Here is part of an online conversation that my friend Don Wharton submitted. I edited it into the following short essay. With Don’s permission I post it here.

There is an unfortunate source of confusion about Einstein and his sense of religious reverence for this very wonderful universe. He made it quite clear that he did not hold any traditional religious beliefs. However, he did say things such as:

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive

forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man."

Traditional religious people often erroneously cite the first part of this Einsteinian quote in an attempt to demonize secular humanists, asserting that "unbelievers" lack the emotional qualities that the religionists value highly.

The fact is that preposterous nonsense is not a prerequisite for positive emotional experience. Any "religious experience" of awe, love, beauty, delight or sense of oneness with the universe can be enjoyed by people having a profoundly secular, naturalistic stance toward the world. In the Einsteinian sense, then, one can take religious belief entirely out of religion and still have religion. Einstein did it to wide popular acclaim -- but in so doing, left a multi-generational trail of confused religionists.

It is a fact that awe, love, beauty, delight or sense of oneness with the universe are human emotions that can be, and are, experienced by humans in all walks of life regardless of  their views of the supernatural. 

 © 2007 R. Leland Waldrip