Einstein and God. Let’s put this behind us shall we?

I write this in response to all those who quote Einstein when they are faced with a science v/s religion dilemma. Misquoting Einstein or quoting him out of context (which most people do, albeit inadvertently) gives them a good excuse to go on living as they have. It allows them to escape from the tribulation that comes along with facing the prospect of changing one’s religious views. I know because I have been in those shoes before. Einstein’s views of God and religion are very clear but easy to distort.

Most of those, whom I know, who make the mistake of quoting Einstein at this juncture to appease themselves, are those who after a certain time of practising science have come to the point where they need to face the reality. The reality that fate is in the hands of us human beings and that we have a huge responsibility for all our actions. That the world is based on causality and is not some puppet show. Or it is those who have always believed in God but in a lab their belief system is contradicting their science. Or those, like me, who have always been agnostic but gone along with the flow of religious rituals because they never needed to question their religious views. (It is not uncommon to not have to face your own religious views when you are surrounded by people of very similar views, which happens a lot in urban India).

Before I state my case, I will make it clear that my main source of reference is Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Einstein’s essays on this topic. And I am aware that this may put off many of those who consider Dawkins to be wrong. I certainly don’t think Dawkins is wrong but I also am not an in-your-face-atheist (or a ‘new atheist’ as people call it these days). I say this because, irrespective of your views of Dawkins, his account of Einsteinian religion is an objective account of Einstein’s beliefs and as such can be considered independent of his views on God. So read the following without prejudices please:

Much unfortunate confusion is caused by failure to distinguish what can be called Einsteinian religion from supernatural religion (a supernatural creator that is appropriate to worship). Einstein sometimes invoked the name of God, inviting misunderstanding by supernaturalists eager to misunderstand and claim so illustrious a thinker as their own.

One of Einstein’s most eagerly quoted remark is ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ But Einstein also said, “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious conviction, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Here are more quotations from Einstein to give a flavour of Einsteinian religion:

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

Einstein was repeatedly indignant at the suggestion that he was a theist. He admired Spinoza’s philosophy. He said, “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’?”

I’ll end this discussion with Dawkins’ explanation:

There is every reason to think famous Einsteinisms like ‘God is subtle but He is not malicious’ or ‘He does not play dice’ or ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe’ are certainly not theistic. ‘God does not play dice’ should be translated as ‘Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.’ ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?’ means ‘Could the universe have begun in any other way?’ Einstein was using ‘God’ in purely metaphorical, poetic sense.