QuestionsDoes God exist?Spinoza's God: the harmony of the laws, not a God who concerns himself with mankind
Does God exist?PantheismWhat God is

Spinoza's God: the harmony of the laws, not a God who concerns himself with mankind

Einstein's Spinoza's God; cosmic religious feeling

Albert Einstein 1879 · 1955The physicist of relativity: simultaneity depends on the observer, and there is no 'now' valid for the whole universe.
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What it claims

If one wants to speak of God, it is of Spinoza's God, the order of the world's laws before which one marvels, and not of a personal God who concerns himself with men.

Why

If everything follows laws, a divine will cannot be an extra cause; what remains is awe before the order of the world.

The same idea through history
Benedictus de Spinoza1677Spinoza identifies God with Nature: a God with neither will nor purpose, from whom everything follows of necessity. This is the model Einstein refers to.
Albert Einstein1929Asked by telegram by a New York rabbi, Einstein replies in one German sentence that he believes in Spinoza's God, not in a God who concerns himself with human fate.
Albert Einstein1930He describes 'cosmic religious feeling': before the marvelous order of nature and thought, with no human-shaped image of God.
In short

"Spinoza's God: the harmony of the laws, not a God who concerns himself with mankind" is an argument by Albert Einstein (Einstein, telegram of 24 April 1929; 'Religion and Science' (1930); 'Science and Religion' (1941), 1929) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: pantheism). Its claim: If one wants to speak of God, it is of Spinoza's God, the order of the world's laws before which one marvels, and not of a personal God who concerns himself with men. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P2). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Einstein, telegram of 24 April 1929; 'Religion and Science' (1930); 'Science and Religion' (1941)
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1929 a New York rabbi telegraphed Einstein: 'Do you believe in God? Answer paid 50 words.' Einstein answered in one German sentence: he believes in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate of men. Behind this reply there is a line of reasoning, which he develops in 1930 and 1941. The better one knows the regularity of events, the less room is left for a divine will acting alongside the laws. But the feeling of admiration before this order is, for Einstein, the living heart of religion. A caution: Einstein himself refuses labels. In 1930 he said he did not know whether he could call himself a pantheist, and he added that he is not an atheist. We place him in this camp because it is the closest to what he says he believes.

P1The more one is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer one's conviction that there is no room left beside it for causes of a different nature: neither the rule of human nor of divine will is an independent cause of natural events.
P2 · implicit premiseA personal God who rewards, punishes and intervenes in the world would be a divine will acting as an independent cause of events.
P3There is also an internal difficulty: if a personal God is omnipotent, every human act and thought is also his work. How can men be held responsible, and how can his punishments be reconciled with his goodness?
P4Religion is not thereby empty. It has a third level, more mature than fear and the need for support: cosmic religious feeling. In it one feels the futility of human desires and the sublimity of the marvelous order revealed in nature and in thought, with no anthropomorphic conception of God.
P5The God that corresponds to this feeling is Spinoza's: he reveals himself in the lawful harmony of what exists.
So, if one wants to speak of God, it is of Spinoza's God, the order of the world's laws before which one marvels, and not of a personal God who concerns himself with men.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Valid with one hidden premise, P2: a personal God who intervenes would be an independent cause of events. Nearly all the debate concerns P1 and P2. Believers answer that laws describe what happens when nothing intervenes, and that a divine intervention does not violate them; Einstein himself grants that no science can refute that idea, and judges it only fragile, because it takes refuge in what science does not yet know. P4 and P5 are more a choice of vocabulary: which is why others say that this 'God' is another name for nature.
Analogy. A child enters a huge library whose walls are covered with books in many languages. She knows that someone wrote them, but not who or how, and only dimly senses a mysterious order in the arrangement. Einstein gave this image in 1930: it is, he says, the attitude of the human mind toward God. The order is there, one admires it, but gives it no face.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Einstein himself (he refuses the label) 1930 · attacks the conclusion

Asked about pantheism, Einstein answers that the question is the most difficult in the world and cannot be answered with a plain yes or no: he is not an atheist, and does not know whether he can call himself a pantheist. Our conclusion should therefore be read not as a creed he signed, but as the direction of his thinking.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Einstein in the texts.
C. S. Lewis (laws and miracles) 1947 · attacks premise 1

The laws of nature say what happens when nothing else intervenes. A miracle is not a violation of those laws: it is a new event entering nature, which the laws then follow like any other. A divine will can therefore act without the laws ceasing to be true.

Einstein replies
Einstein 1941 · What Einstein says in advance
Einstein grants it: the idea of a personal God interfering with events could never be refuted by science, because it can always take refuge in the domains where scientific knowledge has not yet arrived. But he judges this attitude unworthy and fatal: a doctrine that can survive only in the dark will lose its effect on mankind.
The debate goes on (our summary) A believer will answer that God is not sought in the gaps of knowledge: the question is not what science does not know, but why there is an ordered world with laws at all, which science does not say. The disagreement then concerns what we call 'God', not the facts.
Richard Dawkins 2006 · attacks premise 5

Dawkins calls pantheism of this kind 'sexed-up' atheism: calling the laws of the universe 'God' says nothing more than an atheist says, and the word misleads the public, since everyone hears a person in it. He places Einstein among those who use 'God' in a metaphorical sense.

Einstein replies
Einstein 1930 · What Einstein says in advance
Einstein holds that cosmic religious feeling has a content of its own, which neither militant atheism nor dogmatic religion recognizes: admiration before an order one grasps only in part. He reproaches 'free-thinkers' for lacking this humility.
The debate goes on (our summary) Militant atheists answer that this admiration can perfectly well be expressed without the word 'God': keeping the word maintains the confusion with the personal God.
In the same family · What God is
An infinite cause, an infinite universeGiordano Bruno
Does God exist?Pantheism 5
God, or NatureBenedictus de Spinoza
Does God exist?Pantheism 6
All is one: divinity within the worldGiordano Bruno
Does God exist?Pantheism 3
One logos governs all: the divine is the unity of the world's oppositesHeraclitus of Ephesus · 500 BC
Does God exist?Pantheism 3