Albert Einstein: Views on God

There is confusion among some people as to what Albert Einstein's views on religion and God were. Yes, he sometimes used the term "God", but he meant something very different from what many religious people mean when they use that word.

Albert Einstein was not a follower of any organized religion, and he clearly did not believe in the kind of personal God that many religious people believe in. Consider the following quotes from Einstein:

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously."

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.”

So what did Einstein mean when he used the word "God"? He was quite clear on this also:

“I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

"This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza)."

Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch philosopher who is often associated with pantheism - the idea that God = the Universe (or Nature), or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God.

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