Einstein and God

“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”

-Albert Einstein

It seems that both the Atheists and the Theist want to claim Albert Einstein for their respective camps. While he did claim to believe in a “superior spirit,” and therefore he cannot correctly be described as an Atheist, he absolutely did not believe in the God of the Bible and is not really a good example of a person arguing for a God that is involved in people’s lives.

Einstein saw structure and order in the universe that led him to believe that there was design in nature. Things did not arise from chance. “God doesn’t play dice.” At the same time, his experience and understanding of the universe did not allow for a personal God who intervened in creation. He saw no possibility of miracles and did not believe the accounts of the Bible to be accurate.

Today, science has drifted far away from the structured and “designed” understanding of the universe that Einstein held. Science has gone from demanding concrete evidence—things that can be seen or touched—to believing in things for which there is no proof, merely “scientific consensus.”

Rather than revolutionaries paving the way for belief and understanding based on observation and facts, they have become cardinals and priests defending elaborate systems and dogmas based on tradition and established teaching. When Einstein wrote the words in the quote above, he probably never envisioned a time when science would become its own religion.