I was given a wonderful biography of Einstein ("Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson) for Christmas. People forget how articulate Einstein was. And over the span of his life he opined on many subjects. One of them was God and religion. I also got some other books for Christmas. I am currently most of the way through "The God Argument" by A. C. Grayling. You can get a good feel for the subject under discussion by consulting the subtitle: "The Case Against Religion and for Humanism". I'll get back to this latter book later. But let's start with this question: Was Einstein religious?
Most people would say no without spending much time thinking about it. He was a hard nosed scientist and everyone knows they are a pack of atheists, right? But "everyone" would be wrong. That is if you pay attention to what Einstein actually said about his religious beliefs. Isaacson scatters this information throughout his book. But he also devotes a chapter ("Einstein's God") to the subject. I am going to focus on the contents of that chapter. But, where appropriate, I am also going to bring in information from other parts of the book.
Let's start with the Big Bang. Jews, Christians, and Moslems share the Old Testament. And the first book of the Old Testament is Genesis. And Genesis contains the whole "and God created the world in six days" story. For "people of the book" this is the religious equivalent of the Big Bang. Boiling Genesis and the Big Bang down the world came into existence at a certain specific point. Genesis and a large contingent of Christian literalists say it was 6,000 years ago. Scientists say it was 13.7 billion years ago. But both takes on the question agree that there is a key question: How did it all get started?
There is a sound scientific answer to this question: insufficient information. There are lots of possibilities and not enough information to pick between them. One possibility is that the whole thing was kicked off by some very powerful space alien. So what do you call this space alien? How about God (with a capital "G"). People of the book cut straight to the chase. They go with God and do not admit the possibility of other explanations. But an unjustified leap is encapsulated in the above. I started with "space alien" and ended up with God. Where's the justification for that? The answer is: There isn't one.
But this is a leap that Einstein made. He knew the difference but decided to go with God instead of "space alien" (or some other formulation less strongly associated with religion) for convenience. It is true (see below) that he knew the distinction. But he was comfortable using "God" or not contradicting others when they used "God" on his behalf. And this sort of fuzzing the details is all too common in religious discussions.
Scientists have learned that it is extremely important to as a first step define your terms. The history of science is littered with examples of situations where one person is talking about apples and the other person is talking about oranges. This leads to unproductive disagreements. Once the confusion is sorted out there may or may not be a disagreement remaining. But even in the cases where a disagreement remains it is now possible to make forward progress.
Einstein was very careful, articulate, and thorough at various points to define what he meant by "God" and it wasn't at all the same thing as what religionists meant. And it resulted in a lot of initial confusion. People were happy to find out that Einstein believed in God. But later when what he meant by "God" became apparent many of these same people were all of a sudden very unhappy with him. So let me back up and briefly review Einstein's history with religion.
He was born a Jew. Being Jewish is an ethnic or cultural attribute. It can also be a religious attribute. He was born into a family that was not religiously active. And he was happy to think of himself as not even ethnically or culturally a Jew let alone religiously one. Unfortunately at that time (early 1900s) and in that place (Germany) it was not possible for Jews to avoid the ethnic/cultural connection. He was literally not permitted to ignore his Jewish identity. Over time he came to cherish his cultural identity and was at various times active in Zionism and the pursuit of a Jewish homeland in what eventually became Israel. But at no time in his life did he embrace the Jewish religion.
For a time he became intensely interested in Christianity. But he eventually became disenchanted and moved away from Christianity. He eventually extended that disenchantment to all forms of organized religion. But, when asked late in life, always characterized himself as religious. On several occasions he said "I am not an atheist". What's going on?
I threw that Big Bang stuff in earlier for a reason. The state of scientific ignorance around what preceded the Big Bang is completely compatible with a number of explanations. Einstein came to the belief that cosmology and pretty much every branch of science pointed to the existence of a "great architect". Einstein came to believe firmly in the existence of such an entity and he used "God" or some variant to refer to him. He also did what any good scientist would do. He took what he could see of how this entity operated and inferred some of his characteristics.
This led directly to the famous (he never said it exactly this way) quotation: "God does not play dice with the universe". He was not speaking metaphorically. He meant exactly what he said. His understanding led him to believe that the great architect, who he called "God", operated along certain principles. And those principles did not permit the kinds of probabilistic shenanigans that are a core attribute of Quantum Mechanics. This belief in "God" and his understanding of how "God" comported himself was a core component of Einstein's belief system. But Einstein's "God" was not the God of the bible.
So Einstein was a believer in some kind of powerful external entity. "Powerful" and "external" are attributes almost universally assigned by many religions, including all flavors of Christianity, to what they call "God". So Einstein and people who believe this way are in agreement so far. Where does the disagreement come in? The parting of the ways came on the subject of what is often called a "personal God".
Does "God" care about what individual humans do or don't do? Is he interested enough in their efforts to perhaps intercede on their behalf if asked? If asked does he sometimes actually intercede? In more conventional religious terms, does God care about good and evil? Does God care if we pray? Does God sometimes answer our prayers? A "personal god" answers "yes" to all these questions. Einstein's "God" answers "no" to all these questions. Most religions, and "most" includes Christianity, require the existence of a personal God to justify the religion's very existence. When various religious types found out that Einstein rejected a personal god they became very unhappy with him.
But perhaps I am getting this wrong. So let's see what Einstein actually said:
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the activities of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation.He defined his religiosity thus:
My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we can comprehend about the knowable world.Here's his take on the power of prayer:
. . . a 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.On the conflict between science and religion he said:
The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God.He was a very perceptive observer of much, not all of it directly related to science.
Interestingly, Einstein did not believe in free will. Based on his reading of how "God" operated he believed in what is often referred to as a "clockwork universe". The laws under which the universe operates are set up. Then the whole thing is kicked into motion. From then on the laws uniquely and specifically direct what will happen at each point in both space and time. This is technically called a "deterministic" universe. The conditions at any one point determine exactly what is going to happen next. And that means the behavior of each and every human being is predetermined at every point in their lives. And if everything is predetermined there is no room for free will.
This creates a fundamental problem. If everything is predetermined we never actually make choices. It just looks like we are making choices. If we never really have a choice then we really are not responsible for our actions. And that means guilt is an illusion and punishment is unfair. And that means there is no check on our behavior. If we do something bad it is not because we are a bad person or have been led astray but because it was always predetermined that we would behave that way.
Einstein did not really have a good answer for this. Instead he waved his hands. He said (paraphrasing) "I always act as if I believe I have free will. Everyone else should too. That is the way we get good and just people and good and just societies." It is not a persuasive argument but it is the only one he had.
And if only he had been willing to embrace Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the rest of Quantum Mechanics the problem would have disappeared. It provides the perfect mechanism for introducing free will back into the way the universe works. But he never did. He fought Quantum Mechanics to the day he died.
He did this honestly and ethically by coming up with theories and tests that could be put into competition with Quantum Mechanics. Scientists universally respected him. And the way he comported himself in his tussle with Quantum Mechanics only increased their respect for him. He fought fair. And the result eventually was a confirmation of Quantum Mechanics and a better and deeper understanding of it.
With that let me back up and take a wider perspective on all this. Einstein's conception of "God" is consistent with science. And his observation that the question of a personal God was key to the continuing conflict between science and religion is also spot on. But the fact that his position is consistent with science does not make it right.
The argument about whether there was a "master architect" who created the laws the universe operates under and then set it in motion is usually posited as a "one of two possible outcomes" argument. Either there was a master architect or there wasn't. I think this implicit assumption that there are only two possibilities is both wrong and demonstrates a failure of imagination. And the example I continuously fall back on is the tried and true argument about the nature of light.
For a couple of hundred years the assumption was that the nature of light was another one of those "one of two possible outcomes" arguments. Light was either made up of particles or it was waves. There were no other possibilities. Except it was Einstein himself who came up with a third possibility. Light is composed of something called photons. Photons sometime behave like particles. They sometimes behave like waves. They sometimes behave like both and they sometimes behave like neither. In other words, they are their own thing. This "third way" broke the log jam.
We literally don't know enough about the conditions before and during the Big Bang to be able to restrict the possibilities. So it is premature to say anything about the existence of or lack thereof of a master architect.
But interestingly enough there is something we can say about "God". If you study the bible you can adduce many characteristics of the entity Christians and others call "God". Then you can take that list of characteristics and ask "does such an entity exist in the natural world". The answer is a resounding NO! And that means there is no God where Capital "G" God means the "God of the bible" God. If you want to talk about lower case "god" gods then we can have a different discussion.
But you are likely to end up in the same place. This "god" doesn't exist. That "god" doesn't exist. That other "god" over there doesn't exist. The reason is a simple one. The gods that interest people and, therefore, result in successful religions are almost without exception personal gods. And science has studied the question of whether unnatural entities (entities that are capable of operating outside the natural laws as understood by scientists) exist and the answer is No! There just isn't any room for a personal god. If there were science would have come up with evidence of the existence of such an entity.
And, as I indicated above, Einstein adamantly denied being an atheist. He would cop to being an agnostic if pushed. But I think the problem is definitional. Einstein adopted the definition of atheist that says "an atheist must believe in no god nor any kind of higher power". This is a convenient definition for religious types. Because there are a lot of people like Einstein who didn't believe in God (i.e. the god of the bible) but do believe in some kind of higher power.
But in our society people generally mean "god of the bible" when they use the word "God" (capitalized) or even "god" (lower case). So my definition of "atheist" is "anyone who does not believe in the god of the bible". By that definition Einstein was an atheist. And it turns out that this is the exact same argument that Boston Cardinal William Henry O'Connell advanced in Einstein's time. He thought Einstein was actually an atheist too.
Finally, if you want to dig into all this business a lot more deeply I recommend Grayling's book. I have pretty much stuck to one issue. Religious people and people who are not have fought over a lot of things over the centuries. Grayling provides a much more complete list of these conflicts and outlines the non-religious take on all of them. He then spends a lot of time talking about "humanism" a non-religion based ethical and moral system which he thinks is superior to what religions have come up with. If you are interested, check it out.
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