NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS AND GOD

     This section is dedicated to the religious views of well-known Nobel Prize winners and other notable modern scientists.

From,  Brian, Denis (Editor). The Voice of Genius. Cambridge, Masssachussets: Perseus Publishing, 1995.

PAUL DIRAC (Nobel, physics, 1933)

 (Interview with his wife.)

 What was your husband’s attitude toward religion?

…..

 He was a Christian. He went to church on Sundays.

 You mean he believed in Jesus Christ?

 Perhaps sometimes, and sometimes not. You know, most people are like that.

Most people I contacted are atheists.

 My husband wasn’t an atheist

 …

 Did he feel there was an intelligent creator?

 Yes, yes.

 (P. 69)

GEORGE WALD (Nobel, Physiology, 1967)

 “We live in a world of chance, yet not of accident. God gambles but He does not cheat.” (P. 137)

 INTERVIEW

…the stuff of mind pervades the universe….The stuff of the world is mind stuff…The mind stuff is not spread in space and time.

(P. 146)

 I find that the Hindu and Buddhist thought on the imperishability, the immortality of what the Hindus call Self, (Soul or Spirit), the Atman, enormously interesting.

(P. 150)

 Do you think life has a purpose?

 As I said, I began realizing years ago that this universe of ours is a life-breeding universe…we are in an astonishing universe with a special concatenation of properties that makes life possible…Humankind then takes a great place in cosmic evolution, one of transcendent worth and dignity in which our purpose is to know and create and to try to understand.

(P. 151)

 …I once wrote “A physicist is the atom’s way of knowing about atoms.” In our knowing, the universe comes to know itself.

(P. 152)

ARNO PENZIAS (Nobel, physics, 1978) 

“ This world is most consistent with purposeful creation.” (P. 153)

INTERVIEW 

“The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole, in that the universe appears to have order and purpose.”

 (The Bible) reflects the same world view, rather than exactly the same world. It’s consistent with the same world view, though not exactly the same, in the sense that there is not that kind of description. The Bible talks of purposeful creation. What we have, however, is an amazing amount of order; and when we see order, in our experience it normally reflects purpose.

 And this order is reflected in the Bible?

Well, if we read the Bible as a whole we would expect order in the world. Purpose would imply order, and what we actually find is order.

(P. 163)

 So we can assume there might be purpose?

 Exactly.

(P. 164)

…

This world is most consistent with purposeful creation.

 (P. 165)

 The kind of things that make me believe in purpose, or in the Bible, as it were, have to do with the miracles of existence, and not whether somebody can figure out a way of having ten percent better odds at blackjack.

 (P. 168)

 Are you a practicing Jew?

 Yes.

(P. 172)

 Mathematics is just a tool to guide our intuition. Math isn’t separate, it’s just one of those tools. It turns out as Kepler, the biggest true believer, said. He thought God was going to be a mathematician and it turned out to be a very fruitful supposition.

(P. 173)

CHARLES TOWNES (NOBEL, PHYSICS, 1964)

 Do you believe in God?

 Yes.

 Very few physicists do.

 Relatively few. But a surprising number actually and it’s becoming somewhat larger. The interaction between science and religion has increased, I think, in the last decade or so.

 Do you believe purely on faith?

 I would say I feel it intuitively. I think my prayers have been answered. On the other hand, to prove it scientifically is somewhat like the problem of telepathy. It’s my own judgment over my experience that makes me believe in God.

(P. 201)

 Do you believe Jesus Christ was God?

 That he was part of God I could say, yes in a sense he was, and so are you. Christ comes closer to being God-like than most of the rest of us certainly.

 (P. 202)

 ARTHUR SCHAWLOW (Nobel, Physics, 1981)

(Intro before the interview.)

 …Nobel laureate Artur Schawlow’s favourite book is not The Origin of Species or the collected works of Isaac Newton, but the Bible. This he told Carl Irving, when interviewed by The San Francisco Examiner in 1985. When I spoke with Schawlow almost a decade later, he not only confirmed his faith but said his brother-in-law, Charles Townes, is also religious. (P. 209)

 INTERVIEW

 Is the Bible your favorite reading?

 I don’t read it very much, but if you asked me what I thought was the greatest book ever written I guess I’d have to say that it was.

(P. 241)

Are you religious?

Yes, I was brought up a Protestant Christian and I’ve been in a number of denominations…I go to church to a very good Methodist church.

(P. 241-242)

 Do you believe that Jesus was God?

I wouldn’t say I disbelieve it…Certainly I think Jesus was the greatest moral philosopher. And the imitation of Jesus is the way to save your life, I think. Beyond that I don’t know.

(P. 242)

JOHN ECCLES (Nobel, neurophysiology, 1963)

“There is a divine Providence over and above the materialistic happenings of biological evolution.”

“There is a fundamental mystery in my personal existence, transcending the biological account of the development of my body and my brain. That belief , of course, is in keeping with the religious concept of the soul and with its special creation by God.”

 (P. 371)

WILDER PENFIELD (World-renowned neurosurgeon)

From the scientific view the mind can only find expression through the brain. Now there may be extra neural communication in the way of prayer, between the mind of man and the mind of God in the way of extrasensory perception.

(P. 364)

 “…there is a grand design in which all conscious individuals play a role”

(quoted  by interviewer from Penfield’s The mystery of the Mind,  New Jersey: Princeton, 1975, 115)

FROM,  Bertch McGrayne, Sharon. Nobel Prize Women in Science. A

Birch Lane Press Book, 1993.

JOCELYN BELL BURNELL (Discoverer of pulsars)

 Quoted by the author from her booklet Broken for Life.

 (Her words are in quotations.)

  “Can you find a wholeness that includes pain and a readiness to suffer?” she asked. If God is a loving, caring God in charge of the world, why is there suffering? And why so much of it fall on innocent people?

  In her book, she offers a possible resolution to these ageless questions. Although she was loath to abandon the idea of a kindly God, perhaps God is not running the world. “If the world is not run by God, then the calamities that occur cannot be blamed on God. Perhaps God decided that we are responsible adults that should be given a free hand and allowed to get on with life without interference…God would still exert influence on the world, but only through people, through their attitudes and what they do, through their healing and reconciliation.”

(P.378)

As a physicist, Burnell found such randomness comforting. “It actually ties in very well with the randomness of uncertainty that modern physicists know is at the heart of everything and seems to be one of the  “givens of this world.” In fact she found the idea liberating, releasing one from the constraints of rewards and punishments, just and unjust, cause and effect.”

P. 378

“Sometimes religion appears to be presented as offering easy cures for pain: have faith and God will mend your hurts…” (But) healing so as to eradicate all the trace of the encounter is not part of the package,” she concluded. Brokenness is an essentialingredient in life. “Suffering can mature us and make us more sensitive to others ;then through small deeds and kind actions we can interact with empathy, reassuring and helping others…But pain is not part of a Grand Design and will not come to a purposeful ending unless we work at it to ensure that it does.”

P. 378-379 

FROM, Hooper, judith, The Three pound universe. New York: Macmillan, 1986.

(This is a portion of an interview with Candace Pert, the discoverer of the opiate receptor.)

"Einstein and other physicists have described experiencing an almost religious awe when contemplating the laws of the universe. Do you feel the same way about the brain?"

"No, I don't feel an awe for the brain. I feel an awe for God. I see in the brain all the beauty of the universe and its order--constant signs of God's presence. I am learning that the brain obeys all the physical laws of the universe. It's not anything special. And yet it is the most special thing in the universe." (P. 390)

FROM, Chandra Wichrasinge, "Science and the Divine Origin of Life," The Intellectuals Speak out on God, ed. Varghese, 23-37. Quoted in Ruggiero, V. R. Warning Nonsense is Destroying America. Nashville: T. Nelson Publ., 1994,  175.

CHANDRA WICKRASINGE (British scientist who worked with Sir Fred Hoyle.)

"There's no evidence for all of the basic tenets of Darwinian evolution. I don't believe there was aver any evidence for it. It was a social force that took over the world in 1860, and I think it has been a disaster for science ever since.

Genuine science, she says, supports, " some miraculous property of life that's either explained in terms of a statistical miracle or in terms of an Intelligent intervening. It's one or the other."

 

HOME