Albert Einstein, photographed giving a lecture in Vienna in 1921.
An old letter from Einstein in which the eminent physicist advises a religious studies professor and her students that science is “replacing” religious belief and that God can be seen as “human-like” is up for sale for $125,000.
Einstein addressed the letter, dated April 11, 1950, to Martha Munk, the wife of a rabbi and a professor of religious studies at an unspecified school in New York City. Munk, like Einstein, was forced to flee Nazi-occupied Germany during the Holocaust, according to The Raab Collection, the company selling the letter. (The document is written in German and has been translated into English.)
Munk had previously approached Einstein with questions posed by her students. “On behalf of the students of the religious studies course, I would like to ask you whether you think that a modern scientist can reconcile the concept of the creation of the world by God, a higher power, with his scientific knowledge,” Munk wrote in her first letter, sent earlier that year.
In response, Einstein noted: “The scientific man distances himself from the religious understanding (in its original meaning) of the cosmos, because he applies the standard of causality to everything. This does not refute religious feelings, but, in a certain sense, replaces and displaces them.”
Letter addressed by Albert Einstein to Martha Munk and her students, April 11, 1950.
In his letter, Einstein also expressed his opinion on how God can be interpreted: “As long as the Bible stories are taken literally, it becomes obvious what kind of faith is expected of the readers. However, if you interpret the Bible symbolically (metaphorically), it is no longer clear whether God is really to be regarded as a person (and therefore not as a monotheistic deity), which is in a certain sense comparable to human beings,” Einstein wrote. “In such a case, it is difficult to determine what remains of faith in its original sense.”
Einstein's views on religion are well known. The physicist was raised in a Jewish family and maintained ties to the Jewish people despite his lack of belief in God as depicted in the Torah. Einstein spent his life trying to explain how the universe came into being without a divine force.
In 2018, a lengthy letter written by the German scientist in 1954, known as the “Einstein God letter,” sold at auction for $2.9 million. In the document, the physicist detailed how he didn’t believe in Bible stories as a child and how that freed him up to “fun
Sourse: www.livescience.com
