Einstein’s God
While reading Walter Isaacson’s majestic biography of Albert Einstein I was deeply moved by his description of Einstein’s view of the universe, and the question of origins as seen by most people in the question of God. In a day of vacillating extremes between the devoutly religious and the disdainful atheists, it is helpful to remember that the very biggest minds this world has ever known were content to wallow in the utter mystery of human existence.
To desire certainty may drive us to find solutions, and the only progress we know as beings comes with dissatisfaction at the world as it is, including our explanations and understanding of reality. But certainty can and in may disciplines (theology being the first offender and philosophy a close second) equally leads to premature conclusions, or defensive protestations about our absolute knowledge when no such standard has yet been attained. Einstein, a man who literally grappled every day with ideas that encroach on the very fabric of time itself, understood what he did not understand:
“The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.”
In a similar vein, Einstein was once asked directly if he believed in God, to which he responded:
“I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. 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 the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”
After too much time trying to understand what I do not, it is enough for me to say, as did Einstein, “I prefer the attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.” When mystery is what we have, it is sufficient to sustain.
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“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
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October 14th, 2007 at 10:37 am
[…] The biographer of Franklin has most recently turned to Albert Einstein and written what is likely to become the seminal biography of Einstein’s life and academic work. By necessity, portions of the book are very technical, but Isaacson’s writing shows clearly the oversight by people such as Brian Greene who help make lofty ideas about physics understandable to the average person. My quick thoughts on Einstein’s God can be read here. […]