Einstein’s ‘God Letter,’ a Viral Missive From 1954

If it were written now as a series of tweets, they would surely go viral.

Think of it: One of the most famous people in the world is panning religion. “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,” the message reads. “No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this.”

That is only 239 characters, including the spaces, periods and commas, well short of the 280-character limit for a tweet. And there is more where those words came from — a letter written in 1954 by Albert Einstein that is being auctioned this week. It provides a glimpse of Einstein’s private thoughts and would probably be inflammatory in today’s polarized social media world.

The page-and-a-half document, in German, became known a decade ago as the “God letter,” a nickname that makes some Einstein experts wince. But while the letter has to do with his Jewish identity and mankind’s search for meaning, Einstein used the word “God” only once in the letter, in the passage quoted above.