Fine-Tuning

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Gavin Ortlund:

When we look up at the sky on a summer night, observing the moon, the stars, the sounds of insects and owls, the smells, and so on, . . . it feels like music. Many of us . . . have moments where the intricacy and order of the universe we inhabit compels us to think instinctively, “This cannot all be an accident!” Such experiences are generally not dependent on having a science degree. They are common and come in the midst of everyday life from a variety of sources—while watching a Planet Earth documentary, for instance, or visiting Niagara Falls, or seeing an ultrasound picture of your baby growing in the womb. Lots of design arguments play on this perception, without appealing to technical knowledge (sometimes called “naïve teleological arguments”).

     But in the modern era this popular-level perception of design was widely perceived as discredited by various objections raised by David Hume and then by evolutionary science. It is only recently that design arguments have been revitalized in relation to current scientific knowledge, particularly from the realm of physics. What might be called the cutting edge of design arguments appeals to the fine-tuning of the laws of nature, the initial conditions of the universe, and physical constants like the speed of light, the cosmological constant, the gravitational constant, and many others. Unless these were set in exactly the way that they are, with unimaginable precision, the universe could not sustain life in the way that it does. Yet these values do not seem to be physically necessary. We can quite easily imagine our universe being different and thus nonpermitting of life. So the question is, Why are all these constants exactly right? Did we just get lucky?

     Scientific discoveries throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have thus reinforced the common intuition, viewed more skeptically during earlier periods of modernity, that our world is designed. Even some settled atheists have been convinced by these revitalized design arguments. It is not hard to find scientists without religious commitments marveling at the intricacy and exquisite calibration of the world we inhabit, particularly as understood from the standpoint of modern science. The atheist astronomer Fred Hoyle put it memorably in an often repeated quote: “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.”

(Gavin Ortlund, Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn’t: The Beauty of Christian Theism, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021], pp. 60-62.) Preview.

Gregory of Nazianzus, Archbishop of Constantinople (c. 329-390):

How could this universe have had foundation or constitution, unless God gave all things being and sustains them? No one seeing a beautifully elaborated lyre with its harmonious, orderly arrangement, and hearing the lyre’s music will fail to form a notion of its craftsman-player, to recur to him in thought though ignorant of him by sight.

(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.6; trans. St Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, Popular Patristics Series, Number 23, trans. Lionel Wickham, [Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002], p. 41. Cf. NPNF2, 7:290.) See also: ccel.org.

William Paley:

     In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. …there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. …Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.

(William Paley, Natural Theology: Or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, [Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1860], pp. 5, 6, 13.)

Note: See further: Abiogenesis (The Origin of Life).

Josh D. McDowell, Sean McDowell:

Imagine you are trekking through the mountains and come across an abandoned cabin. As you approach the cabin, you notice something very strange. Inside, the refrigerator is filled with your favorite food, the temperature is set just as you like it, your favorite song is playing in the background, and all your favorite books, magazines, and DVD’s are sitting on the table. What would you conclude? Since chance would be out of the question, you would likely conclude that someone was expecting your arrival.

     In recent decades, scientists have begun to realize that this scenario mirrors the universe as a whole. The universe seems to have been crafted uniquely with us in mind. “As we look into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked to our benefit,” says physicist Freeman J. Dyson, “it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.” This is why British astronomer Fred Hoyle remarked, “A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces speaking about in nature.” Physicists agree that life is balanced on a razor’s edge.

     Consider a couple of examples. First, if the law of gravity varied just slightly, the universe would not be habitable for life. In relation to the other forces in nature, gravity must be fine-tuned to one part in 1040 (that’s one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Second, Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking observed that, “If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it even reached its present size.”

     There are actually nineteen such universal constants that must each be perfectly fine tuned. Clearly, the odds against us being here are vanishingly small. In fact, Oxford physicist Roger Penrose concluded that if we jointly considered all the laws of nature that must be fine-tuned, we would be unable to write down such an enormous number since the necessary digits would be greater than the number of elementary particles in the universe.

     The evidence for design is so compelling that Paul Davies, a renowned physicist at Arizona State University, has concluded that the bio-friendly nature of our universe looks like a “fix.” He put it this way: “The cliché that ‘life is balanced on a knife-edge’ is a staggering understatement in this case: no knife in the universe could have an edge that fine.” No scientific explanation for the universe, says Davies, can be complete without accounting for this overwhelming appearance of design. Some try to explain away the fine-tuning by positing the existence of multiple universes, but the empirical evidence for them is nonexistent. The most economical and reliable explanation for why the universe is so precisely fine-tuned is because a Creator—God—made it that way.

(Josh D. McDowell, Sean McDowell, More Than a Carpenter, [Crownhill: Authentic, 2011], pp. 55-57.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria

Fear of Religion

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Blaise Pascal:

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect.

     Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.

     Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. 

     Attractive because it promises true good.

(Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer, [London: Penguin Books, 1966], # 12 (187), p. 34.)

Thomas Nagel:

     In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. [fn. 8: I won’t attempt to speculate about the Oedipal and other sources of either this desire or its opposite. (About the latter there has already been considerable speculation—Freud’s The Future of an Illusion, for example.) I am curious, however, whether there is anyone who is genuinely indifferent as to whether there is a God—anyone who, whatever his actual belief about the matter, doesn’t particularly want either one of the answers to be correct (though of course he might want to know which answer was correct).]

(Thomas Nagel, The Last Word, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], p. 130.)

Aldous Huxley:

     These last considerations raise an important question, which must now be considered in some detail. Does the world as a whole possess the value and meaning that we constantly attribute to certain parts of it (such as human beings and their works); and, if so, what is the nature of that value and meaning? This is a question which, a few years ago, I should not even have posed. For, like so many of my contemporaries, I took it for granted that there was no meaning. This was partly due to the fact that I shared the common belief that the scientific picture of an abstraction from reality was a true picture of reality as a whole; partly also to other, non-intellectual reasons. I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.

     Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence. Those who detect no meaning in the word generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that the world should be meaningless.

…The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves.

     …For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.

(Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, [London: Chatto & Windus, 1938], pp. 269-270, 272, 273.)

Anne Rice:

     What gradually came clear to me was that many of the skeptical arguments—arguments that insisted most of the Gospels were suspect, for instance, or written too late to be eyewitness accounts—lacked coherence. They were not elegant. Arguments about Jesus himself were full of conjecture. Some books were no more than assumptions piled upon assumptions. Absurd conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all.

     In sum, the whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified by it if he knew about it—that whole picture which had floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years—that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I’d ever read.

     I saw almost no skeptical scholarship that was convincing, and the Gospels, shredded by critics, lost all intensity when reconstructed by various theorists. They were in no way compelling when treated as composites and records of later “communities.”

     I was unconvinced by the wild postulations of those who claimed to be children of the Enlightenment. And I had also sensed something else. Many of these scholars, scholars who apparently devoted their life to New Testament scholarship, disliked Jesus Christ. Some pitied him as a hopeless failure. Others sneered at him, and some felt an outright contempt. This came between the lines of the books. This emerged in the personality of the texts.

     I’d never come across this kind of emotion in any other field of research, at least not to this extent. It was puzzling.

     The people who go into Elizabethan studies don’t set out to prove that Queen Elizabeth I was a fool. They don’t personally dislike her. They don’t make snickering remarks about her, or spend their careers trying to pick apart her historical reputation. They approach her in other ways. They don’t even apply this sort of dislike or suspicion or contempt to other Elizabethan figures. If they do, the person is usually not the focus of the study. Occasionally a scholar studies a villain, yes. But even then, the author generally ends up arguing for the good points of a villain or for his or her place in history, or for some mitigating circumstance, that redeems the study itself. People studying disasters in history may be highly critical of the rulers or the milieu at the time, yes. But in general scholars don’t spend their lives in the company of historical figures whom they openly despise.

     But there are New Testament scholars who detest and despise Jesus Christ. Of course, we all benefit from freedom in the academic community; we benefit from the enormous size of biblical studies today and the great range of contributions that are being made. I’m not arguing for censorship. But maybe I’m arguing for sensitivity—on the part of those who read these books. Maybe I’m arguing for a little wariness when it comes to the field in general. What looks like solid ground might not be solid ground at all.

(Anne Rice, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, [London: Arrow Books, 2006], pp. 441-444.)

Flannery O’Connor:

     “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,” he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

(Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find;” In: A Good Man is Hard to Find: And Other Stories, [New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1992], p. 21.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria

Famous Scientists on God

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Sir Isacc Newton (Mathematician, Physicist and Astronomer Who Discovered Classical Mechanics):

The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. …This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called “Lord God” παντοκρατωρ, or “Universal Ruler”; …The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be “Lord God”; for we say, “my God,” “your God,” “the God of Israel,” the “God of Gods,” and “Lord of Lords,” 

(Isacc Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, The General Scholium, Book III; trans. Newton’s Philosophy of Nature: Selections from His Writings, The Hafner Library of Classics [Number Sixteen], ed. H. S. Thayer, [New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1953], III. God and Natural Philosophy, I. General Scholium, p. 42.)

Cf. Sir Isacc Newton (Mathematician, Physicist and Astronomer Who Discovered Classical Mechanics):

     Opposite to the first is Atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds, beasts and men have their right side and left side alike-shaped (except in their bowels), just two eyes and no more, [one] on either side the face, and just two ears, [one] on either side the head, and a nose with two holes and no more between the eyes, and one mouth under the nose, and either two fore-legs, or two wings, or two arms on the shoulders, and two legs on the hips, one on either side and no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel and contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that all the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom and the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside a hard transparent skin and within transparent layers with a crystalline lens in the middle and a pupil before the lens—all of them so truly shaped and fitted for vision that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it?

     These and such like considerations, always have, and ever will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, and has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared.

(Isacc Newton, “A Short Scheme of the True Religion;” In: Sir Isaac Newton: Theological Manuscripts, ed. H. McLachlan, [Liverpool: At the University Press, 1950], pp. 48-49.)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (One of the Fathers of Calculus):

     7. Thus far we have spoken as simple physicists: now we must advance to metaphysics, making use of the great principle, little employed in general, which teaches that nothing happens without a sufficient reason; that is to say, that nothing happens without its being possible for him who should sufficiently understand things, to give a reason sufficient to determine why it is so and not otherwise. This principle laid down, the first question which should rightly be asked, will be, Why is there something rather than nothing? For nothing is simpler and easier than something. Further, suppose that things must exist, we must be able to give a reason why they must exist so and not otherwise.

     8. Now this sufficient reason for the existence of the universe cannot be found in the series of contingent things, that is, of bodies and of their representations in souls; for matter being indifferent in itself to motion and to rest, and to this or another motion, we cannot find the reason of motion in it, and still less of a certain motion. And although the present motion which is in matter, comes from the preceding motion, and that from still another preceding, yet in this way we make no progress, go as far as we may; for the same question always remains. Thus it must be that the sufficient reason, which has no need of another reason, be outside this series of contingent things and be found in a substance which is its cause, or which is a necessary being, carrying the reason of its existence within itself; otherwise we should still not have a sufficient reason in which we could rest. And this final reason of things is called God.

(Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “The Principles of Nature and of Grace;” trans. The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz: Second Edition, trans. George Martin Duncan, [New Haven: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Company, 1908], p. 303.)

Johannes Kepler (Astronomer and Mathematician Who Discovered the Laws of Planetary Motion):

     Purposely I break off the dream and the very vast speculation, merely crying out with the royal Psalmist: Great is our Lord and great His virtue and of His wisdom there is no number: praise Him, ye heavens, praise Him, ye sun, moon, and planets, use every sense for perceiving, every tongue for declaring your Creator. Praise Him, ye celestial harmonies, praise Him, ye judges of the harmonies uncovered (and you before all, old happy Mastlin, for you used to animate these cares with words of hope): and thou my soul, praise the Lord thy Creator, as long as I shall be: for out of Him and through Him and in Him are all things, τά αἰσθητά καὶ τὰ νοερά (both the sensible and the intelligible); for both whose whereof we are utterly ignorant and those which we know are the least part of them; because there is still more beyond. To Him be praise, honour, and glory, world without end. Amen.

(Johannes Kepler, Harmonies of the World: Book Five, ed. Stephen Hawking, [Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002], p. 89.)

Nicolaus Copernicus (Mathematician and Astronomer Who Discovered Heliocentrism):

For who, after applying himself to things which he sees established in the best order and directed by Divine ruling, would not through diligent contemplation of them and through a certain habituation be awakened to that which is best and would not admire the Artificer of all things, in Whom is all happiness and every good? For the divine Psalmist surely did not say gratuitously that he took pleasure in the workings of God and rejoiced in the works of His hands, unless by means of these things as by some sort of vehicle we are transported to the contemplation of the highest good.

(Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, ed. Stephen Hawking, [Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002], Book One, p. 7.)

Cf. Nicolaus Copernicus (Mathematician and Astronomer Who Discovered Heliocentrism):

Similarly, in the case of the other planets I shall try—with the help of God, without Whom we can do nothing—to make a more detailed inquiry concerning them…

(Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, ed. Stephen Hawking, [Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002], Book One, p. 8.)

Galileo Galilei (Father of Observational Astronomy):

No, when I consider what marvelous things and how many of them men have understood, inquired into, and contrived, I recognize and understand only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God’s, and one of the most excellent.

(Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, trans. Stillman Drake, ed. Stephen J. Gould, [New York: The Modern Library, 2001], p. 120.)

Robert Boyle (One of the Fathers of Modern Chemistry):

…when with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets, and when with excellent microscopes I discern, in otherwise invisible objects, the inimitable subtlety of nature’s curious workmanship; and when, in a word, by the help of anatomical knaves, and the light of chymical furnaces, I study the book of nature . . . I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! in wisdom hast Thou made them all!

(Robert Boyle, Some Motives to the Love of God; In: The Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle: In Five Volumes: Volume I, [London: A. Millar, 1744], p. 167; cf. Franjo Stvarnik, Portraits of the Great Bible-Believing Scientists, [Fort St Victoria: FriesenPress, 2018], p. 111.)

Sir Francis Bacon (Father of the “Scientific Method”):

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.

(Francis Bacon, “Of Atheism;” In: Bacon’s Essays: With Annotations, ed. Richard Whately, [Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee & Co., 1861], Essay XVI, p. 155.)

Blaise Pascal (One of the Fathers of Probability Theory, and the Development of Modern Economics):

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

(Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer, [London: Penguin Books, 1966], # 148 (428), p. 75.)

James Clerk Maxwell (Responsible for the Classical Theory of Electromagnetic Radiation):

I believe, with the Westminster Divines and their predecessors ad Infinitum, that “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

(James Clerk Maxwell; In: Lewis Campbell, William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With Selections from His Correspondence and Occasional Writings, [London: Macmillan and Co., 1884], p. 110; cf. George Mulfinger, Christian Men of Science, [Greenville: Ambassador Emerald International, 2001], p. 194.)

Michael Faraday (Father of Electromagnetism and Electrochemistry):

Yet even in earthly matters I believe that “the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead,” and I have never seen anything incompatible between those things of man which can be known by the spirit of man which is within him, and those higher things concerning his future, which he cannot know by that spirit.

(Michael Faraday, “Observations on Mental Education;” In:

Lectures on Education: Delivered at the Royal Institute of Great Britain, [London: John W Parker and Son West Strand, 1855], Lecture II, p. 41.)

Cf. Michael Faraday (Father of Electromagnetism and Electrochemistry):

…I cannot doubt that a glorious discovery in natural knowledge, and the wisdom and power of God in the creation, is awaiting our age, and that we may not only hope to see it, but even be honoured to help in obtaining the victory over present ignorance and future knowledge.

(Michael Faraday; In: Bence Jones, The Life and Letters of Faraday: Vol. II, [London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1870], p. 244.)

Gregor Johann Mendel (Father of Modern Genetics):

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. [Der Sieg Christi hat uns das Reich der Gnade gewonnen, das Himmelreich. Osterfahne wird zur Himmelsfahne, zur Flagge der Ewigkeit, die siegreich weht über den Toren der Heiligen Stadt Jerusalem]

(Gregor Johann Mendel; In: Folia Mendeliana: Volumen 6, [Museo Moravo, 1971], p. 251; cf. Augustiniana, Volume 21, [Augustijns Historisch Instituut., 1971], p. 342.)

Louis Pasteur (Chemist and Microbiologist Who Discovered the Principles of Vaccination, Microbial Fermentation, and Pasteurization):

Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory.

(Louis Pasteur; Quoted in: James J. Walsh, Makers of Modern Medicine: Catholic University Edition, [New York: Fordham University Press, 1915], p. 318.)

Lord Kelvin [William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin] (Mathematical Physicist who Formulated the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics):

I have long felt that there was a general impression that the scientific world believes science has discovered ways of explaining all the facts of nature without adopting any definite belief in a Creator. I have never doubted that impression was utterly groundless.

(Lord Kelvin; In: Twelfth Report of the Committee of the Christian Evidence Society: June, 1883: Instituted A.D. 1870, [London: G. Norman and Son, 1883], p. 46.)

Max Planck (1918 Nobel Laureate in Physics):

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 any accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were also deeply religious souls…

(Max Planck, Where is Science Going? trans. James Murphy, [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1932], p. 168.)

Werner Karl Heisenberg (1932 Nobel Laureate in Physics, and the Father of Modern Quantum 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. 

(Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers, World Perspectives: Volume Forty-eight, ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen, trans. Peter Heath, [New York: Harper & Row, 1974], p. 213.)

Wernher von Braun (The Father of Modern Aerospace Flight):

My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun?

(Wernher von Braun, In a letter to the California State Board of Education, September 14, 1972; Quoted in: Christopher H. K. Persaud, Blessings, Miracles & Supernatural Experiences: A Biblical Perspective: A Christian’s Story, [The Standard Publishing Company, 2015], p. 39.)

Sir Derek Harold Richard Barton (Organic Chemist and 1969 Nobel Prize Laureate):

God is Truth. There is no incompatibility between science and religion. Both are seeking the same truth. Science shows that God exists. Our universe is infinitely large and infinitely small. It is infinite in time past and in future time. We can never understand infinity. It is the ultimate truth, which is God.

(D. H. R. Barton, “The Ultimate Truth is God;” In: Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo Sapiens, ed. Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Varghese, [La Salle: Open Court, 1992], p. 144.)

Charles H. Townes (1964 Nobel Laureate in Physics):

Some accept both religion and science as dealing with quite different matters by different methods, and thus separate them so widely in their thinking that no direct confrontation is possible. Some repair rather completely to the camp of science or of religion and regard the other as ultimately of little importance, if not downright harmful. To me science and religion are both universal, and basically very similar. In fact, to make the argument clear, I should like to adopt the rather extreme point of view that their differences are largely superficial, and that the two become almost indistinguishable if we look at the real nature of each.

(Charles H. Townes, Making Waves, [Woodbury: The American Institute of Physics Press, 1995], p. 157.)

Francis Collins (Geneticist, and the Lead Scientist of the “Human Genome Project”):

The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful—and it cannot be at war with itself.

(Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence For Belief, [New York: Free Press, 2007], p. 211.)

Gerald Lawrence Schroeder (Physicist Whose Arguments were Instrumental in the Conversion to Deism of Atheist Philosopher Anthony Flew):

Wisdom, information, an idea, is the link between the metaphysical Creator and the physical creation. It is the hidden face of God.

(Gerald L. Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002], p. 49.)

William D. Phillips (Physicist and 1997 Nobel Laureate):

I am a physicist. I do mainstream research; I publish in peer-reviewed journals; I present my research at professional meetings; I train students and postdoctoral researchers; I try to learn from nature how nature works. In other words, I am an ordinary scientist. I am also a person of religious faith. I attend church; I sing in the gospel choir; I go to Sunday school; I pray regularly; I try to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God.” In other words, I am an ordinary person of faith.

(William D. Phillips, “Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?” Big Questions Essay Series, John Templeton Foundation.)

Stephen Weinberg (Theoretical Physicist and 1979 Nobel Laureate):

…science can never explain any moral principle. There seems to be an unbridgeable gulf between “is” questions and “ought” questions.

(Steven Weinberg, Lake Views: This World and the Universe, [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009], p. 21.)

Arno Penzias (Physicist and 1978 Nobel Laureate):

…the best data we have (concerning the big bang) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the first five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.

(Arno Penzias, Quoted in: Malcolm W. Browne, “Clues to Universe Origin Expected,” New York Times, March 12, 1978.) 

Freeman John Dyson (Theoretical and Mathematical Physicist):

The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.

(Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, [New York, Harper & Row, 1979], p. 250.)

Stephen Hawking (Theoretical Physicist, Cosmologist and Atheist):

It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.

(Stephen Hawking, A Brief History Of Time: From The Big Bang To Black Holes, [New York: Bantam Books, 1988], p. 127.)

Cf. Stephen Hawking (Theoretical Physicist, Cosmologist and Atheist):

“The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the big bang are enormous . . . I think there clearly are religious implications whenever you start to discuss the origins of the universe. There must be religious overtones . . . But I think most scientists prefer to shy away from the religious side of it.”

(Stephen Hawking, In an Interview with John Boslough; Quoted in: John Boslough, Masters of Time: Cosmology at the End of Innocence, [Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1993], pp. 55-56.)

Sir Fred Hoyle (Atheist Astronomer Who Formulated the Theory of Stellar Nucleosynthesis):

The popular idea that life could have arisen spontaneously on Earth dates back to experiments that caught the public imagination earlier this century. If you stir up simple non organic molecules like water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with almost any form of intense energy, ultraviolet light for instance, some of the molecules reassemble themselves into amino acids, a result demonstrated about thirty years ago by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. The amino acids, the individual building blocks of proteins can therefore be produced by natural means. But this is far from proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the orderings in enzymes, can be produced by this method. No evidence for this huge jump in complexity has ever been found, nor in my opinion will it be. Nevertheless, many scientists have made this leap—from the formation of individual amino acids to the random formation of whole chains of amino acids like enzymes—in spite of the obviously huge odds against such an event having ever taken place on the Earth, and this quite unjustified conclusion has stuck. 

     In a popular lecture I once unflatteringly described the thinking of these scientists as a “junkyard mentality.” Since this reference became widely and not accurately quoted I will repeat it here. A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe. 

(Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe: A New View of Creation and Evolution, [New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984], pp. 18-19.)

Cf. Sir Fred Hoyle (Atheist Astronomer Who Formulated the Theory of Stellar Nucleosynthesis):

Would you not say to yourself, “Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule.”? Of course you would. . . . 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.

(Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Engineering & Science, (November 1981), pp. 8-12.)

Robert Jastrow (American Astronomer and Planetary 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 mountain 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, God and the Astronomers, [New York, London: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1978], p. 116.)

Owen Gingerich (Professor of Astronomy and the History of Science at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge):

“There are so many wonderful details which, if they were changed only slightly, would make it impossible for us to be here, that one just has to feel, somehow, that there is a design in the universe and, therefore, a designer to have worked it out so magnificently.”

(Owen Gingerich, In a National Public Radio Interview; Quoted in: Luis Palau, David Sanford, God Is Relevant: Finding Strength and Peace in Today’s World, [New York: Doubleday, 1997], p. 32.)

Paul Davies (Agnostic Physicist):

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient “coincidences” and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if “a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics”.

(Paul Davies, “Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn’t mean a god fixed it,” The Guardian, June 25, 2007.)

Cf. Paul Davies (Agnostic Physicist):

I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here.

(Paul Davies, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World, [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992], p. 232.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria