爱因斯坦无疑是现代物理学的奠基人，他所创导的一系列科学理论至今仍然是理论物理学的巅峰。
但是，科学家们并没有把爱因斯坦当神一样供奉起来，他们踩在巨人肩膀上不断地试图超越他。前不久有报道说，欧洲学者证实超光速粒子存在，颠覆爱因斯坦理论。
无论爱因斯坦的理论能否真的被颠覆，随着人类对自然和自身了解的深入，我们都不因该让自己的思维受到前人的限制，哪怕他是“大师”或“圣人”。
据说爱因斯坦对佛教也颇有研究，常看到有网友引用“爱因斯坦论佛教”：
"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism."
仔细看了几遍，我的疑问来了：
这一段文字，基本上是一些判断句：will be, has, is, would be等等，没有分析归纳，所以经不起任何一个“why”的疑问。
其实，这段“爱因斯坦”论述还有另一个版本：
Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity，and Buddhism is the only religion able to cope with modern scientific needs
如果是爱因斯坦的原话，为什么会有两种说法？
据说，这段话出自1954年普林斯顿大学出版社出版的《Albert Einstein: The Human Side》一书。
不过，我可以告诉你，这本书里根本没有这一段话！况且，此书的作者也不是爱因斯坦本人！
普林斯顿大学出版社还有一本专门论述爱因斯坦和宗教的专著：“Einstein and Religion” (1999, Princeton, ISBN 0691006997) ，这应该是一本对爱因斯坦和宗教最为全面的书籍，其中也没有这段话！
不过，爱因斯坦的确对佛教有过论述，有据可查的是在1930年11月9日的New York Times Magazine（Nov 9, 1930. 1-4.）有一篇爱因斯坦的文章，“Religion and Science by Albert Einstein”, 其中有一段写到：
The social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God. The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates. Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
请高手来翻译一下吧。不过请注意“cosmic”这个词，我不主张翻译成“宇宙”，当然中文里也很难找到一个合适的对应的词。
这段话，让我们看到一个睿智的大脑对不同宗教的发展和演变所做出的深层分析。我们不妨把这段话看成是一个科学家对宗教的思考，而不是对宗教的结论。
