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Old 05-13-2008, 03:19 PM   #8
photon
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I don't think it really contradicts Einstein's earlier statements.

Quote:
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
-- Albert Einstein, following his wife's advice in responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the International Synagogue in New York, who had sent Einstein a cablegram bluntly demanding "Do you believe in God?" Quoted from and citation notes derived from Victor J. Stenger, Has Science Found God? (draft: 2001), chapter

"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has 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 hope of reward after death."
-- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-- Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
He sometimes talked poetically about God but it wasn't the God of the Bible or the Jews, it more like Spinoza's God.

Quote:
"The scientist", he said, "is activated by a wonder and awe before the mysterious comprehensibility of the universe which is yet finally beyond his grasp".
Quote:
"In its profoundest depths it is inaccessible to man".
That is why Einstein said science without religion is lame, he's not talking about religion such as Judaism or Christianity, but a religion of awe of the universe.

The only people who really seem to care are those who have some desire for Einstein to believe in God to validate their views on God. Which doesn't work, since he was at best a pantheist, and a self proclaimed atheist.
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