Faith and Mystery

I've been reading Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein, which has fascinated me. The pursuit of the meaning of our existence seemed absurd to him. He thought the most beautiful experience we can have as human beings is the mysterious. If we lose our capacity to wonder, he said we are as good as dead. It was the experience of mystery that fostered religion, and only in that sense did he consider himself religious.

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

He talked about three motivations or stages of religion. First, there is a religion of fear. Gods are fashioned, served, and appeased to aleve our fears of hunger, sickness, death, etc., which also establishes a priestly caste to serve as mediators between the people and the gods they fear. Secondly, there is the God of Providence based upon a social or moral conception of God who protects, rewards, punishes, comforts, loves, and keeps the dead. He says that the scriptures illustrate the development of a religion of fear into moral religion.

Though rare he says there is another level of religious experience which he calls a "cosmic religious feeling" prompted in part by the futility of human desires and the wonder at the natural order revealed in nature and the world of thought. This feeling distinguishes the religious geniuses of all ages, which are often regarded as heretics. It "knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it." He believed it is "the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."

I feel like I'm in a rut of sorts, somewhere between a moral religion and a cosmic religious feeling. It depends on which day you ask me. Regardless of where we find ourselves, I hope that we never lose our capacity to wonder. I don't believe it's our calling as human beings to explain the Mystery but to embrace it.