Something to task sci-minds :D Cheers Euphrosene


-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. Fred Hoyle (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. Paul Davies (British astrophysicist)

-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. Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy)

-As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit? George Greenstein (astronomer)

-The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory. Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist)

-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. Tony Rothman (physicist)

-The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine. Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist)

-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. Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic)

-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. Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics)

-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. Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics)

"I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in Nature."

- Albert Einstein.

""God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time -- life and death -- stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out."

- Richard Feynman

""The universe could have evolved from absolutely nothing in a manner consistent with all known conservation laws." "

- Alan Guth

"Premature as the question may be, it is hardly possible not to wonder whether we will find any answer to our deepest questions, any signs of the workings of an interested God, in a final theory. I think that we will not."

- Steven Weinberg

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."

- Isaac Asimov.

It is interesting to note that, furthermore, that all of these men are/were Jewish, and if anyone has a reason to believe in God in a traditional sense - because they are supposively a "chosen people" - it is the Jews.

I'm surprised no one has commented on this. Where are the resident atheists?

edit:spoke too soon :p

Samcdkey:

Beat ya!

But anyway, I should like to note: The non-religious can have a sense bordering on the religious without abandoning said non-religiousness. I myself, for instance, can often feel, in a romantic mood, a sense of religious awe when met with a philosophic truth. Not a profound ecstasy, but I imagine this is what others claims religion does for them.

Yeah, according to Fox and Keck, Einstein was a little contradictory on the subject of God. He did not appear to believe in a ‘personal God’ but appeared to believe in a ‘concept of the divine’.

Despite having a sense of the personal, I have some sympathy with him, as I understand his comments may have related to God as the ‘all-knowing father figure’ – and that is not how I either see or sense my bit of the Big E either.

As for Albert: “It was the awe-inspiring ‘order’ of the universe, then, in which (he) recognised the divine. … A review of Einstein’s writings does seem to indicate that while he didn’t hold a conventional vision of God, he was not merely a pantheist, and definitely not an atheist. For one thing, he used the term ‘God’ too often.”

cf Einstein A to Z Karen C Fox and Aries Keck (both science reporters)

It would probably be better to consider Einstein a Deist than a Pantheist. He saw an expression of the "divine" or "divinesque" in natural, scientific law, but held little else in regards to belief in the deity.

It would probably be better to consider Einstein a Deist than a Pantheist. He saw an expression of the "divine" or "divinesque" in natural, scientific law, but held little else in regards to belief in the deity.

wrong wrong wrong wrong, natural/scientific law is an empty word, it means nothing, unless one knows what natural laws are and why they behave like they do!

--
C'mon, James.
You must be joking.

C7ityi_:

Though I am sure Crom has all ready begun to chuckle, I presume that you mean they come from God? For Eistein would have directly disagreed. In fact, he is why we know much about the photoelectric effect (and for which he won the Nobel Prize).