Christopher Hitchens - The Portable Atheist - Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.”

—Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel , New York: New American Library, 1972, Chapter 11.

“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever…. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”

—Albert Einstein, in a letter to Hans Muehsam, March 30, 1954; Einstein Archive 38–434; from The Expanded Quotable Einstein , Chapter 29.

“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.”

—Albert Einstein, upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, published in The New York Times, April 25, 1929; from Einstein: The Life and Times , Ronald W. Clark, New York: World Publishing Co., 1971, Chapter 44; also cited as a telegram to a Jewish newspaper, 1929, Einstein Archive 33–272, from The Expanded Quotable Einstein , Chapter 26.

“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”

—Albert Einstein, letter to a Baptist pastor in 1953; from Albert Einstein the Human Side , Chapter 5.

“Why do you write to me ‘God should punish the English’? I have no close connection to either one or the other. I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.”

—Albert Einstein, letter to Edgar Meyer, a Swiss colleague, January 2, 1915; from The Expanded Quotable Einstein , Chapter 26.

“It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished.”

—Albert Einstein, quoted in W. I. Hermanns, “A Talk with Einstein,” October 1943, Einstein Archive 55–285; from The Expanded Quotable Einstein , Chapter 28.

“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, quoted in The New York Times obituary, April 19, 1955; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Thoughts , New York: Ballantine Books, 1996, Chapter 18.

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.”

—Albert Einstein, letter to a minister November 20, 1950; from Albert Einstein, the Human Side , Chapter 11.

“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.”

—Albert Einstein, “Religion and Science,” in The New York Times Magazine , November 9, 1930, pp. 3–4; from The Expanded Quotable Einstein , pp. 205–206.

“The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image—a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.”

—Albert Einstein, letter to a Rabbi in Chicago; from Albert Einstein, the Human Side , pp. 69–70.

“I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

—Albert Einstein, replying to a letter in 1954 or 1955; from Albert Einstein, the Human Side , Chapter 5.

“I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others.”

—Albert Einstein; from Peter A. Bucky, The Private Albert Einstein , Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 1992, Chapter 10.

“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.”

—Albert Einstein in response to a child who had written him in 1936 and asked if scientists pray; from Albert Einstein, the Human Side , Chapter 5.

“I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God.”

—Albert Einstein; from Albert Einstein, the Human Side , Chapter 9.