Religion and Science

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)