48. Einstein, Albert. Typed letter signed (“A. Einstein”), 1 page (8.5 x 11 in.; 216 x 279 mm.), in English, on “A. Einstein, 112 Mercer Street, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A.” blind-stamped stationery, written from “Knollwood, Saranac Lake, N.Y.”, 2 July 1945, written to “Ensign Guy H. Raner, Jr. (C) USNR USS BOUGAINVILLE (CVE 109) c.o. Fleet Post Office San Francisco, Cal.” Usual folds with minor spotting.

Albert Einstein on religion.

“From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist… It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with these outside of the human sphere – childish analogies.”

Einstein writes in full:
Dear Mr. Raner: I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated. It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with these outside of the human sphere – childish analogies. We have to admire in humanity the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world – as far as we can grasp it. And that is all. With best wishes, yours sincerely, Albert Einstein.

Einstein was raised by secular Jewish parents and, by his own description, he was an agnostic, an atheist and religious. His vocabulary, however, was ecclesiastical, and his pursuit of discovery, reverential. What interested Einstein were the laws which governed order and harmony in the universal design – “God’s thoughts,” he called them. A personal God, as compared to his cosmic one, simply did not make logical sense, and he thought it was “childish.” Einstein’s God revealed Himself in the infinitely marvelous structure of the world – atomic and stellar – as far as human thought could grasp it; what He was not, however, was concerned with the fate and actions of men. That task, Einstein believed, was man’s alone.

Four years later, Einstein wrote Raner again (the following lot), reiterating his disbelief in a personal God as a childlike notion, but disparaging atheism and declaring himself agnostic.
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