Scientists on Religion

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Richard Smalley Chemist Nobel Prize

“Recently I have gone back to church regularly with a new focus to understand as best I can what it is that makes Christianity so vital and powerful in the lives of billions of people today, even though almost 2000 years have passed since the death and resurrection of Christ. Although I suspect I will never fully understand, I now think the answer is very simple: it’s true. God did create the universe about 13.7 billion years ago, and of necessity has involved Himself with His creation ever since. The purpose of this universe is something that only God knows for sure, but it is increasingly clear to modern science that the universe was exquisitely fine-tuned to enable human life. We are somehow critically involved in His purpose. Our job is to sense that purpose as best we can, love one another, and help Him get that job done.”
 
Robert Griffiths Mathematical Physicist

“If we need an atheist for a debate, we go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.”
 
Edmund T. Whittaker Mathematical Physicist

“The vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator. I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.”
 
Isaac Newton Physicist

“Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing.”
 
Colin Russell Science Historian

“The common belief that… the actual relations between religion and science over the last few centuries have been marked by deep and enduring hostility… is not only historically inaccurate, but actually a caricature so grotesque that what needs to be explained is how it could possibly have achieved any degree of respectability.”
 
Edward Milne Astrophysicist

“As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God].”
 
Hugh Ross Astrophysicist

“Astronomers who do not draw theistic or deistic conclusions are becoming rare, and even the few dissenters hint that the tide is against them. Geoffrey Burbidge, of the University of California at San Diego, complains that his fellow astronomers are rushing off to join ‘the First Church of Christ of the Big Bang.’”
 
Albert Einstein Physicist

“The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who – in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’ – cannot hear the music of the spheres.”
 
Edward Robert Harrison Astronomer

“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.”
 
Frank Tippler Mathematical Physics

“When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”

“From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science.”
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Frank Tippler Mathematical Physics

“When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”

“From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science.”
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Do you have the title of the book he wrote?

Best,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Do you have the title of the book he wrote?

Best,
Ed
Click to expand...
*The Physics of Immortality *and The Physics of Christianity.

Both books are bold forays into the nexus between science and religion.

Tipler has been vilified both by atheists and religious scientists for going off the deep end.

New and improved(?) Teilhard de Chardin, if that interests you. 🤷
 
Charlemagne_III said:
*The Physics of Immortality *and The Physics of Christianity.

Both books are bold forays into the nexus between science and religion.

Tipler has been vilified both by atheists and religious scientists for going off the deep end.

New and improved(?) Teilhard de Chardin, if that interests you. 🤷
Click to expand...
Thanks much.

Ed
 
Edward R. Harrison Astronomer

“Given enough time, Hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where its going.”
 
**Owen Gingerich **Astronomer

“The sameness of the mitochondrial DNA suggests that the entire world population stems from a single source…”

“The God having the creative force to make the entire observable universe in a dense dot of pure energy is incomprehensible.”
 
Steven Weinberg Physicist Nobel Prize

“It seems to me that if the word “God” is to be of any use, it should be taken to mean an interested God, a creator and lawgiver who has established not only the laws of nature and the universe but also standards of good and evil, some personality that is concerned with our actions, something in short that is appropriate for us to worship. This is the God that has mattered to men and women throughout history.”
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Colin Russell Science Historian

“The common belief that… the actual relations between religion and science over the last few centuries have been marked by deep and enduring hostility… is not only historically inaccurate, but actually a caricature so grotesque that what needs to be explained is how it could possibly have achieved any degree of respectability.”
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The respectability of science was conferred by Christianity with two fundamental tenets: the validity of reason and the intelligibility of reason based on one simple but profound statement by Jesus:
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, %between%yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
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In other words the reality of Design…
 
Charlemagne_III said:
**Owen Gingerich **Astronomer

“The sameness of the mitochondrial DNA suggests that the entire world population stems from a single source…”
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As has been pointed out many times, the mitochrondial Eve and the counterpart Adam almost certain did not live at the same time, so this is not some sort of confirmation of Genesis.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Isaac Newton Physicist

“Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing.”
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Jacques Monod, Nobel prize-winner, wrote a book *Chance and Necessity *in which he attributed all development to a combination of those factors but he wisely admitted he had his doubts…
 
John Polkinghorne Physicist

“For me, the fundamental content of belief in God is that there is a Mind and Purpose behind the history of the universe.”
 
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