Science Finds God
ASTRONOMER AND QUAKER
For some scholars, there are limits to the consilience of research and faith. Bell Burnell, discoverer of the spinning stars called pulsars, is active in the Religious Society of Friends. She wills herself to accept Christian theology, she says, because the absence of belief is too lonely and frightening a prospect. But she keeps her beliefs separate from her astronomy work at England's Open University. "Would I do science differently if I weren't a Quaker?" she asks. "I don't think so."
JOHN POLKINGHORNEPHYSICIST TURNED PRIEST
After a distinguished career in particle physics, Polkinghorne was ordained an Anglican priest in 1982. "For me," he explains, the fundamental component of belief in God "is that there is a mind and a purpose behind the universe." He sees hints of that divine presence in how abstract mathematics can penetrate the universe's secrets, which suggests that a rational mind created the world. As for purpose, he sees it in how nature is fine-tuned to allow life and consciousness to emerge.
MARIAN WESTLEY
© 1998
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Member Comments
Posted By: jef4 @ 07/03/2008 9:45:54 PM
Comment: I found this article fascinating because it reflects my own experience. I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic grade school and University, both of which drove me to periods of atheism. It was science that solidified my belief in a Creator. The idea that the universe came from nothing and for no reason was rejected as far back as ancient Greece.
There must be a power, energy or force responsible for the Big Bang. Suggestions to the contrary remind me of "Mommy, the bowl fell off the table all by itself and broke itself."
The power that caused the universe is what most folks call God. I think it was Max Planck who said the though the universe might be "A matrix in the mind of God." That thought reappears in Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town." Stephen Hawking said that "It becomes increasingly difficult for me to believe that the Universe was created other than by a being who intended it to have an intelligence like us." Newton, despite his now discredited Clockwork Universe, was a religious man himself. And his idea of a universe that ran like a clock prompted the question ???Who wound up the clock????
Both scientists and theologians rely of both reason and faith. For example, scientists accept on faith that the laws of physics are uniform and theologians use reason when they study ancient secular scripts to supplement and/or confirm Holy Scriptures.
Congratulations on a well done article that many publications would have avoided.