Einstein quotes prove he supported miracles

NICK Canning (Write Back, February 20) claimed that Einstein rejected miracles. This is simply untrue. To admit it would scupper his implication that elite scientists, like Einstein, were atheists.

But Einstein wrote: “I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are details”; “God always takes the simplest way”; “When the solution is simple, God is answering”; “At any rate, I am convinced that he (God) does not play dice”.

Therefore, Nick implies my original quote (Write Back, February 24) about Einstein supporting miracles is fake; I repeat, Einstein said: “There are two ways to see the world, either you can expect nothing to be a miracle, or you can expect everything to be a miracle.” Einstein supported the latter.

Nick also rejects my quote from the Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg: “Atoms, or elementary particles, themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities, or possibilities, rather than one of things, or facts.”

Nick replied, “This is pure mystification” and goes on to baffle us with a list of technical jargon about scientific investigative equipment. These, Nick says, prove that atoms are real.

Nick’s denial of a genuine Einstein quotation confirms my confidence in Nobel Prize-winner Heisenberg’s sincere opinion about atoms, compared to that of Nick’s.

Although Heisenberg died in 1976, he is still held as a respected authority in physics by the scientific community. For Nick to disrespect a Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist’s opinion as “pure mystification” is proof, indeed, of Einstein’s words: “Those who set themselves up as judges of truth and knowledge will be shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

Nick admits the products of modern technology can be disasters for mankind, but excuses this. He says: “Knowledge always carries the need to use it wisely.” Einstein said: “Mankind invented the atomic bomb, but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.”

BOB GRANVILLE Newtownabbey, Co Antrim