SCIENTISTS REGARD THE QUESTION OF GOD AS IRRELEVANT SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY WANT TO

 

 

It is apparent to many scientists that their must be a Creator God who is omniscient and omnipotent. Sir Joseph J. Thomson, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who is recognized as the founder of atomic physics, had stated:

·       “As we conquer peak after peak we see in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not see our goal, we do not see the horizon; in the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and deepen the feeling, the truth of which is emphasized by every advance in science, that ‘Great are the Works of the Lord’.”

 

Albert Einstein believed that to deny the Creator was to be closed minded:

 

·       “The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who – in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’ – cannot hear the music of the spheres.”

 

Einstein had been inconsistent about his beliefs about God. However, he had said many things that indicated that this harmonious world requires an omniscient and omnipotent God to design and maintain it:

·       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.” (From E. Salaman, “A Talk With Einstein,” The Listener 54 (1955), pp. 370-371, quoted in Jammer, p. 123).

 

Physicist Ernest Walton was also convinced that understanding this universe requires an understanding of God:

 

·       “One way to learn the mind of the Creator is to study His creation. We must pay God the compliment of studying His work of art and this should apply to all realms of human thought. A refusal to use our intelligence honestly is an act of contempt for Him who gave us that intelligence.” (V.J. McBrierty (2003): Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, The Irish Scientist, 1903-1995, Trinity College Dublin Press.)

 

Physicist Paul Davies believed that many scientists were avoiding asking the questions about the origin of the universe, perhaps because it inevitably raised questions about an omnipotent God:

·       “People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.” (Physicist Paul Davies, God and the New Physics)

 

Avoidance of the God question makes it seem to many that an omnipotent God is irrelevant. However, Robert Jastrow, the astronomer and physicist who founded NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, suggested that to make God irrelevant was also to condemn oneself to irrelevance:

·       “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover….That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.” (God and the Astronomers)

 

Lord William Kelvin, who was noted for his theoretical work on thermodynamics, the concept of absolute zero and the Kelvin temperature scale based upon it, was convinced by the scientific evidence that science led to God:

 

·       “I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.”

 

·       “If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.”

 

Sir Isaac Newton regarded God as the foundational answer for all scientific understanding:

 

·       “God created everything by number, weight and measure.”

 

·       “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”

 

·       “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.” (All of these quotes come from  https://godevidence.com/2010/08/quotes-about-god-atheism/

 

Some scientists have even admitted that they refuse to consider that God might be the foundation answer for all of their questions. Todd C. Scott admitted:

 

·       Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic [mindless and purpose-less].

 

Richard Lewontin also admitted the bias of present-day science:

 

·       We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs. . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism. . . . we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

 

Yet the establishment has largely covered up this bias, leaving the public with the impression that science is neutral about the question of God.