Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood.
[1] Albert Einstein stated "I believe in
Spinoza's God".
[2] He did not believe in a
personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve.
[3] He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist",
[4] preferring to call himself an
agnostic,
[5] or a "religious nonbeliever."
[3]
OK
In other interviews, he stated that he thought that
there is a "lawgiver" who sets the laws of the universe.
-wikipedia
I doubt this. Need citation. Complete citation from Wiki:
Albert Einstein - Wikipedia
Religious and philosophical views
"Ladies (coughs) and gentlemen, our age is proud of the progress it has made in man's intellectual development. The search and striving for truth and knowledge is one of the highest of man's qualities ..."
Main article:
Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein
Einstein expounded his spiritual outlook in a wide array of writings and interviews.
[185] He said he had sympathy for the impersonal
pantheistic God of
Baruch Spinoza's philosophy.
[186] He did not believe in a
personal god who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve.
[187] He clarified, however, that "I am not an atheist",
[188] preferring to call himself an agnostic,
[189][190] or a "deeply religious nonbeliever".
[187] When asked if he believed in an
afterlife, Einstein replied, "No. And one life is enough for me."
[191]
Einstein was primarily affiliated with non-religious humanist and Ethical Culture groups in both the UK and US. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York,[192] and was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Association, which publishes New Humanist in Britain. For the 75th anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism. He observed, "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity."[193]
In a German-language letter to philosopher
Eric Gutkind, dated 3 January 1954, Einstein wrote:
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. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the
Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the
Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. ... I cannot see anything '
chosen' about them.
[194]
Einstein had been sympathetic toward vegetarianism for a long time. In a letter in 1930 to Hermann Huth, vice-president of the
German Vegetarian Federation (Deutsche Vegetarier-Bund), he wrote:
Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
[195]
He became a vegetarian himself only during the last part of his life. In March 1954 he wrote in a letter: "So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It almost seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore."
[196]
He believed in a humanist ethical culture not a Divine Lawgiver. See
bold.
