Scientists on Religion

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Mark Twain, Writer

“We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.”

Arthur C. Clarke, Science Writer

“It is a good principle in science not to believe any ‘fact’—however well attested—until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.”
 
S.R. Ford, Author

“The plague of scientific minds is the inability to stop oneself from digging into things you know you shouldn’t touch. Some answers ought to be left alone and never discovered by mortals.”

Sherwin B. Nuland, Physician

“These are two different belief systems. There is no reason in the world that the religious have to explain their faith on a scientific basis. It makes no sense. What is needed between science and religion is not a debate but a conversation, each one saying: you’re here to stay, and I’m here to stay, so let’s find out how our relationship can be of greatest benefit to this world.”
 
Piero Scarufi, Author

“Evolution did not design us to believe only true facts, nor to buy only useful products, nor to say only meaningful sentences.”
 
Carl Sundell, Author

"There are those who dismiss philosophy as useless at worse and confusing at best. Since philosophy is by definition the pursuit of wisdom, and science makes no claims regarding wisdom, one would think that everybody would be all for philosophy. At least clarity is often known to rise out of confusion. As to whether philosophy is useless, ask a scientist like Einstein who espoused the philosophy of science as a discipline unto itself.

Philosophy matters because it offers something neither religion nor science can offer. It offers wisdom arrived at not by revelation, but by reasoning from premises to conclusions. In that sense the philosopher, if well trained and wise as he is supposed to be, is a specialist who might be called upon by the engineer, the lawyer, or the physician to have a solution to problems not solvable by the disciplines of engineering, medicine, and law. The scientist might well defer to the philosopher in matters that the scientist is not trained to address, such as for example the ethics of nuclear weapons or cloning. The philosopher will not be asked to weigh in on how nuclear weapons can be made or how we could cone human beings, but rather the benefits and risks of assuming such awesome power over the future of the human race."
 
Jim Baggott, Science Writer

“For more than four hundred years we nurtured the belief (should that, perhaps, be faith?) that evidence-based investigation meeting scientific standards of rigor would reveal the true mechanism of nature. and yet when the mechanisms of nature were revealed to be quantum mechanisms, the worlds of science and philosophy were set on a collision course. instead of truth and comprehension, we got deeply unsettling questions about what we can ever hope to know about the world.”
 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Poet

“When scholars study a thing, they strive
To kill it first, if its alive;
Then they have the parts and they’ve lost the whole
For the link that’s missing was the living soul.”
 
Samir Okasha, Philosopher of Science

“It must be admitted that scientists today take little interest in philosophy of science… It is not an indication that philosophical issues are no longer relevant. Rather, it is a consequence of the increasingly specialized nature of science, and of the polarization between the sciences and humanities that characterizes the modern education system.”
 
Martin Heidegger, Philosopher

“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”
 
Walt Whitman, Poet

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open.”
 
Werner Heisenberg, Physicist

“Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.”
 
Alfred North Whitehead, Mathematician, Philosopher

“Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty. Mind you, though this may seem to justify the eighteenth-century Age of Reason in its contention that religion is nothing but an organized, gigantic fraud and a curse to the human race, nothing could be farther from the truth. It possesses these two aspects, the evil one of the two appealing to people capable of naïve hatred; but what is actually happening is that when you get natures stirred to their depths over questions which they feel to be overwhelmingly vital, you get the bad stirred up in them as well as the good; the mud as well as the water."
 
George Santayana, Philosopher

“Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginative fitness of its faith.”
 
Albert Einstein, Physicist

“Scientific research is based on the assumption that all events, including the actions of mankind, are determined by the laws of nature. Therefore, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, that is, by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being. However, we have to admit that our actual knowledge of these laws is only an incomplete piece of work (unvollkommenes Stückwerk), so that ultimately the belief in the existence of fundamental all-embracing laws also rests on a sort of faith. All the same, this faith has been largely justified by the success of science.
On the other hand, however, every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. The pursuit of science leads therefore to a religious feeling of a special kind, which differs essentially from the religiosity of more naive people.”
 
Paul C. Vitz, Psychologist

“The assumption that religious belief is neurotic and psychologically counterproductive has been substantially rejected. Indeed, there is now much research showing that a religious life is associated with greater physical health and psychological well-being.”
 
Max Planck, Physicist, Nobel Prize

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
 
G.K. Chesterton, Writer

"Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. "
 
Ronald Knox, Writer

Knox was engaged in a theological discussion with scientist John Scott Haldane. “In a universe containing millions of planets,” reasoned Haldane, “is it not inevitable that life should appear on at least one of them?”

“Sir,” replied Knox, “if Scotland Yard found a body in your cabin trunk, would you tell them: ‘There are millions of trunks in the world; surely one of them must contain a body?’ I think they would still want to know who put it there.”
 
Blaise Pascal, Mathematician, Scientist

“Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.”
 
Robert Frost, Poet

Sarcastic Science, she would like to know,
In her complacent ministry of fear,
How we propose to get away from here
When she has made things so we have to go
Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show
Us how by rocket we may hope to steer
To some star off there, say, a half light-year
Through temperature of absolute zero?
Why wait for Science to supply the how
When any amateur can tell it now?
The way to go away should be the same
As fifty million years ago we came—
If anyone remembers how that was
I have a theory, but it hardly does.
 
Henry David Thoreau, Writer

“There is more RELIGION in men’s SCIENCE than there is SCIENCE in their RELIGION”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jurist

“Science makes major contributions to minor needs. Religion, however small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter most.”
 
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