nov 1950, AE:THS]
Of course this doesn’t stop the quote still being
regularly repeated, along with Prince Löwenstein’s unverified quote, and the totally out of context “science without religion is lame”.
As we’ve seen, a lot of stories have circulated about Einstein’s
attitude to religion, and not all of them are accurate. Einstein did
use religious language and wrote about these topics in a
non-confrontational style that could, when read superficially, be taken
as comforting to believers in the traditional religions. He also
criticised and disassociated himself from “professional” atheists who
were out to attack religion.
But Einstein did not believe in God. He explicitly disclaimed all of
the attributes such a being would have to have to qualify as a god.
Nowhere did he state a belief in any intelligent, aware or purposeful
god-like being, certainly not one that would care at all about humans,
or that would even have the capability to care about anything. Any
claim about Einstein believing in some sort of “god” needs to resort to
an unspecified apophatic god of utter vacuity.
Bibliography:
Albert Einstein: Autobiographical Notes, Translated and edited by
Paul Arthur Schilpp, 1979, Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago.
Albert Einstein, Ideas And Opinions, 1954, Crown Publishers, New York
Albert Einstein: The Human Side, Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh
Hoffman. 1981, Princeton University Press (abbreviated to AE:THS above)
Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology, Max Jammer. 2002, Princeton University Press
