What Albert Einstein said about Atheists

"According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people. Einstein said in correspondence, "The fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people'—cannot bear the music of the spheres." Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook."

and,

"Your question [about God] is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God".

That is what the Jewish Scientist Albert Einstein said. He did not believe in the traditional God as I do, but I utterly share his attitude to atheism. I'd rather someone believe in Satan than nothing at all personally. In India they call atheists "Hollow Men". I know it is terrible, but I find talking with people that believe in something far more entertaining than atheists. Nothing is as nothing does perhaps.

Interestingly, Albert Einstein said this about Jesus Christ,

"Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, to which he replied, "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."

"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."

Well I am not letting anyone misquote you on this, Mr Einstein.

I have a deep love for this man and all he achieved. I agree it is all too vast and impenetrable to our limited human minds. That is why I look to experts and those are Prophets and Saints.

a reply to: Tangerine

Those are quotes from Einstein himself.

That is not enough to come out with such a term as that. You are the one looking the fool here because you are too cowardly to challenge me intellectually. You act like a spoilt little brat who is not getting his way. Trash comment, Mr!

Also attributed to him...

"I seriously doubt that Jesus himself said that he was God, for he was too much a Jew to violate that great commandment: Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God and He is one!' and not two or three." Einstein lamented, "Sometimes I think it would have been better if Jesus had never lived. No name was so abused for the sake of power!" Nevertheless, he also expressed his belief that "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."

a reply to: Elton

Exactly, I have read that. It is most welcome. Like I SAID I do not share all Albert Einstein's views. The thread is just to inform people that Albert Einstein was NOT AN ATHEIST! In his own words he said that. So how can anyone argue with that?

as much as they like tosay the know, religious people and atheists have no clue of what might (or might not) be out there in the vast cosmos.
Saying that you know something that cannot be known, one way or the other is arrogant to say the least.
Yey for us fence sitting agnostics i guess!

a reply to: Elton

Heres a shocker...

Hes right... Jesus didn't ever claim to be God...

That came quite a bit after he died... and more so when the early church fathers got together and decided what they thought he was saying...

they were confused... just as the direct followers of Jesus were

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Think about it .

I myself was an atheist for a long time, i now don't quite know what to call myself, or whether i really need to give it a title. I guess Agnostic fits kind of well. Through science and logic it is increadibly difficult to deny a greater presence. Whether the presence is in the form of a singular being or many or infinite it is difficult to say. However there are far to many curiosities in the world to assign them to just random events. Just like there are many phenomena we label as paranormal that have been ignored. These paranormal may one day not be so, instead we may simply call it science. However i strongly believe that the planet Earth for instance is a living being with a consciousness also, one we cannot speak to physically and even have difficulty contemplating its wisdom spiritually. Never the less its a live and we are but hosts on its body just like bacterium are hosts upon us.

a reply to: lonesomerimbaud

He didn't challenge you nor did he have to: You didn't voice anything for your own. You just quoted another person.



And Mr. Einstein was a very brave scientist, but that does not mean that his insights into metaphysics were... adequate.

a reply to: ManFromEurope

I agree, Einstein was a brilliant man with a very high IQ but he was still a man and his ideas are still that, just ideas.

He also put some time into studying hollow earth theory and believed it was possible. I'm not saying its not possible, Im just saying we don't know.

a reply to: lonesomerimbaud

If this is true, I kinda see the point. Some people have childish and simplistic religious concepts, because they are not very smart. Stuff like a man named God who physically lives up in the clouds. I've also seen a certain kind of athiest, who dedicates themselves to discrediting these religious concepts only held by dimwits with an IQ of 70. This sort of person is not very impressive to any scientist, they spend their whole careers dedicated to proving that 2+2 is not equal to 5, as a dimwit believes, instead of focusing on what is actually true, with all its difficult complexity. That seems like what Einstein is talking about here: The truth, with all its difficult complexity, has a level of mystery associated with that can make any well informed person contemplate the divine.

"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."

While we are throwing out Einstein quotes .

i have a debate all the time with my friend he is a "ATHEIST" and he says to me that he knows for sure that there will be nothing when he dies, he is beyond stubborn nobody knows 100% what will happen there is a chance that someone may be right in this world but we will never know until you meet death.

Heres an original einstein quote that you must've missed.

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.
- Albert Einstein

Perhaps his take on atheists was that it was wrong to "sell one's soul" for the sake of one's beliefs... ( be it atheist or Christian)

originally posted by: SkyStarOne
i have a debate all the time with my friend he is a "ATHEIST" and he says to me that he knows for sure that there will be nothing when he dies, he is beyond stubborn nobody knows 100% what will happen there is a chance that someone may be right in this world but we will never know until you meet death.

Exactly... but it goes for religion as well as atheists. It makes sense to have an affinity toward a belief, but to have a belief so rigid that it seeks to eliminate probability is not logical. In truth nobody knows the truth.

Mar 14:61 But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?"
Mar 14:62 And Jesus said, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."
Mar 14:63 And the high priest tore his garments and said, "What further witnesses do we need?

" Wallace announced during a debate that not only has a new fragment of Mark's gospel been discovered in Egypt, but it is the oldest portion of the New Testament now known. He claimed the fragment dates to the first century, within decades of the time of Christ.

Speculation about the fragment's whereabouts has centered on the Green Collection: tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts bought over the past three years by the owners of Hobby Lobby. In December, collection director Scott Carroll issued a tantalizing message on his Twitter account: "For over 100 years the earliest known text of the New Testament has been the so-call[ed] John Rylands Papyrus. Not any more." www.christianitytoday.com... a reply to: Akragon

a reply to: the2ofusr1

Right...

Like I said... HE did not ever claim to be God

Not Once...