“THE RELIGION OF ALBERT EINSTEIN”

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, January 39, 2006

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

To talk about the thoughts of Albert Einstein is a humbling experience. It’s a little like preparing a sermon on the music of Pavaratti, and trying to sing it. How do you explain the ideas of a person who is the recognized symbol of genius? You do it with humility.

You may have known that last year represented an important anniversary concerning Albert Einstein. It was not the centenary of his birth or of his death. Rather, it was the hundredth anniversary of the publication of his ideas that won him the Nobel Prize and revolutionized modern science. Nineteen-0-five was the year that he published four scientific treatises, including his most famous paper on the theory of general relativity, and the most famous scientific formula ever known, whether it is understood or not: E=MC².

I wish to focus primarily on the religious thinking of this extraordinary man. It turns out that he had quite a bit to say on the subject, and most of his thoughts were deliberate and consistent, and in fact he had a name that described his religious perspective.

His views were controversial, to say the least. But it might also be pointed out that his views were equally applauded and equally condemned by both orthodox believers and heretical non-believers. His religious ideas were as unruly as his hair. He was an enigma.

Given the diversity of religion that has flowered in the world since his death, I doubt that his views would be quite as controversial today as they were during the first half of the twentieth century. But his religion was in many ways a product of his scientific mind – a religion rooted in the passion for nature and the mysteries of nature that we can barely comprehend. On the other hand, his science was also a product of his religious passion – for it was the reverence for the mysteries of nature that motivated him to explore the way nature worked. However you look at it, for Albert Einstein, science and religion fit together, hand and glove. But it was a mistake to confuse the hand with the glove – they are very different things. And to Einstein that was the biggest mistake people make: to confuse the separate roles of religion and science.

To get a perspective on his religious views, it is probably helpful to review the highlights of his life. He was born March 14, 1879 at Ulm in Germany. His father was a featherbed salesman who later ran an electrochemical company that failed. His family was Jewish, though non-observant. He attended a Catholic elementary school as the only Jewish student, and he first experienced anti-Semitism there. He was a slow learner, with dyslexia, and may have had a mild form of autism as a child. When his parents hired a tutor to teach him about Judaism, he became devout for a number of years, including dietary restrictions, but gave up formal religious ties once he started reading deeply about science. At age 12, he refused bar mitzvah.

The family moved to Italy when he was 16, and Albert was sent to finish school in Switzerland. While in college in Zurich, he met Mileva Maric, a Serbian woman studying in his same field. They married in 1903, though they had a daughter together a year before they married.

Mileva was herself an accomplished mathematician, and they became intellectual partners. He once described her as “a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am.” They would have two children, both sons, before they divorced in 1919. Einstein then married Elsa Lowenthal, who was a first cousin on his mother’s side and second cousin on his father’s side. They would have no children.

The legend of Einstein presents him as a humble civil service worker at the Swiss patent office who made it big. The picture is true, but just a little misleading. It is also true that at the same time he was working at the patent office, he was finishing up his doctorate, which he received in 1905.

In fact, the year 1905 is sometimes referred to as Einstein’s “miracle year.” As I say, that was the year he published his scientific theories that made him famous and years later won him the Nobel Prize.

Einstein taught at a number of Universities, but eventually settled in Berlin at the Prussian Academy of Sciences and became the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1914 to 1933. During this time, he became increasingly a target of the rising Nazi powers because of his Jewish background. The fact that it was during this period that he received his Nobel Prize made him an even greater target. It was also during this time when he was able to write articles elaborating on his theory of relativity.

Before Einstein, it was generally felt that Isaac Newton had pretty much completed the scientific understanding of nature, and all that was left was a kind of “mopping up” exercise by modern scientists, filling in the gaps of Newtonian physics. Newton, of course, understood gravity very simply based on his famous observation of apples falling from the tree. But Einstein upset the scientific applecart by proposing that gravity, instead of being a simple force of nature that Newton hypothesized, was instead the consequence of the curvature of space-time, subject to the relativity of nature.

Einstein’s ideas were received in the scientific community with skepticism, though eventually independent research around the world proved to confirm them. His theories paved the way for what was to become quantum physics, and Einstein was a leader in this revolutionary new science. But he approached these new and curious ideas with some misgivings, which I’ll mention later, but the modern physics of quantum mechanics would probably not have unfolded as it did without the work of Einstein.

When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Einstein became a more frequent target of anti-Semitic hatred and venom. As the Nazi increased in political power, they imposed their influence in academia, and worked to discredit his reputation, blacklisting him in scientific and political circles. Einstein renounced his German citizenship and moved to America where he was offered a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, where he remained the rest of his professional life. He became an American citizen in 1940, though he also retained his Swiss citizenship as well.

It was at Princeton that Einstein worked on what came to be known as the “Unified Field Theory.” The scientific understanding of cosmic nature – the movement of the planets and the way things worked in the observable world – was substantially different from the scientific understanding of the sub-atomic world – the behavior of neutrons and electrons in the tiniest elements of nature. Some scientists – Albert Einstein chief among them – held strongly to the belief (one might even say, “the faith”), that there was yet to be discovered a single theory that could explain nature in both its macro and its micro forms. This is the meaning of the Unified Field Theory. Einstein did not succeed in discovering it, and it yet remains undiscovered, but he never gave up the conviction that such a theory exists.

Albert Einstein was a devout pacifist. He was an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, and wrote eloquently about non-violence. Still, in 1939, he wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, urging that the United States work on nuclear fission for nuclear military power, because he suspected Germany was already doing so. Roosevelt had his experts look into the matter, which resulted in his creation of what came to be known as the Manhattan Project, developing the nuclear bomb.

After the war, Einstein would become one of the world’s most vocal advocates for nuclear disarmament. It might also be mentioned that he was a target of the witch-hunts by Senator Joe McCarthy. If you browse the FBI website you will find that they compiled a report 1,400 pages long of his affiliations with organizations they considered to be communist-sympathizing. Their report lists that he was a member, sponsor, or affiliated with thirty-four communist front groups between 1937 and 1954.

As with so much of the McCarthy legacy, these accusations were misleading, inaccurate, libelous, and wrong. Einstein was a publicly opposed the Soviet brand of communism, though he advocated a system of democratic socialism. In those days – and maybe in these – simplistic minds could not distinguish between socialism and communism, and of course denied any possibility of democratic forms of socialism, but Einstein’s advocacy was for systems not much different than can be found today in most Western European democracies.

In listing Einstein’s social and political causes, his advocacy for civil rights and racial justice should be mentioned. He was a longtime active member of the NAACP, and longtime friend of civil rights advocates Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois. He once commented that “racism is America’s greatest disease.”

In 1948, he was one of the founders of Brandeis University, a Jewish-based college. In 1952, the Israeli government invited him to serve as in the role of second President, knowing that he was, in essence, a secular Jew. He declined. He was an advocate of the Jewish state, as most Jewish survivors of Nazi oppression would be, and in his will he left all his professional papers to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

It is astounding the fame that Einstein acquired as the years rolled by. He became not only a household name, but a symbol and even synonym for natural genius, a cultural icon. If I say, “Hey, I’m no Einstein, but here’s what I think,” you know exactly what I mean.

Albert Einstein died in the early hours of April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey, from complications of an aortic aneurism. The only person at the scene was a nurse, who reported that just before his death he spoke some words in German, but she didn’t understand it. In the next few hours, an autopsy was performed, and the doctor removed his brain for further scientific study. He was cremated the same day, and his ashes were scattered in an undisclosed location, according to his wishes.

That is the brief sketch of the astounding life of Albert Einstein. What does his life have to say about religion, though? It turns out that there is quite a lot. Perhaps one of the most fascinating discoveries in looking at the religion of Albert Einstein is that he provided ample support for both the secularist and the religiously-inclined. The traditional religious believer can extract many quotes from him (out of context) defending traditional religion. The atheist and free-thinking heretic can find just as many quotes (out of context) defending their point of view. We do know that Einstein resented being used that way by both ends of the religious spectrum.

Albert Einstein was fascinated with the subject of religion throughout his life. He was very unorthodox in his beliefs, but very adamant about the importance of religion. His friend and colleague Max Born said about Einstein, that he “had no belief in the church, but did not think religious faith was a sign of stupidity, nor unbelief a sign of intelligence.”

Over his life, Einstein developed his own personal religious view and even gave it a name. He called it “Cosmic Religion,” or a “cosmic religious feeling.” This, he said, represented the natural evolution of human religious understanding.

Einstein created quite a stir in 1930 when the New York Times invited him to write an essay on “Religion and Science.” It was there that he first carefully articulated his Cosmic Religion, and the result was controversial.

He began his essay with a review of how he believed religion became created by human needs. The most primitive form of religion arose, he said, out of fear – “fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, and death.” Primitive societies created imaginary beings that would protect them from such threats if they give the proper worship.

The second stage of religion arose with what Einstein called “the social and moral conception of God.” At this stage, societies look to Gods, not just for protection, but for “guidance, love, and support.” It was at this stage that religious traditions established moral standards for both society and individuals.

The third stage of religious development, Einstein described as “the cosmic religious feeling.” This is the religion he identified with. At this stage, religion becomes the way in which a person experiences the awe and wonder and mystery of the natural universe. He said this cosmic religious feeling “is very difficult to elucidate to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.” He went on to say of this stage,

“The individual feels. . . 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. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear(ed) at an early stage of development, for example, in the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism. . . contains a much stronger element of this. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. . . .”

He then went on to say that this cosmic religious experience is, in fact, “the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research,” and is therefore the motivation behind scientific research is grounded in this religious passion.

The reaction to this New York Times essay was swift and strong. Orthodox religious leaders condemned his religion as atheistic. Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen called it the “sheerest kind of stupidity and nonsense.” But more liberal clergy, and especially liberal Jewish leaders, found it insightful.

In many writings, Einstein would repeat in different words the point that it is a cosmic religious feeling that motivates scientists to explore the secrets of nature. Here are just a few examples from different writings:

“I have found no better expression than ‘religious’ for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.”

“I am of the opinion that the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling.”

“Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of (human beings), and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

I could spend the entire morning offering quotes like this. The point is simply that for Einstein the passion for science is religious – it addresses the hunger to understand the mysterious forces behind nature. The fact that his cosmic religion had no need for a personal God became hard for religious traditionalists to accept. The fact that Einstein never hesitated to describe the religious force of nature as “God” was hard for religious skeptics to accept.

He was adamant about his rejection of any notion of what he called a “personal God,” – one which answers prayers and intervenes in human affairs. But his cosmic religion included God. In terms of religious philosophy, his mentor was Spinoza, for he sometimes said, simply, that he believed in “Spinoza’s God.”

Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza was a 17^th century Dutch philosopher with a Jewish background. He was excommunicated by his local synagogue because his view of God was so unorthodox. Spinoza’s God was a God of nature, a sort of “pantheism,” that located God, not in some celestial throne, but rather in the natural laws that govern plants and ocean tides and patterns of planets. God exists in nature itself, and is not in any sense “super-natural.” Spinoza’s God was like the one mentioned by Frank Lloyd Wright when Wright once said: “I believe in God, but I spell it ‘N-a-t-u-r-e.’”

The fact that Einstein would speak of God at all became fodder for the writings of traditional religious leaders who invoked his name in defense of their God. Einstein resented that association because his concept of God was completely foreign from the idea of a personal God that they advocated. The fact that Einstein explicitly rejected the concept of a personal God became fodder for the atheists and secularists as well, who invoked his name in their argument for the rejection of God. Einstein resented that they would use him to foster a position of absolute atheism which he rejected.

After his New York Times article was published, another essay of his on religion and science was widely distributed in newspapers around the country, and again caused quite a controversy. In this 1940 essay, he was even more explicit and direct about rejecting any notion of a “personal God,” or God as a “person” who rewards and punishes, but Einstein again defended Spinoza’s “God of Nature.” Again, the religious traditionalists vilified him as an atheist. The atheists welcomed him as one of their own. Both responses upset him, as he wrote about the incident to a friend:

“I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are creatures who – in their grudge against the traditional ‘opium of the people’ – cannot bear the music of the spheres.

The debate about a personal God became hotly contested issue for public debate. But for Einstein, that question was trivial. In more academic circles, there was a much greater stumbling block to be overcome in accepting Einstein’s religion – an obstacle to both religious conservatives and liberals. That issue was Einstein’s unreserved embrace of determinism. This concept was also became his own greatest hurdle in fully accepting quantum mechanics.

Einstein truly believed in a deterministic worldview – a position he felt justified by anyone who took science seriously. Everything that exists and everything that happens can be explained by causes that come before it. Everything that happens is, in theory at least, predictable, if we can only know all the variables that lead up to it. This deterministic view of the world was a threat to orthodox theology for a variety of reasons.

First, it suggests that God can play no role in the unfolding of history, since everything that happens is determined by natural causes. It also rules out concepts like “sin,” for human behavior becomes not a choice, but a consequence of biology and environment. And this is the rub for so many, whether traditional or liberal in their religion: it denies the existence of free will. And if people aren’t free to make choices, then how can they be held responsible for their actions?

Einstein did not elaborate very extensively on this issue, but it clearly became the most controversial part of his religious philosophy among mainstream scientists and philosophers. Interestingly, it was a similar issue of determinism that became an obstacle in Einstein’s embrace of the more radical statements of quantum mechanics.

It was Einstein’s early work that inspired much of modern quantum physics, the scientific view that displaced Isaac Newton’s science. In fact, his Nobel Prize was granted not for his work on relativity, but for his theories concerning light quanta.

But as Einstein’s career unfolded, other physicists suggested a subatomic worldview that Einstein found difficult to embrace. That view was that at the micro level of electrons lies an element of randomness, or at least unpredictability. The most popular understanding of this view became known as “Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty.” Somewhere at the very literal core of nature, there exists indeterminacy. Einstein’s devout faith in a deterministic view of nature prevented him from accepting this theory that was generally to become widely accepted in scientific circles. Of the principle of uncertainty, Einstein famously stated, “God does not play dice with the universe!”

And there the issue of Einstein’s commitment to determinism remained until he died. Some people, mostly non-scientists, grabbed this principle of uncertainty and ran with it as announcing that science had discovered the basis for human free will! That, of course, is not what happened, but it did allow for science to provide a metaphor for free will, and it certainly cast doubt on a completely deterministic worldview.

Before closing, it is worth mentioning one more issue about science and religion that Einstein raised for public debate. He insisted there is a legitimate role for both, but their roles are separate and distinct. They complement each other, but science and religion have two different purposes.

Science, he said, tells us what is. Religion shows us what ought to be, and what we ought to do. Science gives us facts, but it cannot give us values. Religion teaches values, but it is not a source of facts. If we are looking to set goals or pursue values, we must appeal to religion, for science cannot tell us what ought to be done. Science can, however, help us know how to achieve those goals. Einstein could see no logical reason for any conflict between science and religion, for they serve different purposes. He summarized this view with a cogent statement that is frequently cited: “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

There is a sense in which Einstein’s religion and Einstein’s science were both woven together in the fabric of his thought. Though they are very different threads from one another, if you take one out, the entire fabric unravels. It was the human sense of wonder and mystery and awe in contemplating the universe that gave rise to the scientific spirit. It is science that helps us grasp what that mystery means beyond mere myth. Religion needs science to make sense out of the experience of mystery. Science needs religion to motivate the human spirit. I will close with what I consider to be his most eloquent explanation of the symbiotic relationship between these two important human endeavors:

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of all true art and true science. Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

(Einstein, “What I Believe”)

MISCELLANEOUS READINGS

From various sources about Albert Einstein’s views

On Religion and Science

“. . . All the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and without such feeling, they would not be fruitful. I also believe that this kind of religiousness, which makes itself felt today in scientific investigations, is the only creative religious activity of our time. . . “ (Einstein, “Science and God”)

“The scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capable, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of ‘what is’ does not open the door directly to ‘what should be.’ One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduce from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievement of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source.”

When Einstein was approached at a dinner party by someone who said, “Professor, I hear you are supposed to be deeply religious?” Einstein replied:

“Yes, you can call it that. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.”

In a letter to the sixth grade Sunday School class of Riverside Church, responding to their letter to him asking his views on prayer:

“Scientific research is based on the assumption that all events, including actions of mankind, are determined by the laws of nature. Therefore, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, that is, but a wish addressed to a supernatural Being. However, we have to admit that our actual knowledge of these laws is only an incomplete piece of work, so that ultimately the belief in the existence of fundamental all-embracing laws also rests on a sort of faith. All the same, this faith has been largely justified by the success of science.

“On the other hand, however, every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of (human beings), and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. The pursuit of science leads therefore to a religious feeling of a special kind, which differs essentially from the religiosity of more naïve people. With friendly greetings, your Albert Einstein.”

On Judaism:

“It is clear that ‘serving God’ was equated (in Jewish tradition) with ‘serving the living.’ The best of the Jewish people, especially the Prophets and Jesus, contended tirelessly for this. Judaism is thus no transcendental religion; it is concerned with life as we live it and as we can, to a certain extent grasp it. . . . But the Jewish tradition also contains something else, something which finds splendid expression in many of the Psalms, namely, a sort of intoxicated joy and amazement at the beauty and grandeur of this world, of which humans can form just a faint notion. This joy is the feeling from which true scientific research draws its spiritual sustenance, but which also seems to find expression in the song of birds.”

An anecdote taken from Charles Chaplin’s autobiography, as told by Albert’s wife Elsa:

The Doctor came down in his dressing gown as usual for breakfast, but he hardly touched a thing. I thought something was wrong, so I asked what was troubling him. “Darling,” he said, “I have a wonderful idea.” And after drinking his coffee, he went to the piano and started playing. Now and again he would stop, making a few notes then repeat: “I’ve got a wonderful idea, a marvelous idea!” I said, “Then for goodness’ sake, tell me what it is, don’t keep me in suspense.” He said, “It’s difficult, I still have to work it out.”

She told me he continued playing the piano and making notes for about half an hour, then went upstairs to his study, telling her that he did not wish to be disturbed, and remained there for two weeks. “Each day I sent him up his means,” she said, “and in the evening he would walk a little for exercise, then return to his work again. Eventually,” she said, “he came down from his study looking very pale. That’s it,” he told me, wearily putting two sheets of paper on the table. And that was his theory of relativity.