More Einstein

"[A] person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetter of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonal value ... The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in the concept of a personal God ... To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot ... [But] a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.

In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but incomparably more worthy task . . . . [I]t seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge," - Excerpts from "Science and Religion," Ideas and Opinions (NY: Laurel, 1954), pp. 50-58.