125 reasons to believe in GodScientists, most of them not believing in God, had to acknowledge and admit the overwhelming evidence pointing to the overwhelming appearance of design in the natural world:
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1276p25-125-reasons-to-believe-in-god#8282Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy, author of: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang
Fine-tuning sticks in the craw of most physicists, and rightfully so. It’s that old Copernican principle again. What set the laws and the initial conditions for the universe to be “just so,” just so we could be here? It smells too much like intelligent design. The whole point of science has been to find natural, rational reasons for why the world looks like it does. “Because a miracle happened,” just doesn’t cut it.
Paul Davies British astrophysicist
“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“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.”
Had the ratio of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces differed by about 1 part in 10^40 (1 in ten thousand billion billion billion billion) then stars such as the Sun, which are capable of supporting life, could not exist. As Davies points out ‘the impression of design is overwhelming’.
F. Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space, 1981
"The enormous information content of even the simplest living systems... cannot in our view be generated by what are often called 'natural' processes... There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible... The correct position we think is... an intelligence, which designed the biochemicals and gave rise to the origin of carbonaceous life... This is tantamount to arguing that carbonaceous life was invented by noncarbonaceous intelligence."
Eugene V. Koonin, The Logic of Chance: " The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution, page 351:
For all the effort, we do not currently have coherent and plausible models for the path from simple organic molecules to the first life forms. Most damningly, the powerful mechanisms of biological evolution were not available for all the stages preceding the emergence of replicator systems. Given all these major difficulties, it appears prudent to seriously consider radical alternatives for the origin of life. "
Graham Cairns-Smith, Genetic takeover, page 66:
Now you may say that there are alternative ways of building up nucleotides, and perhaps there was some geochemical way on the early Earth. But what we know of the experimental difficulties in nucleotide synthesis speaks strongly against any such supposition. However it is to be put together, a nucleotide is too complex and metastable a molecule for there to be any reason to expect an easy synthesis.
A.Einstein: The World As I See It", Ideas and Opinions (1954) trans Sonja Bargmann
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe – a Spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way, the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”
A.Einstein: Letters to Solovine p 131.
.. the kind of order created by Newton's theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the 'miracle' which is constantly reinforced as our knowedge expands."
Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time
"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."
"The overwhelming impression is one of order. The more we discover about the universe, the more we find that it is governed by rational laws." "You still have the question: why does the universe bother to exist? If you like, you can define God to be the answer to that question."
Robert Jastrow God and the Astronomers
"Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements and the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same; the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy."
Arno Penzias Cosmos, Bios, Theos p83
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe that was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."
Freeman Dyson Scientific American, 224, 1971, p 50.
"As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked togehter to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known we were coming."
Richard Dawkins: The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal.
Computers run on software programs that are always made by software engineers. Every experience we have about information - whether it's a computer code, hieroglyphic inscription, a book or a cave painting - is the produce of intelligence. It logically follows that the same must be the case with the biosemitoc algorithmic instructional information stored in biological cells.
George Ellis (British astrophysicist)“Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy)“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.”John O'Keefe (NASA astronomer)“We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures. If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.”George Greenstein (astronomer)“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?”Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist)“The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.”Roger Penrose (mathematician and author)“I would say the universe has a purpose. It’s not there just somehow by chance.”Tony Rothman (physicist)“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.”Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist)“The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.”Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician)“We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.”Ed Harrison (cosmologist)“Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God—the design argument of Paley—updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one. Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument.”Edward Milne (British cosmologist)“As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God].”Barry Parker (cosmologist)“Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed.”Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists)“This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with ‘common wisdom’.”Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in 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.”Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (computational quantum chemist)“The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, ‘So that’s how God did it.’ My goal is to understand a little corner of God’s plan.”Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer)“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.”Einstein quotes: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/Einstein.html
Fred Hoyle quotes: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/Hoyle.html#c1
Hawking quotes: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/hawking.html#c1
Robert Jastrow: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/Jastrow.html#c1
Aron Penzias: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/penzias.html#c1
Freeman Dyson: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/dyson.html#c1
