Einstein the Agnostic? actually theist or deist (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Saturday, November 24, 2018, 12:00 (2191 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "In February 1954, just 14 months before he [Einstein] died, he wrote in a letter to the American physicist David Bohm: ‘If God created the world, his primary concern was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us.'’

DAVID: Perhaps more deist than agnostic.

dhw: Once more, many thanks for a great article, and a great quote, which I imagine being accompanied by a twinkle in the eye. Deism offers a view of God which seems to me to fit in very well with life's history as we know it (i.e. allowing life to pursue its own course).

DAVID: I doubt God created this reality and then let it alone to wend its own way.

dhw: That is the gist of my theistic hypothesis: if God exists, he created the mechanism for life and evolution and then watched it unfold. Do you not get the impression that if he exists, that is precisely what he is doing now?

DAVID: I've felt all along God is active. First from the thought that creation was a complicated process that required intense concentration with planning. I think God would want to keep a hand in what is going on. I feel my life was guided and still is. Perhaps God?

Interesting! Without going into the complexities of theodicy (deism offers a simple solution to that problem), do you also feel that “perhaps” God guides the lives of tyrants and their victims, and the victims of natural disasters?