Einstein Would've Been a New Atheist?

EINSTEIN AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
Uploaded by *olivervo on 16 Jun 06, 11.40PM PDT.

If Einstein were alive today would he back up the New Atheists?

It's hard to say. It's possible that Einstein would have a more evolved and sophisticated belief system if he's still alive. But based on his 1954 letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, he sounds more like Hitchens or Harris. (Even Dawkins is claiming Einstein as an Atheist.)

"Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.

"The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.

"As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they 'have no different quality for me than all other people'.

"'The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.

"'No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this,' he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper." [read more]

Word.

ADDENDUM: Some say that Einstein was a genius, not a mystic. I beg to differ. If the definition of a mystic is "someone who believes in the existence of realities beyond human comprehension," then Einstein certainly qualified. Here's a relevant quote (via Quantum Questions). Emphasis mine.

"If it is one of the goals of religion to liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in yet another sense. Although it is true that it is the goal of science to discover rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this is not its only aim. It also seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible number of mutually independent conceptual elements. It is in this striving after the rational unification of the manifold that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to illusions. But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious, in the highest sense of the word. And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life."

So, to me, Einstein was both a genius and a mystic. But a mystic who spoke in a non-metaphysical (or non-New Agey) language.