Did Einstein believe in god?

[Led Zeppelin]

I hear this shit alot from religious nutters, they claim that Einstein believed in a god, is this a myth or reality?

Discuss.

[JKP]

He was a Deist If I recall correctly.

[Forward Union]

BUCKY:
So then, you consider yourself to be a religious man?

EINSTEIN:
I believe in mystery and, frankly, I sometimes face this mystery with great fear. In other words, I think that there are many things in the universe that we cannot perceive or penetrate and that also we experience some of the most beautiful things in life in only a very primitive form. Only in relation to these mysteries do I consider myself to be a religious man. But I sense these things deeply. What I cannot understand is how there could possibly be a God who would reward or punish his subjects or who could induce us to develop our will in our daily life.

Extract from an interview. Aside from this, I believe he was a neo-Pantheist. He treated Science to be a religion, well that's a very bad way of putting it but you can look it up yourself.

Remember to mention he was a Communist, and that he also rejected the christian concept of God.


I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws.

[LSD]

Einstein was religious ...then he hit puberty.

Autobiographical Notes, 1949, pp. 3-5:

Thus I came--despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents--to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. 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. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment— an attitude which has never again left me.

In his own words, he was most likely an agnostic.

Letter to Guy H. Raner, September 28, 1949:

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 fervor 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.


Originally posted by Additives Free+ Nov 11 2005, 10:52 AM --> (Additives Free @ Nov 11 2005, 10:52 AM )Aside from this, I believe he was a neo-Pantheist.[/b]

I would disagree.

Brian, Einstein, A Life, New York, 1996 cit. p. 186:

emphasis added
I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. 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 a universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by Lysergic Acid [email protected] 11 2005, 04:12 PM
I would disagree.

Perhaps. Im not one to actually state what another (dead) strangers beliefs were. However, there are large differences and confusions between what Pantheism is.

The worship of all gods,

The worship fo nature

The belief that God resides within everything

God is everything etc...

[KC]

"God does not play dice with the universe."

---Albert Einstein, in response to quantum physics.

[Bugalu Shrimp]

Einstein was a sick pervert, E=mC2 MY ARSE! pROVE IT U RED SWINE

[STI]

Quit spamming.

[Bugalu Shrimp]

My post is highly informative, brimming with truth that will resonate throughout these walls of lies..

[John Dory]

From a correspondence between Ensign Guy H. Raner and Albert Einstein in 1945 and 1949. Einstein responds to the accusation that he was converted by a Jesuit priest: "I have never talked to a Jesuit prest in my life. 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." "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 fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from religious indoctrination received in youth." Freethought Today, November 2004

"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." From a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954. It is included in Albert Einstein: The

From a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954. It is included in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, published by Princeton University Press. Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), p. 27.

"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 influence, the phenomenal world... The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old conception 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 fulfillment of their wishes... In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vase power in the hands of priests." Albert Einstein, reported in Science, Philosophy and Religion: A Symposium, edited by L. Bryson and

"Thus I came...to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true....Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience...an attitude which has never left me." The Quotable Einstein

[Creature]

I've heard that Einstein was supposed believe in God from one statement he made along the lines of, 'Whenever I look into the eye, it scares me. Something so perfect was not formed through evolution.'

[Black Dagger]

^^
That sounds like a fabricated quote, any source?

[Creature]

Like i said, I heard it, thus meaning from word of mouth, so I can't offer a source.

[Xvall]

Originally posted by Bugalu [email protected] 14 2005, 07:22 PM
Einstein was a sick pervert, E=mC2 MY ARSE! pROVE IT U RED SWINE
OMG that is so going in my sig.

And Einstein didn't really believe in a God; most certainly not in the way that people of the Judeo-Christian persuasion do. Maybe he believed in some "esoteric mystery of life" or something along those lines, but that hardly constitutes as a religion and is more in line (I think) with spiritual/philosophical masturbation.

[Monty Cantsin]

I remember reading something Einstein wrote that 'if he believed in god it would be the god of Spinoza" i.e. he was undecided but liked pantheism the most out of theist plosions.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

"It was the role of in probability in quantum mechanics, and in the Copenhaegen Interpretation in particular, that lead Einstein to make the famous remark, "I cannot believe that God plays dice." But all the evidence suggests Einstein was wrong: nature, (what Einstein, an atheist, always meant by "God") operated on the same principles as a casino".

"Physics" by John Gribbin, p. 110

[Le People]

I thought Einstein was Jewish.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Einstein was a neo-Pantheist, as someone stated already. Naturalistic Pantheism could describe him in some ways, however. Einstein was not religious in a modern sense, and he was, in fact, a socialist. Einstein believed that nature was God, and, because atheism, from his perspective, disregarded the spiritual, he choose to call himself pantheist.

To call Einstein an atheist, in a traditional sense, would be correct. He did not give himself that label because he believed spirituality, or religiousness, did not require belief in God; furthermore, since atheist typically denounces spirituality, he disregarded it. There is questioning to whether or not fear made Einstein not admit his atheism, but he did not believe in a personal God.

Einstein was jewish in race, not religion. He was raised jewish, and he admired buddhism (probably because it did not require faith in a spiritual entity) saying it was more suited for a reasonable society than other faiths (paraphrasing).

In short, the most accurate way to describe Einstein's belief is Pantheism, although he might deny being labelled a Pantheist (even though he was).

[Global_Justice]

i thought einstein said..

science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind

or was that someone else?

[Ownthink]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2005, 05:32 PM
i thought einstein said..

science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind

or was that someone else?
Google is your friend.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24949.html