Einstein's Student Reveals: How Faith Shaped His Scientific Theories

Many have written about the various statements of the most famous scientist of all time, Albert Einstein, regarding faith and the perception of the Creator through creation.

However, his student, Max Jammer, took things a step further. According to him, faith in the Creator also influenced Einstein's own scientific theories. He summarized this research in his book titled "Einstein and Religion, Physics, and Theology."

He writes, "After examining the Einstein Archive at the National Library in Jerusalem and other sources, I quickly realized that religion played an important role in Einstein's emotional and intellectual life."

Einstein writes about his childhood: "When I was young, with a fairly developed sense of awareness, I became aware of the futility of the hopes and aspirations that most people pursue tirelessly throughout their lives. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty involved in that futile pursuit... The first refuge from this whirlwind is religion, which is instilled in every child through the traditional education system. So I arrived at a deep religiosity, despite being the child of completely secular (Jewish) parents."

Einstein never saw science and religion as opposites. On the contrary, he regarded science and religion as complementary, even interdependent, a relationship he described with the quote: "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."

In 1930, in a conversation with Irish writer James Murphy and Irish mathematician John William Navin Sullivan, Einstein declared emphatically: "In my view, the deeper hypotheses in science stem from a profound religious feeling, and without this feeling, they could not be productive."

Jammer shows that Einstein's scientific approach was influenced by a Jewish religious perspective: "Einstein's persistent opposition to the new quantum mechanics... stemmed at least to some extent from a religious motive... Certain specific physical concepts in relativity theory were influenced by religious considerations. Georg Schenkman even said that Einstein's famous mass-energy relationship, expressed by the equation e = mc², parallels one of the statements in the theory of virtues."

All those mentioned above believed that Einstein's theory of relativity was shaped to some extent under religious influences or motives.

Opponents of Einstein in Germany argued that his science was Talmudic thinking... "The manner of thinking expressed in Einstein's theory is called, when applied to other ordinary matters, 'Talmudic thinking.' The purpose of the Talmud is to fulfill indirectly the concepts of the Torah, the biblical system of laws. This purpose is achieved through appropriate definitions of the concepts appearing in the law, and by a completely formalistic way of interpreting and applying them."

Perhaps they were right about this. Einstein's Jewish Talmudic thinking greatly advanced science.