Albert Einstein's Belief in Pantheism

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Bertrand Russell was smart and an atheist.

In any case, the question of "Who is smart" doesn't really solve anything.

That being one chapter of the guy's life. Surprising as it may sound to some people, the views of people are not necessarily homogeneous throughout their entire life.

Of course not. Just a few days ago my favorite color was green, for example

That being one chapter of the guy's life. Surprising as it may sound to some people, the views of people are not necessarily homogeneous throughout their entire life.

Seems pretty consistent to me. Can you point me to some information that shows the evolution of his spiritual leanings over time?

Although born in 1879 of German-Jewish parents, Albert was not brought up in the Jewish faith. He attended a nearby Catholic elementary school in Munich and then the local high school. A rather slow and dreamy student, Albert was bored with non-scientific subjects,3 and learned little under the harsh military-style 19th century German education system. He grew up with an aversion to discipline, and a life-long suspicion of all authority.

At age 11 he went through an intense religious phase during which he ate no pork and composed songs to God, which he sang to himself on the way to school.4

From age 12 Albert read popular books on science, taught himself algebra, geometry and calculus, and studied Immanuel Kant's anti-theistic Critique of Pure Reason. Concerning this time in his life, Albert later wrote, 'Through the reading of popularscientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic (orgy of) [sic] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. … It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of … an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings.'4

Albert's anti-authoritarianism, and probably also his desire to escape compulsory military service at age 17, led him to renounce his German citizenship. On January 28, 1896 he became a stateless person at the age of 16. His application for Swiss citizenship was approved February 21, 1900.

http://creation.com/einstein-the-universe-and-god



I suppose it would be only in his 11th year that he had considered being religiously Jewish and after that, due to Immanuel Kant, became essentially atheist.

The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer.

Hold up... So whatever books he was reading in high school changes the content of statements he made later in life? You do realize that those are considered "formative years", right? Almost everybody changes at that point. The end result was he became pantheist.

His words speak for themselves. Try [url=http:einsteinandreligioncom/]Reading Them (link)[/url].

Everyone has different words throughout their life on various subjects. It's a simple enough matter for anyone to go through the words of a person on a matter that their opinion changed upon during their lifespan and truncate all that do not fit in a specific mold. The various statements that one makes throughout a day could easily enough be truncated and juxtaposed to say just about anything one wishes to hear.

"The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness." - ( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

Albert Einstein: 'I believe in Spinoza's God'

I heard this guy was pretty smart. Also, a PANTHEIST. Hmm.