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+--- Thread: Einstein's historic 'God Letter' (/showthread.php?tid=11882)
Einstein's historic 'God Letter' - dirtymonkey22 - 10-09-2012
Quote:One of the most celebrated minds of the 20th century tackled one of the most contentious topics of all-time - and now his thoughts are up for auction, with an opening bid set at $3 million.
Albert Einstein penned some of his most trenchant critiques of religion in a letter to philosopher Eric B. Gutkind on Jan. 3, 1954, a year before he passed away.
Auction Cause will auction Einstein's "God Letter" on eBay from Oct. 8 to 18.
The handwritten letter, in German, was Einstein's response to Gutkind's book "Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt." Although Einstein and Gutkind had a lot in common, in Einstein's estimation, Einstein disagreed with several of Gutkind's theological convictions.
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Quote:Albert Einstein penned some of his most trenchant critiques of religion in a letter to philosopher Eric B. Gutkind on Jan. 3, 1954, a year before he passed away.
The Word of God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish," Einstein wrote from his home in Princeton, N.J.
He claimed that no interpretation, no matter how sophisticated, could sway his stance.
Einstein also responded to Gutkind's written statements on Israel and the Jewish people. "Israel's soul could not be hypnotized," Gutkind wrote, "it never succumbed to hypnotic assaults. ⦠The soul of Israel is incorruptible."
Einstein said that Judaism - like all other religions - is "an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." He said that he is glad to belong to the Jewish people but that they have "no different quality for me than all other people."
"As far as my experience goes," he continued, "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."
Joan Stambaugh translated the portions of the letter quoted above into English.
The letter - known to the scientific community for more than 50 years - will be auctioned with its original envelope, stamp and postmark.
The letter was previously sold for $404,000 through Bloomsbury Auctions in London, reported The New York Times.
In a different letter, dated March 24, 1954, Einstein rejected the notion of a personal god, but explained his sense of wonder that could be considered somewhat spiritual.
"If something is in me," Einstein wrote, "which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
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Key Passages:
... 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 honorable, 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 monopolization. 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, i.e; in our evaluations of human behavior. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and 'rationalization' 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