Sarojini Henry reviews Max Jammer's "Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology," writing that the book "provides us with a clear, well-documented, and unbiased picture of Einstein's religious sensibilities." For Henry, getting the story straight on Einstein's spiritual views is essential for the science and religion community as "Einstein's ideas about religion have been distorted both by atheists and by religious groups eager to claim him as one of their own."

Sarojini Henry started her teaching career, after completing the Master's degree, as a lecturer in Mathematics at Sarah Tucker College in South India. After taking her M.Phil degree, in Mathematics, she worked as Professor of Mathematics at St John's College, teaching graduate students. In 1981, Sarojini was invited by Union Theological Seminary, New York as their ecumenical fellow for a year. It was as a doctoral student at Union, that she received the P.E.O. Fellowship for Women and the Roothbert Fellowship. After completing her doctorate in ethics, (Thesis on Reinhold Niebuhr's Critique of Mahatma Gandhi's Non-Violence) at Union, Sarojini joined the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, Madurai, as professor in Systematic Theology. In 1990, she was invited by the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky as an adjunct professor for a semester. In 1992, she was awarded the Martin Buber Institute fellowship by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for a semester.

From 1992, Sarojini started giving lectures on science and religion at the Ecumenical Christian Center at Bangalore and still continues to do so. In 1994, she introduced a course on science and religion for the M.Th theology students at the United Theological Seminary, Bangalore where she was already a visiting professor. In 1997, she received the Templeton Religion and Science Course award for this Institution. In 1999, she received a second Religion and Science Course award for a liberal arts college, the American college at Madurai. In 2000, she was appointed Professor of Systematic Theology at Gurukul Lutheran Theological Seminary, and for this Institution, she received a Templeton Science -Religion Course award in 2001.

--Editor

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Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology by Max Jammer, (Princeton: Princeton press, 1999 hdb, pbk 2002 ) pages 279 cloth bound $37.50 and paperback $16,95

Reviewed by Sarojini Henry

"To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structures of all that there is". These are the words with which Albert Einstein concluded a statement of his philosophy of life made in 1932. Einstein's insatiable curiosity about the secrets of the world can be traced to his fascination with a toy compass, which his father gave him to play with when he was a child. The effect the compass had on young Albert was both prophetic and dramatic. The question for Albert was how the little needle, enclosed in a box, should have the constant impulse to point to the north.

Banesh Hoffmann, who calls Einstein a creator and rebel, rightly summarizes Einstein's philosophy in the following words, "The essence of Einstein's profundity lay in his simplicity and the essence of his science lay in his artistry-his phenomenal sense of beauty." Einstein had indeed captured the world's imagination with his exceptional blend of a profound aesthetic sense, an insatiable curiosity about the secrets of the universe and a rare ability to grasp mentally the structure of all there is. What Einstein accomplished in his life in the scientific field was a truly an astonishing achievement for any human being. Apart from his scientific ingenuity, his acute sensibility to social problems and peace concerns has become part of the legacy of the world's most renowned scientist.

But what was Einstein's attitude to religion? Not many biographies of Einstein say much about Einstein's philosophy of religion although his quest for spiritual truth had played a prominent part both in his personal life and in his scientific research. Often, Einstein's ideas about religion have been distorted both by atheists and by religious groups eager to claim him as one of their own. In this context, this fascinating book, Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology, by Max Jammer, the distinguished Professor of Physics Emeritus and former Rector at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, provides us with a clear, well-documented and an unbiased picture of Einstein's religious sensibilities and his philosophy of religion.

Max Jammer, like Einstein himself, comes in the long line of Jewish scientists, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jacques Loeb in physiology, Minkowski in Mathematics, Paul Ehrenfest in the quantum theory, Haber in chemistry, Leo Szilard in nuclear physics all bearing witness to the spectacular part that Jewish scholarship had played in the field of science, often displaying exemplary courage in the face of anti-Semitism Thus Max Jammer was not only at home with the theoretical part of Einstein's physics but also shared his cultural background. Further, Jammer knew Einstein personally and this acquaintance enabled him to draw on a wide range of less familiar anecdotes in Einstein's life and thought.

The book has three chapters; the first chapter examines the role of religion in Einstein's personal life and includes some biographical notes. The second chapter deals with Einstein's philosophy of religion, both from Einstein's writings and also from the interviews that religious leaders had with Einstein. The third chapter analyses the effect of Einstein's physics on theology, although Einstein himself abstained from using the word theology.

The first chapter begins with a discussion of Einstein's childhood religious education and the religious atmosphere--or its absence--among his family and friends. It then reconstructs, step by step, the development that led young Albert from the religious paradise of his youth to the stage when, "through the reading of popular scientific books", he "reached the conviction that much of the stories in the bible could not be true." Such a posture seemed to have motivated Einstein to find God in the physical world itself, from the atomic level to the stellar level; and Einstein attests that this road beckoned him like a liberation and since then has proved itself trustworthy.

Max Jammer goes on to explain how Einstein's religious sentiments were closely allied to that of Spinoza. Baruch Spinoza, a seventeenth Jewish philosopher, was the author of a rigorously monistic interpretation of reality, and Einstein had read Spinoza'a Ethics while working at the Berne office. When Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue in New York called Einstein in 1929 to ask whether he believed in God, Einstein cabled a reply, "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings"

Einstein was influenced by Spinoza's belief in determinism in which all events in nature occur according to immutable laws of cause and effect. Einstein also believed like, Spinoza, that some superior intelligence reveals itself in the harmony of the universe. Then again, like Spinoza, Einstein regarded the idea of a personal God as an anthropomorphism. For Einstein there is no personal God, but held that there is "a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe- a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble" . Further, Einstein believed that the laws of nature though complex can be understood by the human person and hence Einstein could assert "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not."

In the second chapter, Jammer explores Einstein's writings and lectures on religion and its role in society, and how far they have been accepted by the general public and by professional theologians like Dean R. Fowler, Paul Tillich or Frederick Pond Ferré. Einstein not only gave lectures on the theme of religion and science but also responded to many queries addressed to him by several clergy and rabbis. Further, Einstein was also interviewed by several religious peoples and other scholars including the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.

Jammer gives a vivid account of Einstein's meeting with Rabindranath Tagore in his home at Caputh in the summer of 1930. Tagore the Nobel Laureate for literature in 1913 and Einstein both shared a love of music and of nature. The discussion turned to truth and beauty and to the question whether they are independent of the human person. When Tagore denied that truth or beauty is independent of the human person, Einstein asked Tagore "If there would be no human beings anymore, the Apollo of Belvedere would no longer be beautiful?" When Tagore replied "No", Einstein answered "I agree with regard to this conception of Beauty but not with respect to Truth." Einstein's point was that scientific truth must be conceived as a truth independent of reality. When Tagore claimed," If there be some truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to the human mind, it will ever remain as nothing so long as we remain human beings." Einstein seems to have replied triumphantly, "Then I am more religious than you are."

One of Einstein's articles published and preserved is Religion and Science which occupied the entire front page of the New York Times of November 9, 1930. "Everything that men do or think", it began, "concerns the satisfaction of the needs they feel or the escape from pain." Einstein then continued, to outline three stages of religious development, starting with the religion of fear that moved primitive people to envisage supernatural beings. This stage gave rise to the moral religion which arises from the "desire for guidance, love and support". This leads to the "God of Providence who protects, disposes, and rewards." Einstein pointed out that the Christian Scriptures is an admirable illustration of the transition from the religion of fear to the religion of morality.

Then comes the third stage of religious experience which Einstein called the cosmic religious feeling, which, recognized neither dogma nor God made in the image of man. Einstein pointed out that the Psalms and some prophetic books display aspects of the cosmic religion. Further, Einstein was sure that any person who is thoroughly convinced of the rationality of the universe will have no use for the religion of fear or for moral religion. Einstein then reaffirmed his belief that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research and added that in our largely materialistic age, the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.

Einstein's cosmic religion was based on the view that the cosmos is governed by strictly deterministic laws. Einstein could not accept the probabilistic interpretation of the quantum theory because of his deep conviction in the rationality of the universe. In his view, the statistical laws necessary to explain the subatomic world, can only compel God to throw the dice in each case. He wrote to Max Born in Dec, 1926 "Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

After moving to the United States, Einstein was invited to give a lecture at a conference at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1939. Einstein titled his talk 'The Goal' and concluded that scientific thinking alone cannot lead to the ultimate and fundamental purpose of our existence. Again in 1940 at a 'Conference on Science Philosophy and Religion', held at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, Einstein presented a paper on 'Science and religion'. In addition to his famous statement "science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind", Einstein also claimed a certain independence of science and religion by asserting that "science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be," whereas "religion on the other hand, deals with the evaluations of human thought and action."

It was Einstein's denial of a personal God that elicited stern criticism from American clergy. In Einstein's strict determinism, God cannot be personal capable of responding to people's prayers and performing acts on his own volition. God, in Einstein's view does not concern himself with human actions so that for Einstein, morality has nothing to do with religion. Einstein believed that God is devoid of ethical properties, and that morality and the concept of good and evil are all relative to human values and norms. He did not see that a future life was essential for ethical behaviour in this life.

The last chapter of Jammer's book deals with the important question, whether Einstein's scientific work, and in particular his theory of relativity, has theologically significant implications. Such a problem is important for those who are interested in the new discipline of the relation between science and religion and it is already an established fact that Einstein's theory of Relativity has altered irreversibly the philosophical discussions of the nature of time and space.

The new cosmology, based on Einstein's general theory of relativity, is raising some deep philosophical issues and is producing direct and indirect statements concerning the nature of time and space and of the universe and the ultimate reality with significant implications for theology. It looks as though contemporary science of Einstein has taken on the roles that once belonged exclusively to metaphysics and as a consequence is having direct impact on theology and philosophy. Contemporary physicists are engaging in the question of the effect of physics in theology, to the extent that they seek to go beyond the mere data of the universe and address the fundamental metaphysical questions about the origin, purpose, and ultimate destiny of the universe.

Jammer also points to process philosophy developed by Alfred North Whitehead in consistent with the new physics in which nature is understood as evolutionary, dynamic and emergent and where the emphasis is on becoming rather than being. The implication of this philosophy for theology is worked out by Charles Hartshorne, according to whom God is immanent with the world just as the world is immanent with God, although God and the world do not form an identity.

In Jammer's view, Einstein's cosmic religion is incompatible with the doctrines of the Christian and Jewish religions. The point of contention is the idea of a personal God. The general impression from the several interviews and Einstein's response to queries from individuals and groups, is that most Christian clergy opposed Einstein's stand while Jewish rabbis approved it. The question is how one understands the concept of a personal of God. Paul Tillich, then professor of systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary, was sympathetic to Einstein's view, in pointing out that the notion of a personal God is only a symbol, though a necessary one. Max Jammer rightly concludes that "Tillich's statement converges towards Einstein's cosmic religion as much as is possible for a theistic theologian."

Published   2004.10.11