Einstein & God

Page one of Einstein's "God Letter"

One of the great debates between at least some theists and the more militant atheists is the one about Albert Einstein's belief or lack of belief in God.  The theists say that he "really did" believe.  The atheists deny that he did.  According to a news posting one the Washington Post website entitled, "Einstein letter discussing God to be auctioned on eBay with $3 million starting price," a key piece of evidence in the debate is as the headline says going up for auction.  It is a letter written by Einstein to Eric B. Gutkind in German and dated January 3, 1954.

The key paragraphs in the letter, translated into English by Joan Stambaugh, read,

... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

 In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the priviliege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evalutations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and `rationalisation' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes. Yours, A. Einstein.

We aren't going to end the debate over Einstein's beliefs here in this usually quiet corner of the Web, but this letter is worth one or two observations.  First, Einstein's concern was with a word, "God," which he took to be a symbol for a set of regrettable human superstitions.  Whether or not he thought that there is a  metaphysical Something beyond the physical world is not addressed.  Nor does this relatively brief set of reflections allow for the fact that the word "God" can be used in ways that do not reflect theistic "superstitions," be they Jewish, Christian, or of any other religious tradition.  Second, he rejects religion in the same way he rejects religious notions of God.  He is particularly critical, as a Jew, of Jewish "superstitions" about being the so-called chosen people.

My oft-repeated general rule is that scientists make poor theologians.  Because of their disdain for religion, they are usually as ignorant of theology as they are knowledgeable of their particular field of science.  They generally take the most superficial, popular understanding of God,  reject that view (as many of us who are theists also do), and in the process fail to come to grips with the fascinating possibilities of the best theologies.  They do with God what Einstein did with the Bible in this letter.  He dismissed the Bible as being a book of fables and pointedly rejected any readings of the Bible that might find more in it than mere fables.  He rejected any interpretation that claimed the Bible was anything more than childish, primitive legends.  Because it is the Bible, that is, he refused to entertain the possibility that the study of the Bible as literature might reveal deeper subtleties than his own uninformed reading of it suggested to him.  On this subject, his mind was closed.  And I'm not talking here about trying to convince him that the Bible really is inspired and that there really is a God.  Simply treating the Bible as literature might offer insights to something more than superstition, but Einstein rejected that possibility entirely.  And, in fact, the close study of the Bible as a literary document does reveal that contains much more than a mere set of silly legends.  Apart from any belief in inspiration, it is in and of itself a fascinating collection of ancient literature.

Einstein was a brilliant scientist.  He was a lousy theologian.  From the tone of this letter, I suspect that he probably was more inclined to atheism than not.  If so, he also seems to have shared the inclination of that subset of atheists who habitually cast things like "God," Bible, and religion in the worst possible light.