Do scientists pray? Einstein answers a little girl’s question about science vs. religion.
The Riverside Church
January 19, 1936
My dear Dr. Einstein,
We have brought up the question: Do scientists pray? in our Sunday school class. It began by asking whether we could believe in both science and religion. We are writing to scientists and other important men, to try and have our own question answered.
We will feel greatly honored if you will answer our question: Do scientists pray, and what do they pray for?
We are in the sixth grade, Miss Ellis’s class.
Respectfully yours,
Phyllis
Only five days later, Einstein wrote back — isn’t it lovely when cultural giants respond to children’s sincere curiosity? — and his answer speaks to the same spiritual quality of science that Carl Sagan extolled decades later and Ptolemy did millennia earlier. Six years prior, Einstein had explored that very subject, in far more complicated language and mind-bending rhetoric, in his legendary conversation with the Indian philosopher Tagore.
January 24, 1936
Dear Phyllis,
I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer:
Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.
However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith. Such belief remains widespread even with the current achievements in science.
But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.
That is a great response. I think it is a generally accepted truth amongst the scientific community that the further you advance in the field the more things become illogical or unexplainable altogether. Upon approaching such levels even the most hard core atheists have to concede that there is «something.»
I remember reading something by Professor Mikhail Epstein one time that said in essence that if humans have the ability to create life then how can one totally discount the possibility that something created us?
Kimmarie › Science vs. Religion is, probably, the most discussed topic in the Russian Internet, that's because of the increasing influence of religion in Russia. What I can say about it, is that these two domains are to be kept distinctly separate, one's belief in the existence of the planet Goloka in the transcendental universe shouldn't be mixed with one's idea of the universe as a congregation of matter, the two ideas should by no means interfere.
I remember reading something by Professor Mikhail Epstein one time that said in essence that if humans have the ability to create life then how can one totally discount the possibility that something created us?