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Samantha A. Torrence and Thomas A. Torrence - A recently released letter penned on January 3, 1954 by Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind has become a spectacle over night, stroking the egos of atheists and inspiring the annoyance of the religious. What else is new when it comes to the words of a great spirit?

Some of the quotes, translated from German, were made available to the public.

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this,"

Emphasis on word mine.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions, and the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Despite his humble opinion of himself, the fact of the matter is if the Germans did not persecute the Jews, Einstein would not have fled to the US and his part in the development of atomic power would have never happened. Arguably therefore the US may not have won the war by dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki forcing Japan to withdraw and leave the Germans without their strongest ally. A Jew secured the end of the war by a display of great power, although he greatly regretted his hand in it all.


Atheists and opponents to religion have jumped on these words and have thrown their weight around to challenge any who would say that the letter is nothing more than a singular view made in response to questions from Eric Gutkind that perhaps we will not know. Einstein had his own words for the way he was misquoted today to support a view he did not hold.

In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.

"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 fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth."

So this view that religious concepts are childish is not a new one, so why is this letter some great revelation? Hype. As agnostic as Einstein was he did believe in a God concept. Just to clarify for all of you who do not understand the difference between an atheist and an agnostic.

a·the·ist –noun a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

ag·nos·tic
–noun 1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
–adjective 3. of or pertaining to agnostics or agnosticism.
4. asserting the uncertainty of all claims to knowledge.

Einstein's theories about God are not dissimilar to many who find themselves on the outskirts of the religious and scientific fields.

I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

Einstein was indeed a Great Spirit who had to deal with many mediocre minds from the atheist to the religious who strung him up time and time again in an attempt to reign in his brilliance for themselves. He was a man of balance who embraced science, spirituality and philosophy in an intellectual and non evangelical vehement fervor like atheistic scientists and evangelicals do today.

[E]ven though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies … science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind … a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist

This letter written one year before his death was not in response to an atheist, but to an intellectual peer in debate over Eric Gutkind's book Choose life, the Biblical call to revolt. Eric Gutkind's work is quoted and reviewed far less than Einstein, but one of his most relevant quotes comes from his book The Body of God: First steps toward Anti-theology states:

Our main sin today is that we do not ultimately accept our human destiny…. This demand made upon Man seems to be superhuman, and yet is must be accepted. It is what the great philosopher Kant called: the dignity of Man. We are looking for something petty, something practical, something to give us shelter. We must realize that our present situation is very advanced and by no means petty. It brings us to the awareness that Man is greater than he thinks.

Here is the abridged form of the letter published by the Guardian.

... I read a great deal in the last days of your book, and thank you very much for sending it to me. What especially struck me about it was this. With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common.

... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evaluations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and 'rationalisation' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things. With friendly thanks and best wishes

Yours, A. Einstein

Perhaps the hype surrounding this letter is evidence of atheists grasping at straws and the sad fact of the matter that only pieces of the pieces are being "leaked" to the public is even more suspicious. Of all the speculation put out there here is some more. Perhaps Einstein and Gutkind were arguing the merits and flaws of Jews and the Dogma of religion, but that they may have the most important view in common, that God is more than is defined by man or religion and that religions and their definitions are simplistic or "childish" compared to the truth that is out there.

To assume that a man's entire life, his works, his views, and his achievements can be summed up in one sentence or one letter is arrogant to say the least. We as people who could only dream of being as profound as this great spirit should come to acceptance that he was a diverse man and that his death has caused our world to be bereft of a great mind and the only man who can answer the question, "What did Einstein beleive?"