November 28, 2005

• The Way of the Pilgrim,
  Part II:
   
  Einstein’s Orgy

  In a recent Edge article, “The Vagaries of Religious Experience,” a Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert,  quotes Einstein on his own religious vagaries:

  “(I
  had) a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at
  the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon
  reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could
  not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy* of freethinking
  coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived
  by the state through lies. It was a crushing impression. Suspicion
  against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical
  attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific
  social environment– an attitude which has never again left
  me.” (Autobiographical Notes, 1949)

  Gilbert adds,

  “Einstein’s
  orgy* of freethinking forever changed our understanding of space and
  time, and the phrase ‘Religion for Dummies’ became, in the
  view of many scientists, a redundancy.”

  Here is another Einstein quotation, from the paragraph in Autobiographical Notes following the paragraph quoted by Gilbert:

  “It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which
  was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of
  the ‘merely-personal,’ from an existence which is dominated by wishes,
  hopes and primitive feelings.  Out yonder there was this huge
  world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands
  before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to
  our inspection and thinking.  The contemplation of this world
  beckoned like a liberation…. The road to this paradise was not as
  comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it
  has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having
  chosen it.”

  Einstein
  describes “the road to the religious paradise” as “comfortable and
  alluring.”  He might therefore have profited by the book saluted
  in the previous entry… a book that might be described, to adapt Gilbert’s
  charming phrase, as “Religion for Dummies like Einstein.”

  For an approach to the contemptible religion of Scientism that is more subtle than Gilbert’s, see “Einstein’s Third Paradise,” by Gerald Holton, another Harvard savant.

  * In the original, the words “orgy of” appear in square
  brackets to indicate an interpolation by the editor, Paul A. Schilpp, a Methodist minister (pdf).  Einstein’s own words were “eine geradezu fanatische Freigeisterei.” 
  Gilbert’s omission of the brackets indicates both the moral
  slovenliness typical of those embracing Scientism and the current low
  standards of scholarship at Harvard.  (Related material: The Crimson Passion.)

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