"The God Of Albert Einstein"

	AP 1931 file photo
More comfortable writing equations than praying? Debate continues to swirl over Albert Einstein's spiritual beliefs.

Albert Einstein: arch rationalist or scientist with a spiritual core?

Einstein's most famous legacy is the special theory of relativity, which makes the point that a large amount of energy could be released from a tiny amount of matter, as expressed in the equation E=MC2 (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared). The theory changed the face of physics, allowing scientists to make predictions about space and paving the way for nuclear power and the atomic bomb.

Einstein's musings on science, war, peace and God helped make him world famous, and his scientific legacy prompted Time magazine to name him its Person of the 20th Century.

A letter being auctioned in London this week adds more fuel to the long-simmering debate about the Nobel prize-winning physicist's religious views. In the note, written the year before his death, Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product of human weakness and the Bible as "pretty childish."

The letter, handwritten in German, is being sold by Bloomsbury Auctions on Thursday and is expected to fetch between $12,000 and $16,000.

Bloomsbury spokesman Richard Caton said the auction house was "100 percent certain" of the letter's authenticity. It is being offered at auction for the first time, by a private vendor.

    Albert Einstein, an icon in the world of physics, has been an enigma as to his religious beliefs, some considering him to be an atheist, others considering him a believing Jew.

John Brooke, emeritus professor of science and religion at Oxford University, said the letter lends weight to the notion that "Einstein was not a conventional theist" — although he was not an atheist, either.

Born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1879, Einstein said he went through a devout phase as a child before beginning to question conventional religion at the age of 12.

In later life, he expressed a sense of wonder at the universe and its mysteries — what he called a "cosmic religious feeling" — and famously said: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

But, he also said: "I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws."

Brooke said Einstein believed that "there is some kind of intelligence working its way through nature. But it is certainly not a conventional Christian or Judaic religious view."

Einstein, who helped unravel the mysteries of the universe with his theory of relativity, expressed complex and arguably contradictory views on faith, perceiving a universe suffused with spirituality while rejecting organized religion.

    As I see it , Albert Einstein had a reverent view of "God", not as the egotistical human like King predominately pictured in the Bible and by Jewish and Christian theologians, but as the Ethical Intelligence that designed the laws and algorithms of Nature and human relationships. I believe Einstein understood that objective scientists and ethicists reveal "God" more than subjective prophets, priests and theologians. Perhaps Einstein understood that the true worship of "God" is the learning and wise use of the natural and spiritual laws that govern this orderly and evolving Universe created from the chaotic "Big Bang". Even the Jesus Christ of the synoptic gospels used Nature and human relationships to reveal his "Heavenly Father" much more than the Jewish scriptures. I have found the spirituality and the non-theistic "God" perspective of Albert Einstein liberating. I see a great truth in what Einstein said concerning religion and science, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

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