Einstein and Faith
I recently stumbled upon this nice collection of facts about Albert Einstein. The site has plenty of remarkable quotes that show how deeply this man got it and how far he matured in his life. One that resonated especially with me was this remark about the question if God exists:
We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.
I found the quote translated in German here, I am unsure in which language it was delivered first. This one is supposedly quoted from D. Brian: Einstein – a life, Wiley 1996, p. 186.:
Wir befinden uns in der Lage eines kleinen Kindes, das in eine riesige Bibliothek eintritt, die mit vielen Büchern in verschiedenen Sprachen angefüllt ist. Das Kind weiß, dass jemand die Bücher geschrieben hat. Es weiß aber nicht, wie das geschah. Es versteht die Sprachen nicht, in der sie geschrieben wurden. Das Kind erahnt dunkel eine mysteriöse Ordnung in der Zusammenstellung der Bücher, weiß aber nicht, was es ist. Das ist nach meiner Meinung die Einstellung auch des intelligentesten Menschen gegenüber Gott. Wir sehen ein Universum, das wunderbar zusammengesetzt ist und bestimmten Gesetzen gehorcht, aber diese Gesetze verstehen wir nur andeutungsweise. Unser begrenzter Verstand kann die mysteriösen Kräfte, welche die Konstellationen bewegen, nicht fassen.
I sat through scientific talks that ended with the lecturer preaching his own faith and trying to convert the audience and I also talked to remarkable thinkers that were of the opinion that only secular people could be proper and neutral scientists.
I am not religious. I can resonate with the book parable however and I am deeply interested in the ordering of the books, however, I am all Meh about who put them there. But for me this quote of Einstein is the one reason why I would be religious and the one reason why I can understand if people are. It also builds a bridge between science and religion showing that truly the one can nurture the other. Coexistence is not only possible, but natural.