Dear Editor:

Lawyers and cognitive science researchers know all too well that
human memory is very unreliable.  PAW readers should keep this in mind
when reading Stan Stevenson's triumphant 50-year-old recollection of
Einstein "preach[ing]" at a 1952 Chapel service and professing his belief
in a deity [PAW, October 6, 2004].

I urge those who are interested in Einstein's beliefs to consult the
detailed documentary record.  For example, in _Albert Einstein:  The
Human Side_ (Dukas and Hoffmann, eds., Princeton University Press,
1979), on page 38 one finds a 1954 letter of Einstein, one passage of
which reads as follows:

"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."

Jeffrey Shallit '79
Kitchener, Ontario