|
|
Definitions of (and statements about) “Science” and
“Religion”
John W. Burgeson E-mail BURGY@www.burgy.50megs.com Web site www.burgy.50megs.com
What is it that breathes fire into the
equations and makes a universe for them to govern? … Although science may solve
the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question: Why does
the universe bother to exist? – Stephen Hawking, The Hand of God, p. 72.
"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 (Clarck, 1971, p. 18-19)
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though
nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.
--
Einstein
Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbrued
with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. this source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of
religion. Einstein, 1941, quoted in Teaching Science in an Age of Controversy,
ASA, 1986.
If faith has meaning, it can’t be off in one part of you. It has
to be integrated. I think my faith adds to the experience of being a scientist
in the way that discovering something has more meaning, sort of glimpsing the
mind of God. – Francis Collins, geneticist, Inside the Mind of God, p. 26.
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,
The Cosmic Blueprint.
My commonsense 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. Sir Fred Doyle, Inside the Mind of God, p. 69.
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. – Wernher Von Braun, The Hand
of God, p. 128.
The psychiatrist Dr. M. S. Peck, contrasting science and theology,
describes scientists as reductionistic, left brained, analytical, biting off
tiny pieces one at a time for examination; theologians as integrative, right
brained, their appetite as large as God. "The fact that God is invariably
larger than their digestion does not deter them in the least,” he says. –
source unknown
The Science/Religion Relationship
Stephen Jay Gould, Descartes,
Plato, Bultmann, Tillich, Einstein
Alfred North Whitehead, David Ray
Griffin, Sallie McFague, John Wheeler
Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke
“Science is the … search
for accurate laws and reproducible phenomena in the immanent, while religion
… deals with phenomenon in the transcendent...These
two existing spheres must be separated in order to be understood... The
overlapping … is the tragic reason for confusion….” Antonino Zichichi RESEARCH
NEWS, 11/2002, page 3.
God is a mathematician. – James Jeans, ~ 1930
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question “How?” but
it gets terribly confused when you ask the question “Why?” -- Erwin Chargaff, Inside the Mind of God,
p. 68
Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the
world. -- Schopenhauer. The Hand of God, p. 135
By refusing to cry “miracle” in the face of mystery,
science has brought the world fantastic dividends. -Michael Ruse
To attribute divine causes when naturalistic
causation theories might be just over the horizon is dubious theology. Faith
should rest on something more profound than ignorance. Sharon Begley, Inside
the Mind of God, p. 18.
Knowledge – proud to have learned so much. Wisdom – humble to know
no more. – Cowper
There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of one
who believes that every event in the universe can be explained in a rational
way as the product of some previous event.
-- R. Jastrow, Reader’s Digest, 7/80, pp. 49-53.
"Two suppositions only are open to us; the one that the
feeling which responds to religious ideas resulted … from an act of special
creation; the other that it … arose by a process of evolution. If we adopt the
first of these alternatives, universally accepted by our ancestors and by the
immense majority of our contemporaries, the matter is at once settled: man is
directly endowed with the religious feeling by a creator; and to that creator
it designedly responds. If we adopt the second alternative, then we are met by
the questions -- What are the circumstances to which the genesis of the
religious feeling is due?" ---
Spencer (First Principles)
I have shown men the glory of your works, as much of their
unending wealth as my feeble intellect was able to grasp. – Johannes Kepler,
1571-1630
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem
to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. -- Isaac Newton,
1643-1727
"We should be careful in giving interpretations of Scripture
that contradict science, and so exposing the Word of God to the ridicule of
unbelievers." - Augustine, 5th century A.D.
Goethe: Doubt grows with increasing knowledge.
Pascal: The last function of reason is to recognize that there
exists infinitude of things that surpass it.
Unamundo: The supreme triumph of reason is to cast doubt on its
own validity.
Wilkinson: I used to think I was indecisive but now I’m not so
sure.
Burgeson: I think, therefore I am, I think.
Valery: Sometimes I think, and sometimes I am.
Add lastly the further religious aspect of science, that it alone
can give us true conceptions of ourselves and our relation the mysteries of
existence. At the same time it shows us all that can be known, it shows us the
limits beyond which we can know nothing. Not by dogmatic assertion, does it
teach the impossibility of comprehending the Ultimate cause of things; but it
leads us clearly to recognise this impossibility by bringing us in every
direction to boundaries we cannot cross. It realises to us in a way which
nothing else can, the littleness of human intelligence in the face of that
which transcends human intelligence. While towards the traditions and
authorities of men its attitude may be proud, before the impenetrable veil
which hides the Absolute its attitude is humble- a true pride and a true
humility. Only the sincere and genuine man of science, we say, can
truly know how utterly beyond, not only human knowledge but human conception,
is the Universal Power of which Nature, and Life, and Thought are
manifestations. -- Spencer
Science limits itself to treating the world as an object, an
"it” which can be manipulated and put to the experimental test. Religion is concerned with personal
encounter with that reality which can only be treated as a "thou." In
the realm of the personal, testing has to give way to trusting. – author unknown
Religion is concerned with the search for motivated belief. Faith
does not involve shutting one's eyes and believing impossible things because
some unquestionable authority tells one to do so. It is the quest for an
understanding of human experience
rooted in worship, hope, and the history of holiness represented by the great religious figures of world history. –
author unknown
Science proves nothing. On most vital questions, it does not even
produce evidence. - Vannever Bush, 1965.
Miracle: The natural law of a unique event. -- Rosenstock. I know of nothing else but miracles. –
Walt Whitman