Einstein on Science and Religion

The following is a quote about religion by Einstein. Many people often misrepresent him as a religious man -- by that I mean as a man who believed in a personal God. Even if they acknowledge that Einstein did not believe in a personal God, they often misrepresent Einstein as seeing organized religion, such as the Abrahamic religions, as a good thing. I hope to dispel both of those myths here.

When Einstein says that he was a deeply religious man, or that "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" one must look deeper than the simple quote and read the quote in context to ascertain what he actually meant. This should help put such quotes in context:

Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us. Now what are the feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense of the words? A little consideration will suffice to show us that the most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and experience. With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed toward a mortal. In this sense I am speaking of a religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests. The social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God. The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates. Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another. How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. 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 - provided, of course, that 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 undergoes. Science has therefore 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 hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees.On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.

After reading the quote by Einstein it should be clear that when Einstein says that "science without religion is lame" he means religion in the cosmic sense. Through reading his works, one can say that his "religious" experiences can be described as the deep sense of awe and wonder you get by contemplating the workings of the universe. In this sense, I am a "religious" person too. The only thing I object to in Einstein's quote is his casual use of the word "religious," as it merely equivocates things.

Why do you hate God so much?

I don't hate God. It would be silly to hate something that doesn't exist.

You cannot prove that God does not exist.

You cannot prove that God does not exist.

Of course not. Nor can I prove that fairies, mermaids, unicorns, minotaurs or werewolves don't exist.

But suffice it to say that I'm more sure that God doesn't exist than any of the aforementioned fantasy characters. Since I consider hating unicorns to be just silly, similarly hating God would be just silly.

Without religion we'd still be in the stone-age.

Without religion we'd still be in the stone-age.

Possibly. But in that case, religion is a relic that needs to be done away with.

I would disagree. As we've argued before, I feel that religion's positive effects on people in today's age outweigh the bad. For every few million that follow by the "book" and better their lives by it there are a few extremists that make it as a whole look bad. Freedom of thought and freedom to believe in whatever people want to should never be done away with.

Whether or not religion is a positive or negative force is irrelevant. When I say it's a relic I mean from a purely epistemological standpoint. The fact that after all we know people still believe "magic man done it" is pathetic. I will concede that I don't know how everything started. That does not mean that the God hypothesis has any real merit behind it. That does not mean we shouldn't excoriate such puerile beliefs. If you want to believe something it should be justified with evidence. Otherwise, society should ostracize you if you're over...five.

Of course, you know how I feel about this. I post these little articles because I find them amusing, and exhilirating, at times. But you don't need me to go over this with you again, I doubt, nor do you probably want me to. I am, however, interested in why you would continue believing. You're a fairly smart guy. What makes what I see as a delusion so persistent for you?

I choose to believe because man cannot now describe how everything started, and it will probably not be in my lifetime, nor will it ever. I feel that it is great you do not believe in God, we need to have people questioning everything if we are ever going to progress. Me personally, I do not loathe religion like I was brought up, I've become more self-spiritualized as I feel I don't need to go to church to pray, if I want some alone time to be spiritual, more so than not I need to be alone and solve my own problems.

I don't agree what you said. What you believe doesn't seem delusional to me, actually it's the opposite. But my personality I love to question things and i've been taught from a young age to always question everything and never agree until you know for yourself what is to be true. As for Religion, I agree there are plenty of probelms with it, but concerning God I still feel that our existance can not have just started from nothing, I feel there are different levels of conciousness that obviously we cannot see because they are on a different 'plane' of time itself, a plane where time does not exist.

I love a good majority of these articles you post as I feel I can get into them equally and love to find out viewpoints from other people as I form my own opinion. But basically, where i'm getting at is that being delusional isn't always a bad thing. It helps people get by, if they want to be afraid of death and use religion to justify living a good life, then be it. I don't think religion or religious people should be castricized because of them believing in something, because that would be hypocritical and very similar to different religions fighting with each other because the other person doesn't have the same beliefs as them, that's what it boils down to.

I know this seems very jumbled but I just peiced together a few thoughts at work, I'll try and re-elaborate once I get a moment.

Einstein was an atheist for most of his life (or a type of person who is "neutral" about religion, or can't prove god exists and can't prove god exists) up to a point in his science career when he realized that the universe (he looked at religion in a cosmic sense) could not exist without some Hierarchy or order governing the things existant in it. That's when he came to the conclusion that god did exist, or at least some sort of supernatural being or system.

Einstein was an atheist for most of his life (or a type of person who is "neutral" about religion, or can't prove god exists and can't prove god exists) up to a point in his science career when he realized that the universe (he looked at religion in a cosmic sense) could not exist without some Hierarchy or order governing the things existant in it. That's when he came to the conclusion that god did exist, or at least some sort of supernatural being or system.

Einstein vehemently denied the existence of any sort of anthropomorphic God through his whole life. Where did you hear otherwise?

Einstein vehemently denied the existence of any sort of anthropomorphic God through his whole life. Where did you hear otherwise?

Some accurate sources. Maybe you're taking his quotes a little too literally and maybe you should take them a bit more symboligically (like the bible). No offense by the way

Some accurate sources. Maybe you're taking his quotes a little too literally and maybe you should take them a bit more symboligically (like the bible). No offense by the way

Reliable sources...kay.

I have read a lot on and of Einstein...I'm not misinterpreting. This is not quotes I'm going off of. The whole point of this post was to put his quotes in context...

Maybe you missed it.

And what am I misinterpreting from the bible? When it says that you should stone your kids for adultery, quite dictatorially, how else should I interpret that?

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/einstein.html

It is however, interesting how he arrived at that conclusion. In developing the theory of relativity, Einstein realized that the equations led to the conclusion that the universe had a beginning. He didn't like the idea of a beginning, because he thought one would have to conclude that the universe was created by God. So, he added a cosmological constant to the equation to attempt to get rid of the beginning. He said this was one of the worst mistakes of his life. Of course, the results of Edwin Hubble confirmed that the universe was expanding and had a beginning at some point in the past. So, Einstein became a deist - a believer in an impersonal creator God:

"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 languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements 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."

It is the second part of the quote that reveals the reason Einstein rejected the existence of a personal God. Einstein compared the remarkable design and order of the cosmos and could not reconcile those characteristics with the evil and suffering he found in human existence. How could an all-powerful God allow the suffering that exists on earth?

All very, very excellent points from Einstein...

I can see your point of view. I don't stress people's opinions though, since it is hopeless unless they see things with their own eyes, not through someone else's.

And what am I misinterpreting from the bible? When it says that you should stone your kids for adultery, quite dictatorially, how else should I interpret that?

Where does it say that? Also, I agree that these "poetic" quotes are taken too literally.

Much of everything in this world is taken too literally. Whole religions have been based on taking the bible too literally. But I won't go in depth on that.

I'm sorry, but after reading through that I must say it's full of trivializations, distortions, and exaggerations. I have 2 consecutive exams coming up, so I don't have time to elaborate, but in general I would be weary of apologist websites. I mean, this site actually denies evolution. I'm sorry, but when my job involves me working in a laboratory where the basic principles of what I'm doing simply would not work if evolution was false renders me incapable of having any bit of patience for these morons.

I think you misunderstood what D3V was saying there, Why.