A handwritten letter pen by Albert Einstein shortly before his death in 1954 hassold to anunknown online bidderfor $ 3,000,100.00 . In the so - called “ God Letter , ” Einstein touch upon such themes as religion , tribalism — and his disbelief in a scriptural God .
The historic document is peculiarly important because it dispel the myth that Einstein was religious and that he believed in God . His notable inverted comma , “ God does not play die with the Universe , ” suggest to some that he harbored spiritual views . Today , historians suspect that he used the condition as a variety of colloquial metaphor for such affair as the laws of purgative , or even the sum of the cosmos itself .
The private alphabetic character , which was written to the Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind , was fair scathing in its remarks . Einstein write , “ … The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and merchandise of human impuissance , the Bible a collection of honorable , but still crude caption which are nevertheless pretty infantile . No interpretation , no matter how insidious , can ( for me ) exchange this … ”
The anon. marketer of the letter acquired it from Bloomsbury Auctions in London in 2008 for $ 404,000 . Since that time , it has been preserved in a temperature - controlled hurdle . The seller placed the start bid at $ 3M , hoping that it would sell for double or three-fold that amount . Butafter just two bidding , it settled at the still monumental price of $ 3,000,100 on October 18 . It ’s deserving mention thatRichard Dawkins was reportedly interested in acquiring the letter .
The key passages of the missive reads like this ( translated from German ):
… I read a capital deal in the last days of your book , and give thanks you very much for sending it to me . What especially struck me about it was this . With regard to the factual attitude to living and to the human community of interests we have a great deal in common .
… The Book God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses , the Bible a ingathering of honorable , but still primitive legends which are nevertheless middling infantile . No rendition no matter how subtle can ( for me ) change this . These subtilize interpreting are extremely manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original textual matter . For me the Jewish faith like all other organized religion is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions . And the Judaic mass to whom I fain belong to and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no dissimilar quality for me than all other people . As far as my experience plump , they are also no better than other human grouping , although they are protect from the bad cancers by a deficiency of force . Otherwise I can not see anything ‘ choose ’ about them .
In cosmopolitan I witness it painful that you claim a privileged place and adjudicate to oppose it by two walls of superbia , an outside one as a Isle of Man and an interior one as a Jew . As a piece you claim , so to speak , a dispensation from causality otherwise live with , as a Jew the privilege of monotheism . But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all , as our fantastic Spinoza recognise with all prick , probably as the first one . And the animist rendition of the religion of nature are in rule not annulled by monopolization . With such walls we can only strike a sure self - dissembling , but our moral crusade are not furthered by them . On the contrary .
Now that I have quite openly say our difference of opinion in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite near to each other in essential thing , i.e ; in our evaluations of human deportment . What separate us are only cerebral ‘ prop ’ and ‘ rationalisation ’ in Freud ’s words . Therefore I consider that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete thing .
With favorable thanks and best compliments ,
Yours , A. Einstein
Top image via AP / Reuters . H / tWhy Evolution is dead on target .
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