Atheists who mock Christianity: Do you agree with Albert Einstein's assessment of you?

Question

“There are people who say there is no God,” he told a friend. “But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” And unlike Sigmund Freud or Bertrand Russell or George Bernard Shaw, Einstein never felt the urge to denigrate those who believed in God; instead, he tended to denigrate atheists. “What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos,” he explained.

In fact, Einstein tended to be more critical of debunkers, who seemed to lack humility or a sense of awe, than of the faithful. “The fanatical atheists,” he wrote in a letter, “are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who — in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’ — cannot hear the music of the spheres.”
http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2342

Answer 1

QUIT TRYING TO "PULL" EINSTEIN INTO YOUR SKY DADDY NONSENSE.

He thought your idea of a personal god was laughable.

Additionally, if I google for this "quote" you provide I only get a couple of hits, all from christian sites. Are you making stuff up again? Like the bible?

Answer 2

I would not claim to be more intelligent than Albert Einstein. I will also not claim, like so many do, to know what Einstein believed. I can not read his mind or ask him about his beliefs personally, so I can only draw conclusions from the historical records we have regarding Einstein. The research I have done indicates that Einstein was a deist, not a theist. This means that Einstein believed in a creator of the universe, but did not believe in a personal, theistic god. Therefore, while his opinion differs from atheists, it also differs from Christians. So do Christians think they are smarter than Einstein? On a side not, most atheists I know scoff at a theistic viewpoint. We view a deistic viewpoints as a reasonable, albeit unsubstantiated viewpoint. We admit deistic viewpoints are possible, but they lack evidence. It is theistic viewpoints, such as Christianity, that are so ridiculous that we feel safe in claiming intellectual superiority!

Answer 3

Doesn't it strike you odd, that someone with Einstein's mental abilities, couldn't find a way to prove the existence of God?

I think this Einstein quote more accurately describes his religious conviction:
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

In essence Einstein didn't believe in the Christian God, he believed in the awesomeness of the Universe. These are two completely different things. The quote you list above is a judgment against Atheists who spend their time begrudging religion, while missing the wonders of the universe. It is by no means an endorsement of a Christian, Muslim, Hindu God etc. In fact Einstein was very clear about his disbelief in a personal God as presented by religion.

The quotes you are using are presented in a dishonest way, in order to imply that Einstein meant something he clearly didn't.

Answer 4

Albert Einstein was an atheist. People who quote otherwise, are taking things out of context. Einstein had a spiritual side which he expressed in terms of an 'awe of nature'. He did not accept the notion of a personal deity. And he treated other people's belief in a such a deity with politeness. It's his politeness on the subject, which Christians usually misconstrue. But we enlightened few know that Einstein was an atheist, and any argument to the contrary is just nonsense.

Answer 5

Einstein rejected the now progressively more clearly illustrated principles of quantum mechanics as well... He wasn't infallible... He regarded religion as something thought by him to be what makes people more selfless, saying:

"A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation...In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects."

In other words, he said what he said about religions and atheism because he valued morals, this was a society a long time ago, and the nature of atheistic culture was entirely different, humanism wasn't yet a prevalent movement during Einstein's life or anything of the like, and the values of selflessness and morality promoted amongst atheists might not have been as prevalent. As such it would be naive to assume he would say such things in a world where atheists have as many moral philosophies as there are religions.

Answer 6

Quit quote mining Einstein. He was not a God Believer.


“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, in a letter March 24, 1954; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 43.
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“As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came — though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents — to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. 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 toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment-an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections. It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the ‘merely personal,’ from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.”

Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, Chicago, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1979, pp 3-5.
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“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.… This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”

Albert Einstein, in a letter to Hans Muehsam, March 30, 1954; Einstein Archive 38-434; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 218.
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“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”

Albert Einstein, quoted in The New York Times obituary, April 19, 1955; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Thoughts, New York: Ballantine Books, 1996, p. 134. )

Answer 7

Einstein died in 1955, so I think his thoughts on Religion and Christianity are a little outdated, considering all the events that have happened since then. Often, people who are brilliant in one subject, don't know much about other subjects - Like - how to be a good family man, or History. Just because he was an oracle of mathamatics, doesn't mean he was an oracle on other subjects.

Answer 8

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)

Answer 9

Interesting. But in reading that he is not denouncing atheism, just the 'fanatical atheists'. Everything I've ever read from and about Einstein made it clear that he was an atheist himself and the quote you've included doesn't really disclaim that. He even states above that "....What separates me from most so-called atheists.....", implying that he is also an atheist just not the fanatical kind.

Answer 10

As a Christian I could care less what Einstein thought about our faith. He is long dead. However, I found it amusing that some atheists got to feel a bit of the sting of being called a fanatic. Ha ha,

Answer 11

I don't consider myself as someone who "mocks" Christianity. I do, however, take issue with someone quoting Einstein out of context in basically what is a cut-and-paste from a christian evangelistic site.

And you DO how you're using poor Albert. He wasn't remotely a Christian and didn't believe in a personal "God". According to most Christians, he's roasting in everlasting torment. But you see fit to use his arguements in support of your god. That seems creepy, at the very least.