Religion and Science
By Albert Einstein
(The following article by Albert Einstein appeared in the New York Times Magazine on
November 9, 1930 pp 1-4. It has been reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, Crown
Publishers, Inc. 1954, pp 36 – 40. It also appears in Einstein’s book The World as I See
It, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, pp. 24 – 28.)
Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction
of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in
mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling
and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in
however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us. Now what are the
feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense
of the words? A little consideration will suffice to show us that the most varying
emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and experience. With primitive man
it is above all fear that evokes religious notions – fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness,
death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually
poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to
itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to
secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which,
according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or
make them well disposed toward a mortal. In this sense I am speaking of a religion of
fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a
special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the
beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases a leader or ruler or
a privileged class whose position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with
its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the
priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.
The social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and
mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire
for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of
God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the
God who, according to the limits of the believer’s outlook, loves and cherishes the life of
the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and
unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral
conception of God.
The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to
moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all
civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The
development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples’ lives.
And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized
peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The
truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that
on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.
Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God.
In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded
communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage
of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a
pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this
feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic
conception of God corresponding to it.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and
marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought.
Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the
universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling
already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David
and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the
wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious
feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can
be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the
heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious
feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes
also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and
Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can
give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most
important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those
who are receptive to it.
We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from
the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is inclined to look upon
science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The
man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation
cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events –
provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no
use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who
rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions
are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be
responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it
undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the
charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed
be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward
after death.
It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted
its devotees.On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the
strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense
efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science
cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such
work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep
conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it
but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have
had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of
celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived
chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality
of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits
scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted
his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and
given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is
cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not
unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only
profoundly religious people.
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a
reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.” (Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19
April 1955)
