Albert Einstein was Spiritual (12 Quotes)

[PookztA]

I support you 100%, Dr. Albert Einstein.  



1. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)


2.  "I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."
-Albert Einstein


3. "The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma 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. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism."
(Albert Einstein)


4. "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality."
(Albert Einstein,The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press)


5. "I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?"
(The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 208)


6. "Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres."
(The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 214)


7. "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details."
(The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p.202)


8. "In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views."
(The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 214)


9. "It is very difficult to elucidate this cosmic religious feeling to anyone who is entirely without it. . . The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it ... In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."
(The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 207)


10. "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves."
(Albert Einstein, The World as I See It)


11. "A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
(Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930)


12. "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."
(Albert Einstein, responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein who had sent Einstein a cablegram bluntly demanding "Do you believe in God?" Quoted from Victor J. Stenger, Has Science Found God? 2001, chapter 3.)

(Baruch Spinoza believed God exists only philosophically and that God was abstract and impersonal.[1] Spinoza's system imparted order and unity to the tradition of radical thought, offering powerful weapons for prevailing against "received authority." As a youth he first subscribed to Descartes's dualistic belief that body and mind are two separate substances, but later changed his view and asserted that they were not separate, being a single identity. He contended that everything that exists in Nature (i.e., everything in the Universe) is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality which surrounds us and of which we are part. Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality,[11] namely the single substance (meaning "that which stands beneath" rather than "matter") that is the basis of the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect is only understood in part.)




BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!  

[laughingwillow]

Thanks for making this thread. I especially like the quote below.

quote from above: 11. "A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
(Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930)...................

In the same vein, the building blocks of life, DNA, is another example of a "books someone had to write." even if we can't see the author, imo. At least back in Einstein's day it would have prolly been called "books" of information. Today it might be compared with computer programs...

Welcome to spr, btw.

lw

[judih]

Oh yeah

i mean YEAH!

[JRL]

I know i will get smacked for saying this but science is holy!

[Satori]

It's funny. I am currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins.. or.. trying to anyway. It is a really bad book. But he uses a lot of Einstin's quotes to show how non-religious Einstein is.
In relation to the first quote in this thread, he adds this quote:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions,  lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as science can reveal it."

I must admit, that all this talk about whether Einstein was religious or not is a bit silly. Who cares? What different does it make?
Just because he is not religious is not gonna stop me from being religious - due to the life, insights and experiences I have had so far. And if he was religious.. good for him!

[PookztA]

cool comments folks! i also dig the information in the last post, very interesting because I did not know about that.

Science & Spirituality, what a combo eh?

Peace to you all,

-Abe