On the network, a story is popular about how a university teacher tried to prove to the audience that if evil exists, then God is evil, but one of the students was able to refute his arguments. It is alleged that this student was Albert Einstein. We decided to check whether a similar case took place with a physicist.

The most common version of the story of a religious dispute between a professor and a student is as follows: the teacher claims that if there is evil in the world, and God has created everything that exists, it means that God is evil; The student, however, gives counter examples from physics and retorts that evil is, on the contrary, the lack of God. In different publications, arguments and counterarguments are different, but at the end it is invariably clear that a young Einstein was a student who at a dead end of his professor.

This story is often found at Information And entertainment Portals, resourcesdedicated religion, sites With selection of quotes And aphorisms famous personalities. Internet users share it on their pages in social networks ("VKontakte" Instagram, Facebook) and on the blog-platforms ("Zen" Livejournal), discuss it at forums and in services questions and answers. The text of the story has become so viral and has existed on the network so long that the phrase “this student was Albert Einstein” turned into a meme that is used when they want to demonstrate doubt about the veracity of any story.

In his student years, the future Nobel laureate Albert Einstein did not shine with estimates. In 1896, he did not without difficulties in Federal Technological Institute In Switzerland. The next four years of study, Einstein was not an exemplary student and skipped lectures that seemed boring to him, preferring to study a lot on his own. The teachers were also not enthusiastic about him, and at the end of his studies (the only one on the course) they did not invite him to stay at the institute. It could have been admitted that a self -war student could take a similar dispute with one of the professors - provided that the student had a noticeable religious zeal.

1894. Source: Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

Despite the fact that parents Einstein were non -religious Jews, he himself went to a Catholic school in childhood and, according to his own wordsUntil 12 years old, he was a deeply believing child. But then, thanks to the reading of popular science books, he, as they say in the scientist’s autobiography, came to the conclusion that much in biblical stories cannot be true. “The consequence of this was a fanatical revelry of free thought, connected with the impression that the state deliberately deceives youth,” wrote the future Nobeliat. That is, by the age of 17 (it was at this age that Einstein entered the institute) the young man was unlikely to be religious enough to argue on this topic with atheist professors. Later, in 1915, he He wrote To his Swiss colleague Edgar Meyer: “God punishes so many of His children for their many nonsense, for which only He himself can be responsible; In my opinion, only his non -existence could justify him. ” These words rather correspond to the thoughts of the professor from the analysis of the history, rather than the student arguing with him.

However, despite the quote mentioned in the previous paragraph, the atheist Einstein was not and did not deny the existence of God. The German diplomat and anti -fascist Hubertus Tsu Lenanstein recalled as a scientist once said To him: “In the face of such harmony in space that I can recognize with my limited human mind, there are still people who say that there is no God. But what really angers me is that they quote me to support such views. ” However, Einstein did not talk about the personified God, as he is understood in monotheistic religions and in which the future Nobel laureate believed in childhood. When in 1929 he was asked if he believes in God, the scientist answered: "I believe in the god Spinoza, who manifests himself in the natural harmony of the world, and not in God who cares about the fate and deeds of mankind." The philosopher Barukh Spinoza, who lived in the XVII century in the Netherlands I thoughtthat God is an eternal and endless essence, the only one in the universe, and everything else that exists in this universe stems from this essence and is part of it. This concept also somewhat contradicts the student’s position in a disassembled conversation with the professor, because, according to Spinoza, everything that exists is part of God, therefore there can be no absence of God in the universe.

1896. Source: Unattributed, Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

Whatever the views of Einstein on God and his relationship with evil, “verified” did not find a description of the alleged dispute with an atheist professor in any authoritative source dedicated to the biography and/or works of the Nobel laureate. In the largest electronic archives, physics collected Jewish University in Jerusalem, as well as Princeton And California technological Universities in the United States, failed to find a story about a similar dialogue or a scientist close in meaning. In the collection of quotes Einstein The Ultimate QUOTABLE EINSTEIN, published by the researchers of Princeton University, there is a whole section dedicated to the statements of a physicist about God and religion, but there are no words like a virus text. Do not mention such an episode and Biographers scientist.

According to the fact of the project Snopes, this story began to spread in the English-language segment of the network back in the late 1990s in the form of a newsletter by e-mail. It turned out that the plot of a militant professor atheist, battered by the arguments of a believing student, is quite popular. Moreover, if in Russian the option about Einstein was mostly involved, in English there is a much greater diversity. IN one From versions, the professor turns to God with a demand to push him from the platform to prove his existence. After some time, one of the students - the Marine Corcodier - himself clashes the professor, claiming that God was busy and sent him instead of himself. IN another The student retorts the argument “If no one has seen God, then he is not” by the fact that no one has seen the professor’s brains either, therefore, he has no brains. Of course, a nameless student or a “sea cat” does not have such an authority as the Nobel laureate, and, probably, that is why Einstein was added to one of the versions of history with an atheist professor.

By the way, the authors of some Russian -speaking publications are also Included The argument about the lack of brain professor in texts about student Einstein, thus replacing a much more logical ending about evil as the absence of God and slightly reducing the degree of pathos in this story.

This is not the only and far from the first time that Einstein is attributed to words that he never spoke, or make him a hero of events, in which he did not take. For example, “verified” earlier Reit The next bike: as a teacher, the physicist was mistaken in multiplication with the whole class, and then explained to laughing students that it should not pay attention to such a reaction of people and allow demotivating himself. Einstein did not invent and puzzlewhich only 2% of the world's population can allegedly decide.

Thus, the evidence that Einstein had ever argued with his professor about the existence of God could not be found. The scientist discussed a lot about faith, but his views were far from the position described in the viral history. The plot in which a religious student breaks the arguments of the professor - an aggressive atheist (sometimes wit and sometimes rude power), is very popular in the English -language segment of the Internet. Apparently, the Nobel laureate was included in one of the versions of such stories simply because of his fame.

Photo on the cover: Lucien Chavan [1] (1868–1942), a friend of einstein's when he was lining in berne, Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons