Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein's work and thought further illuminate the relationship between theology and creativity. Einstein is well-known for his phrase, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind" (1930, p. 202). He regarded science and religion as complementary to each other, or rather as mutually depending on each other (Jammer, 1999). Einstein believed that religious experience develops in three stages: 1) primitive people have a "religion of fear,"

2)after socialization, people develop a social or moral conception of God, and

3)the "cosmic religious feeling" (Gamwell, 2002). Gamwell explains that Einstein's

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cosmic religion was basically a pantheist reverence for nature and suggests that for Einstein, there is an order to the universe which he experienced as a feeling of awe before nature. Einstein distinguished between faith in a personal, supernatural God, which he dismissed as prescientific, and the conviction that there is a cosmic order, which he believed was essential to the scientific outlook (Gamwell, 2002).

In his biography of Einstein, Jammer (1999) claims that Einstein called himself neither a theist nor a pantheist. According to Einstein, the root of his religiosity was neither a love of nature nor of music; it was rather "his realization of the vanity of human rivalry in the straggle for existence with its concomitant feeling of depression and desperation from which religion seemed to offer a relief (p. 20).

Music, for Einstein, was an expression of religious feeling. Einstein entertained a life-long enchantment with music; the notion of "awe" or "cosmic religious feeling" lies at the foundation of his philosophy of religion. Jammer (1999) posits that ever since taking violin lessons at age six, Einstein found music intimately related with religious sentiments. "Music, Nature, and God became intermingled in him in a complex of feeling, a moral unity, the trace of which never vanished, although later the religious factor became extended to a general ethical outlook on the world" (Moszkowski; cited in Jammer, 1999, p. 18).

Often, while playing music, Einstein "suddenly" found the solution to a scientific problem that had intrigued him for some time. The last few days before completing the general theory of relativity likely encompassed the most concentrated work of Einstein's life. A description of those days, reported by his wife Elsa, can be found in Charles Chaplin's autobiography (1964):

The Doctor came down in his dressing gown as usual for breakfast but he hardly touched a thing. I thought something was wrong, so I asked what was troubling him. "Darling," he said, "I have a wonderful idea." And after drinking his coffee, he went to the piano and started playing. Now and again he would stop, making a few notes then repeat: "I've got a wonderful idea, a marvelous idea!" I said: "Then for goodness' sake, tell me what it is, don't keep me in suspense." He said: "It's difficult, I still have to work it out." She told me he continued playing the piano and making notes for about half an hour, then went upstairs to his study, telling her that he did not wish to be disturbed, and remained there for two weeks. "Each day I sent him up his meals," she said, "and in the evening he would walk a little for exercise, then return to his work again. Eventually," she said, "he came down from his study looking very pale. 'That's it,' he told me, wearily putting two sheets of paper on the table. And that was his theory of relativity." (pp. 346-7; cited in Jammer, 1999, p. 56)

In Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity (1986), Renee Weber argues that science and mysticism are two approaches to nature. In the modern world, science endeavors to explain the mystery of being while mysticism seeks to experience it. Both, however, look for the basic truth about matter and the source of matter. Weber states: "By analogy with the physicist's splitting of

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the atom, the mystic is engaged in splitting the self-centered ego and the three-dimensional thinker that sustains it. The ego, like the atom, coheres in time through its 'binding power,' what Buddha called 'the aggregates' (skandas) that make up our personality" (p. 11). Weber points out that the awareness of unity and interconnectedness naturally leads to an empathy with others:

It expresses itself as a reverence for life, compassion, a sense of the brotherhood of suffering humanity, and the commitment to heal our wounded earth and its peoples. All the mystics (and virtually all the scientists) in these dialogues draw this connection between their vision of the whole and their sense of responsibility for it. (p. 16)

Einstein felt a strong responsibility for the world, supporting such causes as the United Nations and world government, nuclear disarmament, and civil liberties.

His example is different from Kahlo's and Bingen's in that suffering was not the primary backdrop of his creative investigations. Rather, meaning and one's place in the cosmos motivated him to create. One might say that through music, Einstein attempted to know the sacred through a mind intrinsically tied to sensibility. Moreover, like Wuthnow's examples, for Einstein aesthetic experience served as a source for theology as a locus of general religious experience - implicitly associated with cosmic religious feeling.