Einstein’s ‘God Letter’ for Sale on eBay
Posted by Everyday Christian Staff
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At 12:35 pm on October 08, 2012
A private letter penned by Albert Einstein expressing his views on God and religion is up for sale on eBay. Starting bid is $3-million.
The auction is for the original, handwritten letter sent to philosopher Eric Gutkind in 1954 in response to Gutkind's book “Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt."
Among Einstein's opinions expressed in the letter written one year before his death:
"... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
Born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1879, Einstein said he went through a devout phase as a child before beginning to question religion at the age of 12.
Later in 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."
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