Abstract

The main issue of this paper is the question what Einstein actually meant from the philosophical and/or theological point of view in his famous phrase God does not play dice. What is the ‘underlying’ concept of necessity in this phrase, and first of all: which God here does not play dice – theistic, deistic, pantheistic? Some other passages from Einstein’s informal writings and public speeches suggest that he was very close to pantheism, following Spinoza, whom he admired and appreciated mostly among philosophers. However, Spinoza’s pantheism implies determinism which was presumably not the main point of Einstein’s protest against ‘dicing God’ in quantum physics… So, is Einstein’s God nevertheless closer to Newton’s Pantocrator as to Spinoza’s Deus sive natura? Maybe yes, but only in case if the ‘Universal Ruler’ does not punish, neither reward his creatures, ourselves, tiny human beings in the mighty and incredibly ‘well-tuned’ cosmos. The enigma of the famous phrase remains