Einstein on Man's Free Will, on the Idea of a Personal God, and on the Idea of a Messiah

By RE CASTEL

In a speech to the German League of Human Rights in Berlin, Einstein clearly expresses his unbelief of the idea of free will. His words are as follows:

Einstein's position here is according to his belief in a fully deterministic causality in nature that predestines everything. Einstein believes that all things, every thought and every deed, are already predestined by nature.

Einstein denies man's volition. He denies man's free will. And this is tantamount to trying to take away man's free agency by the cunning suggestion that man's free will does not exist or, more insidious, that it is better not to have it. To a person who understands the doctrine of the free agency of man and have been made aware of that one in the very beginning who sought to take away man's free agency, Einstein's propositions are very chilling propositions. He may lack the motivation that that one had, but his propositions are irresponsible, ignorant and haughty.

In "The World as I See It," Einstein denounces the idea of a just, volitional and personal God, and he assails the idea of a Messiah, the idea of the Christ who conquered death. Einstein's discourse is as follows.

Clearly, Einstein does not believe in an anthropomorphic or personal God; he does not believe that there is such a thing called the will of God. And Einstein does not believe in the idea of "an individual who should survive his physical death," which is pretty much an allusion to the resurrected Messiah since the Lord Jesus Christ is the first resurrected being. He belittles the idea of resurrection by making such the "absurd egoism of feeble souls." He essentially says that life after death is beyond his comprehension. He didn't even wish to have such. Although he speaks of a "mystery of the eternity of life", which clearly contradicts his disregard for life after death.

As is explicit in his own admissions, Einstein does not believe that there is such a thing as the will of God; therefore, it must be that he has never really tried to know the will of God, especially God's will concerning man. His ignorance of the will of God indicates that it is very likely that Einstein never cared to entertain the idea regarding God's plan of eternal happiness for man.

Einstein embraces what he calls the "cosmic religious feeling," which he says "knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image." He says, "there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it." He says that the individual who embraces the cosmic religious feeling "wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole", which is quite the idea of the pantheist. Einstein alludes his kinship to "heretics" whom he says were "regarded by their contemporaries as atheist" and he adds, perhaps to becloud the idea, "sometimes also as saints." When Einstein refers to a God who "does not play dice," he clearly does not mean the person we call God. He extols "the universal operation of the law of causation." So, he must be referring to the non-personal cosmos or nature as his God of the absolute causality that does not play dice. He very clearly does not promote the belief and faith in the person we call God. Einstein may seem to be a pantheist, but is more likely an absolute atheist.

It is disturbing to think just how much Einstein has contributed to the foolishness of atheism and to the rue of unbelief. It is saddening to think that his stature as a man of science may have influenced and led many astray. It is chilling to think that his ideas may have hindered man's noble search for enlightenment regarding the will of God.