Einstein on God and Faith

About once a year, I pull out some notes I once made on Einstein.  His comments on God and Faith always inspire me, because his faith emerged from his deep study of the universe.  Romans 1:20 says, For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what is made, so that men are without excuse.

Einstein's faith is a good example of what we can know about God without revelation.  As a Jew, he did not believe in a 'personal' God who involved Himself in the lives of men, but still, Einstein had a reverence -- what the bible calls "the fear of the Lord" -- for the designer and creator of the universe:

The cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research...

Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding...Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.

 

There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.

 

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe -- a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.  In this way, the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiousity of someone more naive.

 

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.  To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly; this is religiousness.  In this sense...I am a devoutly religious man.

 

I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene...No one can read the Gospells without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.  His personality pulsates in every word.  No myth is filled with such life.

 

All of these quotes have been taken from the wonderful biography Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson (2007).

 

Tomorrow night, we experience the Geminid, the marvelous shower of meteors that will be visible everywhere on earth.  Reading these sentiments from a great scientist is a wonderful preparation for contemplating the mysteries of the universe and of the God Who made it.