Karina+Week+8

As presented in Gerald Holton’s //Einstein’s Third Paradise//, the legendary scientist Albert Einstein experienced several transitions of religiosity in his lifetime. It can be stated that Einstein was not conventionally religious, neither belonging wholly to the Jewish nor Christian faith despite “the teaching in his Catholic primary school, mixed with his private instruction in elements of the Jewish religion.” However, he did experience a stage in his early years of when he held religious feelings, as documented in a biography by his sister. Later in life, he became fascinated with science, of which his experience can almost be described as spiritual. About age sixteen, he began the process to disassociate himself from conventional religion (i.e. organized religion), “…inventing his own form of religiousness, just as he was creating his own physics.”

Einstein is notoriously misquoted by both the religious and the non-religious who are eager to claim such a renowned name as “Albert Einstein” as one of their own. He was known to frequently use the word “God” is his writings, which was irritating to some other scientists. “…the countless, well-known quotations in which Einstein referred to God – doing it so often that Niels Bohr had to chide him.” and, “Karl Popper remarked that in conversations with Einstein, ‘I learned nothing. . . . he tended to express things in theological terms, and this was often the only way to argue with him. I found it finally quite uninteresting.’” In these cases, one could assume that Einstein was a religious man, but in a reply to a telegram from an American rabbi that asked him if he believed in God, he answered, “I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” What I find amusing is that “the rabbi cited this as evidence that Einstein was not an atheist.” (Oh no! Not an //atheist//!) In reading Richard Dawkins’ //The God Delusion//, I came across a piece about Einstein and religion which I was reminded of while reading this article. While I recognize that it might be slightly biased in favor of atheism, I found this piece of information interesting. “In greater numbers since his death, religious apologists understandably try to claim Einstein as one of their own. Some of his religious contemporaries saw him very differently. In 1940 Einstein wrote a famous paper justifying his statement ‘I do not believe in a personal God’.”

I can then be said that what Einstein called God was feeling of cosmic unity that had nothing to do with any organized religion that believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent creator. As well as his outstanding constitutions to physics, Einstein has influenced many in the modern world in religious beliefs when he described himself, “in his words, of ‘a deeply religious unbeliever’.” In fact, I think I might have heard Dawkins refer to himself as a “deeply religious non-believer…

As presented in Gerald Holton’s //Einstein’s Third Paradise//, the legendary scientist Albert Einstein experienced several transitions of religiosity in his lifetime. It can be stated that Einstein was not conventionally religious, neither belonging wholly to the Jewish nor Christian faith despite “the teaching in his Catholic primary school, mixed with his private instruction in elements of the Jewish religion.” However, he did experience a stage in his early years of when he held religious feelings, as documented in a biography by his sister. Later in life, he became fascinated with science, of which his experience can almost be described as spiritual. About age sixteen, he began the process to disassociate himself from conventional religion (i.e. organized religion), “…inventing his own form of religiousness, just as he was creating his own physics.”

Einstein is notoriously misquoted by both the religious and the non-religious who are eager to claim such a renowned name as “Albert Einstein” as one of their own. He was known to frequently use the word “God” is his writings, which was irritating to some other scientists. “…the countless, well-known quotations in which Einstein referred to God – doing it so often that Niels Bohr had to chide him.” and, “Karl Popper remarked that in conversations with Einstein, ‘I learned nothing. . . . he tended to express things in theological terms, and this was often the only way to argue with him. I found it finally quite uninteresting.’” In these cases, one could assume that Einstein was a religious man, but in a reply to a telegram from an American rabbi that asked him if he believed in God, he answered, “I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” What I find amusing is that “the rabbi cited this as evidence that Einstein was not an atheist.” (Oh no! Not an //atheist//!) In reading Richard Dawkins’ //The God Delusion//, I came across a piece about Einstein and religion which I was reminded of while reading this article. While I recognize that it might be slightly biased in favor of atheism, I found this piece of information interesting. “In greater numbers since his death, religious apologists understandably try to claim Einstein as one of their own. Some of his religious contemporaries saw him very differently. In 1940 Einstein wrote a famous paper justifying his statement ‘I do not believe in a personal God’.”

I can then be said that what Einstein called God was feeling of cosmic unity that had nothing to do with any organized religion that believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent creator. As well as his outstanding constitutions to physics, Einstein has influenced many in the modern world in religious beliefs when he described himself, “in his words, of ‘a deeply religious unbeliever’.” In fact, I think I might have heard Dawkins refer to himself as a “deeply religious non-believer…