Religion influences Einstein's views

By contemplating whether or not God would have designed the universe a certain manner, Einstein could use his sharp intuition to develop simple and elegant ideas.
             Although he went through a strong religious phase as a child, his acquaintance with Max Talmud, the poor Jewish medical student who joined the Einstein family for a weekly meal, soon weakened his regard for traditional religion. Talmud recommended philosophical and popular scientific books that led Einstein to doubt the religious precepts he had been taught in school. Einstein began questioning the veracity of the Bible and discontinued the preparation for his bar mitzvah. Some biographers point to this early religious skepticism as the source of Einstein's freedom of thought and intellectual independence as a scientist; in any case, it is clear that his defiance of authority was to remain an important aspect of his thinking and his personality for the rest of his life.
             Yet in spite of his disdain for religious instruction in accordance with any particular denominational tradition, Einstein nonetheless always maintained a pious sentiment of inspired religious devotion. He identified very closely with the seventeenth-century Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who rejected the traditional theistic concept of God in favor of an impersonal cosmic order. Spinoza believed that the universe is governed by a mechanical and mathematical order such that all events in nature occur according to immutable laws of cause and effect. He held that God is devoid of ethical properties and therefore does not reward or punish human behavior. Einstein, who studied Spinoza's Ethics in Bern with his friends of the Olympia Academy, was drawn to this philosopher because they shared a love of solitude and the experience of having rejected their Jewish religious tradition. Einstein also joined with Spinoza in denying the existence of a personal God and an unrestricted determinism.