Albert Einstein’s ‘God letter’ reflecting on religion auctioned for $3m

A handwritten missive by Albert Einstein called the “God letter” fetched almost $3m at auction .

Christie’s ah in New york city stated on Tuesday afternoon that the letter, including the buyer’s premium, fetched $2.89m within the hammer. That has been almost twice the expected amount.

The one-and-a-half-page letter, developed in 1954 in German and addressed on the philosopher Eric Gutkind, contains reflections on God, the Bible and Judaism.

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Einstein says: “The word God is good for me only the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible an amount of honourable, nevertheless primitive, legends that happen to be nevertheless pretty childish.”

The sentence has been hailed as evidence that your physicist, on the list of 20th century’s most esteemed thinkers, was an atheist. But Einstein occasionally said he had not been an atheist, and resented being labelled mutually.

In the letter C being auctioned at Christie’s in Big apple on Tuesday C Einstein, a Jew, also articulates his disenchantment with Judaism. “For me the Jewish religion similarly to others is really an incarnation that is childish superstitions. And also the Jewish visitors to whom I gladly belong with whose mentality I’ve a deep affinity don’t have any different quality in my situation than all the other people,” he wrote.

“As far as my experience goes, they may be no as good as other human groups, whilst they are protected from the worst cancers by way of loss of power. Otherwise I can not see anything ‘chosen’ about the subject.”

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The letter was designed in reaction to a novel by Gutkind, called Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.

The letter ended up being held among Gutkin’s papers, even so it came up for auction working in in 2008. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was beaten in bidding that ended at 170,000.

Acknowledging his disappointment in failing to secure that, Dawkins said: “This letter was ready something very important to Einstein, I think.”

According to Einstein: Your life, a biography published in 1996, he was devoutly religious during a vacation. But in the era of 13, he “abandoned his uncritical religious fervour, feeling he previously been deceived into believing lies”.

He said he believed in “Spinoza’s God” C referring to Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Dutch thinker C “who reveals himself within the lawful harmony of the planet, not in a very God who concerns himself while using the fate additionally, the doings of mankind”.

On another occasion, he criticised “fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind when the intolerance from the religious fanatics”.

Nick Spencer, a senior fellow within the Christian thinktank Theos, said: “Einstein offers scant consolation with the idea to party in such a debate. His cosmic religion and distant deistic God fits neither the agenda of religious believers or that relating to tribal atheists.

“As sometimes throughout his life, he refused and disturbed the accepted categories. We do the good physicist an injustice once we visit him to legitimise our belief in God, or perhaps in his absence.”