Einstein letter: Belief in god childish, Jews not the chosen people

CptStern

CptStern

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Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday

The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.


As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other people".


"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," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper
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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/britain_religion_science_jews_einstein
 
I guess whatever argument people had about Einstein being a religious man is gone.
 
This isn't making much sense to me, I though Einstein was religious, "God does not play dice" and all.
 
He was religious in a secular panthiest sense as Dawkins explains in The God Delusion.

Still, really awesome.
 
Finally, some really solid evidence to stop people using that damn ad hominem argument over and over again.
 
Still, even if he was religious, or in the case of Newton, Pasteur or Galileo, the argument that God does or doesn't exists because someone really smart either did or didn't believe in him is retarded.
 
Mr Stabby said:
Still, even if he was religious, or in the case of Newton, Pasteur or Galileo, the argument that God does or doesn't exists because someone really smart either did or didn't believe in him is retarded.
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Very true, although I'm not sure that's the intent of the topic.

Just dispels a dishonest myth regarding a man some religious people use an argument for their faith. Much like the oft-repeated "Lady Hope" tale.
 
Einstein was more of a deist, or possibly even a Buddhist.
 
He wasn't a deist in the slightest.

He referred to the fundamental rules of the universe as god, and by the term god, meant nothing more than the fundamental rules of the universe.
 
Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.
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Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
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In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, 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.
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Hardly the quotes of a "non-religious" person.
 
So, when do we herd theists into concentration camps and perform genocide?
 
In my opinion all he said in that letter was that he disagreed with religion, not the possible existence of a super-natural entity or whatever.
 
It's nice to know, but as all facts about people's particular religious beliefs are, it holds no weight in any argument.
 
They're all universally known.

Those quotes don't really clash with each other anyway.
 
I think it can be safely said that Einstein's religious convictions are not entirely known and therefore debatable. Even more reason to dismiss arguments that rest on invoking his name.
 
There's a quote of his in the god delusion that says he doesn't believe in god and people misuse his quotes to say he does. Cant find it though.
 
That's totally open to discussion. Exactly what he's referring to when he says 'god' changes a lot.
 
Solaris said:
There's a quote of his in the god delusion that says he doesn't believe in god and people misuse his quotes to say he does. Cant find it though.
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My copy of The God Delusion laying open in front of me:

One of Einstein's most eagerly quoted remarks is 'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.' But Einstein also said,
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.
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Does it seem that Einstein contradicted himself? That his words can be cherry-picked for quotes to support both sides of an argument? No. By 'religion' Einstein meant something entirely different from what is conventionally meant. As I continue to clarify the distinction between supernatural religion on the one hand and Einsteinian religion on the other, bear in mind that I am calling only supernatural gods delusional.
Here are some more quotations from Einstein, to give a flavour of Einsteinian religion.
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.
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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.
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The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.
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I believe the opposing views are, as Atomic_Piggy noted, due him being more religious in his early life than in his later.
 
I don't think his statements contradict themselves, rather that he viewed religion in a much different light than most people are used to.
 
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