Religion and Science: Quotable Quotes

In a recent article on this website, this author presented quotes by many of the great achievers in science and philosophy that rejected the claims of supernatural entities beyond our physical reality. Based on comments from forumers it is deemed fair to quote some of the achievers that did express beliefs in supernatural beings, even though they provided no particular evidence to back up their specific claims.

Johannes Kepler (1618, theory of the motion of planets)

Since geometry is co-eternal with the divine mind before the birth of things, God himself served as his own model in creating the world (for what is there in God which is not God?), and he with his own image reached down to humanity.

Isaac Newton (1721, father of modern physics)

Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds beasts & men have their right side & left side alike shaped (except in their bowels) & just two eyes & no more on either side the face & just two ears on either side the head & a nose with two holes & no more between the eyes & one mouth under the nose & either two fore legs or two wings or two arms on the shoulders & two legs on the hips one on either side & no more?

Galileo (1610, father of Modern astronomy)

Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.

Wilhelm Liebnitz (1686, co-inventor of Calculus)

Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.

Blaise Pascal (1660, Pioneer of physics)

God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.

Max Planck (1931, a pioneer of Quantum Physics and Nobel winner).

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.

Leonhard Euler (1748, pioneering mathematician)

Since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear

Adolf Hitler (German writer, dictator and leader of the Reich, and staunch Catholic)

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.

God the Almighty has made our nation. By defending its existence we are defending His work...

The Government of the Reich, which regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attaches the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See, and is endeavoring to develop them.

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.

I say: my feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to the fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as sufferer but as fighter.

Werner von Braun (1958, Nazi rocket scientist and later chief designer of US Apollo Spacecraft to the Moon)

For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all.

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?

Abdus Salaam (1975, first Muslim winner of Nobel prize in Physics)

As a scientist, the Quran speaks to me in that it emphasizes reflection on Laws of Nature, with examples drawn from cosmology, physics, biology and medicine, as signs for all men.

Srinavasa Ramanujan (1920, Indian Physicist and collaborator of Albert Einstein, a devout Hindu)

An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God

James Clerk Maxwell (1853, Scottish pioneer of electromagnetism)

I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable.

Michael Faraday (1870, father of Electrical Engineering)

I shall be with Christ, and that is enough.

John Polkinghorne (1995, British physicist and theologian)

God is not a God of the edges, with a vested interest in beginnings. God is the God of the whole show. God didn't produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.

Erwin Schrödinger (1925, Austrian, converted to Buddhism, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1933)

Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.

Joseph Priestley (1772, British chemist, discovered oxygen, was also a Unitarian preacher)

The mind of man will never be able to contemplate the being, perfections, and providence of God without meeting with inexplicable difficulties. When we say there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent designing cause of what we see in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaused.

Albert Hoffman (1960, Swiss, inventor of LSD and other psychotropic and recreational drugs)

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist. Ye shalt know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

This promise constitutes the heart of my Christian beliefs and my call to natural-scientific research. We will attain to knowledge of the universe through the spirit of truth, and thereby to understanding of our being one with the deepest, most comprehensive reality, God.

And yet as of this time, not a single one of these godly quotes by scientists has appeared in any science textbook. Why? Are the claims not valid even though they were said by influential figures in science? Were these quotes speculation or opinion, with no actual proofs behind them? At this time we call on the believers of the many faiths in the world to come forward and provide the evidence for the claims of supernatural beings.

kwaku ba ©January 2011