Albert Einstein — "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion."
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.
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More from Albert Einstein
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
"The Chinese don't sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods."
"Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose."
"The only way to escape the corrupting influence of praise is to go on working."
"I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Einstein distinguishes between organized religion's supernatural God and a deep, reverent sense of awe at the universe's order and beauty. He feels wonder and humility before nature's mysteries as intensely as any devout believer — but without faith in a personal deity or afterlife. He's naming a genuine spiritual posture: not atheism, not traditional belief, but a sense of the sacred rooted entirely in rational inquiry and natural law.
Relevance to Albert Einstein
Einstein explicitly rejected belief in a personal God while simultaneously refusing the atheist label. He admired Spinoza's conception of God as the rational order of nature. In his 1954 letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, he called a personal God 'childlike.' His daily work as a physicist — uncovering equations he described as revealing 'the mind of God' — embodied exactly this devotion to universal order. He saw scientific pursuit itself as a spiritual act.
The era
Einstein shaped this view across the early-to-mid 20th century, when science and traditional religion were in sharp public tension. World War I had shattered faith for millions, while logical positivism and secular humanism rose among intellectuals. Yet fascist regimes weaponized both religious and anti-religious sentiment. Einstein's framing offered a third path — preserving moral seriousness and reverence without dogma — at a moment when both institutional religion and cold materialism seemed dangerously insufficient.
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