Einstein As A Man Of God
"Albert Einstein believed in God. Do you think you're more clever than him?"
Einstein did once comment that "God does not play dice [with the universe]." This quotation is commonly mentioned to show that Einstein believed in the Christian God. Used this way, it is out of context; it refers to Einstein's refusal to accept some aspects of the most popular interpretations of quantum theory. Furthermore, Einstein's religious background was Jewish rather than Christian.
A better quotation showing what Einstein thought about God is the following:
"...I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists..."
Einstein recognized Quantum Theory as the best scientific model for the physical data available. He did not accept claims that the theory was complete, or that probability and randomness were an essential part of nature. He believed that a better, more complete theory would be found, which would have no need for statistical interpretations or randomness. So far no such better theory has been found, and much evidence suggests that it never will be.
A longer quote from Einstein appears in
Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941. In it he says:
"...The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted [italics his], in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot."