Was Albert Einstein a man of religion and did he believe in God? For years, the faithful and agnostics fought on this question and, as one would expect, both have tried to claim that the world’s greatest scientist belonged to their camp.

Non-believers cited his numerous references to his lack of faith in a personal God. On the other hand, the believers quoted a letter that Einstein wrote to Rabbi Herbert S Goldstein in 1929: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.” Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch rationalist who equated God with nature. They also relied on his famous pronouncement that “science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind.”

But now a new document has emerged that proves that Einstein was an atheist and didn’t believe either in God or religion. It’s a letter he wrote on January 3, 1954 to his Jewish philosopher friend Eric Gutkind. This letter was sold in 1955 to a private buyer and has remained out of public view since then. The buyer has now put it on the market again and it will be auctioned on Thursday at Bloomsbury Auctions in London. Handwritten in pen, the letter is estimated to fetch a price of more than £8,000 or Rs 640,000.

Einstein writes: “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” Born in a Jewish family, young Einstein was sent to a Catholic primary school. His parents were not religious, yet they arranged for private tuition in Judaism at home.

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