A social media post that shares an anecdote from Albert Einstein’s life, wherein he explains to his teacher about the existence of God is being widely shared. The post attributes a quote ‘just like the darkness and cold. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart’ to Einstein. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Anecdote of Einstein proving the existence of God to his professor.
Fact: There are no credible reports attributing this anecdote to Einstein. Further, there is no mention about this in ‘Einstein: A Life, a biography’ published in 1996. Available evidence suggests that Einstein was religious as a child, however, later on in life, he ‘abandoned his uncritical religious fervor, feeling he had been deceived into believing lies’. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We could not find any credible reports attributing this anecdote to Einstein. Even in the autobiography of Einstein ‘Einstein: A Life’ we could not find any mention of the account in line with the one mentioned in the post.
‘According to Einstein: A Life, a biography published in 1996, Einstein was devoutly religious as a child. But at the age of 13, he abandoned his uncritical religious fervor, feeling he had been deceived into believing lies’, reported the Guardian.
Further, a letter addressed to philosopher Eric Gutkind in 1954, captures Einstein’s reflections on God. In this letter Einstein wrote ‘The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.’
As reported by another article, on another instance, Einstein wrote in a letter that ‘he believes in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings.’
However, as per the Guardian, Einstein did not like to be labelled as atheist. According to Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at the Christian thinktank Theos, ‘Einstein offers scant consolation to either party in this debate. His cosmic religion and distant deistic God fit neither the agenda of religious believers nor that of tribal atheists.’
On another occasion, Einstein criticised ‘fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics’.
Thus, from the above, it is evident that Einstein was religious as a child and later on in life, he became more critical of religion. However, no credible report attributed the anecdote shared in the post to Einstein.
The same story has been doing rounds on internet for over two decades. Snopes debunked the same story as fake back in 2004.
To sum it up, there is no evidence to conclude that Einstein proved the existence of God to his professor.
