Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

A handwritten letter by German scientist Albert Einstein where he had framed his views on God and religion, has been sold at an auction for a whopping $2.9 million. Einstein wrote the letter a year before his death in 1954.

The so-called “God letter”- by Einstein, was expected to be sold at $1.5 million earlier, at Christie’s Rockefeller Centre auction, in New York.

It is a two-page letter written on January 3, 1954, by Einstein to German philosopher Eric Gutkind. Gutkind had sent a copy of his book “Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt” to Einstein in 1952. Einstein had wrote the letter in response to Gutkins’s book.

In the letter, Einstein wrote: “The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of venerable but still primitive legends.”

In a statement, Christie’s auction wrote: “This remarkably candid, private letter was written a year before Einstein’s death and remains the most fully articulated expression of his religious and philosophical views.”

Einstein wrote: “No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change anything about this.”

Einstein also mused Jewish religion and wrote: “For me the unadulterated Jewish religion is, like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and in whose mentality I feel profoundly anchored, still for me does not have any different kind of dignity from all other peoples.”

The letter further stated: “As far as my experience goes, they are in fact no better than other human groups, even if they are protected from the worst excesses by a lack of power. Otherwise, I cannot perceive anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

An author of “Einstein: His Life and Universe” book, Walter Isaacson said, “He did not believe in a God who went around choosing favourite sports teams or people

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