Einstein: Science Alone Won't Transform Society

 

By Ted Glick 

(This article is taken from a longer essay, Does God Exist? Does It Matter?, which can be found at my personal website here.)

Albert Einstein was one of if not the most prominent scientists of the 20th century. But in addition to his scientific accomplishments, he was also a prolific writer on many issues. One of them was the relationship between science and religion.

This is an important issue for those of us in the world-changing business. Historically, some on the political Left have taken the position that religion and spirituality are of little or no value to the process of transforming society, that scientific processes, in not just industry and technology but also in politics and social transformation, are THE way revolutionary change happens. From my experience, professed atheism has more adherents percentage-wise among leftists than among the population as a whole.

Einstein was actually a socialist, but as far as I know he was never active in movements for social change. But his views on science and religion have definite relevance.

For example, Einstein believed that serious scientists inevitably must come to believe in a mysterious, unknown, higher power in the universe. He wrote, “everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”  (Einstein and Religion, by Max Jammer, p. 144)

This is not how the late, prominent scientist Steven Hawking saw the issue. As reported in the Washington Post on March 14, 2018, he said during an interview with El Mundo in 2014: “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.”

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Source: tedglick.com