Whether
he was Atheist or not is hotly debated. From all what I have read, and I can
give you references, Einstein believed in God in a Mathematical sense. He
always said that he has no belief in a "personal" God who listens to
prayers and has qualities such as love, forgiveness and limitless power. To
say he was an Atheist is wrong. Here is one quote-" I’m not an atheist and
I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist,” he once said when asked to define
God. “I believe in Spinoza’s God,” he told Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the
Institutional Synagogues of New York, “who reveals himself in the orderly
harmony of what exists.” Another -
" There are still people", he remarked at a charity dinner during the
War, "who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they
quote me for support of such views”. “There are fanatical atheists whose
intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics,”
he said in 1940.
He believed in a Cosmic
religion or some type of Cosmic order responsible for the precise mathematical
laws that appear to exist in Nature but he was passionately against a belief in
a Personal God. If you define Atheism as a rejection of a personal God, then
Einstein was an atheist but most intellectual scientists and physicists who
believe in God do not have the "Old man in a beard" type of personal
god concept. I think it is fair to say that a true Atheist is one who rejects
both components, i.e cosmic intelligence and a personal God who have an influence
on us. I certainly know highly intelligent and well-read people who
believe in God but it is almost always a belief in a Cosmic intelligence rather than a personal god.
Welcome to my Blog
A warm welcome to my Blog
I shall post some news of interest to Sri lankans about life in Sri Lanka in the period 1950-1960 mainly. This will feature articles on music, general history and medicine. I am dedicated to humanism and refuse to judge people according to labels they are born with. Their actions and behaviour shall be my yardsticks, always cognizant of the challenges they faced in life.
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