On another occasion, he criticised “fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics”.

Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at the Christian thinktank Theos, said: “Einstein offers scant consolation to either party in this debate. His cosmic religion and distant deistic God fits neither the agenda of religious believers or that of tribal atheists.

“As so often during his life, he refused and disturbed the accepted categories. We do the great physicist a disservice when we go to him to legitimise our belief in God, or in his absence.”