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Personal god

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Is it possible that there are people who say "God" and suppose they mean something shared by all? — Only consider two schoolboys: one of them buys a knife, and the other buys an identical one on the same day. And a week later, they show each other the two knives, and they turn out to be only remotely similar, so differently have they been shaped by different hands. ... Is it possible to believe we could have a god without making use of him? ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

A personal god is a deity who can be related to as a person instead of as an impersonal force.

Quotes

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  • I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar.
    • Albert Einstein, in an interview (1948), quoted in Einstein and the Poet : In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983) by William Hermanns, p. 132
  • It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
    • Albert Einstein, in a letter to an atheist, written in English (24 March 1954), included in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman.
  • Is it possible that there are people who say "God" and suppose they mean something shared by all? — Only consider two schoolboys: one of them buys a knife, and the other buys an identical one on the same day. And a week later, they show each other the two knives, and they turn out to be only remotely similar, so differently have they been shaped by different hands. ... Is it possible to believe we could have a god without making use of him?
    • Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), as translated by Michael Hulse (2009), p. 16

See also

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Wikipedia
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