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Albert Einstein on Religion "I assert," he wrote for The New York Times on Nov. 9, 1930, "that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research. No one who does not appreciate the terrific exertions and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer creation in scientific thought cannot come into being can judge the strength of the feeling out of which alone such work turned away as it is from immediate, practical life, can grow." "The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience," he wrote "is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, also has given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms--this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men. "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature. "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God." "The most incomprehensible thing about the world," he said on another occasion, "is that it is comprehensible."
EINSTEIN'S COSMIC RELIGION Scientific experience of the universe is rational. Perception and experience become separated through the rational activity of the mind. Let’s analyze this indirect way of experiencing. Information enters the senses, goes into the mind where it is processed, and becomes an experience.
Mystic experience is direct, one experiences reality as has been perceived by the senses. The difference between object and subject disappears, one becomes one with the whole of existence. Mystic experience can be described as oceanic, ecstatic, it reveals the real nature of the world. By watching the mind one can develop rational experience in a mystic experience. Humans have the capacity to watch and become aware how the mind elaborates perception. One can close one's eyes and watch the stream of thoughts in one's inner space whenever one likes. Mystic experience requires us to become aware of all thoughts, emotions and images that are associated with the object or situation that we experience .
Conscious experience makes it clear that the universe is eternal, it has no beginning and no end. Time as a linear entity (i.e. past-present-future) exists only as part of the mind, it does not exist as a physical entity, so it cannot have a beginning as a physical reality. As there is no beginning of time, there is no beginning of the universe. Man is projecting his birth and death on to the universe, that's why he thinks that the universe was born, and will die one day. The universe simply exists, it was never created. From the universal point of view it makes no sense that the evening is after the morning, that the father is born before the son.. The idea of a timeless and eternal universe is supported by research done by Steinhardt from Princeton, and Turok from Cambridge. Their research introduces the idea of a cyclic universe that has no beginning and no end; big bangs are cyclic.
2. Einstein quotation, http://leiwen.tripod.com/quote2.htm. 3. Sorli (2002) Conscious Experience of The Universe, The Journal of Psychospiritual Transformation, Number 3, PSRI PRESS, New York. 4. Einstein quotation, http://leiwen.tripod.com/quote2.htm. 5. Paul Davies (1995), About Time, Chapter 11, Time Travels: Reality of Fantasy?, Orion Productions. 6. Immanuel Kant (1999), Critique of Pure Reason, Amazon, New York “The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.”
Albert Einstein There is no personal God. The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously. [Letter of 1946, Hoffman and Dukas] What I cannot understand is how there could possibly be a God who would reward or punish his subjects or who could induce us to develop our will in our daily life. I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. [The Private Albert Einstein] The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events - provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. [New York Times Magazine November 9, 1930] The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. There is no freedom of will or separate soul. In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. [The World as I See It] But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. [The World As I See It] Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning. [Letter of 5 February 1921] There is no afterlife or punishment for sins after death. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. [The World as I See It] If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? [Out of My Later Years] Prayer is useless. Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being. [Einstein - The Human Side]
Einstein's belief in God. I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. [Telegram of 1929, in Hoffman and Dukas] The cosmic mystery. The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. [The World as I See It] The most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science. If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. [Interview with Peter Bucky] It is very difficult to elucidate this [cosmic religious] feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole.
Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature. [The World as I See It.] Sheer being. The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. [Dukas and Hoffman] A spirit or superior intelligence. But, on the other hand, every one 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 religiosity of someone more naive. [c. Dukas and Hoffman] His [the scientist's] religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. [The World As I See It] The grandeur of reason incarnate in existence. [Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium]
Religion inspires science. While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements. [Ideas and Opinions] The cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand. . . It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. [The World as I See It]
1. Banesh Hoffman and Helen Dukas, Albert Einstein, New York and London, 1973. 2. Peter A. Bucky and Allen G. Weakland, The Private Albert Einstein by Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, 1992. 3. Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, New York, 1954. 4. Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Albert
Einstein - The Human 5. Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, New York, 1941. 6. Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949. 7. Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years, New York, Philosophical Library, 1950.
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