“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological
concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine
some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those
of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity
of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe
that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and
understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human
problem—the most important of all human problems.”
“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.…
This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”
“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the funda-
mental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amaze-
ment, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience
of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A
knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the
manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty,
which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms-
it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious
attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I
cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or
has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An
individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my
comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the
fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of
the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality,
together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion,
be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.”
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