Albert Einstein letter about God goes for $3 million at auction

A one-and-a-half page letter Albert Einstein wrote in 1954 to philosopher Eric Gutkind was sold at auction on Tuesday for nearly $3 million — almost twice the amount expected by Christie's in New York.

Known as the "God Letter," it was written in German, Einstein's response to Gutkind's book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. Einstein wrote that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." Einstein, who was Jewish, said he found that "the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."

Einstein was religious as a child, but his biography Einstein: A Life says he "abandoned his uncritical religious fervor" at age 13. "As so often during his life, he refused and disturbed the accepted categories," Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at the Christian think tank Theos, told The Guardian. "We do the great physicist a disservice when we go to him to legitimize our belief in God, or in his absence."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up