Did Einstein say that atheists are good as dead?

Question

"I am not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist."

At a dinner party in Berlin in 1929, 50 year old Einstein replied to another's disgust at the idea that he was religious. 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 laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force behind anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious."

Asked, if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, he replied, "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."

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."

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"I am fascinate by Spinoza's pantheism, but I admire even more his contribution to modern thought."

I don't think you can conclude Einstein he was a deist.

Answer 1

Spiritually YES!

Answer 2

"The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. " - Albert Einstein, Letter to A. Chapple, Australia, February 23, 1954

"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]

I find it comical that religionists will mine any quote by Albert that can be twisted to resemble theirs.

Einstein rejected all Anthropomorphic Gods. All Gods are Anthropomorphic. His use of a vague sort of human based spirituality and a lack of cynicism is hardly a resume entry stating that he prayed to Jesus or the Jewish God.

He did neither.

Answer 3

This sound very strange to me, I always understood Einstein was an agnostic. Einstein makes much impression pro or against religion, but you have to think that even though he was a great scientist, he was also just a man and surely no mystic. Therefore I wonder why his believing or not believing has a positive effect on religion or atheism.

Answer 4

He certainly did not swallow any mythological figure. But he's remembered to have said this

Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual; and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. -Albert Einstein

If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. -Albert Einstein

Answer 5

To what's been said let me just add that Einstein's remarks about Jesus strike me as more political than anything else. He wasn't exactly a fool. In Western culture, even the avowed atheist is compelled to base his position on "Jesus," and it's always been good business to pay lip service to the idea that Jesus is justly celebrated as a symbol of all that is good and holy. A catholic exegesis of the gospels as they stand ought to dispel that myth, and would, were it not for our brainwashing.

My favorite Einstein quote on God: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

Answer 6

And the link between your question and your additional notes would be?

Ah, okay, the additional additional ploy. Um, no, Einstein did not say atheists are as good as dead, he said anyone who can't experience what he defined as the most beautiful emotion is as good as dead. The one has nothing to do with the other.

Einstein - as far as my reading has informed me - did not believe in a sky-daddy, nor even anything he necessarily defined as "God" other than as a convenient descriptor - but then I'm sure you've got a quote to cover that one too.

The thing is, Einstein was one man. A brilliant man, but still just one man. And what got him through his days is of interest only inasmuch as it is of any other person - academic.

Atheism means ONLY that one doesn't believe in god(s) - what individual atheists DO believe in is a far more interesting question and fruitful field of study.

Answer 7

Einstein was a deist. He believed in Spinoza's god.

Deism is seeing the universe as god. Einstein did not believe in a personal god.

Answer 8

awesome! and he was vegetarian. And was a Jew. And was a spiritual practitioner of Inner Vibration meditation.... u can check out Sant Mat group.

Answer 9

Are we all ever really ALIVE? The moment you're born, you're dying.

I believe in Jesus... just not the mythological version put forth to destroy the pagans...

_()_

Answer 10

No, he wasn't a Christian, he was a lot like me, and saw Jesus as a wonderful person.