Did you atheists know?

Question

EINSTEIN WAS NOT AN ATHEIST!!! He believed in God!!!

Answer 1

Yes. And did you know that it wasn't the Christian version of God?

Answer 2

"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."

-- Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

So - either your religion made you lie, or somebody lied to you and you accepted it without question - just like you've done with your bible.

And also:

"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. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

-- Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

-- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930

Answer 3

Quotes from Einstein:

I can't answer with a simple yes or no. 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. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things.

(Spinoza: In a letter to Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, Spinoza declared, "I do not think it necessary for salvation to know Christ according to the flesh: but with the Eternal Son of God, that is the Eternal Wisdom of God, which had manifested itself in all things, and especially in the human mind, and above all in Christ Jesus, the case is far otherwise.")

More Einstein:

I have tried to respond to your question as simply as I could. Here is my answer. 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 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, everyone 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.

The Saturday Evening Post, in 1929:

"To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?"
"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."

"Have you read Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus?"

"Emil Ludwig's Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot."

"You accept the historical Jesus?"

"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life." 7

Count Kessler once said to him, "Professor! I hear that you are deeply religious." Calmly and with great dignity, Einstein replied, "Yes, you can call it that. 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."

Einstein may not have believed in a "personal God" but he knew there was more to the universe than just stars and planets and electrons and protons.

Answer 4

You're right, he was not an atheist. But he was not a Christian. He was ethnically a Jew, but he was not theistically a Jew. At best he might have been considered a Deist. If you had read what Einstein himself said about religion, instead of the propaganda about him, you would know this.

Elda9's answer says it all.

Answer 5

yes, by a definition of god which probably varies immensely from yours.

i would like to add that atheists seem to care less about that than theists. he was free to believe whatever he wanted. how does that affect atheists?

Answer 6

He was probably a Deist, but he was pretty tight with what he thought. That is a great deal different than how you are trying to represent it.

Answer 7

no, he believed in Spanoza's god, nothing like your god. he was a Pantheist.

also Newton was basically the last Alchemist and Pythagoras thought beans were evil, so what's your point?

Answer 8

He was RAISED a Jew, sweetheart.


There's a difference in being raised and actually believing for the rest of his/her's life.

P.S. the guy who killed JFK was raised Lutheran, did you know that?

Answer 9

I imagine many atheists know that. And?