Einstein himself stated "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a
pantheist ... I believe in
Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a
God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings". Einstein explained his view on the relationship between science and religion in his lectures of 1939 and 1941:
Early childhood Einstein was raised by
secular Jewish parents and attended a local
Catholic public elementary school in
Munich. In his
Autobiographical Notes, Einstein wrote that he had gradually lost his faith early in childhood:
Personal God Einstein expressed his
skepticism regarding the existence of a
personal god, often describing this view as "naïve" In a letter written in 1947, he stated that "The idea of a personal God seems to me an anthropological concept that I cannot take seriously." In a letter to Beatrice Frohlich on 17 December 1952, Einstein stated, "The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve." Prompted by his colleague
L. E. J. Brouwer, Einstein read the philosopher
Eric Gutkind's book
Choose Life, a discussion of the relationship between Jewish
revelation and the modern world. On January 3, 1954, Einstein replied to Gutkind: "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. .... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." In 2018, his letter to Gutkind was sold for $2.9 million. On 22 March 1954, Einstein received a letter from Joseph Dispentiere, an Italian immigrant who had worked as an
experimental machinist in
New Jersey. Dispentiere had declared himself an atheist and was disappointed by a news report that had cast Einstein as conventionally religious. Einstein replied on 24 March 1954: In his book
Ideas and Opinions (1954), Einstein stated, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests."
Pantheism and Spinoza's God Einstein had explored the idea that humans could not understand the nature of God. In an interview published in
George Sylvester Viereck's book
Glimpses of the Great (1930), Einstein responded to a question about whether or not he defined himself as a
pantheist. He explained: Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things. Einstein stated, "My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems." On 24 April 1929, Einstein
cabled Rabbi
Herbert S. Goldstein in German: "I believe in
Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." He expanded on this in answers he gave to the Japanese magazine
Kaizō in 1923: Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).
Agnosticism and atheism Einstein said people could call him an agnostic rather than an atheist, stating: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a
personal god is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the
fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." In 1945, Guy Raner, Jr. wrote a letter to Einstein asking if it was true that a
Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism. Einstein replied, "I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. ... It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it, and that is all." In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an
agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment." Einstein said in correspondence, "[T]he fanatical atheists...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 the traditional '
opium of the people'—cannot hear the
music of the spheres." Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such a belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any
transcendental outlook." Einstein, in a one-and-a-half-page hand-written German-language letter to philosopher
Eric Gutkind, dated
Princeton, New Jersey, 3 January 1954, a year and three and a half months before his death, wrote: "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this. [...] For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. [...] I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them [the
Jewish people]."
Afterlife On 17 July 1953, a woman who was a licensed
Baptist pastor sent Einstein a letter asking if he had felt assured about attaining everlasting life with the Creator. Einstein replied, "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." This sentiment was also expressed in Einstein's book
The World as I See It (1935), "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature." Einstein was averse to the
Abrahamic conception of
Heaven and
Hell, particularly as it pertained to a system of everlasting reward and punishment. In a 1915 letter to the Swiss physicist Edgar Meyer, Einstein wrote, "I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him." He also stated, "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." Part of Einstein's tension with the Abrahamic afterlife was his belief in
determinism and his rejection of
free will. Einstein stated, "The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events — that is, if he takes the hypothesis of
causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through."
Cosmic spirituality In 1930, Einstein published a widely discussed essay about his beliefs in
The New York Times Magazine. In 1936, Einstein received a letter from a young girl in the sixth grade. She had asked him, with the encouragement of her teacher, if scientists
pray. Einstein replied in the most elementary way he could: Einstein characterized himself as "devoutly religious" in the following sense: "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power 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. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men." In a letter to
Maurice Solovine Einstein spoke about his reasons for using the word "religious" to describe his spiritual feelings, "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza. (But) I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason." Einstein frequently referred to his belief system as "cosmic religion" and authored an
eponymous article on the subject in 1954, which later became his book
Ideas and Opinions in 1955. The belief system recognized a "miraculous order which manifests itself in all of nature as well as in the world of ideas," devoid of a personal God who rewards and punishes individuals based on their behavior. It rejected a conflict between
science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science. He smiled, "Some centuries ago, I would have been burned or hanged. Nonetheless, I would have been in good company." His religion and his philosophy were integral parts of the same package as his scientific discoveries. In an interview published by
Time magazine with
George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein spoke of his feelings about Christianity. And like Einstein he was a pacifist. At the time of the interview, Einstein was informed that Viereck was not Jewish, but stated that Viereck had "the psychic adaptability of the Jew," making it possible for Einstein to talk to him "without barrier." Einstein lamented, "Sometimes I think it would have been better if Jesus had never lived. No name was so abused for the sake of power!" Later, in a 1943 interview, Einstein added, "It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished." Einstein interpreted the concept of a
Kingdom of God as referring to the best people. "I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people." In the last year of his life, he said, "If I were not a Jew I would be a
Quaker."
Views of the Christian churches The only Jewish school in
Munich had been closed in 1872 for want of students, and in the absence of an alternative, Einstein attended a
Catholic elementary school. He also received Jewish religious education at home, but he did not see a division between the two faiths, as he perceived the "sameness of all religions". Einstein was equally impressed by the stories of the
Hebrew Bible and the
Passion of Jesus. Einstein later recalled an incident involving a teacher who particularly liked him, "One day that teacher brought a long nail to the lesson and told the students that with such nails Christ had been nailed to the Cross by the Jews" and that "Among the children at the elementary school anti-Semitism was prevalent...Physical attacks and insults on the way home from school were frequent, but for the most part not too vicious." He would later in life recall that "The religion of the fathers, as I encountered it in Munich during religious instruction and in the synagogue, repelled rather than attracted me." Einstein met several times and collaborated with the Belgian priest scientist
Georges Lemaître, of the
Catholic University of Leuven. Lemaître is known as the first proponent of the
Big Bang theory of the origins of the cosmos and a pioneer in applying Einstein's theory of general relativity to cosmology. Einstein proposed Lemaitre for the 1934
Francqui Prize, which he received from the Belgian King. In 1940,
Time magazine quoted Einstein lauding the
Catholic Church for its role in opposing the
Nazis: Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly. The quotation has since been repeatedly cited by defenders of
Pope Pius XII. An investigation of the quotation by mathematician
William C. Waterhouse and Barbara Wolff of the
Einstein Archives in
Jerusalem found that the statement was mentioned in an unpublished letter from 1947. In the letter to Count Montgelas, Einstein explained that the original comment was a casual one made to a journalist regarding the support of "a few churchmen" for individual rights and intellectual freedom during the early rule of Hitler and that, according to Einstein, the comment had been drastically exaggerated. In 2008, the
Antiques Roadshow television program aired a manuscript expert, Catherine Williamson, authenticating a 1943 letter from Einstein in which he confirms that he "made a statement which corresponds approximately" to
Time magazine's quotation of him. However, Einstein continued, "I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi regime—much earlier than 1940—and my expressions were a little more moderate."
William Hermanns conversations Einstein's conversations with William Hermanns were recorded over a 34-year correspondence. In the conversations, Einstein makes various statements about the Christian Churches in general and the Catholic Church in particular: "When you learn the history of the Catholic Church, you wouldn't trust the
Center Party. Hasn't Hitler promised to smash the Bolsheviks in Russia? The Church will bless its Catholic soldiers to march alongside the Nazis" (March 1930). "So often in history the Jews have been the instigators of justice and reform whether in Spain, Germany or Russia. But no sooner have they done their job than their 'friends', often blessed by the Church, spit in their faces" (August 1943). "But what makes me shudder is that the Catholic Church is silent. One doesn't need to be a prophet to say, 'The Catholic Church will pay for this silence...I do not say that the unspeakable crimes of the Church for 2,000 years had always the blessing of the Vatican, but it vaccinated its believers with the idea: We have the true God, and the Jews have crucified Him.' The Church sowed hate instead of love, though the ten commandments state: Thou shalt not kill" (August 1943). "With a few exceptions, the Roman Catholic Church has stressed the value of dogma and ritual, conveying the idea theirs is the only way to reach heaven. I don't need to go to Church to hear if I'm good or bad; my heart tells me this" (August 1943). "I don't like to implant in youth the Church's doctrine of a personal God, because that Church has behaved so inhumanly in the past 2,000 years... Consider the hate the Church manifested against the Jews and then against the
Muslims, the
Crusades with their crimes, the burning stakes of the
inquisition, the tacit consent of Hitler's actions while the Jews and the Poles dug their own graves and were slaughtered. And Hitler is said to have been an altar boy!" (August 1943). "If I were allowed to give advice to the Churches," Einstein continued, "I would tell them to begin with a conversion among themselves, and to stop playing power politics. Consider what mass misery they have produced in
Spain,
South America and
Russia." (September 1948). In response to a Catholic convert who asked, "Didn't you state that the Church was the only opponent of Communism?" Einstein replied, "I don't have to emphasise that the Church [
sic] at last became a strong opponent of National Socialism, as well." Einstein's secretary
Helen Dukas added, "Dr. Einstein didn't mean only the Catholic church, but all churches." When the convert mentioned that the Nazis had gassed his family members, Einstein replied that "he also felt guilty—adding that the whole Church, beginning with the Vatican, should feel guilt" (September 1948). William Miller of
Life Magazine who was present at this meeting described Einstein as looking like a "living saint" and speaking with "angelic indifference." ==Philosophical beliefs==