Dear Goanetters,
In some postings of this Forum
it was said that Albert Einstein was an atheist.
There were rejoinders to them. I would like to quote his own words,
wherein he says that he is neither an atheist nor a pantheist.
***Albert Einstein wrote: "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."
Einstein was often asked, "Do you believe in God?", to which he sometimes
replied "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of
all being". "By God", Spinoza wrote at the very beginning of his Ethica, "I
mean a being absolutely infinite-that is, a substance consisting in infinite
attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality".
Proposition XV of the Ethica stated: "Whatever is, is in God, and without
God nothing can be, or be conceived."
Once in answer to the question "Do you believe in the God of Spinoza?"
Einstein replied as follows:
"I can't answer with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and I don't
think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little
child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages.
The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how.
The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books
but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even
the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvellously
arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our
limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the
constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more
his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to
deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things."
Although dead, let Einstein speak for himself. It was a lived faith in God.
Comments will come later on, if need be.
Regards.
Fr.Ivo
