Did Einstein believe in god? Many religious theists cite Einstein as an example of a scientist who was also a religious theist. This supposedly rebuts the idea that science conflicts with religion or that science is atheistic. However, Albert Einstein consistently and unambiguously denied believing in personal gods who involved themselves in human affairs — the sort of god common to religious theists claiming that Einstein was one of them.
In fact, it can be safely said that the great physicist was one of the greatest spiritual atheists whose mind was filled with wonder and awe that was definitely spiritual in Nature. “I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly,” he said. “If something is in me that can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Einstein also maintained that he was a deeply religious non-believer that he considered to be a new kind of religion. And that although he had never imputed to Nature a purpose or goal, what he did see in it was a magnificent edifice that one could comprehend only very imperfectly but that nevertheless was capable of filling a thinking person with a feeling of humility. It was, he believed, a genuinely religious feeling that had nothing to do with mysticism.
“Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.”
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