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Albert Einstein’s 'God Letter' auctioned for 2.89 million dollars

Albert Einstein’s 'God Letter' auctioned for 2.89 million dollars

Posted December. 06, 2018 08:22,   

Updated December. 06, 2018 08:22

한국어

A letter in which genius of physics Albert Einstein (1879~1955) expressed his thoughts on religion was auctioned for almost 3 million U.S. dollars at Christie’s in New York on Tuesday (local time), according to BBC. The buyer was not identified.

This one-and-a-half page letter known as the “God letter” was sent to German philosopher Eric Gutkind in 1954, one year before Einstein died. In the letter, Einstein wrote in German, “The word God is for me nothing but the expression‎ of and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends…No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this.”

He also pointed out that Judaism is, like all other religions “an incarnation of primitive superstition.” “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,” declared Einstein in the letter. “I cannot perceive anything ‘chosen’ about them,” added Einstein.

The letter, which comments on the relation between science and religion, was expected to sell for between 1 million and 1.5 million dollars but fetched almost twice the estimate at auction.


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