Scientists on Religion

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Piet Hein, Mathematician

*The Paradox of Life:

A bit beyond perception’s reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other’s key.*
 
Guy Kawasaki, Author

“Some things need to be believed to be seen.”
 
Rudolf Carnap, Philosopher

“In science there are no ‘depths’; there is surface everywhere.”
 
Percy Williams Bridgman, U. S. Physicist, Nobel Prize,

“There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.”
 
C.E.M. Joad, Philosopher

There are certain impulses in human nature… which are not satisfied by a life of self-seeking. There is the impulse to serve a creed or a cause, the impulse to do good to other people, the impulse to help those who are in trouble… What account are we to give of these? Can THEY be justified by any worldly standard?.. to observe such a standard is patent folly if this is the only world, since no justification can be found for them here… we hasten to provide the required justification by indicating that there is another world which makes sense of our altruistic impulses and explains and justifies our occasional preference for duty over expediency… the stimulus to invest our existence with a purpose and to make sense of the impulses which lack justification in this life by providing for them justification in another."

How, then, on determinist lines explain the epistemological relation of thought and its objects. The content of a thought may be, indeed, on the determinist assumption… chemically determined … But how can it be determined by… that which is thought about?.. if it is what is commonly called an abstract thought, it is extremely difficult to see how it COULD be determined by such events. For how could an historical generalization be the result of a physical stimulus?"

“I have sought, in the first place, to establish the common-place proposition that there is no conflict between science and religion… secondly … the scientific account of the world is a selective account… It is in no sense an account of the whole… Thirdly… I have cited certain outstanding examples of the failure of the sciences to give an even plausible account of certain areas of human experience. The upshot of these considerations is to support the view advanced by religion that man is a member of two different orders or realms of being, that it is only of one of these that science takes account, and of that one only in so far as it can be satisfactorily isolated from the other and treated as if it were the whole.”
 
Gabriel Marcel, Philosopher, Playwright

“But however measurable, there is much more life in music than mathematics or logic ever dreamed of.”
 
Hermann Weyl, Mathematician

"My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful. "
 
Miguel de Unamuno, Philosopher

“Science says: ‘We must live,’ and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable, wisdom says: ‘We must die,’ and seeks how to make us die well.”
 
Carl Sundell, Author

The man of science hopes to find out something about nature. The man of God hopes to find our something about God. Both hopes are worthy. But since we are all going to die, one hope is more worthy than the other.
 
Peter Kreeft, Philosopher

“Is it possible that design happens by chance without a designer? There is perhaps one chance in a trillion that “S.O.S.” could be written in the sand by the wind. But who would use a one-in-a-trillion explanation? Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don’t wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. We have a logical explanation of the universe, but the atheist does not like it. It’s called God.”
 
Herbert Spencer, Philosopher, Biologist

“Doubtless it is true that while consciousness is occupied in the scientific interpretation of a thing, which is now and again “a thing of beauty,” it is not occupied in the aesthetic appreciation of it. But it is no less true that the same consciousness may at another time be so wholly possessed by the aesthetic appreciation as to exclude all thought of the scientific interpretation. The inability of a man of science to take the poetic view simply shows his mental limitation; as the mental limitation of a poet is shown by his inability to take the scientific view. The broader mind can take both.”
 
Claude Levi-Strauss, Anthropologist

“Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths.”
 
Xenophanes, Ancient Greek Philosopher.

“But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor will he know it; neither of the gods,
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
And even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it;
For all is but a woven web of guesses.”
 
Immanuel Kant, Philosopher

“The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience.”
 
Carl Sundell, Author

“There is a veil of ignorance between man and God as there is a veil of ignorance between great mathematical truths and the human mind. Only with the greatest effort and intelligence have men penetrated the veil of mathematical ignorance. But far greater and more wonderful art and science are needed to know God. Whereas getting to know mathematics requires only the opening of the mind, getting to know God requires the opening of both the mind and the heart. Even more to the point, the heart’s knowledge of God is deeper than the mind’s, because God is a person, not merely an idea.”
 
Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Prize Physics

“Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics!”
 
José Ortega y Gasset, Philosopher

“The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands blood stained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes.”
 
George Santayana, Philosopher

“Repetition is the only form of permanence that Nature can achieve.”
 
Albert Einstein, Physicist

“Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.”
 
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