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Einstein: Religions are “childish superstition”

Posted by Zach on May 14th, 2008 at 9:31 pm · 7 Comments

(It’s that time again – guest post from Zach time.)

Image from Bloomsbury Auctions

(Image from Bloomsbury Auctions)

Lots of people are talking about a newly-surfaced letter by Einstein, which seems to clarify his ambiguous views on religion with the following strongly-worded statements:

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. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

and

For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.

According to one blogger, the sentiments quoted above aren’t actually that new – similar ones were republished in Skeptic magazine in 1997. But even so, this reinforces them, plus they are getting a lot of press. So I am pleased by the news overall. But I think one should keep something in mind.

Namely, there are not two simple “sides” to the religion/atheism debate, but a spectrum; Einstein is the quintessential example of someone in the middle. I’m not qualified to explain his thoughts on religion definitively, but it seems clear that he is basically a “theist” in the mold of Spinoza (or going earlier, Winstanley) – i.e. someone who is an atheist as far as the traditional, personal god of theology goes, but who has an attitude of reverence towards the natural world that leads him to describe it in religious language. An atheist in substance and a religionist in style, you might say.

So anyone who tries to claim Einstein for “our team” without qualification is being a little sloppy. John Lynch of Stranger Fruit gets this, but it appears that Homosecular Gaytheist doesn’t, and neither does erv (but s/he’s hilarious so let’s call it even). At first I thought PZ Myers was making the same mistake, but I think he’s just saying that religious folk can’t claim Einstein for their “team,” not that atheists can.

If anything, Einstein would be on Team Ambiguous-Sacrilicious-Humanist – just like us here at Mind on Fire…

Tags: Atheism · Belief · Gadgets · Gender · Getting over Religion · Gods · Guest Posts · Humanism · Jana · Nature · News · Religion · Ritual

7 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Reed Braden // May 14, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    The title of my blog post was in reference to what he believed about God, not whose side he took politically. Atheism, by definition, has no political side to take. It is simply the abcense of a God-belief. On that level, Einstein was “on our side.”

    Also, I disagree with this:
    “an atheist as far as the traditional, personal god of theology goes, but who has an attitude of reverence towards the natural world that leads him to describe it in religious language”

    Well, I agree with the statement, but it leading you to say he wasn’t really an Atheist is ridiculous. He didn’t believe in a god. He described the world as one would a god. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t an Atheist… that means he really loved the world. I use the terms “designed,” “crafted,” and “created” when talking about biology. I’m in no way a creationist. Sometimes it’s best to use the more poetic terms that religion set down for us in the infancy of our species because it makes a more profound impact. This doesn’t make me a creationist and it doesn’t make Einstein anything less than an Atheist. Is that too hard to understand?

    He didn’t care much for the religion, but he was above caring about it at all… one way or the other. He was certainly not anti-religious. It is a stretch to call his cultural observance “religious,” but it’s not the point of contention. Religious or not, he did not believe in God and was, thus, not on the “side” of those who claim him to have been. Intellectually, he was on “our side.”

    I understand that and have for quite some time. The title was meant to convey that he was on “our side” intellectually, not politically. It was only put so bluntly as a method of provoking religious people and saying nyah nyah nyah at them.

    Sorry, but you didn’t understood the actual point I tried to make under the thick slathering of cynicism.

  • 2 Reed Braden // May 14, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    Religious or not, he did not believe in God and was, thus, not on the “side” of those who claim him to have been a believer*.

  • 3 fred // May 15, 2008 at 5:35 am

    Apparently the word Atheist now has some new esoteric meaning.

    My understanding was that the word refers to someone who does not believe in the existence of gods.

    Apparently using the term ‘god’ in any context, such as when you smack your thumb with a hammer, coupled with the beholder’s general affection for the person, turns a non-believer into an honorary theist of some kind.

    Unbelievable.

  • 4 John // May 15, 2008 at 5:47 am

    Reed, my first thought when I read the title of your post was, “most Jews I know *are* atheists.”

    Zach, I completely support the essence of your post, which (correct me if I’m wrong here) is to shift us away from the polarizing tendencies of typical atheist-theist polemics. While I’m not sure if I would put Einstein quite in the ‘middle,’ he definitely wasn’t a Christopher Hitchens, either.

    Einstein strikes me as a complex man who defies (and personally defied) being pigeonholed. If militant, dogmatic atheism represents the far end of your spectrum, I agree that we’d definitely have to slide Einstein over some.

    One more thought: I think we have to be careful taking one thought expressed at one point in someone’s life and claim it represents the whole person. People change and evolve throughout life, including brilliant, iconic scientists.

    Anyhow, here’s a quote directly from the man himself:

    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.

    That said, I claim Einstein’s personal-god-denying and natural-universe-reverencing ways for myself. :P

  • 5 xJane // May 15, 2008 at 6:43 am

    Thank you, Zach, I’ve been debating about whether to post something about this. I would like to underline John’s comment that people say things throughout their lives and to take one comment and make it the Truth of their lives is a little shallow (or perhaps it shows how much of a pedestal we put these people on that we believe that they have their beliefs together so much more than we have).

    Feminism has this, too. Feminists for Life (a misleading name if ever I heard one) likes to use quotes from “famous feminists” to support their position. As do NARAL and Planned Parenthood. What is much more likely is that these women were conflicted, intelligent people who wrote and said what they thought (at the time).

    Unfortunately, I don’t think that leaving historical people out of the debate is going to be an option. Having Einstein or Susan B. Anthony appear to be on your side is a very powerful rhetorical tool.

    Sometimes it’s best to use the more poetic terms that religion set down for us in the infancy of our species because it makes a more profound impact.

    Speaking of the world in terms of poetry is always a beautiful thing. The Romantics have always inspired me to look at my world, and yes at the Divine as well, with a different lens. But, most of them were atheist (if not antitheist). I think nothing inspires me to my own belief more than this poetry: the Divine is not on high, policing our thoughts, but right here and all around us. Causing beauty, inspiring good, and filling our hearts with love. I will worship no other god than that.

  • 6 Zach // May 15, 2008 at 8:51 am

    Reed,
    You’re completely right about atheism per se being a simple intellectual question, and from the above quotes plus the little else I’ve read, I think you’re also right that Einstein was on our side on that score. Strictly speaking, there’s nothing stopping an atheist in the intellectual sense from emphasizing the glory and wonder of the cosmos, and taking a quasi-religious attitude towards it.

    So in that sense, Einstein’s on our side. Yay!

    But less strictly speaking, there are qualities associated with atheism and atheists that I think Einstein, in common with many religious people, didn’t wish to be associated with – unemotional rationalism, being negative rather than constructive, and so on. These are just stereotypes, perhaps with a grain of truth to them, which are getting debunked as time passes, and more (and more diverse) unbelievers come out. But I think this “political” dimension is a very real and very interesting.

    So I guess where we differ is that I’m interested in not just the intellectual point but also the wider social context.

    (I’m not, by the way, defending his particular brand of atheist/pantheist religion. I share his discomfort with a certain narrow kind of rationalism, but using the word God at all, even meaning the natural world, seems like a bad idea. Same for using “religion” to mean something like “humility towards the universe.” )

  • 7 Zach // May 15, 2008 at 9:02 am

    (PS: Reed, I probably should’ve framed my criticism better in the post – more accurate and genial would’ve been to say something like what I just commented, e.g. “leaving out the interesting social/political dimension” rather than “sloppy,” which wrongly suggests a lack of intellectual rigor.)

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