Albert Einstein and Religion

Albert Einstein described belief in God as “childish superstition” and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week.

As a Jew, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said in the 1954 letter they “have no different quality for me than other people.”

And he continued: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

In the German-language letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, he also observed: “For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.”