EINSTEIN AND THE MYSTERY OF SCIENCE

Glenn Statile

1)      The Religiosity of Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein once asked a Catholic priest stationed in New Jersey to provide him with books dealing with the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.[i]  This might strike you as odd reading matter for a scientifically minded man of Jewish background who throughout his life continued to publicly disclaim any belief in the existence of a personal God.   For those of you who may harbor a theoretical penchant for paradox I would point out that Einstein once described himself as a “deeply religious nonbeliever.”[ii]  By such a statement he meant that his worldview was somehow pervaded by an overwhelming and general feeling of religiosity rather than dominated by some specific creedal commitment. Perhaps Einstein’s curiosity in the Eucharist might be easier to fathom were we to regard it as a symptom of his abiding and lifelong quest to unravel the eternal enigma of appearance and reality.  For the deeper reality pointed to by the theory of relativity in regard to space, time, matter, and energy must have seemed as shocking to Einstein’s contemporaries as the transubstantiation of bread and wine still does to anyone who does not subscribe to certain forms of Christian sacramental theology.