SCIENCE AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD — No Contradiction

SCIENCE AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD No Contradiction T HERE is much confusion about Einstein's religious beliefs, in particular about his views on the existence of God. Some think that Einstein was an atheist. Others have a different opinion. An analysis of the various statements made by Einstein about his views will show that Einstein was not an atheist, and was in doubt about the existence of God. In 1997, Skeptic, a science magazine, published for the first time a series of letters that Einstein exchanged in 1945 with an officer in the US Navy named Guy Raner Jr, on the existence of God. Raner wanted to know if it was true that Einstein converted from atheism to theism on being confronted by a Jesuit priest with the following argument: A design requires a designer, and since the universe has a design, it must have a designer. Einstein wrote back that he had never spoken to a Jesuit priest in his life, but that from the viewpoint of such a person, he was and would always be an atheist. He added that it was misleading and childish to use anthropomorphic concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere and that all we could do was to admire, in humility, the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world as far as we can grasp it. A design requires a designer, and since the universe has a design, it must have a designer. Raner replied, asking for clarification of Einstein’s position, “Are you, from the viewpoint of the dictionary, an atheist, one who disbelieves in the existence of a God or a Supreme Being”? To this, Einstein replied, “I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist, whose fervour is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.” The view that Einstein holds about the existence of God is the same that almost all scientists hold. They consider themselves agnostics —