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A handwritten letter by Albert Einstein in which he grapples with the concept of religion is being auctioned in New York on Tuesday.

The so-called "God letter" was written in 1954 and is expected to fetch up to $1.5 million (£1.2m), BBC informed.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, then 74, wrote the one-and-a-half page note to German philosopher Eric Gutkind in response to one of his works.

"This remarkably candid, private letter was written a year before Einstein's death and remains the most fully articulated expression of his religious and philosophical views," a statement from the auction house says.
In the letter, written in his native German, Einstein takes issue with the belief in God.

"The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses," he writes. "The Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends."

It continues: "No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can [for me] change anything about this."
It is not the first time Einstein's letters have been put up for auction.

Last year, a note written to an Italian chemistry student who had refused to meet him sold for $6,100. It was sold alongside a number of other letters from Einstein, including a 1928 note that went for $103,000, in which he set out his thoughts for his third stage of the theory of relativity.