The God of Einstein

By Wayne Brown
Carl Sagan's "Varieties of Scientific Experience" provides an excellent introduction to the subject for  those unfamiliar with the "God of Einstein". In a nutshell, Einstein concluded that:

  • The universe seems to be governed by consistent "laws" many of which turned out to be were (somewhat surprisingly) discoverable and comprehensible to the mind of man.
  • Such laws appear to apply equally throughout the observable universe (again something that did not need to be true but apparently is according to our observations)
  • There is no special frame of reference -- a fact that follows from the universal applicability of the laws of physics, most famously known as Einstein's principal of relativity.
  • This does not imply the existence of a personal God with all or any of the attributes assigned by Western theology, such as omniscience, omnipresence, responsiveness to prayer etc.
I agree with Carl Sagan, one of the most articulate proponents of Skepticism, that such a "God" almost certainly exists.

I would also say that arrival at this conclusion represents a final step in the Old Testament tradition, which advocated for a Universe governed by law and Skepticism regarding other gods. It simply takes the additional step of believing in one less god or, if you wish, stripping the final god of a set of attributes for which there is no evidence.

Einstein himself ran up against serious personal doubts about even this God, since the laws of the Universe apparently step beyond what the human mind (at present) can comprehend. Famously, God does apparently play dice with the Universe -- contrary to Einstein's intuition. Einstein was also deeply troubled by the fact that the properties of matter seem, in some deep fundamental sense, to appear only when we measure them. In spite of phenomena that seemed counter-intuitive to Einstein, Science has moved on with the fundamental confidence (call it faith if you wish) that the Universe makes sense and we are left to discover the sense of it if we can. 

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