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Sat 6 Aug, 2005 05:42 pm
Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "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." (Hoyle, F. 1982. "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: 20:16.) [Hoyle suggested the theory of "Panspermia," which is straight out of sci-fi, but the point is that he recognizes that chaos is not the "author" of the universe.]
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." (Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. "Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest." New York Times, p. B9.
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." (Harrison, E. 1985. Masks of the Universe. New York, Collier Books, Macmillan, pp. 252, 263.)
"We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is." (Albert Einstein)
"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." (Isaac Newton, "General Scholium," in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton. 1687)
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which 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." (Arno Penzias, Nobel prize in physics, Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83)
"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?" (George Greenstein, American astronomer, The Symbiotic, Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos. New York: William Morrow, 1988, pp. 26-27)
"When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." Frank Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics, The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, 1994, Preface.
Max Planck?-"At all events we should say, in summing up, that, according to everything taught by the exact sciences about the immense realm of nature in which our tiny planet plays an insignificant role, a certain order prevails?-one independent of the human mind. Yet, in so far as we are able to ascertain through our senses, this order can be formulated in terms of purposeful activity. There is evidence of an intelligent order of the universe."?- (Max Planck, May 1937 address)
"An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists..." (Carl Sagan, The Amniotic Universe, Broca's Brain, p. 311)
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