Some interesting quotes from scientists on religious matters

[Stunster]

From COSMOS, BIOS, THEOS: SCIENTISTS REFLECT ON SCIENCE, GOD, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE, LIFE, AND HOMO SAPIENS, edited by Henry Margenau and Roy Varghese (Open Court, 1992). Margenau was Eugene
Higgins Professor Emeritus of Physics and Natural Philosophy at Yale University, author of over 200 research articles and 14 books, including SCIENTIFIC INDETERMINISM AND HUMAN FREEDOM (1968) and THE MIRACLE OF EXISTENCE (1984).

The main part of the book consists of interviews with 60 leading scientists (including 24 Nobel Prize winners), where they answer the following six questions:

1. What do you think should be the relationship
between religion and science?

2. What is your view on the origin of the universe: both on a scientific level and--if you see the need--on a metaphysical level?

3. What is your view on the origin of life: both on a scientific level and--if you see the need--on a metaphysical level?

4. What is your view of the origin of Homo sapiens?

5. How should science--and the scientist--approach origin questions, specifically the origin of the universe and the origin of life?

6. 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?

The answers are very interesting and varied. All the scientists are very prominent people in their fields. Not all are religious believers, but many are. Here's some quotes, but the book itself is worth reading as a whole:

Geoffrey Chew, Dean of the Physical Sciences, Univ. of
California, Berkeley--"Appeal to God may be needed to answer the origin question: 'Why should a quantum universe evolving toward a semiclassical limit be consistent?' I doubt that consistency will be
established through mathematics."

John Erik Fornaess, Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University:
"I believe that there is a God and that God brings structure to the universe on all levels from elementary particles to living beings to superclusters of galaxies."

B. D. Josephson, (Nobel Prize winner) Professor of Physics,
Cambridge University: "I don't see any conflict. There are
conflicts between the views of many scientists on religion, but I think there need be no ultimate conflict. Science may be capable of extension in a way that is compatible with the tenets of religion."

Vera Kistiakowsky, Professor of Physics, Massachussets Institute of
Technology: "I am sastisfied with the existence of an unknowable
source of divine order and purpose."

William Little, Professor of Physics, Stanford University: "I
... might go along with some form of 'intelligence' associated
with matter, energy and the universe."

Robert A. Naumann, Professor of Chemistry and Physics, Princeton
University: "The existence of the universe requires me to conclude
that God exists."

Edward Nelson, Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University:
"One of my earliest memories is a feeling of great surprise that there is anything. It still strikes me as amazing, and for me this is the fundamental religious emotion. I believe in, pray to, and worship God."

Arno Penzias (Nobel Prize winner for Physics), VP of Research at AT & T Bell Laboratories: "...astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with a very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan. Thus the observations of modern science seem to lead to the same conclusions as centuries-old intuition."

Arthur Schawlow (Nobel prize winner), Professor of Physics at Stanford University: "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."

Wolfgang Smith, Professor of Mathematics at Oregon State, member of faculty at MIT and UCLA: "...nothing is more evident, more certain, than the existence or reality of God."

Charles Townes, (Nobel Prize winner) Professor of Physics at University of California, Berkeley: "I believe in the concept of God and in his existence."

Shoichi Yoshikawa, Professor of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton
University: "I think that God originated the universe and life."

Christian Anfinsen (Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry), Professor
of Biology at John Hopkins University: "I think that 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."

Steven Bernasek, Professor of Chemistry, Princeton University:
"God's existence is apparent to me in everything around me, especially in my work as a scientist."

Harry Rubin, Professor of Molecular Biology and Research Virologist at UC Berkeley: "Life, even in bacteria, is too complex to have occurred by chance."

George Snell (Nobel Prize winner for Physiology/Medicine), Senior Staff Scientist at the Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor:
"science can tell us essentially nothing as to the nature of consciouness."

Henry Margenau (Emeritus Professor of Physics, Yale) writes: "There exists a widespread view that science and religion in general are incompatible. Let me therefore point out, first of all, that this belief may have been true half a century ago but has lost its validity now as may be seen by one anyone who reads the philosophical writings of the most distinguished and creative physicists of the last five decades. I am referring here to men like Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg,
Schrodinger, Dirac, Wigner, and many others." Later Margenau adds: "Homo sapiens is physically an evolutionary follower of the two-legged ape... But God endowed man with a soul."