Einstein and God

It seems that Einstein held God in pretty low esteem. In a letter sold recently at auction for $404,000 Einstein explains to his correspondent that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." In speaking of religion (rather than just God) he said "the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."

So what do we make of this? What is particularly interesting is that believers just won't give up on Einstein. Rather than accepting that he just didn't believe in God, a prominent scholar, John Brookes, interprets these comments as meaning that "Einstein was not a conventional theist." That's like saying that Newt Gingrich is not a conventional Democrat or that Oscar Wilde is not a conventional heterosexual.

Einstein had actually, it seems, read the Bible and come to his own damning conclusions. When one of the greatest thinkers of the last century concludes that something is "pretty childish" it should give pause to those who claim that all knowledge is in the Bible. But it probably won't. Similarly, no-one should choose to derive their moral guidance from incarnations of childish superstitions, but that won't stop it happening.

Not that it matters to me, but it does matter to people who want to co-opt Einstein to the "scientists can believe in God too" side of the argument. Even if he had believed in God, it wouldn't make God any more real. It's a funny thing about this "Argument from Authority" that it only really matters to the religionists - because it's just another one of the logic-less pretexts for why we should believe their mumbo-jumbo.

Einstein had understood that God and religion are two constructs that religionists propagate that some people come to rely on in their weakness. This puts me in mind of Barack Obama's comment of how people in small towns "get bitter and cling to ... religion ... as a way to explain their frustrations." When times are tough religion gets going, which does not bode well for the current recession. Caveat emptor.