There are no supernatural entities out there for Einstein, and there is no uncaused cause. And it is precisely by getting that they are inexorable that we experience this religious feeling. It’s just a recognition of the way things ultimately are, which is what Einstein meant by “God.” The reason that God does not play dice in Einstein’s universe is that physical laws are inexorable. “Cosmic religion” has nothing to do with morality or free will or sin and redemption. He regarded organized religion as a superstition, but he believed that, by means of scientific inquiry, a person might gain an insight into the exquisite rationality of the world’s structure, and he called this experience “cosmic religion.”

Einstein did have views about God, but he was a physicist, not a moral philosopher, and, along with a tendency to make gnomic utterances-“God does not play dice with the universe” is his best-known aperçu on the topic-he seems to have held a standard belief for a scientist of his generation. This all made the letter sound a lot more thoughtful than it is. “Not only does the letter contain the words of a great genius who was perhaps feeling the end fast approaching,” Christie’s said on its Web site, “It addresses the philosophical and religious questions that mankind has wrestled with since the dawn of time: Is there a God? Do I have free will?” The press release called it “one of the definitive statements in the Religion vs Science debate.” Journalistic interest was stirred up by the question of whether the letter might contradict other comments that Einstein is recorded having made about God. The God letter was cleverly marketed, though. But, if auction price is at all relative to historical significance, that letter should be way more valuable than the God letter. It was written by the physicist Leo Szilard, based on a letter that Einstein had dictated. Photograph by Ernst Haas / GettyĪlthough it bears his signature, Einstein didn’t actually write the bomb letter.

Einstein had what might be called a night-sky theology, a sense of the awesomeness of the universe that even atheists and materialists feel.

The cosmic view of albert einstein pdf