A Scientist Once Said...
“In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anyone would have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly this is happening… in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers.”
—Time Magazine, April 1980
Christian B. Anfinsen was an American biochemist, sharing the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stanford Moore and William Howard Stein for work on ribonuclease, concerning in particular the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation. During an interview, Anfinsen was asked, “Many prominent scientists – including Darwin, Einstein, and Planck – have considered the concept of God very seriously. What are your thoughts on the concept of God and on the existence of God?” He replied saying, “I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place.”
Anfinsen died on May 14th 1995, aged 79.
Sir Derek Harold Richard Barton was an English organic chemist and winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and died on the 16th March 1998 at 79 years of age. In 1954, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Recited in Cosmos, Bios, Theos, Barton said, “God is Truth. There is no incompatibility between science and religion. Both are seeking the same truth. Science shows that God exists.”
“The observations and experiments of science are so wonderful that the truth that they establish can surely be accepted as another manifestation of God. God shows himself by allowing man to establish truth.”
Max Born was a German physicist and mathematician who was involved in the development of quantum mechanics, and was the Nobel Prize in Physics winner in 1954. He died at 87 on the 5th January 1970. “Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be rather silly.”
“Something which is against natural laws seems to me rather out of the question because it would be a depressive idea about God. It would make God smaller than he must be assumed. When he stated that these laws hold, then they hold, and he wouldn’t make exceptions. This is too human an idea. Humans do such things, but not God.”
Considered the founder of modern chemistry, Robert Boyle was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist and inventor, and in 1663, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. “God [is] the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion.” – Boyle.
Sir William Henry Bragg was a British physicist, chemist, mathematician and active sportsman who, in 1915, shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with his son William Lawrence Bragg. “Science is experimental, moving forward step-by-step, making trial and learning through success and failure. Is not this also the way of religion, and especially of the Christian religion? The writings of those who preach the religion have from the very beginning insisted that it is to be proved by experience. If a man is drawn towards honour and courage and endurance, justice, mercy, and charity, let him follow the way of Christ and find out for himself. No findings in science hinder him in that way.” – Bragg. Bragg’s daughter also wrote about her fathers faith saying, “Religious faith to W. H. Bragg was the willingness to stake his all on the hypothesis that Christ was right, and test it by a lifetime’s experiment in charity.” Bragg died in 1942, on the 12th March, living up to 79 years.
Melvin Ellis Calvin was an American biochemist most famed for discovering the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. On January 8, 1997, Calvin died at age 85. He said, “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.”
Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing and his work on the transplantation of blood-vessels and organs. He wrote in his book Reflections on Life, “Jesus knows our world. He does not disdain us like the God of Aristotle. We can speak to Him and He answers us. Although He is a person like ourselves, He is God and transcends all things.” At 71 years, Carrel died in 1944 on the 5th November.
Sir Ernst Boris Chain was a British biochemist born in Germany, and a 1945 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for his work on penicillin and its effect in various infectious diseases. “There are many ways in which people are made aware of their power to believe in the supremacy of Divine guidance and power: through music or visual art, some event or experience decisively influencing their life, looking through a microscope or telescope, or just by looking at the miraculous manifestations or purposefulness of Nature,” said he. Chain died on the 12th August, 1979, aged 73.
Francis Sellers Collins is an American physician-geneticist known for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project. He said, “There are good reasons to believe in God, including the existence of mathematical principles and order in creation. They are positive reasons, based on knowledge, rather than default assumptions based on a temporary lack of knowledge.”
Arthur Holly Compton was an American physicist who won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. He died on March 15th, 1962, aged 69. “For myself, faith begins with a realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man. It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for it is incontrovertible that where there is a plan there is intelligence—an orderly, unfolding universe testifies to the truth of the most majestic statement ever uttered—-‘In the beginning God.'”
“Science can have no quarrel with a religion which postulates a God to whom men are His children.” – Compton.
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the universe. He died on the 24th May 1543, aged 70. Copernicus said, “To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful workings of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more grateful than knowledge.”
Charles Darwin, the founder of evolution was, truthfully, not an atheist. “The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.” - in his book Descent of Man. “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.” - quoted in his autobiography. And these are only two of the many times that Darwin admitted to the existence of a God.
Paul Charles William Davies is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster. His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He has proposed that a one-way trip to Mars could be a viable option. He is the winner of the 2001 Kelvin Medal issued by the Institute of Physics. As quoted in his book God and the New Physics, “It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.” He also said, “People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
Davies also mentioned, “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.”
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was an English theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. In 1933, he won the Nobel Prize on Physics. “God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”
Freeman John Dyson is an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. He said, “Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe is also weird, with its laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension.”
Sir John Carew Eccles was an Australian neurophysiologist and philosopher who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work on the relationship between inhibition of nerve cells and repolarization of a cell’s membrane. He died in 1997, at 94 years of age, on the 2nd of May. “Science and religion are very much alike. Both are imaginative and creative aspects of the human mind. The appearance of a conflict is a result of ignorance. We come to exist through a divine act. That divine guidance is a theme throughout our life; at our death the brain goes, but that divine guidance and love continues. Each of us is a unique, conscious being, a divine creation. It is the religious view. It is the only view consistent with all the evidence.”
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who did his greatest work in astrophysics. On the 22nd of November 1944, he died at 61 years. As written in his work The Nature of the Physical World, “We all know that there are regions of the human spirit untrammeled by the world of physics. In the mystic sense of the creation around us, in the expression of art, in a yearning towards God, the soul grows upward and finds fulfillment of something implanted in its nature. The sanction for this development is within us, a striving born with our consciousness or an Inner Light proceeding from a greater power than ours. Science can scarcely question this sanction, for the pursuit of science springs from a striving which the mind is impelled to follow, a questioning that will not be suppressed. Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead and the purpose surging in our nature responds.” - Eddington.
“The more I study science, the more I believe in God.” - Einstein.
Albert Einstein received numerous awards and honors, including the Nobel Prize in Physics. In his life, he published more than 300 scientific papers and 150 non-scientific papers.
“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.”- Albert Einstein.
In reality, Einstein had become quite unimpressed with the use of his quotes in support that there is no God. “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, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.”
–Albert Einstein
He referred to those who denied the Creator as “fanatical atheists.”
“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.” – said Einstein.
“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 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.” – as written in Antony Flew’s book There Is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.
He was asked during an interview with the Sunday Morning Post, “You accept the historical Jesus?”
“Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.” – he answered. Albert Einstein died on the 18th April 1955 at 76 years old.
George Francis Rayner Ellis is the Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology. He was a collaborator on the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems (regarding the Big Bang theory). In Stephen Williams’ What Your Atheist Professor Doesn’t Know, Ellis is quoted saying, “Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”
“God is the creator and sustainer of the universe and of humankind, transcending the universe but immanent in it.”
“God’s nature embodies justice and holiness, but is also a personal and loving God who cares for each creature (so the name ‘father’ is indeed appropriate).”
“God’s nature is revealed most perfectly in the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, as recorded in the New Testament of the Bible, who was sent by God to reveal the divine nature, summarized in ‘God is Love.'”
Owen Jay Gingerich is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University, and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. He said this while reflecting on Fred Hoyle’s comment, “Fred Hoyle and I differ on lots of questions, but on this we agree: a common sense and satisfying interpretation of our world suggests the designing hand of a superintelligence.”
He also said, “Nevertheless, just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, so I believe that the Book of Nature, with its astonishing details–the blade of grass, theConus cedonulli, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom–also suggest a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist.”
Werner Gitt is an engineer and young earth creationist, and is the Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, Germany. In his book Without Excuse he wrote, “…We then examine a particular coding system in DNA and discover that UI [universal information] is conveyed within the genes. Using this DNA evidence and scientific laws governing UI as premises, we are able to develop sound, logical deductions. This leads us to the following conclusion: the God of the Bible exists and He is responsible for originating and embedding Universal Information into biological life.”
Robert B. Griffiths is an American physicist at Carnegie Mellon University. He was the 1984 winner of the Heinemann Prize for Mathematical Physics. “If we need an atheist for a debate, we go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.” – Griffiths.
Edward R. Harrison was a British astronomer and cosmologist, noted for his work on the increase of fluctuations in the expanding universe, for his explanation of Olbers' Paradox, and for his books on cosmology. At 88 years, he died on the 29th January 2007. “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.” – Harrison.
Peter Harrison is an Australian Laureate Fellow and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. He was an Oxford University Professor of Science and Religion. He said, “Those who have magnified more recent controversies about the relations of science and religion, and who have projected them back into historical time, simply perpetuate a historical myth. The myth of a perennial conflict between science and religion is one to which no historian of science would subscribe.”
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist and one of the prime pioneers of quantum mechanics. In 1932, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. “In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.” – Heisenberg. He said, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Richard Conn Henry is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, author of one book and over 200 publications on the topics of astrophysics and various forms of astronomy including optical, radio, ultraviolet, and X-ray. He also contributed to the re-categorisation of Pluto as a dwarf-planet. “Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” – Henry.
Antony Hewish is a British radio astronomer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for his work on the development of radio aperture synthesis and its role in the discovery of pulsars. He said, “I believe in God. It makes no sense to me to assume that the Universe and our existence is just a cosmic accident, that life emerged due to random physical processes in an environment which simply happened to have the right properties. As a Christian I begin to comprehend what life is all about through belief in a Creator, some of whose nature was revealed by a man born about 2000 years ago.”
In the foreward Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief, Hewish writes, “The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is nonintuitive for those unacquainted with physics. Religious belief in God, and Christian belief that God became Man around two thousand years ago, may seem strange to common-sense thinking. But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuitions.”
Sir Fred Hoyle was an English astronomer noted primarily for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, but also for his stances on other scientific matters—such as his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term invented by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth. “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect 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.” This was what Hugh Ross quoted in The Creator and the Cosmos.
Christopher Isham is an atheoretical physicist at Imperial College London. He focuses primarily on quantum gravity and foundational studies in quantum theory. He is Britain’s leading quantum cosmologist, saying, “Perhaps the best argument…that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas…being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory.”
Robert Jastrow was an American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist. He died on the 8th February, 2008, at 82 years. “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover…. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.” – From Jastrow’s God and Astronomers.
He also was quoted in Until the Sun Dies, saying, “What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation.”
James Prescott Joule an English physicist and brewer, who died on the 11th October 1889 at 70 years old. He is known for discovering heat, creating the First Law of Thermodynamics, creating the Law of the Conservation of Energy, and for disproving Caloric Theory. “It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed.”
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, was an Irish mathematical physicist and engineer, who at 83 years, died on December 17th 1907. He was known for his theoretical work on thermodynamics, the concept of absolute zero and the Kelvin temperature scale based upon it. “I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.”
“If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.” – Kelvin.
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. He discovered the laws of planetary motion which later served as one of the foundations for Issac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation. He is also considered to be one of the founders of the field of astronomy. He said, “…Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts… and if piety allow us to say so, our understanding is in this respect of the same kind as the divine, at least as far as we are able to grasp something of it in our mortal life.” He died on November 5th, 1630, at age 58.
Vera Kistiakowsky is an American research physicist, teacher, and arms control activist. Her career began in the nuclear chemistry field, moving on to nuclear physics, then particle physics, and ending on astrophysics. She said, “The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.”
Walter Kohn is an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He shared the 1998 Nobel Prize on Chemistry with John Pople, for his contributions to the understandings of the electronic properties of materials. In 2002, Kohn was asked what he thought was the relationship was between science and religion, Kohn replied saying, “Mutual respect. They are complementary important parts of the human experience.”
Kohn was later asked what he thought about the existence of God, and he answered with, “There are essential parts of the human experience about which science intrinsically has nothing to say. I associate them with an entity which I call God.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German polymath and philosopher who today occupies a leading place in the history of mathematics and of philosophy. With Isaac Newton, he foundered calculus. “The ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.”
“Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, since perfection is nothing but magnitude of positive reality, in the strict sense, setting aside the limits or bounds in things which are limited.” – Leibniz. He died on the 14th November, 1716, at 70 years.
Guglielmo Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer. In 1909, Marconi won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He is known for his invention of the first system of wireless telegraphy, making possible the electronic communications of the modern world. He himself said, “The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer; the more I feel that the so-called science, I am occupied with, is nothing but an expression of the Supreme Will, which aims at bringing people closer to each other in order to help them better understand and improve themselves.”
“I am proud to be a Christian. I believe not only as a Christian, but as a scientist as well. A wireless device can deliver a message through the wilderness. In prayer the human spirit can send invisible waves to eternity, waves that achieve their goal in front of God.” In 1937, 20th July, aged 63, Marconi died.
Put simply, Henry Margenau was a German-U.S. physicist, and philosopher of science. He worked as a professor at Yale University. As quoted in Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo Sapiens, “God created the universe out of nothing in an act which also brought time into existence. Recent discoveries, such as observations supporting the Big Bang and similar astronomical phenomena, are wholly compatible with this view.” Margenau died on the 8th February 1997, at age 95.
James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish scientist in the field of mathematical physics, credited for formulating the theory of electromagnetic radiation. His scientific contributions are regarded to be of the same importance to those of Einstein and Newton. On the 5th November 1879, Maxwell died at 48 years of age. “I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.”
“Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent it must have been created.” - Maxwell.
Robert A. Millikan was an American physicist honored with the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics for his measurement of the elementary electronic charge and for his work on the photoelectric effect. He said, “The first important quarrel of this sort arose over the advancing by Copernicus of his theory that the earth, instead of being a flat plane and the center of the universe, was actually only one of a number of little planets, rotating once a day upon its axis and circling once a year about the sun. Copernicus was a priest – the canon of a cathedral – and he was primarily a religious rather than a scientific man. He knew that the foundations of real religion are not laid where scientific discoveries of any kind can disturb them. He was persecuted, not because he went against the teachings of religion but because under his theory man was not the center of the universe and this was most displeasing news to a number of egoists.”
“To me it is unthinkable that a real atheist could be a scientist.”
“Religion and science, then, in my analysis are the two great sister forces which have pulled, and are still pulling, mankind onward and upward.”
“The impossibility of real science and real religion ever conflicting becomes evident when one examines the purpose of science and the purpose of religion. The purpose of science is to develop – without prejudice or preconception of any kind – a knowledge of the facts, the laws and the processes of nature. The even more important task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the consciences, the ideals and the aspirations of mankind.”
At 85, on the 19th December 1953, Millikan died.
He also commented, “This much I can say with definiteness – namely, that there is no scientific basis for the denial of religion – nor is there in my judgment any excuse for a conflict between science and religion, for their fields are entirely different. Men who know very little of science and men who know very little of religion do indeed get to quarreling, and the onlookers imagine that there is a conflict between science and religion, whereas the conflict is only between two different species of ignorance.”
Edward Arthur Milne was a British astrophysicist and mathematician, who died on the 21st September 1950 at 54. In his life, he won the Royal Society’s Royal Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Bruce Medal. “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].” – Milne.
Sir Nevill Francis Mott was an English physicist who, for his work on the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems (especially amorphous semiconductors) won the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physics. “I believe in God, who can respond to prayers, to whom we can give trust and without whom life on this earth would be without meaning (a tale told by an idiot). I believe that God has revealed Himself to us in many ways and through many men and women, and that for us here in the West the clearest revelation is through Jesus and those that have followed him.” – Mott. On the 8th August 1996, he died at 90 years old.
Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on December 23, 1954, with identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick. In 1990, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with E. Donnall Thomas, for work that “proved to a doubting world that it was possible to transplant organs to save the lives of dying patients.” Murray said, “Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist – I don’t see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation – the way it emerged – it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I’ve never seen a conflict.” At age 93, Murray died in 2012, on the 26th November.
Sir Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician who is today widely identified as one of the most influential scientists of all time and an impornt figure in the scientific revolution.
“God created everything by number, weight and measure.”
“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”
“I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”
“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.”
Newton died at the age of 84 on March 31 1727.
John Aloysius O'Keefe was a planetary scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1958 to 1995. He died in the year 2000. O’Keefe said, “If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.”
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist known for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He is identified as the founder of microbiology and immunology. He died on September 28 1895, aged 72. “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.”
“In good philosophy, the word cause ought to be reserved to the single Divine impulse that has formed the universe.”
“Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.”
Sir Roger Penrose is an English Oxford University mathematical physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science. He has received the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their contribution to the understanding of the universe. As cited in his book The Emperors New Mind, “This now tells how precise the Creator’s aim must have been, namely to an accuracy of one part in 10, to the power of 10, to the power of 123. This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full in the ordinary denary notation: it would be 1 followed by 10 to the power of 123 successive 0’s. Even if we were to write a 0 on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe- and we could throw in all the other particles for good measure- we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.”
Arno Allan Penzias is an American physicist and radio astronomer who is co-discoverer of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology. He won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics. In Joshua O. Haberman’s book The God I Believe In, Penzias is quoted saying, “The best data we have (concerning the Big Bang) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”
During another interview, Penzias said, “If there are a bunch of fruit trees, one can say that whoever created these fruit trees wanted some apples. In other words, by looking at the order in the world, we can infer purpose and from purpose we begin to get some knowledge of the Creator, the Planner of all this. This is, then, how I look at God. I look at God through the works of God’s hands and from those works imply intentions. From these intentions, I receive an impression of the Almighty.”
He also mentioned, “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”
William Daniel Phillips an American physicist. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. Phillips said, “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.”
“I believe in God because of a personal faith, a faith that is consistent with what I know about science.”
“Being an ordinary scientist and an ordinary Christian seems perfectly natural to me. It is also perfectly natural for the many scientists I know who are also people of deep religious faith.”
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German theoretical physicist whose work on quantum theory won him the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics, up until the day he died on the 4th October 1947, aged 89. He is considered to be the founder of quantum theory, and one of the most important physicists of the 20th century. During a lecture, Planck said, “Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.”
“There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.”
John Charlton Polkinghorne is an English theoretical physicist, theologian, writer and Anglican
priest. He is the author of five books on physics, and 26 books on the relationship between science and religion. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1997. As cited from his book Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship, “I believe that a full understanding of this remarkable human capacity for scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that our power in this respect is the gift of the universe’s Creator who, in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in the image of God (Genesis I: 26-27). Through the exercise of this gift, those working in fundamental physics are able to discern a world of deep and beautiful order–a universe shot thorough with signs of mind. I believe that it is indeed the Mind of that world’s Creator that is perceived in this way. Science is possible because the universe is a divine creation.”
Alexander Markovich Polyakov is a Russian theoretical physicist who has received many awards for his scientific contributions, some of which includes the Lars Onsager prize in 2011, the Dirac Medal and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1986, the Lorentz Medal in 1994, and the 1996 Oskar Klein Medal. He said, “We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it. So there is a chance that the best of all possible mathematics will be created out of physicists’ attempts to describe nature.”
Sir Ghillean Tolmie Prance is a British botanist and ecologist. From 1988 to 1999, he was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Prance was knighted in 1995. He has been a Fellow of the Linnean Society since 1961, and since 1993 has been a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour in 1999. He was awarded the Patron's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1994. Prance said, “For many years I have believed that God is the great designer behind all nature… All my studies in science since then have confirmed my faith. I regard the Bible as my principle source of authority.”
Isidor Isaac Rabi was a Polish-born American physicist and winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics, for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance. He said, “Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, ‘Will it bring you nearer to God?’ ”
Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician and autodidact. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. “An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.” – Ramanujan. He died in 1920 26th April at only 32 years of age.
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. Since 1995, he has been an Astronomer Royal, and was the president of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010. He is the winner of the Crafoord Prize, amongst numerous other awards. “Let me say that I don’t see any conflict between science and religion. I go to church as many other scientists do. I share with most religious people a sense of mystery and wonder at the universe and I want to participate in religious ritual and practices because they’re something that all humans can share.” – Rees.
Hugh Norman Ross is a Canadian North American astrophysicist, Christian apologist, and old earth creationist. He is the author of The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God. “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.’” – Ross.
Tony Rothman is an American theoretical physicist, academic and writer. He is a former post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University. “When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it’s very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it.” - Rothman.
Colin Archibald Russell was an Emeritus Professor of History of Science and Technology at the Open University and was a research scholar associated to the History and Philosophy of Science Department, Cambridge University. His primary research interests were in the fields of the history of chemistry, environmental history and history of science and religion. He died on May 17 2013. He said, “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.”
Abdus Salam won the Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1979, for his work in electroweak theory. This genius died at the age of 70 on the 21st November 1996. In his article called Science and Religion, it is quoted, “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.”
Allan Rex Sandage was an American astronomer. He was a Staff Member Emeritus with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. He determined the first accurate values for the Hubble constant and the age of the universe. Sandage also discovered the first quasar. He is a winner of the Crafoord Prize in astronomy. Sandage is considered to be one of the founders of modern astronomy and was widely regarded to be the world’s greatest cosmologist until his death in 2010, November 13 (aged 84). He came to belief in God as a result of his science, as he announced at a conference on the origin of the universe in 1985.
“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.” – Sandage.
Henry Schaefer III is a computational and theoretical chemist. He is a five time nominee for the Nobel Prize, and as quoted in his essay Stephen Hawking, the Big Bang, and God, “It is relatively unusual that a physical scientist is truly an atheist. Why is this true? Some point to the anthropic constraints, the remarkable fine tuning of the universe. For example, Freeman Dyson, a Princeton faculty member, has said, ‘Nature has been kinder to us that we had any right to expect.'”
He is also quoted in Stephem Williams What Your Atheist Professor Doesn’t Know, “The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, ‘So that’s how God did it.’ My goal is to understand a little corner of God’s plan.”
He also said, “A Creator must exist. The Big Bang ripples and subsequent scientific findings are clearly pointing to an ex nihilo creation consistent with the first few verses of the book of Genesis.”
Arthur Leonard Schawlow was an American physicist. For his work on lasers, he shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn. “It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life.”
“Religion is founded on faith. It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. For me that means Protestant Christianity, to which I was introduced as a child and which has withstood the tests of a lifetime.”
“But the context of religion is a great background for doing science. In the words of Psalm 19, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork’. Thus scientific research is a worshipful act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God’s creation.” – Schawlow. He died on April 28th 1999, aged 77.
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was a 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics-winning Austrian physicist who developed a number of results in the field of quantum theory, which formed the basis of wave mechanics: he formulated the wave equation and revealed the identity of his development of the formalism and matrix mechanics. He said, “Science is a game – but a game with reality, a game with sharpened knives. If a man cuts a picture carefully into 1000 pieces, you solve the puzzle when you reassemble the pieces into a picture; in the success or failure, both your intelligences compete. In the presentation of a scientific problem, the other player is the good Lord. He has not only set the problem but also has devised the rules of the game – but they are not completely known, half of them are left for you to discover or to deduce. The uncertainty is how many of the rules God himself has permanently ordained, and how many apparently are caused by your own mental inertia, while the solution generally becomes possible only through freedom from its limitations. This is perhaps the most exciting thing in the game.”
He died on January 4th 1961at 73 years of age.
Richard Errett Smalley was the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. For the discovery of a new form of carbon, he won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He died at 62 year of age, on the 28th October 2005. He said, “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.”
George Fitzgerald Smoot III is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics winner. After the discovery of radiation patterns in space that may have marked the beginning of time itself, Smoot, the leader of the research team, said, “If you’re religious, it’s like looking at God. The order is so beautiful and the symmetry so beautiful that you think there is some design behind it.”
“Whatever caused the rapid expansion of the universe following the Big Bang–the same forces caused tiny ripples. Because if you try to do something too fast, you shake a little. God might be the designer. “
Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. is an American astrophysicist and 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics winner for his discovery, with Russell Alan Hulse, of a "new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation.” His work supported the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe. About this, he said, “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.”
Nikola Tesla a Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist, known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. At 86 years, Tesla died on the 7th January 1943. He said, “The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power.”
Sir Joseph John Thomson was an English physicist. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London and appointed to the Cavendish Professorship of Experimental Physics at the Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory in 1884. In 1906, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, for his discovery of the electron. He is known as the founder of atomic physics. He is quoted saying, “As we conquer peak after peak we see in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not see our goal, we do not see the horizon; in the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and deepen the feeling, the truth of which is emphasized by every advance in science, that ‘Great are the Works of the Lord’.” On the 30th August 1940, Thomson died at age 83.
Frank Jennings Tipler is a mathematical physicist and cosmologist, holding a joint position in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University. He wrote, “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.” - Tipler.
James M. Tour is a synthetic organic chemist, specializing in nanotechnology. He has been considered one of the worlds leading nanoscientists. “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. My faith has been increased through my research. 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.” – Tour.
Charles Hard Townes was an American 1964 Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor, up until the day he died on January 27 2015, aged 99. He shared the Nobel Prize with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov, for his work in quantum electronics. He is quoted saying, “At least this is the way I see it. I am a physicist. I also consider myself a Christian. As I try to understand the nature of our universe in these two modes of thinking, I see many commonalities and crossovers between science and religion. It seems logical that in the long run the two will even converge.”
He also mentioned, “I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.”“Science, with its experiments and logic, tries to understand the order or structure of the universe. Religion, with its theological inspiration and reflection, tries to understand the purpose or meaning of the universe. These two are cross-related. Purpose implies structure, and structure ought somehow to be interpretable in terms of purpose.”
Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was a German, later an American, aerospace engineer and space architect credited with inventing the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany and the Saturn V for the United States. He died on June 16 1977, aged 65. Von Braun is considered the father of space science and was the most important rocket scientist involved in the development of the U.S. space program.
“Although I know of no reference to Christ ever commenting on scientific work, I do know that He said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Thus I am certain that, were He among us today, Christ would encourage scientific research as modern man’s most noble striving to comprehend and admire His Father’s handiwork. The universe as revealed through scientific inquiry is the living witness that God has indeed been at work.” – Wernher von Braun.
“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.” “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?” “God deliberately reduced Himself to the stature of humanity in order to visit the earth in person, because the cumulative effect over the centuries of millions of individuals choosing to please themselves rather than God had infected the whole planet. When God became a man Himself, the experience proved to be nothing short of pure agony. In man’s time-honored fashion, they would unleash the whole arsenal of weapons against Him: misrepresentation, slander, and accusation of treason. The stage was set for a situation without parallel in the history of the earth. God would visit creatures and they would nail Him to the cross!” - von Braun.
Edmund Taylor Whittaker was an English mathematician who contributed widely to applied mathematics, mathematical physics and the theory of special functions. In 1954, he won the Copley Medal, which is the most prestigious award in British science. He died on the 24th March 1956, aged 82. He said, “There is no ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before [the Big Bang] and were suddenly galvanized into action. For what could distinguish that moment from all other moments in eternity? It is simpler to postulate creation ex nihilo—Divine will constituting Nature from nothingness.”
Shoichi Yoshikawa, a Senior Research Scientist and Professor of Princeton University, as cited in Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo Sapiens, said, “I think that God originated the universe and life. Homo Sapiens was created by God using the process that does not violate the physical laws of the universe significantly or none at all.”