Scientists on Religion

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Angus J.L. Menuge, Philosopher

“The inability of Darwinian psychology to account for human reasoning is devastating to its pretensions to be a science. The prestige of science depends on the application of highly advanced practical and theoretical reason. A ‘science’ that is incompatible with such reasoning is therefore at odds with the very essence of scientific activity.”
 
John D. Barrow, Physicist

“There was no ‘before’ the beginning of our universe, because once upon a time there was no time.”
 
“Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God - the design argument of Paley - updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one… Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument.” Ed Harrison (cosmologist)

“If anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has, he is hiding his head in the sand. These special features ARE surprising and unlikely.” David D. Deutch

“The precision [of the fine tuning] is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bullseye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.” Michael Turner
 
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

"Science is about explanation. Religion is about meaning. Science analyses, religion integrates. Science breaks things down to their component parts. Religion binds people together in relationships of trust. Science tells us what is. Religion tells us what ought to be. Science describes. Religion beckons, summons, calls. Science sees objects. Religion speaks to us as subjects. Science practices detachment. Religion is the art of attachment, self to self, soul to soul. Science sees the underlying order of the physical world. Religion hears the music beneath the noise. Science is the conquest of ignorance. Religion is the redemption of solitude.”
 
“Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned.”
  • Loren Eiseley
“As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.”
  • Isaac Newton
 
Bishop Louis le Chanoine Rendu, Geologist

“Only a half-century ago, a Christian speaker, mistrustful of men of science told them: ‘Stop finally, and do not dig to hell.’ Today, gentlemen, reassured about the steadfastness of our unshakeable faith, we say: dig, dig again; the further down you, the closer you come to the great mystery of the impotence of man and truth of religion. So dig, always dig: and when science has stuck its final hammer blow on the bosom of the earth, you will be able to ignite a burst of light, read furthermore the mind of God and contemplate the imprint of His hand.”
 
Pope John Paul II

"Is the community of world religions, including the Church, ready to enter into a more thorough-going dialogue with the scientific community, a dialogue in which the integrity of both religion and science is supported and the advance of each is fostered? Is the scientific community now prepared to open itself to Christianity, and indeed to all the great world religions, working with us all to build a culture that is more humane and in that way more divine? Do we dare to risk the honesty and the courage that this task demands? We must ask ourselves whether both science and religion will contribute to the integration of human culture or to its fragmentation. It is a single choice and it confronts us all.

"For a simple neutrality is no longer acceptable. If they are to grow and mature, peoples cannot continue to live in separate compartments, pursuing totally divergent interests from which they evaluate and judge their world. A divided community fosters a fragmented vision of the world; a community of interchange encourages its members to expand their partial perspectives and form a new unified vision.

“Yet the unity that we seek, as we have already stressed, is not identity. The Church does not propose that science should become religion or religion science. On the contrary, unity always presupposes the diversity and the integrity of its elements. Each of these members should become not less itself but more itself in a dynamic interchange, for a unity in which one of the elements is reduced to the other is destructive, false in its promises of harmony, and ruinous of the integrity of its components. We are asked to become one. We are not asked to become each other.”
 
Frederick Nietzsche, Philosopher

“One sees that science also rests on a faith: there is no science at all ‘without premises.’”
 
Voltaire, Philosopher

“There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. … We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.”
 
Lewis Thomas, Biologist, Physician

“The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.”
 
Noam Chomsky, Linguist

“As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.”
 
Richard Feynman, Physicist

“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”
 
Konrad Lorenz, Ethologist

“It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.”
 
Robert W. Faid, Mathematician Nobel Laureate

“…all of creation was made so that we, men and women, could see and testify to God’s glory in it. It says that all of this, the entire universe, was created for us, for us to see and to observe and to appreciate, for alone in all creation, man his this capacity to see and observe and appreciate. This means that all of the laws of physics, of chemistry, of motion, of mathematics, of thermodynamics, all natural laws, were authored by a God who delights in man’s discovery of them when that discovery is accompanied by an appreciation of the God who created them.”
 
Frank Tipler, Mathematical Physicist

“From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science.”
 
David Berlinski, Philosopher

“Has anyone provided proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.”
 
Max Planck, Physicist Nobel Laureate

“Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.”
 
Werner Heisenberg, Physicist Nobel Laureate

“One may say that in a state of science where fundamental concepts have to be changed, tradition is both the condition for progress and a hindrance. Hence, it usually takes a long time before the new concepts are generally accepted.” Werner Heisenberg
 
Isaac Newton, Physicist

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
 
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