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Give Up Personal God for Reason - Einstein"
New York, N.Y. -
Albert Einstein urged abandonment of the "concept of a personal God" in a paper addressed here Tuesday to a conference of 500 leaders in science, philosophy and religion- Jewish, Protestant and Catholic. This body had assembled for the momentous task, as they expressed it, of unifying the thought of democracy.
To them, the famous unifier of time and space expounded his own atheism, which has been little known publicly and never before so emphatically stated.
He was moved, he revealed, by his belief that "the main source of the present day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in his concept of a personal God."
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The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events," Einstein continued, "
the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him, neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events.
'Always One Refuge'
"To be sure, the doctrine of a personal god interfering with natural events could never be refuted in the real sense by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.
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In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god, that is give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors, they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the good, the true and the beautiful in humanity itself. That is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
"Whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances in the domain of scientific thought 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 hope and desires and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be religion in the highest sense of the word."
'Can't Justify Reasoning'
In contrast to his reverence for reason, Einstein declared:
"Nobody certainly will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just and omnibeneficent personal god is able to accord man solace, help and guidance; also by virtue of its simplicity, the concept is inaccessible to the most undeveloped mind.
"But, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also his work. How, then, is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty being?"