I repeat: Einstein did not believe in God

I have just as much respect for our bygone geniuses and revolutionary intellectuals, those men (and women) whose brilliance, innovation and creativity have contributed to making our modern world as advanced as it is, as anyone else does. The problem, though, is that many religious people (particularly Christians) like to dredge up their religious or spiritual beliefs as though what old, dead people believed in was any sort of an influential argument. It ain’t.

One of these revolutionary corpses most brought up for these pitiful non-arguments has to be that of Albert Einstein. One notable example is that tired and verifiably false story about “Einstein and the Professor”, which I’ve myself dissected on this blog a few months back. As though it weren’t freakin’ obvious and demonstrable enough, here’s yet another shining bit of evidence to illustrate how there were few less religious and/or god-believing people than our the father of the Theory of Relativity himself. In a letter that he wrote just a year before his death to to the author of a heavily Christian religious book, he wrote thus:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely 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 superstition. [My emphasis]

How bloody clearer can he get?

(Interesting trivia: this letter was bought at auction in May of 2008 for £170,000. One of the unsuccessful bidders was, funnily enough, Richard Dawkins. Heh.)

Now, can we finally put the myth that Einstein was Christian, or that he believed in any sort of God, to rest? And can anyone who claims as much be crushed under the label of “dumbass”? Please?

(via Pharyngula)
Technorati tags: Einstein · God · letters · jews