Albert Einstein:
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”
Once more the old man is co-opted in the cause of God. Einstein clearly didn’t believe in a personal God, and said so many times. He called himself an agnostic, but I think he was, like David Attenborough, just a nonbeliever who didn’t like the term “atheist.” They could, for instance, have used this quote from Einstein:
“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text.”
or this one, in reply to an atheist who was worried about news reports that Einstein was conventionally religious:
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
HuffPo Science section engages in dishonest quote mining
