Quote:
Originally Posted by Emu
“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.”
Albert Einstein in a letter to Beatrice Frohlich, December 17, 1952; Einstein Archive 59-797; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 217.
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Ok, so for the life of me I can't find the book I'm looking for, I think it was
this one, not one of the silly one's about his love life, but I'll try my best nutshell at least MY impression of one of Einstein's letters on the subject. This is the furthest thing, by the way, from quoting the man, as everything in my head is filtered through all the other stuff in there...
Essentially, he felt that human beings typically experienced spirituality on three different levels. The vast majority of people relate to it on a basis of fear, wherein "If I do something wrong, I will get punished by a wrathful God." A smaller minority of people utilize their sense of spirituality to gain reward, as in, "When I do good things, I receive blessings from a kind and loving God."
Einstein counted himself in the third group of people, and he guessed that most high achievers in the world no matter their field of study also experience spirituality on this level: something in the way of "I understand the ebb and flow of things that is beyond our ability to comprehend, and I am necessarily a part of that." Again, this last bit is probably the hardest part for me to recall exactly, as it's the most interesting part and thus the one I've blended the most with other things. I'm pretty sure that's as close to what he actually said as I can get from memory.
Now, I'm no Einstein, but what I extrapolated from his thoughts on the subject led me to believe that atheists also exist in the three level structure as he defined it. I honestly believe that it's impossible to live on this planet while being completely detached from the idea of God simply for environmental reasons. I believe most atheists reject the idea of God as understood by those living in one of the first two levels, and seek something less threatening or crass to base their lives in.
I also believe there is room in the third level for a kind of atheistic existence, even though from my point of view that person would have to be a pretty foul dude... maybe an "anti-theist," though I don't think that quite names him. I know that it's gonna be easy to say that Einstein was talking about science, but he was discussing spirituality outside of Physics, the supernatural, not science. I think he saw that "ebb and flow" in personal relations and human interaction with the other bits and pieces of the universe in terms of morally right or wrong choices that, though they may be within us to understand, they are not of us.
That being said, Einstein contradicted himself many times in his life, and he was also wrong on a few of his assertions. If you really wish to understand what he really felt about anything, even science, the absolute worse thing you can do is snatch a few random quotes from here or there and say you get what he meant. You couldn't do that with the Theory of Relativity, could you?
Now, if you are simply trying to count a great man on "you side" in any argument, throwing disembodied quotes around is the perfect way to go about that. Einstein never wrote a book about God, and he wasn't known to have spent a hell of a lot of time studying the matter. He also wrote that were mankind to refuse to wholly accept the precepts of Socialism that refusal would spell it's own doom. I suspect he was part inspiration for Dr. Simon Pritchett in Atlas Shrugged, even. He was a smart guy that accomplished unbelievable things in his time, but to seek his wisdom in the unpublished part of his life requires a bit of extrapolation from much of his work, not just a casual sentence or two out of context with the rest of his life.
I wish I had that book. Meh... If I quoted it now, I'd probably wind up looking like a dumbass.