The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events,
the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the
side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For
him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an
independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a
personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted,
in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take
refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been
able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the
representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also
fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear
light, but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on
mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle
for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to
give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source
of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast powers in the
hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves
of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True,
and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
