Religion and Science

by Albert Einstein

Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned
with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of
pain.  One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to
understand spiritual movements and their development.  Feeling and
longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human
creation, in however exalted a guise the the latter may present
themselves to us.  Now what are the feelings and needs that have
led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense of the
words?  A little consideration will suffice to show us that the
most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought
and experience.  With primitive man it is above all fear that
evokes religious notions--fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness,
death.  Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal
connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates
illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills
and actions these fearful happenings depend.  Thus one tries to
secure the favor of those beings by carrying out actions and
offering sacrifices which, according to the traditions handed down
from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well
disposed toward a mortal.  In this sense I am speaking of a
religion of fear.  This, though not created, is in an important
degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste
which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the
beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis.  In many
cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position rests
on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular
authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the
political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their
own interests.
        The social impulses are another source of the crystallization
of religion.  Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human
communities are mortal and fallible.  The desire for guidance,
love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral
conception of God.  This the God of Providence, who protects,
disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the
limits of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of
the tribe of of the human race, or even life itself; the comforter
in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of
the dead.  This is the social or moral conception of God.
        The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development
from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development
continued in the New Testament.  The religions of all civilized
peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral
religions.  The development from a religion of fear to moral
religion is a great step in peoples' lives.  And yet, that
primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions
of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against
which we must be on our guard.  The truth is that all religions
are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation:
that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality
predominates.

         Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of
their conception of God.  In general, only individuals of
exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities,
rise to any considerable extent above this level.  But there is a
third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them,
even though it is rarely found in a pure form:  I shall call it
cosmic religious feeling.  It is very difficult to elucidate this
feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there
is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
        The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims
and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both
in nature and in the world of thought.  Individual existence
impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the
universe as a single significant whole.  The beginnings of cosmic
religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development,
e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets.
Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful
writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of
this.
        The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by
this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God
conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose
central teachings are based on it.  Hence it is precisely among
the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with
this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases
regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as
saints.  Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of
Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
        How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one
person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a
God and no theology?  In my view, it is the most important
function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it
alive in those who are receptive to it.
        We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to
religion very different from the usual one.  When one views the
matter historically, one is inclined to look upon science and
religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious
reason.  The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal
operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain
the idea of a being who interferes in the course of
events--provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of
causality really seriously.  He has no use for the religion of
fear and equally little for social or moral religion.  A God who
rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason
that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and
internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more
than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it
undergoes.  Science has therefore been charged with undermining
morality, but the charge is unjust.  A man's ethical behavior
should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social
ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary.  Man would indeed
be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment
and hope of reward after death.


        It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always
fought science and persecuted its devotees.  On the other hand, I
maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and
noblest motive for scientific research.  Only those who realize
the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which
pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to
grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work,
remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue.
What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what
a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the
mind revealed in the world, Kepler and Newton must have had to
enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the
principles of celestial mechanics!  Those whose acquaintance with
scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results
easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of men
who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to
kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and the
centuries.  Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can
have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given
them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of
countless failures.  It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a
man such strength.  A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in
this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are
the only profoundly religious people.

[, November 9, 1930.]