For Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth century mathematician and scientist, faith in God is the most necessary and therefore the most reasonable thing in the world. In his day clearly the antithesis of faith was atheism, not science. However, John William Draper in his History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) falsely instigated the trajectory of the future conflict between religion and science, which until his day, with the notable exception of the Galileo case, had shown no sign of being a major cultural issue. Moreover, the case of Galileo was not about religion vs science so much as about two stubborn characters, Galileo and Pope Urban VIII, opposing each other on rather personal grounds. The Vatican had always supported scientific research and still does (in fact, it employs its own astronomer who recently found a new body in our solar system).
Draper’s book was published fifteen years after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species. Some of Darwin’s followers were using his theory of evolution to advance their own opposition to religion and no doubt were delighted with Draper’s disparaging remarks about Catholics and Protestants. It is demonstrably provable that agnostics like T.H. Huxley and others fired the opening attack on religion because they wanted to use science against religion. It was understandable and inevitable that religion would be threatened by scientists who promoted the atheist assault when they attacked the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis. That fact still echoes in the words of a contemporary biologist, Richard Dawkins, who unwisely declares that Darwin’s theory of evolution has made atheism respectable. Darwin himself never used his theory to attack religion and denied he was an atheist.
In one sense only science has given a spur to the rise of atheism. Since the days of Francis Bacon, who established the scientific method, many scientists have been truly infatuated with the power of their methodology for acquiring scientific knowledge. The methodology, to be sure, has inspired great discoveries, but it has so narrowed the field of its own endeavors that it has come to view knowledge beyond that field as not provable, therefore without scientific merit, and therefore not real. This development constitutes what is generally called the intellectual heresy of scientism. Certainly not all, or even most, scientists follow in this heresy, but enough of them do to drive a wedge between those who believe in scientific disciplines only and those who believe there are fields of knowledge beyond science that are truly worthy of pursuit, such as metaphysics and religion.
Yet for some time now it has been evident that the conversion of scientists to atheism has not been so successful as many have presented it to be. Certainly before Darwin the vast majority of scientists are on record as seeing no contest whatever between science and the role of God in creation. Even Galileo acknowledged this, and many of the following quotes will also affirm it. Both the Big Bang theory and Intelligent Design theory have secured a strong foothold among many intellectuals favoring the compatibility of religion and science. One of the most salient remarks in modern times was by Albert Einstein. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
The following quotes range from the days of Copernicus to the present and are proof that people of faith and people of science are not necessarily at odds with each other.
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Copernicus, Heliocentric Theory of the Solar System
“The universe has been wrought for us by a supremely good and orderly Creator.”
Johannes Kepler, Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motions
“[May] God who is most admirable in his works … deign to grant us the grace to bring to light and illuminate the profundity of his wisdom in the visible (and accordingly intelligible) creation of this world.”
Galileo Galilei, Laws of Dynamics
“The Holy Bible and the phenomenon of nature proceed alike from the divine Word.”
Isaac Newton, Laws of Thermodynamics, Optics, etc.
“This most beautiful system [the solar system] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
Benjamin Franklin, Electricity, Bifocals, etc.
”Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs by his providence. That he ought to be worshiped.
James Clerk Maxwell, Electromagnetism, Maxwell’s Equations
“I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.”
Lord William Kelvin, Laws of Thermodynamics, Absolute Temperature Scale
“I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.”
Michael Faraday, Invention of electric motor, Atomic theory
“The book of nature which we have to read is written by the finger of God.” …
Charles Darwin, Theory of Evolution
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (from the Preface to the last edition before Darwin’s death).
Louis Pasteur, Germ Theory
“The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.”
Max Planck, Father of Quantum Physics
“There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.”
J.J. Thompson, Discoverer of the Electron
“In the distance tower still higher peaks which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects and deepen the feeling whose truth is emphasized by every advance in science, that great are the works of the Lord.”
Werner Heisenberg, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
“In the course of my life I have been repeatedly compelled to ponder the relationship of these two regions of thought (science and religion), for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.”
Arthur Compton, Compton Effect, Quantum Physicist
“For myself, faith begins with the realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man.”
Max Born, Quantum Physicist
“Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be rather silly.”
Paul A.M. Dirac, Quantum Physicist, Matter-Anti-Matter
“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”
George LeMaitre, Father of the Big Bang Theory, Catholic priest
“There is no conflict between religion and science.” Reported by Duncan Aikman, New York Times, 1933
Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize Physics
“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.”
Thomas Edison, Inventor of Electric Light, Motion Pictures, etc.
“I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe.”
Francis Bacon, Arguably the most important of the early writers on the methodology of science.
“It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity…as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty.”
Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, inventor, theologian
“The heart has reasons reason cannot know.”
Francis Collins, the leader of the international Human Genome Project, which had labored mightily over more than a decade to reveal the DNA sequence.
“It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God.”
Nicola Tesla, Alternating Current, Pioneer of Wireless Communications
“… we cannot help wondering how profoundly wise and scientific and how immensely practical the Christian religion is, and in what a marked contrast it stands in this respect to other religions.”
Robert Jastrow, First Director of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee
Concerning the Big Bang:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Gregor Mendel, Augustinian priest, founder of the modern science of genetics, and a contemporary of Charles Darwin.
“The victory of Christ gained us the kingdom of grace, the kingdom of heaven. Easter is the sky banner flag, the flag of eternity, the victory blowing over the gates of the Holy City of Jerusalem.”
Melvin Calvin, Biochemist Nobel Prize
“As I try to discern the origin of that conviction, I seem to find it in a basic notion . . . enunciated first in the Western world by the ancient Hebrews: namely, that the universe is governed by a single God, and is not the product of the whims of many gods, each governing his own province according to his own laws. This monotheistic view seems to be the historical foundation for modern science.”
Joseph Murray, Catholic surgeon who pioneered transplant surgery. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology
“I still have a vivid memory of my excitement when I first saw a chart of the periodic table of elements. The order in the universe seemed miraculous.”
Robert Boyle, The Father of Modern Chemistry
“The gospel comprises indeed, and unfolds, the whole mystery of man’s redemption, as far forth as it is necessary to be known for our salvation.”
Robert Millikan, 1923 Nobel Prize Physics
“I conceive the essential task of religion to be to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind.”
Stanley L. Jaki, Templeton Prize, Philosopher and Historian of Science,
Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and another in Theology
“All great cultures that witnessed a stillbirth of science within their ambiance have one major feature in common. They all were dominated by a pantheistic concept of the universe going through eternal cycles. By contrast, the only viable birth of science took place in a culture for which the world was a created, contingent entity.”
Fred Hoyle, British astrophysicist
“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
Paul Davies, British astrophysicist
“There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all….It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe….The impression of design is overwhelming”.
“The laws [of physics] … seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design… The universe must have a purpose”.
Alan Sandage, Winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy
“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.”
Robert Bork, Jurist
“The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance.”
G.K. Chesterton, Author
“Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.”
Rupert Sheldrake, Biologist
“I went through the standard scientific atheist phase when I was about 14. I bought into that package deal of science equals atheism.”
Wernher von Braun Rocket Scientist
“They (evolutionists) challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun? They say they cannot visualize a Designer. Well, can a physicist visualize an electron? What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the grounds that they cannot conceive Him?”
William Daniel Phillips, Nobel Prize Physics
“I believe in God. In fact, I believe in a personal God who acts in and interacts with the creation. I believe that the observations about the orderliness of the physical universe, and the apparently exceptional fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe for the development of life suggest that an intelligent Creator is responsible.”
Gerald Schroeder, Nuclear Physicist
from The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth
“The further philosophical problem of there having been a beginning arises with the idea that the beginning of our universe marks the beginning of time, space, and matter. Before our universe came into being, there is every scientific indication that time did not exist. Whatever brought the universe into existence must of course predate the universe, which in turn means that whatever brought the universe into existence must predate time. That which predates time is not bound by time. Not inside of time. In other words, it is eternal. If the laws of physics, or at least some aspect of the laws of physics, did the job of creation, those laws by necessity are eternal.”
Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, chemist, and a pioneer of electricity
“I studied attentively the grounds and basis of religion, the works of apologists and assailants, the reasons for and against, and I can say that the result of such study is to clothe religion with such a degree of probability, even for the merely natural reason, that every spirit unperverted by sin and passion, every naturally noble spirit must love and accept it. May this confession which has been asked from me and which I willingly give, written and subscribed by my own hand, with authority to show it to whomsoever you will, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel, may it produce some good fruit!”
Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize Physics
“It takes more than the right conscience to produce right behavior. And even though you may know what you are supposed to do, you all know that you don’t do things the way you would like yourself to do them. And one of the powerful aspects of religion is its inspirational aspects. Religion gives inspiration to act well. Not only that, it gives inspiration to the arts and to many other activities of human beings.”
Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor Telephone and Photophone
“God has strewn our paths with wonders, and we shall certainly not go through Life with our eyes shut.”
Robert Oppenheimer, Father of the Atomic Bomb
“In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”
Joseph Priestly, Discovery of Oxygen
“When we say there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent designing cause of what we see in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaused.”
Albert Sweitzer, Physician, Nobel Peace Prize
“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will – his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.”
John William Dawson, Geologist
“The science of the earth… invites us to be present at the origin of things, and to enter into the very worship of the Creator.”
Albert Einstein, Physics Nobel Prize
“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.” And again, on a later occasion, Einstein said “… everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a Spirit vastly superior to that of man.”
Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize Physics:
“It pains me as much as it did Kelvin ‘to hear crudely atheistic views expressed by men who have never known the deeper side of existence.’ Let me, then, henceforth use the word God to describe that which is behind the mystery of existence and that which gives meaning to it. I think you will not misunderstand me, then, when I say that I have never known a thinking man who did not believe in God.”
“To me it is unthinkable that a real atheist could be a scientist.”
Erwin Schrodinger, Nobel Prize Physics:
“I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.”
George Wald, Nobel Prize Medicine and Physiology
“It has occurred to me lately – I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities … that Mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality – that the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is Mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create.”
Arno Penzias, Nobel Prize Physics.
“The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”
Sir John Eccles, Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology:
“There is a Divine Providence over and above the materialistic happenings of biological evolution.”
Stephen C. Meyer, Geophysicist
“Though the designing agent responsible for life may well have been an omnipotent deity, the theory of intelligent design does not claim to be able to determine that…. Instead, the theory of intelligent design merely claims to detect the action of some intelligent cause (with power, at least, equivalent to those we know from experience) and affirms this because we know from experience that only conscious, intelligent agents produce large amounts of specified information.”
Dr. Ben Carson, Brain Surgeon
“I had an opportunity to have a debate publicly with Don Johanson, the famous archaeologist…who discovered Lucy, the so-called missing link. And he shows this all over the world, you know, this little skull with a protruding mandible and a receding forehead…and I said, you know, I’m a neurosurgeon, and I operate on a lot of people who have deformed skulls and things, and eventually they die and they get buried and years later somebody like you comes along and finds their skull and says they found the missing link. … Why is there only one of them? Why isn’t there a whole colony of them? How can you dig up this one little thing and then extrapolate?”
Max Planck, Nobel Prize Physics
“Religion represents a bond of man to God. It consists in reverent awe before a supernatural Might, to which human life is subordinated and which has in its power our welfare and misery. To remain in permanent contact with this Might and keep it all the time inclined to oneself, is the unending effort and the highest goal of the believing man. Because only in such a way can one feel himself safe before expected and unexpected dangers, which threaten one in his life, and can take part in the highest happiness – inner psychical peace – which can be attained only by means of strong bond to God and unconditional trust in His omnipotence and willingness to help.”
Kenneth R. Miller, Cell Biologist
“From Roger Bacon, the 13th century Franciscan who pioneered the scientific method, to George Lemaitre, the 20th century Belgian priest who first developed a mathematical foundation for the ‘Big Bang,’ people of faith have played a key role in advancing scientific understanding.”
Samuel Morse, Inventor of Telegraph and Morse Code
“Education without religion is in danger of substituting wild theories for the simple commonsense rules of Christianity.”
Joseph Taylor, Physicist Nobel Prize
“A scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world.”
Nevill Mott, Physicist Nobel Prize
“Neither physical science nor psychology can ever ‘explain’ human consciousness. To me then, human consciousness lies outside science, and it is here that I seek the relationship between God and man.”
William Whewell, Mathematician, Scientist
“Those who have obtained the farthest insight into Nature have been, in all ages, firm believers in God.”
Stephen Barr, Physicist
“Many atheists believe that all religion is at bottom either a pre-scientific attempt to understand natural phenomena through myth or an attempt to obtain worldly benefits through magic. And since they see science as the antithesis of myth and magic they cannot help but see all religion as antiscientific. Of course, such people have little understanding of what true religion is all about.”
Leonardo da Vinci, Inventor, Scientist, Artist
“I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.”
Niels Bohr, Physicist Nobel Prize
“Scripture and Nature agree in this, that all things were covered with water; how and when this aspect began, and how long it lasted, Nature says not, Scripture relates. That there was a watery fluid, however, at a time when animals and plants were not yet to be found, and that the fluid covered all things, is proved by the strata of the higher mountains, free from all heterogeneous material. And the form of these strata bears witness to the presence of a fluid, while the substance bears witness to the absence of heterogeneous bodies. But the similarity of matter and form in the strata of mountains which are different and distant from each other, proves that the fluid was universal.”
Genesis 1: 9: “Then God said: Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear. And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared.”
Arthur Schawlow, Physicist Nobel Prize
“The world is just so wonderful that I can’t imagine it had just came about by pure chance.”
Abdus Salam, Nobel Prize Physics
“This sense of wonder leads most scientists to a Superior Being – der Alte, the Old One, as Einstein affectionately called the Deity – a Superior Intelligence, the Lord of all Creation and Natural Law.”
Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize Physics
“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts; the rest are details.”
“There are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views.”
Charles Darwin, Biologist
“Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.”
William D. Phillips, Physicist Nobel Prize
“I believe in God. In fact, I believe in a personal God who acts in and interacts with the creation. I believe that the observations about the orderliness of the physical universe, and the apparently exceptional fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe for the development of life suggest that an intelligent Creator is responsible.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Owen Gingerich, Astronomer
“The sameness of the mitochondrial DNA suggests that the entire world population stems from a single source.”
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.”
George Smoot, Physicist Nobel Prize
“There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”
Guy Consolmagno, Astronomer
“For what it’s worth, in my experience astronomers are more likely than biologists to be believers. But several surveys, more scientific than my anecdotal experiences, have confirmed that in academic settings, the real atheists are to be found in English Literature departments.”
Denis Alexander, Molecular Biologist
“Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how [existence] may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative.”
Isaac Newton, Physicist
“Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fit the eys of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations always have & ever will prevail with mankind to believe that there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therfore to be feared.”
Walter Thirring, Mathematical Physicist
“In the last decades, new worlds have been unveiled that our great teachers wouldn’t have even dreamed of. The panorama of cosmic evolution now enables deep insights into the blueprint of creation…. Human beings recognize the blueprints, and understand the language of the Creator…. These realizations do not make science the enemy of religion, but glorify the book of Genesis in the Bible.”
Albert Einstein, Physicist
“You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality.”
John Lennox, Mathematician
“In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
David Berlinski, Philosopher, Mathematician
“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.”
James Tour, Chemist
“I build molecules for a living, I can’t begin to tell you how difficult that job is. I stand in awe of God because of what he has done through his creation. Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.”
Werhner von Braun, NASA engineer
“Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable, and yet it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies, and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real, while refusing to accept the reality of God on the ground that they cannot conceive him?”
Eugene Wigner, Mathematician, Nobel Prize
“The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.”
Carl Woese, Microbiologist
“I do not like people saying that atheism is based on science, because it’s not. It’s an alien invasion of science.”
James Jeans, Physicist
“We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling power that has something in common with our own individual minds.”
Kurt Gödel, Logician, Mathematician
“If the world is rationally constructed and has meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife].”
Ronald Knox, Theologian
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 the Yard would still want to know who put it there.”
James Cardinal Gibbons
“Since reason and revelation aid each other in leading us to God, the Author of both, it is manifest that the Catholic Church, so far from being opposed to the cultivation of reason, encourages and fosters sciences of every kind. The more secrets science will elicit from nature’s bosom, the more the Church will rejoice; because she knows that no new revelation of nature will ever utter the words: ‘There is no God.’ Rather will they whisper to the eager investigator, ‘He made us, and not we ourselves.’”
Will Durant, Historian
“If another great war should devastate Western civilization, the resultant destruction of cities, the dissemination of poverty, and the disgrace of science may leave the Church, as in A.D. 476, the sole hope and guide of those who survive the cataclysm.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Prize
“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”
Nevill Francis Mott, Physicist Nobel Prize
“Neither physical science nor psychology can ever ‘explain’ human consciousness. To me then, human consciousness lies outside science, and it is here that I seek the relationship between God and man.”
Charles Darwin, Biologist
“Though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public and freedom of thought is best promoted by the illumination of minds which follow from advanced of science. It has therefore been always my object to avoid writing on religion & I have confined myself to science.”
Carlo Rubbia, Physicist Nobel Prize
“The more you observe nature, the more you perceive that there is tremendous organization in all things. It is an intelligence so great that just by observing natural phenomena I come to the conclusion that a Creator exists.”
Sir John C. Eccles, Physiologist Nobel Prize
“I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition. … We have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.”
Post Script
Over the years I have collected these and many other such quotations on the so-called war between religion and science. I conclude that no real war can or has existed, but has been imagined by those who wish there had been such a war and science had won it.