Albert Einstein on Mystery, Eternity and The Mind Of God

Einstein's quip that "God does not play dice with the universe" was about quantum physics, not a statement of faith. But he did ponder the relationship between science and religion and his sense of "the order deeply hidden behind everything."
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Join Krista Tippett, Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies in an exploration of Einstein's wisdom on mystery, eternity, and the mind of God.
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From The World As I See It by Albert Einstein, published in 1956:

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. A snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery, even if mixed with fear, that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty. It is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude.

In this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. Enough for me, the mystery of the eternity of life and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

Einstein described his own inclination towards another kind of religious sensibility, which he called "a cosmic religious sense." And he discerned kindred glimpses of this feeling in such diverse figures as the prophets and psalmists of the Hebrew Bible, St. Francis of Assisi, and the Buddha.  He wrote in the New York Times in 1930:

"It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who does not experience it. … The individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence strikes him as a sort of prison, and he wants to experience the universe as a single, significant whole. … The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling. … In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."

Paul Davies:  "He did not believe in a personal God. He made that very clear. But he did believe in a rational world order, and he expressed what he sometimes called a "cosmic religious feeling," a sense of awe, a sense of admiration at the intellectual ingenuity of the universe. Not just its majesty, its grandness, its vast size, but its extraordinary subtlety and beauty and mathematical elegance."
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Though Einstein's theories of relativity, an expanding universe, black holes and the fluidity of time have contributed enormously to the fields of quantum physics and chaos theory, his ideas of an 'objective world of space and matter independent of human thought and observation' have been challenged by modern physicists.  To quote Davies again:

"If we go back to the sort of universe that Newton had and the one that Einstein supported, the notion of a deterministic universe, a clockwork universe, then this becomes a real problem, because if God is to change anything, then God has to overrule God's own laws, and that doesn't look a very edifying prospect theologically or scientifically. It's horrible on both accounts.  But when one gets to an indeterministic universe, if you allow quantum physics, then there is some sort of lassitude in the operation of these laws. There are interstices having to do with quantum uncertainty into which, if you want, you could insert the hand of God."
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This is an absolutely wonderful conversation.  Mathematics and Science have always held a deep fascination and attraction for me, and their interconnection with religion, a more recent interest, infuses each with a more profound vibrancy and truth, offering, as Einstein puts it, 'a single significant whole', a view far vaster than that of the individual realms.

The discussion is available at the Speaking Of Faith website in both audio and transcript form. I highly recommend it.

Here is a link to another interesting article entitled Albert Einstein: God, Religion and Theology, at a site called On Truth & Reality, where I found the following quote.
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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
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