Epigraph:

We have created the heavens and the earth and all that is between the two in accordance with the perfect truth (mathematics) and wisdom. (Al Quran 15:85)

Say, ‘O People of the Book! come to a word equal between us and you — that we worship none but Allah, and that we associate no partner with Him, and that some of us take not others for Lords beside Allah.’ But if they turn away, then say, ‘Bear witness that we have submitted to God.’ (Al Quran 3:84)

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

Richard Dawkins’ book, the God Delusion, a treatise of atheism, opens with him applauding God of Einstein, while vilifying all the Abrahamic faiths. When I first read his book some fifteen years ago, I thought it was Dawkins’ hyperbole or dogmatism and an attempt at avoiding to be on the wrong side of the scientists with Jewish heritage. But, now as I go deeper into trying to understand pantheism, I appreciate that Dawkins did have a point. Nevertheless, Einstein was not a hardline pantheist and definitely not an atheist like Dawkins. One could argue that he was more aligned with deism and with optimism and some poetic license, one may dare say that with better theology of Abrahamic faiths, he could have been brought to theism. I think.

Understanding pantheism will give us a better understanding of many of the top scientists’ and mathematicians’ faith and a lot more.

The Pew Research Center poll of scientists found that levels of religious faith vary according to scientific specialty and age. For instance, chemists are more likely to believe in God (41%) than those who work in the other major scientific fields. Meanwhile, younger scientists (ages 18-34) are more likely to believe in God or a higher power than those who are older.

Source: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey, conducted in May and June 2009. For complete question wording, see survey topline.

In this survey those who do not believe in God, but do believe in universal spirit or higher power could be best equated with pantheism and those who do not know as agnostics.

This recent survey of scientists tracks fairly closely with earlier polls that gauged scientists’ views on religion. The first of these was conducted in 1914 by Swiss-American psychologist James Leuba, who surveyed about 1,000 scientists in the United States to ask them about their views on God. Leuba found the scientific community equally divided, with 42% saying that they believed in a personal God and the same number saying they did not.

More than 80 years later, Edward Larson, a historian of science then teaching at the University of Georgia, recreated Leuba’s survey, asking the same number of scientists the exact same questions. To the surprise of many, Larson’s 1996 poll came up with similar results, finding that 40% of scientists believed in a personal God, while 45% said they did not. Other surveys of scientists have yielded roughly similar results.

Albert Einstein reportedly said: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

So, let us learn about Spinoza’s God.

Spinoza’s metaphysics consists of one thing, substance, and its modifications (modes). Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He calls this substance “God“, or “Nature“. In fact, he takes these two terms to be synonymous (in the Latin the phrase he uses is “Deus sive Natura”). For Spinoza the whole of the natural universe consists of one substance, God, or, what is the same, Nature, and its modifications (modes).

Following Maimonides, Spinoza defined substance as “that which is in itself and is conceived through itself”, meaning that it can be understood without any reference to anything external.^[107] Being conceptually independent also means that the same thing is ontologically independent, depending on nothing else for its existence and being the ’cause of itself’ (causa sui).^[107] A mode is something which cannot exist independently but rather must do so as part of something else on which it depends, including properties (for example colour), relations (such as size) and individual things.^[108] Modes can be further divided into ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’ ones, with the latter being evident in every finite mode (he gives the examples of “motion” and “rest”).^[109] The traditional understanding of an attribute in philosophy is similar to Spinoza’s modes, though he uses that word differently.^[108] To him, an attribute is “that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance”, and there are possibly an infinite number of them.^[110] It is the essential nature which is “attributed” to reality by intellect.^[111]

Spinoza defined God as “a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence”, and since “no cause or reason” can prevent such a being from existing, it therefore must exist.^[111] This is a form of the ontological argument, which is claimed to prove the existence of God, but Spinoza went further in stating that it showed that only God exists.^[112] Accordingly, he stated that “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God”.^[112][113] This means that God is identical with the universe, an idea which he encapsulated in the phrase “Deus sive Natura” (‘God or Nature’), which has been interpreted by some as atheism or pantheism.^[114] Though there are many more of them, God can be known by humans either through the attribute of extension or the attribute of thought.^[115] Thought and extension represent giving complete accounts of the world in mental or physical terms.^[116] To this end, he says that “the mind and the body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension”.^[117]

After stating his proof for God’s existence, Spinoza addresses who “God” is. Spinoza believed that God is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator”.^[118] Spinoza attempts to prove that God is just the substance of the universe by first stating that substances do not share attributes or essences and then demonstrating that God is a “substance” with an infinite number of attributes, thus the attributes possessed by any other substances must also be possessed by God. Therefore, God is just the sum of all the substances of the universe. God is the only substance in the universe, and everything is a part of God. This view was described by Charles Hartshorne as Classical Pantheism.^[119]

Pantheists deny God being a person and equate Him with the whole of the universe in a poetic sense. Just like agnosticism, we can also think of pantheism as a hedge between theism and atheism.

Pantheists, like deists or theists do admire the creativity and creation of God, in a poetic language. Here are few pithy quotes of Einstein as he stands in awe of the Cosmic Creator:

That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. 

That humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, which in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man.

A belief bound up with deep feeling in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God.

The above video gives us many insights into pantheism. It is a belief in impersonal God and impersonal immortality. In other words pantheists do not believe in accountability of Afterlife. Robert Lawrence Kuhn gives a line towards the end of the above video that some scientists lean towards pantheism to make science sacred. Was that the case for Einstein? At least some of his quotes will suggest that:

Scientist’s religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work.

When I see nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of ‘humility’. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

Even though Einstein did line up with Spinoza in a few of his quotes, nevertheless, as I said before, he was not a hardline pantheist and definitely not an atheist. Now let me present a few quotes about him being a deist:

Firstly, his most famous quote: “I, at any rate, am convinced that [God] does not throw dice.” This speaks of a deist God and not a pantheist mystery.

Secondly:

I’m absolutely not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things.[1][2]

He wanted to focus on the biggest question of all—from where this universe came.  By age 12, Einstein had decided to devote himself to solving the big riddle of the universe. He wanted to occupy himself with the question that if he were God, how he would create the universe.  In a later conversation with Esther Salaman, a student of Physics, he said:

I want to know how God created this world.  I’m not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.[3]

At this time I must applaud Einstein’s pluralism, as he is reported to have said:

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

So, what is common between pantheism and theism? I present to you a short article: Everything is a Miracle According to the Holy Quran and Albert Einstein.

Unlike theists, pantheists deny their accountability in Afterlife and in so doing possibly distort their vision and deprive themselves of all possible joy and consolation of an All-Powerful and the Most-Merciful and Loving God: We are all living in the Womb of God-the-Mother, 13.8 billion Years Pregnancy.

If some of Jews and Christians theists, be they scientists or not, give up their Islamophobic or parochial tendencies and the Muslims stop basking in their sectarian quibbles, they can join their academic forces to guide atheists and pantheists towards a common understanding of theism, in line with the verses quoted as epigraph of this article. Let me conclude with a few verses of the Quran:

It was We who created you: will you not believe? Consider [the semen] you eject––do you create it yourselves or are We the Creator? We ordained death to be among you. Nothing could stop Us if We intended to change you and recreate you in a way unknown to you. You have learned how you were first created: will you not reflect? Consider the seeds you sow in the ground––is it you who make them grow or We? If We wished, We could turn your harvest into chaff and leave you to wail, ‘We are burdened with debt; we are bereft.’ Consider the water you drink––was it you who brought it down from the rain-cloud or We? If We wanted, We could make it bitter: will you not be thankful? Consider the fire you kindle–– is it you who make the wood for it grow or We? We made it a reminder, and useful to those who kindle it, so [Prophet] glorify the name of your Lord, the Supreme. (Al Quran 56: 57-74)

References

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/9eomd/this_albert_einstein_quote_is_a_great_way_to_sum/
2. https://www.quora.com/Was-Einstein-a-deist
3. E Salaman.  A talk with Einstein.  The Listner 54 , 1955.  Page 132.

References of several of the above quotes

Albert Einstein’s search for God — An Islamic Perspective

Dawkins’ False Papal Fatwa: ‘Einstein was a Pantheist and not a Deist?’