Religion And Science Quotes

We have collected and put the best Religion And Science Quotes from around the world. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

Various aspects of the relationship between religion and science have been cited by modern historians of science and religion, philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others from various geographical regions and cultures. Even though the ancient and medieval worlds did not have conceptions resembling the modern understandings of “science” and “religion“, certain elements of these modern ideas are found throughout history. It was in the 19th century when the phrases “religion and science” or “science and religion” first emerged in the literature. This coincided with the refining of “science“, from the studies of “natural philosophy“, and “religion” as distinct concepts in the last few centuries partly due to the professionalization of the sciences, the Protestant Reformation, colonization, and globalization. Since then, many have characterized the relationship as either conflict, harmony, complexity, or mutual independence.

All truth is one.
In this light, may science and religion endeavor here
for the steady evolution of Mankind:
From darkness to light,
From narrowness to broadmindedness,
From prejudice to tolerance,
It is the voice of life that calls us
To come and learn. – Bell inscription at University of Buffalo (discovered by Cliff Stoll)

Say’st thou, “The Course of Nature governs All?” The Course of Nature is the Art of GOD. – Edward Young

See also

Religion And Science

Religion And Science – Alfred North Whitehead Science and Religion – M. Fethullah Gulen Religion and Science: Irreconcilable? Are Religion and Science Compatible? Relationship Between Religion and Science “Religion Vs. Science?” With Dr. Lynn Mitchell Religion And Science As One Science And Faith The Horizon Of Science

The Relationship Between Science and Religion Science and Religion in a World of Religious Pluralism Regrets About Science and Technology What We Expect from Science Unifying Paradigm For Science And Religion Causality In Science And Religion The Cosmos Perspectives From Science and Religion Religion And Science By Bertrand Russell

Wilberforce did not believe in either evolution or extinction.
Owen believed in extinction but not evolution.
Lamarck believed in evolution but not extinction.
Darwin believed in evolution and extinction.
All four of them believed in God. – Sara Maitland

By means of the Mummy, mankind, it is said,
Attests to the gods its respect for the dead.
We plunder his tomb, be he sinner or saint,
Distill him for physic and grind him for paint,
Exhibit for money his poor, shrunken frame,
And with levity flock to the scene of the shame.
O, tell me, ye gods, for the use of my rhyme:
For respecting the dead what’s the limit of time? – Ambrose Bierce

COMPLEMENTARITY:
Light is both WAVE-LIKE & PARTICLE-LIKE. (Physicist Niels Bohr)
Life is BOTH, AND:
STRUCTURED LOGIC (logos, left brain) and  MEANINGFUL STORY (mythos, right brain)
Truth is both OBJECTIVE & SUBJECTIVE
God is both IMMANENT & TRANSCENDENT.
SCIENCE complements RELIGION (Physicist, Paul H. Carr)

Short And Powerful Religion And Science Quotes

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. – Albert Einstein

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. – Howard Aiken

Faith: not wanting to know what is true. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Fear is religion, courage is science. – Robert Green Ingersoll

For good people to do evil things, it takes religion. – Steven Weinberg

God created everything by number, weight and measure. – Isaac Newton

God does not play dice. – Albert Einstein

Gods are born and die, but the atom endures. – Alexander Chase

I believe in order to understand. – St. Augustine

I think science and religion should be separate. – Freeman Dyson

I want to know God’s thoughts … the rest are details. – Albert Einstein

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism. – Stephen Jay Gould

If we say that religion is a virus, then why isn’t science a virus? – Richard Dawkins

In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice. – Jerry A. Coyne

Is it hot in here? I’m sweating like a Christian in science class. – Aaron B. Powell

Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon? – Edward Abbey

It is not proven, it’s not science. It’s more of a religion than a science. – Steve King

It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold. – Isaac Asimov

It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works. – Isaac Asimov

It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion. – Paul Davies

It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls. – Max Planck

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. – Albert Einstein

Let no one enter here who does not have faith. – Inscription over the door on Max Plank’s Laboratory

Let science tell us what and how. Let religion tell us who and why. – Pope John Paul II

Man is programmed to find the programmer. – Kedar Joshi

Many hidden truths are often unobserved, not invisible. – Matthew A. Petti

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. – Blaise Pascal

Mysteries are the evidence to errors in our religious and historical precepts. – Matthew A. Petti

Never question the conviction of a scientist, based on mere scriptures. – Abhijit Naskar

No path leads from a knowledge of that which is to that which should be. – Albert Einstein

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. – Theodosius Dobzhansky

Only the sixth sense can expose what the other five have hidden. – Matthew A. Petti

Question with boldness even the existence of a god. – Thomas Jefferson

Religion believes in miracles, but these aren’t compatible with science. – Stephen Hawking

Religion can only dream to do what science and art does every day. – Reggie Watts

Religion has always persecuted science. – Dan Brown

Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas. . . . – Herbert Spencer

Religion of the masses is absurd. But so is their science! – Raheel Farooq

Religion without science is superstition. Science without religion is materialism. – Bahá’u’lláh

Science and art are the handmaids of religion. – Francois Delsarte

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed. – Thomas Henry Huxley

Science deals in evidence and uncertainty. Religion deals in certainty without evidence. – David Milne

Science does not deny religion, it just offers a simpler alternative. – Stephen Hawking

Science ever has been, and ever must be, the safeguard of religion. – David Brewster

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. – Victor J. Stenger

Science has taken away our religion. – Bryan Appleyard

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. – Carl Sagan

Science tells us how the heavens go. Religion tells us how to go to heaven. – Galileo Galilei

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. – Albert Einstein

Scientists do the work of God, engineers do the work of man. – Anonymous

Stop telling God what he can do. – Niels Bohr

The burden of proof is now on the doubters. – Robert K. Wilcox

The Church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture. – Elbert (Green) Hubbard

The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion. – Stephen Jay Gould

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. – Albert Einstein

The heart has its reason, which the reason can not know. – Blaise Pascal

The laws of nature are the laws of truth. – Parley P. Pratt

The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not. – Albert Einstein

The more I study science, the more I believe in God. – Albert Einstein

The next great task of science is to create a religion for humanity. – John Morley

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Self, when finite, is Human and when infinite, is God. – Abhijit Naskar

The world is my country. Science my religion. – Christiaan Huygens

Theology is a science of mind applied to God. – Henry Ward Beecher

There can be no truce between science and religion. – John B. S. Haldane

There is no conflict between religion and science. – Georges Lemaitre

Truth is truth, whether labeled ‘science’ or ‘religion.’ – Ezra Taft Benson

When the solution is simple, God is answering. – Albert Einstein

Religion And Science is…

Religion and science … constitute deep-rooted and ancient efforts to find richer experience and deeper meaning than are found in the ordinary biological and social satisfactions. As pointed out by Whitehead, religion and science have similar origins and are evolving toward similar goals. Both started from crude observations and fanciful concepts, meaningful only within a narrow range of conditions for the people who formulated them of their limited tribal experience. But progressively, continuously, and almost simultaneously, religious and scientific concepts are ridding themselves of their coarse and local components, reaching higher and higher levels of abstraction and purity. Both the myths of religion and the laws of science, it is now becoming apparent, are not so much descriptions of facts as symbolic expressions of cosmic truths. – René Dubos

Religion and science are the two wings upon which man’s intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism. – Abdu’l-Bahá

Religion and Science are two aspects of social life, of which the former has been important as far back as we know anything of man. – Bertrand Russell

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated. – Howard Nemerov

Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance. – A.C. Grayling

Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something. – Gene Wolfe

Religion and science have nothing to do with each other, they’re about different things, science is about the way the world works and religion is about […] miracles. […] And in any case, if you ask most ordinary people in church or in a mosque why they believe, it’s almost certainly got something to do with the belief that God does wonderful things, that God intervenes, that God heals the sick, that God answers prayers, God forgives sins. – Richard Dawkins

Religion and science look at reality differently. – Robert Lanza

Religion and science, for example, are often though to be opponents, but as I have shown, the insights of ancient religions and of modern science are both needed to reach a full understanding of human nature and the conditions of human satisfaction. The ancients may have known little about biology, chemistry, physics, but many were good psychologists. – Jonathan Haidt

Religion and science, then, in my analysis are the two great sister forces which have pulled, and are still pulling, mankind onward and upward. – Robert Andrews Millikan

Science And Religion is…

Science and religion are both the same thing. They’re there; they’re life. If it’s not science, it’s not a fact. – Chuck Berry

Science and religion are in full accord, but science and faith are in complete discord. – Khalil Gibran

Science and religion are not antagonists. On the contrary, they are sisters. While science tries to learn more about the creation, religion tries to better understand the Creator. While through science man tries to harness the forces of nature around him, through religion he tries to harness the force of nature within him. – Wernher von Braun

Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand. – Dan Brown

Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive. – E. O. Wilson

Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect. – Physicist Freeman Dyson

Science and religion are very much alike. Both are imaginative and creative aspects of the human mind. The appearance of a conflict is a result of ignorance. We come to exist through a divine act. That divine guidance is a theme throughout our life; at our death the brain goes, but that divine guidance and love continues. Each of us is a unique, conscious being, a divine creation. It is the religious view. It is the only view consistent with all the evidence. – John Eccles

Science and religion are, of course, two different ways of looking at the universe; and it’s the same universe with two different windows. – Freeman Dyson

Science and religion both teach that we are all interconnected, and thus interdependent. And at the very core, we are all One. But how do we live as if we know this? – Ram Dass

Science and religion cannot be reconciled, and humanity should begin to appreciate the power of its child, and to beat off all attempts at compromise. Religion has failed, and its failures should stand exposed. Science, with its currently successful pursuit of universal competence through the identification of the minimal, the supreme delight of the intellect, should be acknowledged king. – Peter William Atkins

Science and religion have to go hand in hand with the mystery, because there’s a certain point beyond which you say, “There are no answers.” – Ray Bradbury

Science and religion no more contradict each other than light and electricity. – William Hiram Foulkes

Science and religion will meet and shake hands. – Swami Vivekananda

Science and Religion. These are reconciled in amiable and sensible people but nowhere else. – Samuel Butler

Science and religion…are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there’s a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don’t agree. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if people in this so-called ‘scientific age’ knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they’d find it easier to share my views. – John Polkinghorne

Science is …

Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition. – Alan Turing

Science is a lie in day-light, with a lot witnesses. Religion is a truth in darkness, without any need for such witness! – Thiruman Archunan

Science is a trigger of changes of civilization. Religion is the failsafe of science performance. – Toba Beta

Science is about explaining the world, and religion is about interpreting it. There shouldn’t be any conflict. – Paul Davies

Science is almost totally incompatible with religion. – Peter Atkins

Science is an effort to understand the creation. Biblical religion involves our relation to the Creator. Since we can learn about the Creator from his creation, religion can learn from science. – Paul H. Carr

Science is but a mere heap of facts, not a golden chain of truths, if we refuse to link it to the throne of God. – Frances Power Cobbe

Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. – Ken Wilber

Science is concerned about quantity; religion is concerned about quality. Religion is concerned with the art of how to live life and how to die life. – Rajneesh

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion. – Stephen Hawking

Science is like society and trade, in resting at bottom upon a basis of faith. There are some things here, too, that we can not prove, otherwise there would be nothing we can prove. Science is busy with the hither-end of things, not the thither-end. It is a mistake to contrast religion and science in this respect, and to think of religion as taking everything for granted, and science as doing only clean work, and having all the loose ends gathered up and tucked in. We never reach the roots of things in science more than in religion. – Charles Henry Parkhurst

Science is not infallible, but it has something religion lacks: a process of testing claims against real-world observations. – PZ Myers

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual … The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. – Carl Sagan

Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary. – Albert Einstein

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. – Adam Smith

Science is the natural ally of religion. – Theodore Parker

Science is the only religion of mankind. – Arthur C. Clarke

Science is the organised attempt of mankind to discover how things work as causal systems. The scientific attitude of mind is an interest in such questions. It can be contrasted with other attitudes, which have different interests; for instance the magical, which attempts to make things work not as material systems but as immaterial forces which can be controlled by spells; or the religious, which is interested in the world as revealing the nature of God. – Conrad Hal Waddington

Science is the slow revelation of God’s blueprint. – Hattie Gerst

Science is the way—a powerful way, indeed—to study the natural world. Science is not particularly effective—in fact, it’s rather ineffective—in making commentary about the supernatural world. Both worlds, for me, are quite real and quite important. They are investigated in different ways. They coexist. They illuminate each other. – Francis S. Collins

Science is wiser than religion: it never tries to do the humanly impossible, like making you love your neighbor like yourself. – Anonymous

Science is…a powerful way, indeed – to study the natural world. Science is not particularly effective…in making commentary about the supernatural world. Both worlds, for me, are quite real and quite important. They are investigated in different ways. They coexist. They illuminate each other. – Francis Collins

Religion is …

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity? – Arthur C. Clarke

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt. – Richard P. Feynman

Religion is based on dogma and belief, whereas science is based on doubt and questioning. – Jerry A. Coyne

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. – Bertrand Russell

Religion is designed for stupid people. Science is designed for stupid people who are embarrassed by their stupidity, who want to do something about it. – Paul Lutus

Religion is just an interpretation; science is another one. – M. T. Panchal

Religion is nothing but a science to attain wisdom, understanding, to know what life is, and to live it in utter celebration. – Rajneesh

Religion is poetry plus, not science minus. – Krister Stendahl

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. – Bertrand Russell

Religion is the antithesis of science; science is competent to illuminate all the deep questions of existence, and does so in a manner that makes full use of, and respects the human intellect. I see neither need nor sign of any future reconciliation. – Peter William Atkins

Religion is the art of the poetic. Science is the art of the provable. Politics is the art of the possible. – Paul H. Carr

Religion is the servant of the vanishing; science, of the existence! Disappearance belongs to the chaos and the Devil; existence, to the God! – Mehmet Murat ildan

Religion is the subjective experience. Science is the objective reality. To argue either is a ridiculous waste of time and energy. – Steve Maraboli

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science. – Henri Bergson

More Religion And Science Quotes

A century ago, Darwin and his friends were thought to be dangerous atheists, but their heresy simply replaced a benevolent personal deity called God by a benevolent impersonal deity called Evolution. In their different ways Bishop Wilberforce and T.H. Huxley both believed in Fate. – Sir Edmund Ronald Leach

A commonsense 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. – Fred Hoyle

A completed book exists in its entirety, although we humans read it in a time sequence from the beginning to the end. Just as an author does not write the first chapter, and then leave the others to write themselves, So God’s creativity is not to seem as uniquely confined to, or even especially invested in, the event of the Big Bang. Rather his creativity has been seen as permeating equally all space and all time: his role as Creator and Sustainer merge. – Russell Stannard

A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs. – Albert Einstein

A contradiction (between science and religion) is out of the question. What follows from science are, again and again, clear indications of God’s activity which can be so strongly perceived that Kepler dared to say (for us it seems daring, not for him) that he could ‘almost touch God with his hand in the Universe.’ – Walter Heitler

A Culture based on superstitions will do worse than one based on scientific knowledge and rational thoughts. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

A dark old world was devastated by wars between conflicting religions. A dark modern world faces wars between conflicting economic and political fanaticisms in which are intertwined race hatreds. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

A dreaded society is not a civilized society. The most progressive and powerful society in the civilized sense, is a society which has recognized its ethos, and come to terms with the past and the present, with religion and science. With modernism and mysticism, with materialism and spirituality; a society free of tension, a society rich in culture. Such a society cannot come with hocus-pocus formulas and with fraud. It has to flow from the depth of a divine search. – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends. – Kurt Vonnegut

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. – Albert Einstein

A man does not receive the statements that “two and two make four,” and that “the pure in heart shall see God,” on the same terms. The one can be proved to him with four grains of corn. – James Russell Lowell

A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. – Albert Einstein

A mere inference or theory must give way to a truth revealed; but a scientific truth must be maintained, however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion. – David Brewster

A merely symbolic religion does not threaten the ruling regime of materialistic science. – Nancy Pearcey

A patient pursuit of facts, and cautious combination and comparison of them, is the drudgery to which man is subjected by his Maker, if he wishes to attain sure knowledge. – Thomas Jefferson

A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonal value. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content and the depth of the conviction concerning its overpowering meaningfulness, regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly, a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance and loftiness of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation. They exist with the same necessity and matter-of-factness as he himself. In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. – Albert Einstein

A political law or a scientific truth may be perilous to the morals or the faith of individuals; but it cannot on this ground be resisted by the Church. … A discovery may be made in science which will shake the faith of thousands; yet religion cannot regret it or object to it. The difference in this respect between a true and a false religion is, that one judges all things by the standard of their truth, the other by the touchstone of its own interests. A false religion fears the progress of all truth; a true religion seeks and recognises truth wherever it can be found. – Lord John Acton

A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false. – Peter Demianovich Ouspensky

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge. – Carl Sagan

A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt about the significance of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation. – Albert Einstein

A scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world. – Joseph H. Taylor

A scientist reads many books in his lifetime, and knows he still has a lot to learn. A religious man barely reads one book, and thinks he knows everything. – Anonymous

Above all, astronomy and anatomy are the two sciences which present to our minds most significantly the two grand characteristics of the Creator; the one, His immensity, by the distances, size, and number of the heavenly bodies; the other, His infinite intelligence, by the mechanism of animate beings. – Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. – Gary Zukav

Addiction is the primary way people escape the modern world. Unfortunately, it is destroying the modern world. – Christyl Rivers

[After science lost] its mystical inspiration … man’s destiny was no longer determined from “above” by a super-human wisdom and will, but from “below” by the sub-human agencies of glands, genes, atoms, or waves of probability. … A puppet of the Gods is a tragic figure, a puppet suspended on his chromosomes is merely grotesque. – Arthur Koestler

After the knowledge of, and obedience to, the will of God, the next aim must be to know something of his attributes of wisdom, power and goodness as evidenced by His handiwork. – James Joule

All good moral philosophy is … but the handmaid to religion. – Sir Francis Bacon

All my discoveries have been made in answer to prayer. I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily. – Sir Isaac Newton

All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting. – Salvador Dali

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. – Albert Einstein

All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith. And faith, by its very definition, tends to be impervious to intellectual argument or academic criticism – Jon Krakauer

All science has God as its author and giver. Much is heard of the conflict between science and religion, and of the contrast between sacred and secular. There may be aspects of truth to which religion is the gate, as indeed there are aspects of truth to which particular sciences are the gate. But if there be a Creator, and if truth be one of his attributes, then everything that is true can claim his authorship, and every search for truth can claim his authority. – Michael Ramsey

All scientific theories are provisional and may be changed, but … on the whole, they are accepted from Washington to Moscow because of their practical success. Where religion has opposed the findings of science, it has almost always had to retreat. – Sir Nevill F. Mott

All that Eddington and Millikan achieve, when they attempt their preposterous reconciliation of science and theology, is to prove that they themselves, for all their technical skill, are scientists only by trade, not by conviction. They practice science diligently and to some effect, but only in the insensate way in which Blind Tom played the piano. … they can’t get rid of a congenital incredulity. Science, to them, remains a bit strange and shocking. They are somewhat in the position of a Christian clergyman who finds himself unable to purge himself of a suspicion that Jonah, after all, probably did not swallow the whale. – H. L. Mencken

All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. – Paul Broun

All the science of flying has been captured in the breadth of an instrument board, but not the religion of it. – Beryl Markham

All we know of science or of religion comes from philosophy. It lies behind and above all other knowledge we have or use. – L. Ron Hubbard

‘Almighty Creator and Preserver of all things… praised be all Thou has created. ‘Let us… not set aside God’s works, but, guided by them, revere the Master! – Carl Linnaeus

Almighty God, who has created man in Thine own image, and made him a living soul that he might seek after Thee, and have dominion over Thy creatures, teach us to study the works of Thy hands, that we may subdue the earth to our use, and strengthen the reason for Thy service; so to receive Thy blessed Word, that we may believe on Him whom Thou has sent, to give us the knowledge of salvation and the remission of sins. All of which we ask in the name of the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. – James Clerk Maxwell

Although this book deals with the conflict between religion and science, I see this as only one battle in a wider war—a war between rationality and superstition. Religion is but a single brand of superstition (others include beliefs in astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing), but it is the most widespread and harmful form of superstition. And science is but one form of rationality (philosophy and mathematics are others), but it is a highly developed form, and the only one capable of describing and understanding reality. – Jerry Coyne

Among the life forms God created were apparently many species now extinct. Fossil-bearing rocks are common on the earth, and these fossils represent once-living organisms, preserved now as part of the earth’s rocky crust. The existence of these animals is indisputable, for their remains have been found in rocks all over the earth. What eternal purpose they played in the creation and early history of the earth is unknown. The scriptures do not address the question, and it is not the realm of science to explore the issue of why they were here. We can only conclude, as Elder Talmage did, that “the whole series of chalk deposits and many of our deep-sea limestones contain the skeletal remains of animals. These lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation. – Morris S. Petersen

Among the popular errors of modern times, an opinion prevails that miracles are events which transpire contrary to the laws of nature, that they are effects without a cause. If such is the fact, then, there never has been a miracle, and there never will be one. The laws of nature are the laws of truth. Truth is unchangeable, and independent in its own sphere. A law of nature never has been broken. And it is an absolute impossibility that such law ever should be broken. – Parley P. Pratt

Any religion that cannot stand up to a modern scientific reasoning, and to rational proof, is asinine – Fakeer Ishavardas

Any suggestion that science and religion are incompatible flies in the face of history, logic, and common sense. – Kenneth R. Miller

Apparent contradictions between religion and science often have been the basis of bitter controversy. Such differences are to be expected as long as human understanding remains provisional and fragmentary. – Henry Eyring

Are science and religion compatible? It’s like, are science and plumbing compatible? They’re just two different things. – Michael Shermer

Are science and religion converging? No. There are modern scientists whose words sound religious but whose beliefs, on close examination, turn out to be identical to those of other scientists who straightforwardly call themselves atheists. – Richard Dawkins

Are we using science in ways that it wasn’t intended to, in which case we should be a little careful, or are we using faith in ways that faith wasn’t really designed for? There are certain questions that are better answered by one approach than the other, and if you start mixing that up, then you end up in … conflict. – Francis S. Collins

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that’s their order of importance. – Muriel Spark

Art is about cosmic beauty. Science is about cosmic order. Religion is about cosmic purpose. – Paul G

Art, science, philosophy, religion — each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience. – Edward Abbey

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things. – Isaac Newton

As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene . . . . No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot. – Albert Einstein

As a citizen of the world, I will not confine myself within the gates of one nation or religion. I will not identify with only one species, sex, class or race; for I am a complete being, and that means that I embrace all of humanity, all of nature, every star and universe within the greater universe as a part of me. If we were all created in the image of God, and his love is unconditional, then why can’t we love all living things with the same eyes as God? How can anybody say that one race is more superior than another, when we were all created in God’s reflection? – Suzy Kassem

As a physicist who devoted his entire life to sober science, to the study of matter, I am sure that I am free from the suspicion of being considered a zealot. And so, according to my research of the atom, I say this: There is no matter in itself. All matter arises and exists only through a force that vibrates the atomic particles and holds them together to form the tiniest solar system of the universe. However, since there is no intelligent force or eternal power in the entire universe—mankind has not been able to invent the much-anticipated perpetuum mobile—we must accept a conscious intelligent mind behind this force. This spirit is the cause of all matter. – Max Planck

As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect. – Richard Dawkins

As a scientist, I don’t believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it. – Alan Lightman

As all truth is from God, it necessarily follows that true science and true religion can never be at variance. – Horace Mann

As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That’s the only difference between science and religion there’s ever been, or will be. – G. K. Chesterton

As Karl Marx once noted: ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.’ William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce. – Michael Shermer

As knowledge advances, science ceases to scoff at religion; and religion ceases to frown on science. The hour of mockery by the one, and of reproof by the other, is passing away. Henceforth, they will dwell together in unity and goodwill. They will mutually illustrate the wisdom, power, and grace of God. Science will adorn and enrich religion; and religion will ennoble and sanctify science. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

As long as truth is unknown, there will be religion no matter what science proves. – Bangambiki Habyarimana

As science advances and increases, as new discoveries are made, as more complete command is obtained over the forces of nature, the more necessary it becomes that we have a religion to guide us in employing these discoveries. To save the world from science, and to make science the builder of a good world, we must hasten our progress towards the fuller acceptance of God. So, the answer to the question at the head of this article is very simple. In an age of science we have greater need than ever before of religion. A conscience of science is a present need. – John A. Widtsoe

As the modern day person struggles with the baffling question of his own existence… science falls short of providing full answers… it can tell how, but not why.” Coleman adds, “Despite their fine automobiles, well-stocked refrigerators, and other material possessions and comforts, the meaning of life seems to be evading them. They are suffering from existential anxiety—deep concern about finding values which enable them to live satisfying, fulfilling, meaningful, and [significant] lives. – James C. Coleman

As they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion… Although just as in hostage negotiations, it’s probably best to keep both sides talking to each other. – Neil deGrasse Tyson

As to the Christian religion, Sir, … there is a balance in its favor from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who surely had no bias on the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very firm believer. – Samuel Johnson

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’. – Joseph J. Thomson

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

As you kind of get over the anxiety about [science and evolution], it actually adds to your sense of awe about this amazing universe that we live in, it doesn’t subtract from it at all. – Francis S. Collins

Astronomers have built telescopes which can show myriads of stars unseen before; but when a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches into the unknown, and reveals orbs which no telescope, however skilfully constructed, could do. – Henry Ward Beecher

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. – Robert Jastrow

At least this is the way I see it. I am a physicist. I also consider myself a Christian. As I try to understand the nature of our universe in these two modes of thinking, I see many commonalities and crossovers between science and religion. It seems logical that in the long run the two will even converge. – Charles Hard Townes

At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. So people stop short at natural laws as something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate. And they are both right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything explained. What is disastrous in the scientific way of thinking (which today rules the whole world) is that it wants to respond to every discomfort by giving and explanation. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Augustine said that we were all born into the world of “common grace” [i.e., available to all]. Before one is baptized, or even if one never is, such grace meets one in God’s creation. There is grace in the pear tree that blooms and blushes. There is common grace in the sea (that massive cleanliness which we are proceeding to corrupt), in the fact that there was, before we laid hands on it, clean air. Our task is to appreciate that grace. – Joseph Sittler

Awakening is the ultimate of religion. Religion is, not really, in believing something outside of your being. It is not in believing or following some authoritative figure, the church, temple, organization or any ideological system of belief. Religion is trusting in what is eternal within you. – Banani Ray

Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing. – Wernher von Braun

Be brave. Be free from philosophies, prophets and holy lies. Go deep into your feelings and explore the mystery of your body, mind and soul. You will find the truth. – Amit Ray

Before science, before the eighteenth century, religion answered the questions, and so in the nineteenth century for instance there was a real jostling between science and religion over the truth and this is why Darwin was so controversial. – Nell Irvin Painter

Belief cannot be reckoned with in terms of science, for science and faith are mutually exclusive. – Rudolf Virchow

Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself. – Andre Gide

Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. – Michael Shermer

Both religion and natural science require a belief in God for their activities, to the former He is the starting point, and to the latter the goal of every thought process. To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view. – Max Planck

Both religion and science must preserve their autonomy and their distinctiveness. Religion is not founded on science nor is science an extension of religion. Each should possess its own principles, its pattern of procedures, its diversities of interpretation and its own conclusions. – Pope John Paul II

Both religion and science need for their activities the belief in God, and moreover God stands for the former in the beginning, and for the latter at the end of the whole thinking. For the former, God represents the basis, for the latter – the crown of any reasoning concerning the world-view. – Max Planck

Both Religion and science require faith in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations. – Anonymous

Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind. – Jack Kornfield

Building on exhaustive research and probing into such diverse enterprises as textbook production and marketing, public education, and state-level politics, Adam R. Shapiro has situated the Scopes trial within a much broader context than any scholar before him. Trying Biology also demonstrates how ideologues have used differing interpretations of the Scopes trial to advance their agendas. By situating the trial within this much broader framework, the author has significantly enlarged our understanding of the conversations between religion and science in twentieth-century America. – Randall Balmer

Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate. – Samuel Butler

But as an intelligent being, if I have a mind capable of reflection, I wish to contemplate the works of nature, and to know something of nature’s God, and my destiny. I love to view the things around me; to gaze upon the sun, moon, and stars; to study the planetary system, and the world we inhabit; to behold their beauty, order, harmony, and the operations of existence around me. … everything is beautifully harmonious, and perfectly adapted to the position it occupies in the world. Whether you look at birds, beasts, or the human system, you see something exquisitely beautiful and harmonious, and worthy of the contemplation there was a God, [even] if there was no such thing as religion in the world. – John Taylor

But as regards God, if I were not overwhelmed by philosophical prejudices, and if the images of things perceived by the senses did not besiege my thought on every side, I would certainly acknowledge him sooner and more easily than anything else. For what is more manifest than the fact that the supreme being exists, or that God, to whose essence alone existence belongs, exists? – Rene Descartes

But in a larger sense this has been the best of all centuries. In the long history of the earth there has been nothing like it. The life expectancy of man has been extended by more than 25 years. Think of it. It is a miracle. The fruits of science have been manifest everywhere. By and large, we live longer, we live better. This is an age of greater understanding and knowledge. We live in a world of great diversity. As we learn more of one another, our appreciation grows. This has been an age of enlightenment. The miracles of modern medicine, of travel, of communication are almost beyond belief. All of this has opened new opportunities for us which we must grasp and use for the advancement of the Lord’s work. – Gordon B. Hinckley

But my favorite of Einstein’s words on religion is “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” I like this because both science and religion are needed to answer life’s great questions. – Temple Grandin

But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. – Albert Einstein

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? – Charles Darwin

But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no longer talking about the art of sex; rather, we are talking about the mechanics of sex. Science has replaced religion as the authority; and science is a more formidable arbiter. Medicine knows how to scare even those who scoff at religion. Compared with a diagnosis, what’s a mere sin? We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt. – Esther Perel

By recognizing our universe as one of law, order, and intelligence, science has driven fear from the hearts of men. Intelligence acts in intelligent ways. The intelligence at the head of all things may be trusted to act intelligently. There arises therefrom a trust in the things about us. The age-old horror, called fear, which has so long distracted humanity, vanishes. Superstition is laid low. Men come to understand better the love of God, and his offerings of goodness. Certainly, in so doing, science has contributed to religious faith. – John A. Widtsoe

Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him? – Wernher von Braun

Christianity is not a mere religion but an experimentally testable science. – Frank J. Tipler

Christianity possesses the source of its justification within itself and does not expect science to constitute its primary apologetic. Science must bear witness to its own worth. – Pope John Paul II

Comparing science and religion isn’t like comparing apples and oranges – it’s more like apples and sewing machines. – Jack Horner

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things. – Richard Dawkins

Conflict between science and religion a dangerous foe. – Henry Norris Russell

Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion. – Karen Armstrong

Creationists have also changed their name … to intelligent design theorists who study ‘irreducible complexity’ and the ‘abrupt appearance’ of life—yet more jargon for ‘God did it.’ … Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with native American creation myths or including the Code of Hammarabi alongside the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools. – Michael Shermer

‘Creativity’ is the universal of universals….. It lies in the nature of things that they may enter into complex unity. – A. N. Whitehead

Culture (science) is the form of religion; Religion is the substance of culture (science). – Paul Tillich

Current research in any field of Science has not yet reached the point where we could start exploring the existential question regarding God as a Supreme Entity driving causality in the universe. However, as modern Neuroscience progresses further and gets more advanced, we shall get to dive deeper into the physiological processes underneath the Qualia of God in human mind. What we have seen so far through our studies in Neurotheology, is that it is not God himself/herself/itself, rather it is people’s perception of God that influences the human life. The Qualia of God impact all aspects of human life by altering the body chemistry at a cellular level. – Abhijit Naskar

Dare to contradict the scientist, not because of your scripture, but because of your own rational thinking. – Abhijit Naskar

Dear Religion, This week I safely dropped a man from space while you shot a child in the head for wanting to go to school. Yours, Science. – Ricky Gervais

Decades spent in contact with science and its vehicles have directed my mind and senses to areas beyond their reach. I now see scientific accomplishments as a path, not an end; a path leading to and disappearing in mystery. Science, in fact, forms many paths branching from the trunk of human progress; and on every periphery they end in the miraculous. Following these paths far enough, one must eventually conclude that science itself is a miracle—like the awareness of man arising from and then disappearing in the apparent nothingness of space. Rather than nullifying religion and proving that “God is dead,” science enhances spiritual values by revealing the magnitudes and minitudes—from cosmos to atom—through which man extends and of which he is composed. – Charles A. Lindbergh

Despite all the advancements in science, and all things about religion that are disproved it still marches on. The bottom line is that the only real, absolutely provable answers about life and our place in the universe are provided by science, and religion has been holding down science since day one. – Joe Rogan

Despite the seeming success of science and rational thinking in other areas, our present state of scientific knowledge cannot begin to answer such questions about God, the eternal world, and matters of faith and revelation with any degree of confidence. – David Clark

DNA that used to have some function way back in evolution but currently does not (and might possibly be revived if, say, an ancient parasite reappeared), DNA that controls how genes switch their protein manufacturing on and off, DNA that controls those, and so on. Some may actually be genuine junk. And some (so the joke goes) may encode a message like ‘It was me, I’m God, I existed all along, ha ha.’ – Ian Stewart

Do not be afraid of being free thinkers. If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all Religion. You will find science not antagonistic, but helpful to Religion. – Sir William Thomson a.k.a. Lord Kelvin

“Does one error disappear only to make room for another?” … [L]et us look at the science of astronomy. How grand and magnificent have been the discoveries in that field of knowledge. What victories over error have been achieved by the telescope. That instrument did … bring down and dispel vast clouds of error, both in respect of the sky and of our planet. It must be confessed, too, that it took something from the importance of our planet. The idea that all the hosts of heaven are mere appendages to this earth is no longer entertained by average men, and … [almost no men] now stand by the old theory for which the church proposed to murder Galileo. Men are compelled to admit that the Genesis by Moses is less trustworthy as to the time of creating the heavens and the earth than are the rocks and the stars. – Frederick Douglass

Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. … the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness. – Theodosius Dobzhansky

Does there truly exist an insuperable contradiction between religion and science? Can religion be superseded by science? The answers to these questions have, for centuries, given rise to considerable dispute and, indeed, bitter fighting. Yet, in my own mind there can be no doubt that in both cases a dispassionate consideration can only lead to a negative answer. What complicates the solution, however, is the fact that while most people readily agree on what is meant by ‘science,’ they are likely to differ on the meaning of ‘religion.’ – Albert Einstein

Don’t set out to teach theism from your natural history… You spoil both. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t talk me about religion! Don’t talk me about tales for children! Be serious! Trust science, because only the science can save you! – Mehmet Murat ildan

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. – Howard Aiken

During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man’s own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer. – Albert Einstein

Earth, stars, and the vastness of space; yesterday, today and tomorrow; and the endlessly increasing knowledge of the relation of forces, present an illimitable universe of numberless phenomena. Only in general outline can the universe be understood. In its infinite variety of expression, it wholly transcends the human mind. . . . In the midst of this complexity man finds himself. As he progresses from childhood to manhood, and his slumbering faculties are awakened, he becomes more fully aware of the vastness of his universe and of the futility of hoping to understand it in detail. Nevertheless, conscious man cannot endure confusion. Out of the universal mystery he must draw at least the general, controlling laws that proclaim order in the apparent chaos; and especially is he driven, by his inborn and unalterable nature, to know if possible his own place in the system of existing things. – John A. Widtsoe

Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. … The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other. – Neil Postman

Essentially all civilizations that rose to the level of possessing an urban culture had need for two forms of science-related technology, namely, mathematics for land measurements and commerce and astronomy for time-keeping in agriculture and aspects of religious rituals. – Frederick Seitz

Even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. – Albert Einstein

Every discovery in science and art, that is really true and useful to mankind, has been given by direct revelation from God, though but few acknowledge it. It has been given with a view to prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of truth, and the redemption of the earth from the power of sin and Satan. We should take advantage of all these great discoveries, the accumulated wisdom of ages, and give to our children the benefit of every branch of useful knowledge, to prepare them to step forward and efficiently do their part in the great work. – Brigham Young

Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God. – Maria Mitchell

Every great scientist becomes a great scientist because of the inner self-abnegation with which he stands before truth, saying: “Not my will, but thine, be done.” What, then, does a man mean by saying, Science displaces religion, when in this deep sense science itself springs from religion? – Harry Emerson Fosdick

Every one 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. – Albert Einstein

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Everything progresses in waves. The march of civilization, the progression of worlds, is in waves. All human activities likewise progress in waves – art, literature, science, religion. – Swami Vivekananda

Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism. – G. K. Chesterton

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. – Thomas Henry Huxley

Faith in order, which is the basis of science, cannot reasonably be separated from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion. – Asa Gray

Faith is not blind submission, passive obedience with no effort at thought or reason. Faith, if worthy of its name, rests upon truth; and truth is the foundation of science… Yet how often may we hear from our pulpits, usually however when they are occupied by the little-great men, scathing denunciations of science, which is represented as a bundle of vagaries, and of scientific men, who are but Will-o-the-wisps enticing the traveler into quagmires of spiritual ruin. Would it not be better for those who so inveigh to acquaint themselves with at least the first principles of the doctrines of science? So general has this practice become amongst us, that the most inexperienced speaker feels justified in thus indulging himself, and in the minds of many the conclusion is reached, none the less pernicious in its present effects because unfounded, that the higher development of the intellect is not a part of the Gospel of Christ. – James E. Talmage

Faith is not something that goes against the evidence, it goes beyond it. The evidence is saying to us, ‘There is another country. There is something beyond mere reason’. – Alister E. McGrath

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand. – Bertrand Russell

Few American theologies are more complex than that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but its flagship Brigham Young University teaches off-the-shelf, industry-standard evolution. That has been the case since 1931, when the church officially said: “Leave biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research.” … What the church requires is only belief “that Adam was the first man of what we would call the human race,” says Gordon Hinckley, the church’s living prophet. Scientists can speculate on the rest, he says, recalling his own study of anthropology and geology: “Studied all about it. Didn’t worry me then. Doesn’t worry me now.” – Larry A. Witham

Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future. – Arthur C. Clarke

For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible! Neither the religion of fear nor the social-moral religion can have, any hold on him. A God who rewards and punishes is for him unthinkable, because man acts in accordance with an inner and outer necessity, and would, in the eyes of God, be as little responsible as an inanimate object is for the movements which it makes. Science, in consequence, has been accused of undermining morals—but wrongly. The ethical behavior of man is better based on sympathy, education and social relationships, and requires no support from religion. Man’s plight would, indeed, be sad if he had to be kept in order through fear of punishment and hope of rewards after death. – Albert Einstein

For Calvin, the creation reflects its Creator at every point. Image after images flashed in front of our eyes, as Calvin attempts to convey the multiplicity of ways in which the creation witnesses to its Creator: it is like a visible garment, which the invisible God dons in order to make himself known; it is like a book in which the name on the Creator is written as its author; it is like a theater, in which the glory of God is publicly displayed; it is like a mirror, in which the works and wisdom of God are reflected. – Alister E. McGrath

For in much wisdom is much grief and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow. – The Bible

For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. – Albert Einstein

For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. – Wernher von Braun

For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts. – Albert Einstein

For the belief in a single truth is the root cause for all evil in the world. – Max Born

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. – Thomas Szasz

From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped. – Sir William Bragg

From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. – Albert Einstein

Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom – that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself. – David Hilbert

Gentlemen, as we study the universe we see everywhere the most tremendous manifestations of force. In our own experience we know of but one source of force, namely will. How then can we help regarding the forces we see in nature as due to the will of some omnipresent, omnipotent being? Gentlemen, there must be a GOD. – Benjamin Peirce

Geology, ethnology, what not?—(Greek endings, each the little passing bell That signifies some faith’s about to die.) – Robert Browning

[Georg Cantor was the first to prove that there could be a series of infinities; that infinities come in an infinite number of sizes.] Thus Cantor’s Absolute is a perfect image for what we experience of God. When I speak of a Big Enough God I am not merely thinking of an Infinite God, but the God of infinities, the Absolute, which either chooses to reveal itself or remains veiled in mystery. Modern mathematics does begin to feel like the language that God talks. – Sara Maitland

Go beyond science, into the region of metaphysics. Real religion is beyond argument. It can only be lived both inwardly and outwardly. – Swami Sivananda

God created… light anddark, heaven and hell-science claims the same thing as religion, that the Big Bang created everything in the universe with an opposite.”Including matter itself, antimatter” – Dan Brown

God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. – Paul A. M. Dirac

God is the mysterious veil under which we hide our ignorance of the cause. – Léo Errera

God is to me that creative force, behind and in the universe, who manifests Himself as energy, as life, as order, as beauty, as thought, as conscience, as love. – Henry Sloane Coffin

God is Truth. There is no incompatibility between science and religion. Both are seeking the same truth. Science shows that God exists. – Derek Barton

God is using not only his covenant people, but other peoples as well, to consummate a work, stupendous, magnificent, and altogether too arduous for this little handful of Saints to accomplish by and of themselves. – Orson F. Whitney

God resides most strongly and evidently where science has not yet progressed to go… And if this is true then it follows that God resides everywhere and in everything. – Terryl L. Givens

God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists. – Albert Einstein

God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works … you don’t need him anymore. But … you leave him to create the universe because we haven’t figured that out yet. – Richard P. Feynman

God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. – Isaac Newton

Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. – Chapman Cohen

Good and evil are both within us. And when our primitive ancestors humanized these natural qualities of the mind, they got two completely opposite supernatural characters. One was the merciful lord almighty and the other was the wicked devil. – Abhijit Naskar

Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion. – Isaac Newton

Great scientific minds, from Claudius Ptolemy of the second century to Isaac Newton of the seventeenth, invested their formidable intellects in attempts to deduce the nature of the universe from the statements and philosophies contained in religious writings…. Had any of these efforts worked, science and religion today might be one and the same. But they are not. – Neil deGrasse Tyson

Gökalp gave “the nation” an important mystical component. In his work, “he transferred to the nation the divine qualities he had found in society, replacing the belief in God with the belief in nation: and so nationalism became a religion.” The national is deified, thus expanding Durkheim’s idea that “society can do as it pleases.” So, if a nation perceives itself in danger, it feels no moral responsibility in its response to that danger. The Unionist “scientific approach” gained a “sacred” character through Gökalp’s theories. – Taner Akçam

Happy is he who bears a god within himself, an ideal of beauty, and obeys him: an ideal of art, an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel. These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. All are illuminated by reflections of the sublime. – Louis Pasteur

Harmonizing religion and science makes you seem like an open-minded and reasonable person, while asserting their incompatibility makes enemies and brands you as “militant.” The reason is clear: religion occupies a privileged place in our society. Attacking it is off-limits, although going after other supernatural or paranormal beliefs like ESP, homeopathy, or political worldviews is not. Accommodationism is not meant to defend science, which can stand on its own, but to show that in some way religion can still make credible claims about the world. – Jerry A. Coyne

Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close. – Carl Sagan

He asserted, on all occasions, the divine authority and sacred efficacy of the holy scriptures; and maintained that they alone taught the way of salvation, and that they only could give peace of mind. The excellency of the christian religion was the frequent subject of his conversation. A strict obedience to the doctrine, and a diligent imitation of the example of our blessed saviour, he often declared to be the foundation of true tranquility. – Hermann Boerhaave

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright. – Blaise Pascal

He who possesses science and art, Possesses religion as well; He who possesses neither of these, Had better have religion. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

His conflict with the Catholic Church arose because deep in his heart Galileo was a believer. There was for him no path of compromise, no way to have separate secular and theological cosmologies. If the Copernican system was true as he believed, what else could Galileo do but fight with every weapon he had in his arsenal of logic, rhetoric, scientific observation, mathematical theory, and cunning insight, to make his Church accept a new system of the universe? – I. Bernard Cohen

How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?…and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent…? – Isaac Newton

How could science be an enemy of religion when God commanded man to be a scientist the day He told him to rule the earth and subject it? – Fulton J. Sheen

How exceedingly fine is the godlike work of the Best and Greatest Artist. – Nicolaus Copernicus

How gladly would we understand every principle pertaining to science and art, and become thoroughly acquainted with every intricate operation of nature, and with all the chemical changes that are constantly going on around us! How delightful this would be, and what a boundless field of truth and power is open for us to explore! – Brigham Young

How long it [the earth] has been organized is not for me to say, and I do not care anything about it. As for the Bible account of creation we may say that the Lord gave it to Moses, or rather Moses obtained the history and traditions of the fathers, and from them picked out what he considered necessary, and that account has been handed down from age to age, and we have got it, no matter whether it is correct or not, and whether the Lord found the earth empty or void, whether he made it out of nothing or out of rude elements; or whether he made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation in the minds of men unless he gives revelation on the subject. – Brigham Young

Humanism is only another name for spiritual laziness, or a vague half-creed adopted by men of science and logicians whose heads are too occupied with the world of mathematics and physics to worry about religious categories. – Colin Wilson

Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole. – Thomas Nagel

I also like to look at the dynamic that takes place between religion and science because, in a way, both are asking the same questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? The methodologies are diametrically opposed, but their motivation is the same; the wellspring is the same in both cases. – J. Michael Straczynski

I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God’s, or Nature’s method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still underway. – Theodosius Dobzhansky

I am more than ever now the bride of science. Religion to me is science, and science is religion. In that deeply-felt truth lies the secret of my intense devotion to the reading of God’s natural works… And when I behold the scientific and so-called philosophers full of selfish feelings, and of a tendency to war against circumstances and Providence, I say to myself: They are not true priests,they are but half prophets — if not absolutely false ones. They have read the great page simply with the physical eye, and with none of the spirit within. The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole… There is too much tendency to making separate and independent bundles of both the physical and the moral facts of the universe. Whereas, all and everything is naturally related and interconnected. A volume could I write on this subject… – Ada Lovelace

I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that. – Richard Dawkins

I am persuaded that there is not in the nature of science anything unfavourable to religious feelings, and if I were not so persuaded I should be much puzzled to account for our being invested, as we so amply are, with the facilities that lead us to the discovery of scientific truth. It would be strange if our Creator should be found to be urging us on in a career which tended to be a forgetfulness of him. – William Whewell

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experiences in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, god and eternity. – Erwin Schroedinger

I am very much a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influenced in my thinking by the writing of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery. – Walter Kohn

I believe also that with this flood of knowledge concerning these highly spiritual things, there has come into the world, almost imperceptibly, a more generally diffused and brighter spirit of intelligence than was known before; like collateral rays shooting off to right and left from the more direct light of God’s revelations which ushered in the great work of the last days. By those collateral rays of light men have been led to those great discoveries in the arts and sciences and in mechanics, which make our age so wonderful as an age of progress and enlightenment. – B. H. Roberts

I believe in the [ancient] covenant. It is true that we emerged in the universe by chance, but the idea of chance is itself only a cover for our ignorance. I do not feel like an alien in this universe. The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming. – Freeman Dyson

I believe it to be a generally accepted proposition in our church that no man’s standing is affected by the views which he may honestly hold with reference to the beginning of man’s life on the earth and the organization of the universe, or the processes employed in the working of the miracles of the Bible. – Stephen L. Richards

I believe that a full understanding of this remarkable human capacity for scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that our power in this respect is the gift of the universe’s Creator who, in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in the image of God (Genesis I: 26-27). Through the exercise of this gift, those working in fundamental physics are able to discern a world of deep and beautiful order–a universe shot thorough with signs of mind. I believe that it is indeed the Mind of that world’s Creator that is perceived in this way. Science is possible because the universe is a divine creation. – John Polkinghorne

I believe that the Dayton trial marked the beginning of the decline of fundamentalism. … I feel that restrictive legislation on academic freedom is forever a thing of the past, that religion and science may now address one another in an atmosphere of mutual respect and of a common quest for truth. I like to think that the Dayton trial had some part in bringing to birth this new era. – John T. Scopes

I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE. – William James

I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while. – Charles Fort

I could almost wish, at this point, that I were in the habit of expressing myself in theological terms, for if I were, I might be able to compress my entire thesis into a sentence. All knowledge of every variety (I might say) is in the mind of God—and the human intellect, even the best, in trying to pluck it forth can but “see through a glass, darkly.” – Isaac Asimov

I do believe that there is a conflict between science and religion … the spirit or attitude toward the facts is different in religion from what it is in science. The uncertainty that is necessary in order to appreciate nature is not easily correlated with the feeling of certainty in faith. – Richard P. Feynman

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. – Albert Einstein

I do not believe that a moral philosophy can ever be founded on a scientific basis. … The valuation of life and all its nobler expressions can only come out of the soul’s yearning toward its own destiny. Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulas must fail. Of that I am perfectly convinced. – Albert Einstein

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. – Galileo Galilei

I do not hope for any relief, and that is because I have committed no crime. I might hope for and obtain pardon, if I had erred, for it is to faults that the prince can bring indulgence, whereas against one wrongfully sentenced while he was innocent, it is expedient, in order to put up a show of strict lawfulness, to uphold rigor… . But my most holy intention, how clearly would it appear if some power would bring to light the slanders, frauds, and stratagems, and trickeries that were used eighteen years ago in Rome in order to deceive the authorities! – Galileo Galilei

I don’t see why religion and science can’t cooperate. What’s wrong with using a computer to count our blessings? – Robert Orben

I don’t think there is any incompatibility between science and mysticism . . . Immanent religion is the only form of religion in which there is no conflict at all, that I can see, between science and religion. – Aldous Huxley

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. – Wernher von Braun

I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist’s hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion. – Frank Lloyd Wright

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. – Allan Rex Sandage

I find it very hypocritical for us as members of the church to sift through the concepts of science selectively, identifying friends and enemies as best fits our narrow purposes. . . For me, there are no notions in biological science which violate the principles, both spiritual and practical, which I hold dear as a committed Latter-day Saint. – William Bradshaw

I furnished the body that was needed to sit in the defendant’s chair. – John Thomas Scopes, [Explaining his role in the Scopes Monkey Trial.]

I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily. – Isaac Newton

I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion. – Alan Lightman

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy. – Fred Hoyle

I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance. – Michio Kaku

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. – Thomas Jefferson

I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background. – Walter Gilbert

I like the confusion you get between science and religion … that’s where belief lies and art as well. – Damien Hirst

I love theologians, they know god cannot speak so they spend their energy trying to explain to us what his silence means – Bangambiki Habyarimana

I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. – Charles Darwin

I need the binocular approach of science and religion if I am to do any sort of justice to the deep and rich reality of the world in which we live. – John Polkinghorne

I now never make the preparations for penetrating into some small province of nature hitherto undiscovered without breathing a prayer to the Being who hides His secrets from me only to allure me graciously on to the unfolding of them. – Louis Agassiz

I now think the answer is very simple: it’s true. God did create the universe about 13.7 billion years ago, and of necessity has involved Himself with His creation ever since. The purpose of this universe is something that only God knows for sure, but it is increasingly clear to modern science that the universe was exquisitely fine-tuned to enable human life. – Richard E. Smalley

I object to religion in science classrooms not because it’s religion but because it’s not science. – Neil deGrasse Tyson

I often get letters … from people who say … I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature. … I reply … “Well, it’s funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the Almighty, always quote beautiful things … orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses.” But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he’s five years old. And I … say, “Well, presumably the God you speak about created the worm as well,” and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful God with that action. And therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing. – Sir David Attenborough

I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely. – Bertrand Russell

I prefer the man who calls his nonsense a mystery to him who who pretends it is a weighed, measured, analyzed fact. – George Bernard Shaw

I say you don’t need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful. – Michael Shermer

I see no conflict between science and religion. When you take truth in either one of these realms, science or religion, they match perfectly. – Richard G. Scott

I sometimes hear preachers speak of the sad condition of men who live without God in the world, but a scientist who lives without God in the world seems to me worse off than ordinary men. – Louis Agassiz

I sort of mind living in a time when most of the literature is terribly personal. I suppose it’s because I grew up on a love of history, philosophy, science and religion, but not to think too much about yourself. – A. S. Byatt

I think Buddhists should not be afraid of science. Science can help Buddhism to discover more deeply the teaching of the Buddha. For example, the Avatamsaka Sutra says that the one is made of the many, and the many can be found in the one. This is something that can be proven by science. Out of a cell, they can duplicate a whole body. In one cell, the whole genetic heritage can be found, and you can make a replica of the whole body. In the one, you see the many. – Thich Nhat Hanh

I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion. That’s a good thing. – Steven Weinberg

I think science is about the search for God; it just comes at it from a different angle than religion. – Chris Carter

I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is. – Daniel Dennett

I think this case will be remembered because it is the first case of this sort since we stopped trying people in America for witchcraft, because here we have done our best to turn back the tide that has sought to force itself upon this modern world, of testing every fact in science by a religious dictum. – Clarence Darrow

I thought religion would eventually wither away and we’d all be worshiping at the altar of science. – A. J. Jacobs

I undertake my scientific research with the confident assumption that the earth follows the laws of nature which God established at creation. … My studies are performed with the confidence that God will not capriciously confound scientific results by “slipping in” a miracle. – James W. Skehan

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 God’s thoughts, the rest are details. – Albert Einstein

I wanted to become a theologian. For a long time I was restless. Now, however, behold how through my effort God is being celebrated in astronomy. – Johannes Kepler

I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn’t do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually I think that class was call Religion. Religion was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were taught in all the other classes. – George Carlin

I was raised to think about philosophy and religious thought and the soul and the spirit of humankind in a different way, also really socially progressive teachings of the Baha’i faith, the equality of men and women, the elimination of racial prejudice, the equality of science and religion, so it was a big cauldron of big ideas in my household. And we were weird and unhappy family, but nonetheless that was a really positive thing that came out of it. – Rainn Wilson

I wish the lecturers to treat their subject as a strictly natural science, the greatest of all possible sciences, indeed, in one sense, the only science, that of Infinite Being, without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exception or so-called miraculous revelation. I wish it considered just as astronomy or chemistry is. – Lord Adam Gifford

I work in the field of art, and you know how during a period of Marxist ideology, fewer people are inclined to believe in the power of the culture as a whole: they believe in the revolutionary potential of economics, class struggle theory.. ..Therefore it’s time to show that art means the power of creativity, and it’s time to define art in a larger way, to include science and religion too… – Joseph Beuys

I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it’s not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by. – Martin Rees

I’d be perfectly happy with a mathematically precise description of how time began. I see science and religion as being two completely different things. I don’t see science as relevant to the question of whether or not there’s a God. – Neil Turok

I’m interested in the hope we invest in science, and the disappointment we can feel when science flattens, or ‘explains,’ the larger mysteries of religion. – Ben Marcus

I’m saying that the leaders of the church have locked the sacred cow called science in the stable and they won’t let anybody enter; they should open it immediately so that we can milk that cow in the name of humanity and thus find the truth. – Mehmet Murat Ildan

If a religious person says “No, no, no” and they won’t listen to science, it makes me think that they don’t have faith in their own religion. – Michael Pitt

If entropy must constantly and continuously increase, then the universe is remorselessly running down, thus setting a limit (a long one, to be sure) on the existence of humanity. To some human beings, this ultimate end poses itself almost as a threat to their personal immortality, or as a denial of the omnipotence of God. There is, therefore, a strong emotional urge to deny that entropy must increase. – Isaac Asimov

If finally, the science should prove that society at a certain time revert to the church and recover its old foundation of absolute faith in a personal providence and a revealed religion, it commits suicide. – Henry Brooks Adams

If I get the impression that Nature itself makes the decisive choice [about] what possibility to realize, where quantum theory says that more than one outcome is possible, then I am ascribing personality to Nature, that is to something that is always everywhere. [An] omnipresent eternal personality which is omnipotent in taking the decisions that are left undetermined by physical law is exactly what in the language of religion is called God. – Frederik Belinfante

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. – Bertrand Russell

If in some madhouse there is a lunatic who still believes the old churchly tenet that heaven is up above, even this [the first manned landing on the moon] probably will not disabuse him. Surely those of us still sane enough to be at large realize that this event will have no more to so with theology, God, or self-knowledge than any flower we pluck or any hand we press—in fact, much less. – George Gaylord Simpson

If people are good because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. – Albert Einstein

If religion and science could be united on the common ground of biological conservation, the problem would be soon solved. If there is any moral precept shared by people of all beliefs, it is that we owe ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment. – E. O. Wilson

If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. – Albert Einstein

If the God of revelation is most appropriately worshipped in the temple of religion, the God of nature may be equally honored in the temple of science. Even from its lofty minarets the philosopher may summon the faithful to prayer, and the priest and sage exchange altars without the compromise of faith or knowledge. – Sir David Brewster

If the man doesn’t believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can’t burn him. – Mark Twain

If the world is turning, even the church can’t stop it; if it isn’t turning, nobody can go out and make it turn. – Mehmet Murat ildan

If there is a just God, how humanity would writhe in its attempt to justify its treatment of animals. – Isaac Asimov

If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism. – Albert Einstein

If there is ever conflict between Science and Scripture, the problem must be on the science side. – Ray Comfort

If there really is God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle. – Dave Barry

If they believe it [evolution], they go back to scoff at the religion of their parents. – William Jennings Bryan

If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? – Albert Einstein

If time is treated in modern physics as a dimension on a par with the dimensions of space, why should we a priori exclude the possibility that we are pulled as well as pushed along its axis? The future has, after all, as much or as little reality as the past, and there is nothing logically inconceivable in introducing, as a working hypothesis, an element of finality, supplementary to the element of causality, into our equations. It betrays a great lack of imagination to believe that the concept of “purpose” must necessarily be associated with some anthropomorphic deity. – Arthur Koestler

If to a person religion means reading books and obeying every single word from it without the slightest bit of reasoning, then such perception would only bring destruction upon the person and the world. Also there are people who use the words from those books to justify their own filthy actions. Let’s take a conservative Muslim, for example. Say, the conservative Muslim male Homo sapiens (I won’t call such creature a human, regardless of the religion, since his action here shows no sign of humanity) is found to be beating his wife. Now, if someone says to him this is wrong”, he would naturally reply, this is a divine thing to do, my book says so”. Now, if a Christian says my book is older, so you should stop obeying your book and start obeying mine”, there will come the Buddhist, and say, my book is much older still, obey mine”. Then will come the Jew, and say, my book is even older, so just follow mine”. And in the end will come the Hindu and say my books are the oldest of all, obey them”. Therefore referring to books will only make a mess of the human race and tear the species into pieces. – Abhijit Naskar

If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated. – Wilfred Trotter

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. – Carl Sagan

If you don’t act now, the day is not far, that this beautiful planet of yours, which you call home, shall be turned into a dry barren wasteland by the blood-sucking fundamentalists. – Abhijit Naskar

If you have science and art, You also have religion; But if you don’t have them, You better have religion. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. … Choose science. – Carl Sagan

If you want to see the real Saints, don’t go to the Temples of the Religion, but go to the Temples of the Science! – Mehmet Murat ildan

If your science contradicts your religion, you’ve either got bad science or bad religion. – April Papke

If “evolution” is…elevated to the status of a world-view of the way things are, then there is direct conflict with biblical faith. But if “evolution” remains at the level of scientific biological hypothesis, it would seem that there is little reason for conflict between the implications of Christian belief in the Creator and the scientific explorations of the way which—at the level of biology—God has gone about his creating processes. – David Atkinson

If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it’s always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It’s Christianity that’s the liar. It’s in perpetual conflict with itself. – Adolf Hitler

Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts. – Brandon Sanderson

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. – Charles Darwin

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly. – Isaac Asimov

In 1925 [state legislators] prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. … Anti-evolutionists feared that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. In the present…, pro-evolutionists fear that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter, insufficient confidence in science. – Neil Postman

In a chaotic universe, God fits naturally into the role of riverboat gambler. – Joseph Ford

In a darkened world no longer illuminated by the light of this center [God], technical advances are scarcely more than despairing attempts to make Hell a more agreeable place to live in. This must be particularly emphasized against those who think that by spreading the civilization of science and technology even to the uttermost ends of the earth, they can furnish all the essential preconditions for a golden age. One cannot escape the Devil so easily as that. – Werner Heisenberg

In addition to instructing them in the holy Scriptures, they also taught their pupils poetry, astronomy, and the calculation of the church calendar. – Bede

In all that has to do with the relations between man and the supernatural, we have to seek for a more than mathematical precision; this should be more exact than science. – Simone Weil

In both religion and science, some people are dishonest, exploitative, incompetent and exhibit other human failings. – Rupert Sheldrake

In considering God’s power, we must not look for a God of the Gaps, a god who is called in for those phenomena for which there is yet no scientific explanation. – Sir Nevill F. Mott

In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science. – Johan Huizinga

In my personal view, a failure to discover unimagined objects and answer unasked questions, once HST functions properly, would indicate a lack of imagination in stocking the Universe on the part of the Deity. – John N. Bahcall

In my understanding of God I start with certain firm beliefs. One is that the laws of nature are not broken. We do not, of course, know all these laws yet, but I believe that such laws exist. I do not, therefore, believe in the literal truth of some miracles which are featured in the Christian Scriptures, such as the Virgin Birth or water into wine. … God works, I believe, within natural laws, and, according to natural laws, these things happen. – Sir Nevill F. Mott

In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining…I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world. – Rosalind Franklin

In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall succeed in our aims: the improvement of mankind. – Rosalind Franklin

In order to see the relation between philosophy as rigorous science and the alternative to it clearly, one must look at the political conflict between the two antagonists, i. e. at the essential character of that conflict. – Leo Strauss

In reality, both religion and science are expressions of man’s uncertainty. Perhaps the paradox is that certainty, whether it be in science or religion, is dangerous. – Robert Winston

In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. – Carl Sagan

In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue. – Paul Davies

In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid. – Bill Gates

In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence. – Isaac Newton

In the days when geology was young, now some two hundred years ago, it found a careful foster-mother in theology, who watched over its early growth with anxious solicitude, and stored its receptive mind with the most beautiful stories, which the young science never tired of transforming into curious fancies of its own, which it usually styled “theories of the earth.” – William Johnson Sollas

In the distance tower still higher peaks which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and deepen the feeling whose truth is emphasized by every advance in science: that “Great are the Works of the Lord.” – Sir J.J. Thomson

In the endeavor to clearly comprehend and explain the functions of the combination of forces called “brain,” the physiologist is hindered and troubled by the views of the nature of those cerebral forces which the needs of dogmatic theology have imposed on mankind. – Sir Richard Owen

In the forefront of science, there is not much difference between religion and science. People harbor beliefs. That’s what happens when people believe something religiously. – Dan Shechtman

In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point. – Werner Heisenberg

In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to anyone to try to refute opinions by showing up their author’s neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author’s neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions. Their value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true. Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria. – William James

In the world union, prosperity is a science, self-interest a new religion, peace is at hand and the future has never looked brighter. – B. Barmanbek

In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task. – Albert Einstein

In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another. … The old problems, such as the relation of science and religion, are still with us, and I believe present as difficult dilemmas as ever, but they are not often publicly discussed because of the limitations of specialization. – Richard P. Feynman

In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views. – Albert Einstein

In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be unkind to do it here.Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but no one uses it in religious matters. – Mark Twain

In … his humbled, kneeling surrender when he disavowed his Copernicanism, we may sense the tremendous forces attendant on the birth of modern science. – I. Bernard Cohen

Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science. – Muhammad Iqbal

India is the mother of religion. In her are combined science and religion in perfect harmony, and that is the Hindu religion, and it is India that shall be again the spiritual mother of the world. – Annie Besant

Infidels are intellectual discoverers. They sail the unknown seas and find new isles and continents in the infinite realms of thought. An Infidel is one who has found a new fact, who has an idea of his own, and who in the mental sky has seen another star. He is an intellectual capitalist, and for that reason excites the envy and hatred of the theological pauper. – Robert Green Ingersoll

Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to form in the social life of man. – Albert Einstein

Is there any conflict between science and religion? There is no conflict in the mind of God, but often there is conflict in the minds of men. – Henry B. Eyring

Is this a topic whose time has truly come? The integration of science and religion? Or have I just written a clever book that temporarily impressed a few people and will otherwise go as quickly as it came? – Ken Wilber

It can’t be presumption to be SURE [of our forgiveness] because it is Christ’s work, not ours; on the contrary, it is presumption to doubt His word and work.’ Before he died he said, I shall see Jesus, and that will be grand. I shall see Him who made the worlds. – Sir David Brewster

It could plausibly be argued that far from Christian theology having hampered the study of nature for fifteen hundred years, it was Greek corruptions of biblical Christianity which hampered it. – Mary B. Hesse

It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil—which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama. – Richard P. Feynman

It ill becomes any of us to take the attitude that all evidence for God is false evidence, beneath consideration, simply by virtue of its being evidence for God, or even by virtue of its being outside the purview of science. – Kitty Ferguson

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. – Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient. When anesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam’s rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved that anesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve. – Bertrand Russell

It is admitted, on all hands, that the Scriptures are not intended to resolve physical questions, or to explain matters in no way related to the morality of human actions; and if, in consequence of this principle, a considerable latitude of interpretation were not allowed, we should continue at this moment to believe, that the earth is flat; that the sun moves round the earth; and that the circumference of a circle is no more than three times its diameter. – John Playfair

It is better to trust in the Rock of Ages, than to know the age of the rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father, than to know how far the stars in the heavens are apart. – William Jennings Bryan

It is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, [if we were to show them our proofs of the existence of God] nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt… – Blaise Pascal

It is certainly true in the United States that there is an uneasiness about certain aspects of science, particularly evolution, because it conflicts, in some people’s minds, with their sense of how we all came to be. But you know, if you are a believer in God, it’s hard to imagine that God would somehow put this incontrovertible evidence in front of us about our relationship to other living organisms and expect us to disbelieve it. I mean, that doesn’t make sense at all. – Francis S. Collins

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion–its message becomes meaningless. – Abraham Joshua Heschel

It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term “scientific truth.” So different is the meaning of the word “truth” according to whether we are dealing with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition or a scientific theory. “Religious truth” conveys nothing clear to me at all. – Albert Einstein

It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed. – James Joule

It is hard to get the people to believe that God is a scientific character, that He lives by science or strict law, that by this He is, and by law he was made what He is; and will remain to all eternity because of His faithful adherence to law. It is a most difficult thing to make the people believe that every art and science and all wisdom comes from Him, and that He is their Author. – Brigham Young

It is HIS work… “Not unto us, but to Thy Name, O Lord, be all the praise”. The nearer I approach to the end of my pilgrimage… the grandeur and sublimity of God’s remedy for fallen man are more appreciated. – Samuel Morse

It is impossible to answer your question briefly; and I am not sure that I could do so, even if I wrote at some length. But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. – Charles Darwin

It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts. – Max Planck

It is ironical that, in the very field in which Science has claimed superiority to Theology, for example—in the abandoning of dogma and the granting of absolute freedom to criticism—the positions are now reversed. Science will not tolerate criticism of special relativity, while Theology talks freely about the death of God, religionless Christianity, and so on. – Herbert Dingle

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. – Richard Lewontin (Geneticist at Harvard)

It is one thing to celebrate science for its achievements and remarkable ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena in the natural world. But to claim there is nothing knowable outside the scope of science would be similar to a successful fisherman saying that whatever he can’t catch in his nets does not exist. Once you accept that science is the only source of human knowledge, you have adopted a philosophical position (scientism) that cannot be verified, or falsified, by science itself. It is, in a word, unscientific. – Thomas Burnett

It is only through the psyche that we can establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We cannot tell whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are border-line concepts for transcendental contents. – Carl Jung

It is precisely because I have studied and reflected that I have today the faith of a Breton; and had I studied and reflected more I should have the faith of a Breton’s wife. – Louis Pasteur

It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind. A thousand years of theological disputes nurtured the habit of analytical thinking that could also be applied to the analysis of natural phenomena. On the other hand, the close historical relations between theology and science have caused conflicts between science and Christianity that does not exist between science and other religions. – Freeman Dyson

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand. – Emile Durkheim

It is this claim to a monopoly of meaning, rather than any special scientific doctrine, that makes science and religion look like competitors today. Scientism emerged not as the conclusion of scientific argument but as a chosen element in a worldview – a vision that attracted people by its contrast with what went before – which is, of course, how people very often do make such decisions, even ones that they afterwards call scientific. – Mary Midgley

It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science. – Albert Einstein

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. – Francis BaconThe laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics. – Galileo Galilei

It is, of course, quite true that there is a region in which science and religion do not conflict. That is the region of the unknowable. – H.L. Mencken

It is…idle to pretend, as many do, that there is no contradiction between religion and science. Science contradicts religion as surely as Judaism contradicts Islam-they are absolutely and irresolvably conflicting views. Unless, that is, science is obliged to change its fundamental nature. – Bryan Appleyard

It may be that in the practice of religion men have real evidence of the Being of God. If that is so, it is merely fallacious to refuse consideration of this evidence because no similar evidence is forthcoming from the study of physics, astronomy or biology. – Archbishop William Temple

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. – J. B. S. Haldane

It was an admirable reply of a converted astronomer, who, when interrogated concerning his comparative estimate of religion and the science he had formerly idolized, answered, ‘I am now bound for heaven, and I take the stars in my way.’ – Anonymous

It was tremendously exciting to discover that science was not destroying religion, as people popularly believe, but that it could cast light on theism and Christianity. – Susan Howatch

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. – Albert Einstein

It’s a common perception that science and religion are mutually exclusive. But there are many scientists who would consider themselves to be spiritual people. Not only that, but in the case of climate change – a scientific issue with strong moral implications and difficult decisions to be made – it’s essential to connect the science to our values. And for many of us, our values come from our faith. – Katharine Hayhoe

It’s progress I think, that science has joined philosophy, metaphysics & religion as subjects drunk people argue about in bars. – Neil deGrasse Tyson

It’s a vacuous answer … To say that “God made the world” is simply a more or less sophisticated way of saying that we don’t understand how the universe originated. A god, in so far as it is anything, is an admission of ignorance. – Peter William Atkins

I’ll deal with the most difficult problem first. Creation ex nihilo. The adipose argument is that “God did it.” That of course is the lazy man’s elixir. Sort of a cocktail made up of a swig of credulity and a teaspoon full of unwillingness to think. In short, it’s an explanation that avoids explanation. – Peter William Atkins

I’m saying that the leaders of the church have locked the sacred cow called science in the stable and they won’t let anybody enter; they should open it immediately so that we can milk that cow in the name of humanity and thus find the truth. – Mehmet Murat ildan

Kant attempted to work out a view of religion and religious belief according to which existing religions could be brought into harmony with modernity, science and reason. – Allen W. Wood

Knowledge is like a knife. In the hands of a well-balanced adult it is an instrument for good of inestimable value; but in the hands of a child, an idiot, a criminal, a drunkard or an insane man, it may cause havoc, misery, suffering and crime. Science and religion have this in common, that their noble aims, their power for good, have often, with wrong men, deteriorated into a boomerang to the human race. – Leo Baekeland

Let me say that I don’t see any conflict between science and religion. I go to church as many other scientists do. I share with most religious people a sense of mystery and wonder at the universe and I want to participate in religious ritual and practices because they’re something that all humans can share. – Martin Rees

Let nobody be afraid of true freedom of thought. Let us be free in thought and criticism; but, with freedom, we are bound to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to it. – Baron William Thomson Kelvin

Let us keep the discoveries and indisputable measurements of physics. But … A more complete study of the movements of the world will oblige us, little by little, to turn it upside down; in other words, to discover that if things hold and hold together, it is only by reason of complexity, from above. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Let us now speak according to natural lights. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible. . . . We are then incapable of knowing of either what He is or if He is. . . . – Blaise Pascal

Life is really about a spiritual unfolding that is personal and enchanting – an unfolding that no science or philosophy or religion has yet fully clarified. – James Redfield

Limited government is not a means to liberty, it is an end. That is to say, there are always going to be a group of citizens who cannot meet their basic needs, and there most assuredly will always be politicians willing to promise that they will meet them. The difference between liberty and tyranny by popular support, or correctly termed democratic despotism, ” is little more than the vehicle a free society chooses to use in order to meet those needs. – Richard D. Baris

Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. – Albert Einstein

Many consider that the conflict of religion and science is a temporary phase, and that in due course the two mighty rivers of human understanding will merge into an even mightier Amazon of comprehension. I take the opposite view, that reconciliation is impossible. I consider that Science is mightier than the Word, and that the river of religion will (or, at least, should) atrophy and die. – Peter William Atkins

Many who are committed to reason and science have turned against religion altogether and treat it with fear and contempt. – Allen W. Wood

Maybe everything happens in a monkey that came to make the rules in heaven – George G. Asztalos

Maybe we have to accept that after reaching the deepest possible level of understanding science can offer, there will nevertheless be aspects of the universe that remain unexplained. Maybe we will have to accept that certain features of the universe are the way they are because of happenstance, accident, or divine choice. – Brian Greene

Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons. – Emile Durkheim

Men-kind shared this world for but a blink, then, sadly, they became enlightened, found science and religion. The new world of men left little room for magic or the magical creatures of old. Earth’s first children were driven into the shadows by flame and cold iron, by man’s insatiable need of conquest. – Brom

Mentor Me: …the crossroads and convergence of where science, metaphysics, religion, and utopian society intersect. – Ken Poirot

Miracles are commonly regarded as occurrences in opposition to the laws of nature. Such a conception is plainly erroneous, for the laws of nature are inviolable. However, as human understanding of these laws is at best but imperfect, events strictly in accordance with natural law may appear contrary thereto. The entire constitution of nature is founded on system and order. – James E. Talmage

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it. – Camille Paglia

Modern science gives lectures on botany, to show there is no such thing as a flower; on humanity, to show there is no such thing as a man; and on theology, to show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a man, but only a mechanism, No such thing as a God, but only a series of forces. – John Ruskin

Modern scientific findings harmonize with revelation through the ages. No conflict exists between the gospel and any truth …. All true principles are a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no principle that we need to fear. – Spencer W. Kimball

More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crises until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. – Lynn Townsend White, Jr.

Mormonism is truth; and every [one] who embraces it feels [oneself] at liberty to embrace every truth: consequently the shackles of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and priestcraft, fall at once from [their] neck; and [their] eyes are opened to see the truth, and truth greatly prevails over priestcraft . . . in other words the doctrine of the Latter-day Saints, is truth. . . . The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of [humans], or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same. – Joseph Smith

Mormons ironically find an unlikely (and surely unwilling) ally in the arch-atheist Richard Dawkins. In his controversial critique of religion, he wrote that: “Any creative intelligence of sufficient complexity to design anything comes into existence only at the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.” Elaborating this point, he said that: “you have to have a gradual slow incremental process [to explain an eye or a brain] and by the very same token, God would have to have the same kind of explanation. … God indeed can’t have just happened. If there are Gods in the universe, they must be the end product of slow incremental processes. If there are beings in the universe that we would treat as Gods, … that we would worship … as gods, then they must have come about by an incremental process, gradually.” – Terryl L. Givens

Most scientists think of science as being a kind of purifying intellectual machinery that leads to honesty, to the withering away of ignorance and wrong ideas, including, provided they are of the atheistic persuasion, those of religion. – Edward O. Wilson

Much of the conflict between science and religion [in the time of Galileo] turns out to have been a conflict between new science and the sanctified science of the previous generation. – John Hedley Brooke

Much scientific truth proved to be as hypothetical as poetic allegory. The relationshiip of those rod-connected blue and red balls to an actual atomic structure was about the same as the relationship of Christianity to the fish or the Lamb. – Tom Robbins

My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations. – Peter William Atkins

My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts (as well as unable to take such a course of action) if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival. In either case, the enterprise of knowledge is consistent with both science and religion, and is essential for the welfare of the human species. – Carl Sagan

My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun? – Wernher von Braun

My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public. – John B. S. Haldane

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. – Albert Einstein

My thesis is that what we call ‘science’ is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from a myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition—that of critically discussing the myth. … In a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is. – Karl Raimund Popper

Natural history is not taught in seminary. This is curious, as most people in pastoral ministry are about 567 times more likely to be asked about cosmology or sub-nuclear physics or human biology or evolution than they are to be asked about irregular Greek verbs or the danger of the patripassionist heresy. If we monotheists are going to go around claiming that our “God made the heaven and the earth,” it is not unreasonable to expect us to know something about what that heaven and earth actually are. – Sarah Maitland

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. … Everything science has taught me—and continues to teach me—strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace. – Wernher von Braun

Neither physical science nor psychology can ever ‘explain’ human consciousness. To me then, human consciousness lies outside science, and it is here that I seek the relationship between God and man. – Sir Nevill F. Mott

[Neo-Darwinism] is a comprehensive, speculative world picture that is reached by extrapolation from some of the discoveries of biology, chemistry, and physics… that postulates a hierarchical relation among the subjects of those sciences, and the completeness in principle of an explanation of everything in the universe through their unification. Such a world view is not a necessary condition of the practice of any of those sciences, and its acceptance or nonacceptance would have no effect on most scientific research. – Thomas Nagel

No doubt it is true that science cannot study God, but it hardly follows that God had to keep a safe distance from everything that scientists want to study. – Phillip E. Johnson

No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy. – Lyman Beecher

No matter how much proponents of ‘intelligent design’ try to clothe their views in the apparel of science, it is what it is: religion. Whose intelligence? Whose design? – Cynthia Tucker

No matter what you say (or write) about the early chapters of Genesis, you are in a lot of trouble with a lot of people. – Richard Averback

None of us deny evolution. We know it and study it with pleasure. Catholic universities do not see anything in evolution to prevent a Christian accepting it, but with the reservation that the great problem of the origin of the world and of the creation of man is the secret of God. The Catholic church accepts what science gives it on condition that science reports facts which can be proved, for it is a fact that there is no scientific truth which can contradict eternal truth. – Monseigneur A. J. V. Piette

Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable–the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars. – Rodney Stark

Nothing can be unworthy of being investigated by man, which was thought worthy of being created by God. – Joseph Henry

Nothing could be more obvious than that the earth is stable and unmoving, and that we are in the center of the universe. Modern Western science takes its beginning from the denial of this common sense axiom. – Daniel J. Boorstin

Now, more than ever, we need people in space… The events of September 11 show us how vulnerable we and our civilization are down here on Earth… So let us use our strength, our awareness of mortality as a civilization, to do something truly lasting and earth-shaking for humanity. Let us join with the peoples and cultures of this planet, the diversities of its perspectives and religions and science, so we can leave it-not behind, but as a springboard to something better. – Paul Levinson

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called; Which some professing have erred concerning faith. Grace be with thee. Amen. – The Bible

Of possible quadruple algebras the one that had seemed to him by far the most beautiful and remarkable was practically identical with quaternions, and that he thought it most interesting that a calculus which so strongly appealed to the human mind by its intrinsic beauty and symmetry should prove to be especially adapted to the study of natural phenomena. The mind of man and that of Nature’s God must work in the same channels. – Benjamin Peirce

On the first page of the Bible there is an instance of how literalism is but an invitation to transcend the image to which literalism points. That first page is not geology, biology or paleontology; it is high religion. For there we are told who we are in terms of our constititutive text. And if we could understand that, we would worrying about whether the antelopes or the cantaloupes came in a certain order. – Joseph Sittler

On the other hand, to limit and insist upon the whole of life and death to this side of Adam’s advent to the earth, some six or eight thousand years ago, as proposed by some, is to fly in the face of the facts so indisputably brought to light by the researcher of science in modern times, and this as set forth by men of the highest type in the intellectual and moral world; not inferior men, or men of sensual and devilish temperament, but men who must be accounted as among the noblest and most self-sacrificing of the sons of men — of the type whence must come the noblest sons of God, since “the glory of God is intelligence” (D&C 93:36); and that too the glory of man. These researchers after truth are of that class. To pay attention to and give reasonable credence to their research and findings is to link the church of God with the highest increase of human thought and effort. On that side lies development, on the other lies contraction. It is on the former side that research work is going on and will continue to go on, future investigation and discoveries will continue on that side, nothing will retard them, and nothing will develop on the other side. One leads to narrow sectarianism, the other keeps the open spirit of a world movement with which our New Dispensation began. As between them which is to be our choice? – B. H. Roberts

On the subject of organic evolution the Church has officially taken no position. The book “Man, His Origin and Destiny” was not published by the Church, and is not approved by the Church. The book contains expressions of the author’s views for which he alone is responsible. – Pres. David O. McKay

One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty. – Joseph Joubert

One man, eager to praise his Creator by uncovering new knowledge about created things, brought about a permanent revolution in agriculture and medicine, as well as in pure science. – Gregor Mendel

One of the great disadvantages of a literary or scriptural tradition like the biblical one is that a deity or context of deities becomes crystallized, petrified at a certain time and place. The deity doesn’t continue to grow, expand, or take into account new cultural forces and new realizations in the sciences, and the result is this make-believe conflict we have in our culture between science and religion. – Joseph Campbell

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have. – Albert Einstein

Only a half-century ago, a Christian speaker, mistrustful of men of science told them: ‘Stop finally, and do not dig to hell.’ Today, gentlemen, reassured about the steadfastness of our unshakeable faith, we say: dig, dig again; the further down you, the closer you come to the great mystery of the impotence of man and truth of religion. So dig, always dig: and when science has stuck its final hammer blow on the bosom of the earth, you will be able to ignite a burst of light, read furthermore the mind of God and contemplate the imprint of His hand. – Louis le Chanoine Rendu

Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. If one’s faith requires one to abandon or ignore natural laws, well, that person is going to have trouble reconciling religion and science. Otherwise, there is no any conflict. – Bill Nye

Our religion embraces chemistry; it embraces all the knowledge of the geologist, and then it goes a little further than their systems of argument, for the Lord almighty, its author, is the greatest chemist there is. – Brigham Young

Our religion will not clash with nor contradict the facts of science in any particular. – Brigham Young

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. – Albert Einstein

Our world will yet grow so subtle that it will be as ludicrous to believe in a god as it is today to believe in ghosts. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Pathology can indeed evoke experiences of Absolute Godliness, but not all God experiences are caused by pathology. They can also occur due to disturbance in the geomagnetic field of our planet, consumption of psychedelics, excruciatingly extreme level of stress during a near- death situation, or ultimately through a natural and healthy procedure of meditation or/and prayer. – Abhijit Naskar

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. – Paul Davies

Perhaps religion provides the justification for wars, but science provides the weapons. – James Rozoff

Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts — between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. – Will Durant

Physics is not religion. If it were, we’d have a much easier time raising money. – Leon M. Lederman

poetry has been able to function quite directly as human interpretation of the raw, loose universe. It is a mixture, if you will, of journalism and metaphysics, or of science and religion. – Annie Dillard

Poetry, mythology, and religion represent the world as man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he gradually comes to discover it. – Joseph Wood Krutch

Politics And Religion Are Obsolete, The Time Has Come For Science And Spirituality. – Vinoba Bhave

Priesthood, Imamhood, Pundithood often come hand in hand with tyranny. – Abhijit Naskar

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. – Thomas Jefferson

Quite surprisingly the majority of religious and spiritual practices actually diminishes your brain’s ability to act out of rage and fear. – Abhijit Naskar

Real atheist is not the one that does not believe in an imaginary big monkey, but the one that gives the imagination more importance than the reality. – Abhijit Naskar

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one’s heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. – Santoka Taneda

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. – Philip K. Dick

Recently I have gone back to church regularly with a new focus to understand as best I can what it is that makes Christianity so vital and powerful in the lives of billions of people today, even though almost 2000 years have passed since the death and resurrection of Christ. Although I suspect I will never fully understand, I now think the answer is very simple: it’s true. God did create the universe about 13.7 billion years ago, and of necessity has involved Himself with His creation ever since. The purpose of this universe is something that only God knows for sure, but it is increasingly clear to modern science that the universe was exquisitely fine-tuned to enable human life. We are somehow critically involved in His purpose. Our job is to sense that purpose as best we can, love one another, and help Him get that job done. – Richard Smalley

Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology. – Vinod Khosla

Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science. – Max Planck

Religion can have psychological and social roles, but in terms of really explaining how things work, science works differently. Science is based on material elements at the core. – Lisa Randall

Religion cannot object to science on moral grounds. The history of religious intolerance forbids it. – Isaac Asimov

Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. – Peter William Atkins

Religion deals with beliefs and faith, but science deals with truth and facts. – Debasish Mridha M.D.

Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas—of those assumed cognitions which it could not substantiate. In the mean time, Science substituted for the personalities to which Religion ascribed phenomena certain metaphysical entities; and in doing this it trespassed on the province of religion; since it classed among the things which it comprehended certain forms of the incomprehensible. – Herbert Spencer

Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard—or try to turn back—the measurable advances that we have made. – Christopher Hitchens

Religion makes people kill each other. Science supplies them with weapons. – Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances. – Leo Tolstoy

Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development. – Alfred North Whitehead

Religion, in contrast to science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the prospect of resolution and elucidation. – Peter William Atkins

Religion: A lot of fanciful ideas inspired by wishful thinking. Science: A lot of logical ideas based on the best evidence available. Which should we have faith in? – David Alan Harvey

Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. … near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry. – Carl Sagan

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions. – Oscar Wilde

Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on its subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain. – John Tyndall

Religious leaders and men of science have the same ideals; they want to understand and explain the universe of which they are part; they both earnestly desire to solve, if a solution be ever possible, that great riddle: Why are we here? – Sir Arthur Keith

Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought. – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Science … in other words, knowledge is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then religion would mean ignorance. But it is often the antagonist of school-divinity. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science and faith have discovered a common territory which they possess, not as rivals, but as allies. … Thus the most alarming intellectual conflict of the last generation has already become of merely historical interest to the thought of to-day. – F. G. Peabody

Science and politics become the hobby of, and are cherished only by, the elect few; but religion becomes, through education, the property of all, without reference to station, age, and sex. – Samuel Mayer

Science and technology has tried to offer an alternative to religion by making a god out of human reason, but that didn’t work out too well. – Thomas Keating

Science and Truth are simple phenomenon of nature, but it is the known that is preventing us from mastering the unknown. – Chandrakanth Natekar

Science boasts of the distance of its stars; of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it has to speak. But poetry and religion always insist upon the proximity, the almost menacing closeness of the things with which they are concerned. Always the Kingdom of Heaven is “At Hand.” – G. K. Chesterton

Science can be the religion of the nonreligious, the poetry of the non-poet, the art of the man who cannot paint, the humor of the serious man, and the lovemaking of the inhibited and shy man. Not only does science begin in wonder; it also ends in wonder. – Abraham Harold Maslow

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor—but they have few followers now. – Arthur C. Clarke

Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again. – Marilynne Robinson

Science can have a purifying effect on religion, freeing it from beliefs of a pre-scientific age and helping us to a truer conception of God. At the same time, I am far from believing that science will ever give us the answers to all our questions. – Nevill Mott

Science can have no quarrel with a religion which postulates a God to whom men are His children. – Arthur Compton

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary. – Albert Einstein

Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish… We need each other to be what we must be, what we are called to be. – Pope John Paul II

Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Science develops best when its concepts and conclusions are integrated into the broader human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value. Scientists cannot, therefore, hold themselves entirely aloof from the sorts of issues dealt with by philosophers and theologians. By devoting to these issues something of the energy and care they give to their research in science, they can help others realize more fully the human potentialities of their discoveries. They can also come to appreciate for themselves that these discoveries cannot be a genuine substitute for knowledge of the truly ultimate. – Pope John Paul II

Science does not need religion. Religion does not need science. And the twain shall never meet. – Bangambiki Habyarimana

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common. – Lawrence Wright

Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. – Martin Luther

Science has faith. We make postulates. We can’t prove those postulates, but we have faith in them. – Charles H. Townes

Science has nothing in common with religion. Facts and miracles never did and never will agree. – Robert Green Ingersoll

Science has penetrated the constitution of nature, and unrolled the mysterious pages of its history, and started again many, as yet, unanswered questions in respect to the mutual relations of matter and spirit, of nature and of God. – Noah Porter

Science has the cold facts, but lacks religion’s social organization and ability to inspire that moves people to act. – Ann Druyan

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Science makes major contributions to minor needs. Religion, however small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter most. – Justice Oliver W. Holmes

Science may eventually explain the world of How. The ultimate world of Why may remain for contemplation, philosophy, religion. – Liberty Hyde Bailey

Science only answers ‘How?’ Religion only answers ‘Why?’ The two combined is the true design, So respect to God cause He drew the lines. – Amir Mohamed

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in. – Stephen W. Hawking

Science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion. – Bill Nye

Science provides tangible evidence of its accuracy and importance. Religion makes excuses for its absence of the same. – PZ Myers

Science recognizes no personal powers in the universe responsive to the prayers and needs of men. Belief in mysterious powers which constitutes, according to our definition, the conceptual aspect of religion is usually an animistic belief in personal powers. Science in effect denies the existence of spiritual beings which religion affirms. – Clifford Kirkpatrick

Science requires faith, the way religion does. Science requires acceptance of metaphor, just the way religion does. “Does science cause wars, the way religion does?” you might ask. I would say those conflicts are actually about territory, either ideological or physical, and that those ideas are materialistic in the same way science is—and the weapons with which those wars are fought, who creates those? – Russell Brand

Science reveals the beauty and harmony of the world material; it unveils to us ten thousand mysteries in the kingdom of nature, and shows that all forms of life through fire and analogous decay are returned again to its bosom. It unfolds to us the mysteries of cloud and rains, dew and frost, growth and decay, and reveals the operation of those silent irresistible forces which give vitality to the world. It reveals to us the more wonderful operations of distant orbs and their relations to the forces of nature. It also reveals another grand principle, that the laws of nature are immutable and unchangeable as are all the works of God. – John Taylor

Science should be taught not in order to support religion and not in order to destroy religion. Science should be taught simply ignoring religion. – Steven Weinberg

Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. – Stephen Jay Gould

Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. – Jonathan Sacks

Science teaches you to open your eyes and appreciate the reality around you. Religion teaches you to close your eyes and cling to the fantasy within you. – David Alan Harvey

Science tells us what storms are in the sky and when and where they will descend upon our continent, and nobody now thinks of praying for rain or fair weather. – Frederick Douglass

Science without religion is dangerous because it necessarily entails a mechanization of humanity and consequent loss of individual autonomy and spirituality. On the other hand, religion without science is powerless because it lacks an effective means through which to actualize the ultimate reality. Science and religion must work together harmoniously. – Masao Abe

Science, above all, respects the power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect and the consummation of the Renaissance. Science respects more deeply the potential of humanity than religion ever can. – Peter William Atkins

Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. – Gregory Bateson

Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement. – B. F. Skinner

Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Science, philosophy, religion and art are forms of knowledge. The method of science is experiment; the method of philosophy is speculation; the method of religion and art is moral or esthetic emotional inspiration. – Peter Demianovich Ouspensky

Science, the system of belief founded securely on publicly shared reproducible knowledge, emerged from religion. As science discarded its chrysalis to become its present butterfly, it took over the heath. There is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence. Only the religious—among whom I include not only the prejudiced but the uninformed—hope there is a dark corner of the physical universe, or of the universe of experience, that science can never hope to illuminate. But science has never encountered a barrier, and the only grounds for supposing that reductionism will fail are pessimism on the part of scientists and fear in the minds of the religious. – Peter William Atkins

SCIENCE: a way of finding things out and then making them work. Science explains what is happening around us the whole time. So does RELIGION, but science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when it’s wrong. – Terry Pratchett

Scientific People, unscientific mind; why are we dividing the world which could shine? Between religion and science, all what matters is human lives. – Santosh Kalwar

Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion. – Michael Shermer

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and survey things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. – Albert Einstein

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being. – Albert Einstein

Scientific studies have strengthened my faith, strengthened it indeed to an extent that no study besides could have effected. – Thomas Meehan

Scientists have practical reasons for wishing that religion and science be kept separate. They can see nothing but trouble … if they venture into the deeply divisive issue of religion – especially when their results tend to support a highly unpopular, atheistic conclusion. – Victor J. Stenger

Scientists [still] refuse to consider man as an object of scientific scrutiny except through his body. The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe—even a positivist one—remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Selfishness from earth to hereafter: Thy pray and struggle, same by thee. Because life committed selfishness in living with the Democracy. – Deh Gel

Should a priest reject relativity because it contains no authoritative exposition on the doctrine of the Trinity? Once you realize that the Bible does not purport to be a textbook of science, the old controversy between religion and science vanishes . . . The doctrine of the Trinity is much more abstruse than anything in relativity or quantum mechanics; but, being necessary for salvation, the doctrine is stated in the Bible. If the theory of relativity had also been necessary for salvation, it would have been revealed to Saint Paul or to Moses. – Georges Lemaitre

Simple molecules combine to make powerful chemicals. Simple cells combine to make powerful life-forms. Simple electronics combine to make powerful computers. Logically, all things are created by a combination of simpler, less capable components. Therefore, a supreme being must be in our future, not our origin. What if “God” is the consciousness that will be created when enough of us are connected by the Internet?!! – Scott Adams

Since as the Creation is, so is the Creator also magnified, we may conclude in consequence of an infinity, and an infinite all-active power, that as the visible creation is supposed to be full of sidereal systems and planetary worlds, so … the endless immensity is an unlimited plenum of creations, not unlike the known universe. – Thomas Wright

Since science and religion provide two different perspectives on the human situation, they must ultimately be able to be reconciled. – Jeremy Griffith

Since the beginning of time, spirituality and religion have been called to fill in the gaps that science did not understand. – Dan Brown

Since the Gospel embraces all truth, there can never be any genuine contradictions between true science and true religion…. I am obliged, as a Latter-day Saint, to believe whatever is true, regardless of the source. – Henry Eyring

Since this is the age of science, not religion, psychiatrists are our rabbis, heroin is our pork, and the addict is the unclean person. – Thomas Szasz

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense. – Carl Sagan

So I hold out my arms to my Redeemer, who, having been foretold for four thousand years, has come to suffer and to die for me on earth, at the time and under all the circumstances foretold. By His grace, I await death in peace, in the hope of being eternally united to Him. Yet I live with joy, whether in the prosperity which it pleases Him to bestow upon me, or in the adversity which He sends for my good, and which He has taught me to bear by His example. – Blaise Pascal

So long as we do not permit faith to override our rational powers we should use those talents to explore the frontiers which lie at the outer limits of scientific observation. – Robert Christian

So then Gravity may put ye Planets into Motion, but without ye divine Power it could never put them into such a Circulating Motion as they have about ye Sun; & therefore, for this, as well as other Reasons, I am compelled to ascribe ye Frame of this Systeme to an intelligent agent. – Sir Isaac Newton

Sociobiology is not just any statement that biology, genetics, and evolutionary theory have something to do with human behavior. Sociobiology is a specific theory about the nature of genetic and evolutionary input into human behavior. It rests upon the view that natural selection is a virtually omnipotent architect, constructing organisms part by part as best solutions to problems of life in local environments. It fragments organisms into “traits,” explains their existence as a set of best solutions, and argues that each trait is a product of natural selection operating “for” the form or behavior in question. Applied to humans, it must view specific behaviors (not just general potentials) as adaptations built by natural selection and rooted in genetic determinants, for natural selection is a theory of genetic change. Thus, we are presented with unproved and unprovable speculations about the adaptive and genetic basis of specific human behaviors: why some (or all) people are aggressive, xenophobic, religious, acquisitive, or homosexual. – Stephen Jay Gould

Some of my friends like to keep science and religion together, but I certainly like to keep them separate. – Freeman Dyson

Some things mankind can finish and be done with, but not … science, that persists, and changes from ancient Chaldeans studying the stars to a new telescope with a 200-inch reflector and beyond; not religion, that persists, and changes from old credulities and world views to new thoughts of God and larger apprehensions of his meaning. – Harry Emerson Fosdick

Some treat science as if it were a sort of infallible oracle, like a divine revelation–or if not infallible, at any rate such that when it comes to fixing belief, science is the court of last appeal. But this can’t be right… science doesn’t address the topics where we most need enlightenment: religion, politics, and morals, for example. Many look to scientists for guidance on matters outside of science, matters on which scientists have no special expertise. They apparently think of scientists as the new priestly class; unsurprisingly, scientists don’t ordinarily discourage this tendency. But of course a scientist pontificating on matters outside her field is no better than anyone else pontificating on matters outside her field. – Alvin Plantinga

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking. – Peter William Atkins

Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking. Would not that same uncluttered mind also see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion? – Peter Atkins

Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. ‘I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day’. In a public talk on science and religion he said: The book of nature which we have to read is written by the finger of God. – Michael Faraday, When asked about his belief in the afterlife he quoted the Bible (2 Timothy 1:12):

Talking through tough social issues — such as cloning — as Lutherans, as Christians, as church, means respectful, yet zealous dialogue rooted in shared faith. God is active in all realms of life – the scientific, the social, the political. God cares for creation, orders society, seeks justice, and draws us out of our individual lives to engage the world. – Margaret McLean

That so many manage to accommodate belief systems encompassing both the natural and the supernatural is a testament not to the compatibility of science and religion but to the flexibility, in both the physical and metaphysical senses, of the human brain. – Susan Jacoby

The accumulated body of scientific knowledge can tell us all about the canvas, oils, and minerals that combine to make a work of art, but they cannot tell us why it takes our breath away. – Mike Cosper

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely fictitious fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance. – Thomas Huxley

The atheist movement declares religion to be an arbitrary illusion—devised by power-hungry priests—for the pious belief in a higher Power over us. At this point, it is not surprising that the atheist movement describes religion with only words of mockery. The atheist movement eagerly makes use of the advance of scientific knowledge. In apparent unity with the progress of science, atheism accelerates its subverting action on the peoples of earth in all social classes. In short, after a victory by atheism, not only all the most precious wealth of our culture would topple, but—what is worse—the prospects for a better future also fade. – Max Planck

The belief in the immortality of the human soul is a dogma which is in hopeless contradiction with the most solid empirical truths of modern science. – Ernst Haeckel

The Bible is a book of Science. Secular Humanism is a religion of mythology. – Michael J. Findley

The Bible is true and science is true, and therefore each, if truly read, but proves the truth of the other. – Matthew Maury

The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs—and equally compatible with atheism. – Galileo Galilei

The Catholic Church excommunicated Copernicans, the Communist Party persecuted Mendelians on the ground that their doctrines were pseudoscientific. The demarcation between science and pseudoscience is not merely a problem of armchair philosophy: it is of vital social and political relevance. – Imre Lakatos

The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics. – Johannes Kepler

The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of a Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed men. And so Christ’s words from the cross are written in sharp-edged terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: ‘They know not what they do’. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. – Mark Twain

The Church worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch – the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. – Mark Twain

The Church, the custodian of the gospel on earth, looks with full favor upon the attempts of men to search out the facts and laws of nature. It believes that men of science, seekers after truth, are often assisted by the Spirit of the Lord in such researches. It holds further that every scientific discovery may be incorporated into the gospel, and that, therefore there can be no conflict between true religion and correct science. The Church teaches that the laws of nature are but the immutable laws of the Creator of the universe. – John A. Widtsoe

The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality. – Alan Watts

The combination in time and space of all these thoughtful conceptions [of Nature] exhibits not only thought, it shows also premeditation, power, wisdom, greatness, prescience, omniscience, providence. In one word, all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know, adore, and love; and Natural History must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe…. – Louis Agassiz

The common belief that… the actual relations between religion and science over the last few centuries have been marked by deep and enduring hostility… is not only historically inaccurate, but actually a caricature so grotesque that what needs to be explained is how it could possibly have achieved any degree of respectability. – Colin Archibald Russell

The conclusion forced upon me in the course of a life devoted to natural science is that the universe as it is assumed to be in physical science is only an idealized world, while the real universe is the spiritual universe in which spiritual values count for everything. – J.B.S. Haldane

The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science. – Sam Harris

The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that ‘this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point’; over the alternative and the one he denies, ‘God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.’ The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one’s inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, ‘the logical one’, the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself – I do not think it wise to be angry at math. – Criss Jami

The declaration that science is the only arbiter of truth is not itself a scientific finding. It is a belief. – Timothy Keller

The Devil: Reformers … will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me ; then it will drive you from religion into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it accidentally. – George Bernard Shaw

The difference between religion and science is the difference between thoughtless certainty and thoughtful doubt. – Kedar Joshi

The difference between science and religion is that the former wishes to get rid of mysteries whereas the latter worships them. – Sidney Hook

The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments , and a passionate unwillingness to do so. – Sam Harris

The different religions confused me. Which was the right one? I tried to figure it out but had no success. It worried me. The different Gods – Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Mohammedan – seemed very particular in the way in which they expected me to keep on good terms with them. I couldn’t please one without offending the others. One kind soul solved my problem by taking me on my first trip to the planetarium. I contemplated the insignificant flyspeck called Earth, the millions of suns and solar systems, and concluded that whoever was in charge of all this would not throw a fit if I ate ham, or meat on Friday, or did not fast in the daytime during Ramadan. I felt much better after this and was, for a while, keenly interested in astronomy. – Richard Erdoes

The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology. – Northrop Frye

The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. – Adolf Hitler

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. – Mark Twain

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother’s milk. – H. L. Mencken

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms… The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma. – Frans de Waal

The enemy of science is not religion… . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma. – Frans de Waal

The entire cosmos is made out of one and the same world-stuff, operated by the same energy as we ourselves. “Mind” and “matter” appears as two aspects of our unitary mind-bodies. There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity. – Sir Julian Huxley

The essence of God’s creative action is the giving of being to a highly capable universe that is called to effect the Creator’s intentions for its actions. – Howard J. Van Till

The essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal. – Winwood Reade

The existence of trousers proves that God meant us to be bipeds. – David Austin

The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine. – Vera Kistiakowsky

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. – Harry Emerson Fosdick

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties – this knowledge, this feeling . . . that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men. – Albert Einstein

The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you. (this quote is attributed to Heisenberg, but some have questioned it’s authenticity) – Werner Heisenberg

The first important quarrel of this sort arose over the advancing by Copernicus of his theory that the earth, instead of being a flat plane and the center of the universe, was actually only one of a number of little planets, rotating once a day upon its axis and circling once a year about the sun. Copernicus was a priest – the canon of a cathedral – and he was primarily a religious rather than a scientific man. He knew that the foundations of real religion are not laid where scientific discoveries of any kind can disturb them. He was persecuted, not because he went against the teachings of religion but because under his theory man was not the center of the universe and this was most displeasing news to a number of egoists. – Robert Andrews Millikan

The fundamental characteristic of the scientific method is honesty. In dealing with any question, science asks no favors. … I believe that constant use of the scientific method must in the end leave its impress upon him who uses it. … A life spent in accordance with scientific teachings would be of a high order. It would practically conform to the teachings of the highest types of religion. The motives would be different, but so far as conduct is concerned the results would be practically identical. – Ira Remsen

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. – Albert Einstein

The general emphasis on God’s absolute power that was fostered by the Condemnation of 1277 encouraged many not only to take seriously the possibility that God could create other worlds than our own but to assume that he had actually done so. – Edward Grant

The Goal of Science is understanding lawful relations among natural phenomena. Religion is a way of life within a larger framework of meaning. – Ian Barbour

The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. – William James

The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. – Thomas Huxley

The greatest spiritual revolutionary Western history, Saint Francis, proposed what he thought was an alternative Christian view of nature and man’s relation to it: he tried to substitute the idea of the equality of creatures, including man, for the idea of man’s limitless rule of creation. He failed. Both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature that no solution for our ecologic crisis can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and refeel our nature and destiny. The profoundly religious, but heretical, sense of the primitive Franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point a direction. I propose Francis as a patron saint for ecologists. – Lynn T. White, Jr.

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. – Blaise Pascal

The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations. If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind . . . it is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way. – Albert Einstein

The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy. – William Beveridge

The humanistic moral values of secularism are not the deliverances of scientific reasoning, but have come down to us from older times . . . they have a theological history. And modern people hold them by faith alone. – Timothy Keller

The idea that the religion of Christ is one thing, and science is another, is a mistaken idea, for there is no true religion without true science, and consequently there is no true science without true religion. – Brigham Young

The ideas of the moral order and of God belong to the ineradicable substrate of the human soul. – C.G. Jung, Dreams

The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God. – Charles Darwin

The impossibility of real science and real religion ever conflicting becomes evident when one examines the purpose of science and the purpose of religion. The purpose of science is to develop – without prejudice or preconception of any kind – a knowledge of the facts, the laws and the processes of nature. The even more important task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the consciences, the ideals and the aspirations of mankind. – Robert Andrews Millikan

The invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that. – Douglas Noel Adams

The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. – Albert Einstein

The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of his imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases. What he is to imagine is a matter for his own caprice; he is not thereby discovering the fundamental principles of the universe nor becoming acquainted with the ideas of God. If he can find, in experience, sets of entities which obey the same logical scheme as his mathematical entities, then he has applied his mathematics to the external world; he has created a branch of science. – Antoine-Thomson d’ Abbadie

The methodological conflicts between science and religion cannot be brokered, for faith has no reliable way to find truth. – Jerry Coyne

The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. – Wilfred Trotter

The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence. The phenomena of matter and force lie within our intellectual range, and as far as they reach we will at all hazards push our inquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of this universe [Who made it all?] lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution. – John Tyndall

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God. – Louis Pasteur

The more we know about this universe, the more mysterious it is. The old world that Job knew was marvelous enough, and his description of its wonders is among the noblest poetry of the race, but today the new science has opened to our eyes vistas of mystery that transcend in their inexplicable marvel anything the ancients ever dreamed. – Harry Emerson Fosdick

The more we learn of science, the more we see that its wonderful mysteries are all explained by a few simple laws so connected together and so dependent upon each other, that we see the same mind animating them all. – Olympia Brown

The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things. – Richard Dawkins

The most beautiful and profound experience for a person is the feeling of the mysterious. It underlies religion and all deeper endeavors in art and science. Anyone who has not experienced this appears to me, if not like a dead man, at least like a blind man. To feel that behind the perceptible is hidden something that is incomprehensible, whose beauty and grandeur only reach us indirectly and in a dim reflection—that is religiousness. In that sense I am religious. It is enough for me to sense these secrets with wonder and to try to humbly grasp a faint image of the majestic structure of all things. – Albert Einstein

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men. – Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. – Albert Einstein

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’. – Isaac Asimov

The most important component of the incompatibility between science and religion is religion’s dependence on faith. – Jerry Coyne

The mystery of life is certainly the most persistent problem ever placed before the thought of man. There is no doubt that from the time humanity began to think it has occupied itself with the problem of its origin and its future which undoubtedly is the problem of life. The inability of science to solve it is absolute. This would be truly frightening were it not for faith. – Guglielmo Marconi

The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. – Carl Sagan

The old prophets filled our imaginations with gods and commandments and holy scriptures, with glowing descriptions of life in Heaven and among the stars. Because of them, we are on our way there. Perhaps that has been their intention all along. – Suzanne Olsson

The older I get, the more I realize that religion is not going to be easily marginalized by one of its wannabe successors – science, capitalism, consumerism. – Bruce Feiler

The only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it’s comprehensible. – Albert Einstein

The only way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something which is not science and something that is not religion. – H. L. Mencken

The origin of life whether human or inferior, must be lodged in some character whom I have not seen! Follow it back, no matter whether it be for six thousand years, six millions, six million millions, or billions of years, the figures and numbers are immaterial, I must have come from some source, my natural philosophy teaches me this. But, leaving the natural philosophy of the child free from false tradition, let us inquire. What does the philosophy of the Christian sects, or many of them, not all, teach? “God made the world in six days, out of nothing!” This is very wrong; no child should be taught any such dogma. God never did make a world out of nothing; He never will, He never can! – Brigham Young

The person who thinks there can be any real conflict between science and religion must be either very young in science or very ignorant in religion. – Joseph Henry

The political and intellectual orders remain permanently distinct from the spiritual. They follow their own ends, they obey their own laws, and in doing so they support the cause of religion by the discovery of truth and the upholding of right. They render this service by fulfilling their own ends independently and unrestrictedly, not by surrendering them for the sake of spiritual interests. Whatever diverts government and science from their own spheres, or leads religion to usurp their domains, confounds distinct authorities, and imperils not only political right and scientific truths, but also the cause of faith and morals. A government that, for the interests of religion, disregards political right, and a science that, for the sake of protecting faith, wavers and dissembles in the pursuit of knowledge, are instruments at least as well adapted to serve the cause of falsehood as to combat it, and never can be used in furtherance of the truth without that treachery to principle which is a sacrifice too costly to be made for the service of any interest whatever. – John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

The pressing need of the age is a system of religion that can recognize, at the same time, the truths of demonstrated science and the doctrines found in the pages of sacred writ, and can show that perfect harmony exists between the works and words of the Creator; a religion that will reach both the head and the heart–that is, will both the intellect and the conscience… Nothing short of this can satisfy the demands of this age of independent investigation and research, when men are not satisfied to take, unquestioned, the opinions of uninspired, self-constituted ministers or priests. – Millennial Star

The problem is not religion or God. The actual problem is authoritarianism, mixed with the desire to angrily impose one’s personal apparently idealistic beliefs on others. – Abhijit Naskar

The problem is that people think faith is something to be admired. In fact, faith means you believe in something for which you have no evidence. – Victor J. Stenger

The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the laws, and the processes of nature. The even more important task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. – Robert Andrews Millikan

The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed. – Charles Darwin

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. – Walter Lippmann

The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God’s empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The religious right around the world has made embryonic stem cell research the surrogate battle between religion and science. – Robert N. Klein II

The Royal Society is quite simply the voice of science in Britain. It is intellectually rigorous, not afraid to be outspoken on controversial issues such as climate change, but it is not aggressively secular either, insisting on a single view of the world. In fact, there are plenty of eminent scientists – Robert Winston, for instance – who are also men of faith. – Bill Bryson

The same spiritual fulfillment that people find in religion can be found in science by coming to know, if you will, the mind of God. – Carolyn Porco

The science of a religious man must be scientific; the religion of a scientific man must be religious. – Fulton J. Sheen

The science of geography will then be extended to millions of worlds, and will embrace a knowledge of their physical features and boundaries, their resources, mineral and vegetable; their rivers, lakes, seas, continents and islands; the attainments of their inhabitants in the science of government; their progress in revealed religion; their employments, dress, manners, customs, etc. The science of astronomy will also be enlarged in proportion to the means of knowledge. System after system will rise to view in the vast field of research and exploration! Vast systems of suns and their attendant worlds, on which the eyes of Adam’s race, in their rudimental sphere, have never gazed, will then be contemplated, circumscribed, weighed in the balance of human thought, their circumference and diameter be ascertained, their relative distances understood. Their motions and revolutions, their times and laws, their hours, days, weeks, sabbaths, months, years, jubilees, centuries, millenniums and eternities, will all be told in the volumes of science. – Parley P. Pratt

The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable. – Thomas Henry Huxley

The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake. – H. L. Mencken

The scientist will find in theology a unifying principal more fundamental than the grandest unified field theory. The theologian will encounter in science’s account of the pattern and structure of the physical world a reality which calls forth his admiration and wonder. – John Polkinghorne

The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism. – Martin Rees

The Senegalese conservationist Baba Dioum can summarize: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” – Ursula Goodenough

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. – Henry Schaefer

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive … but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born. – Mark Twain

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. – Henry Ward Beecher

The split between religion and science is relatively new. Isaac Newton, who first worked out the laws by which gravity held the planets and even the stars in their traces, was sufficiently impressed by the scale and regularity of the universe to ascribe it all to God. – Seth Shostak

The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter… – James Jean

The study of science is the study of something eternal. If we study astronomy, we study the works of God. If we study chemistry, geology, optics, or any other branch of science, every new truth we come to the understanding of is eternal; it is a part of the great system of universal truth. It is truth that exists throughout universal nature; and God is the dispenser of all truth. – Orson Pratt

The Sun Stone, the famous Aztec calendar, is unquestionably a perfect summary of science, philosophy, art and religion. – Samael Aun Weor

The task of science, therefore, is not to attack the objects of faith, but to establish the limits beyond which knowledge cannot go and found a unified self-consciousness within these limits. – Rudolf Virchow

The techniques and criteria of religion and science are so extraordinarily different. Science seeks simplicity publicly and encourages the overthrow of authority; religion accepts complexity privately and encourages deference to authority. – Peter William Atkins

The terror of the thunderstorm led primitive man to the conception of a Supreme Being whose attribute was the thunderbolt. But when Franklin brought the lightning from the clouds and showed it to he a mere electric spark, when we learned to make the lightning harmless by the lightning-rod, and when finally we harnessed electricity to do our work, naturally our reverence for the thrower of the thunderbolt decayed. So the gods of experience vanished. – Charles Proteus Steinmetz

The time of creation has ever been a subject of much comment and dispute. Yet I challenge anybody to produce from the Bible itself any finite limitation whatsoever of the periods of creation. By strained inferential references and interpretations men have sought to set the time in days or periods of a thousand years, but I feel sure that no justification of such limitations is warranted by the scriptures themselves. If the evolutionary hypothesis of the creation of life and matter in the universe is ultimately found to be correct, and I shall neither be disappointed nor displeased if it shall turn out so to be, in my humble opinion the Biblical account is sufficiently comprehensive to include the whole of the process. – Stephen L. Richards

The true contrast between science and religion is that science unites the world and makes it possible for people of widely differing backgrounds to work together and to cooperate. Religion, on the other hand, by its very claim to know “The Truth” through “revelation,” is inherently divisive and a creator of separatism and hostility. – Hermann Bondi

The true contrast between science and religion is that science unites the world and makes it possible for people of widely differing backgrounds to work together and to cooperate. Religion, on the other hand, by its very claim to know “The Truth” through “revelation,” is inherently divisive and a creator of separatism and hostility. – Sir Hermann Bondi

The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness; to him who does, infinity. – John Ruskin

The universe is merely a fleeting idea in God’s mind—a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you’ve just made a down payment on a house. – Woody Allen

The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose. – Bill Bryson

The universe is reeking with organic matter. You could say that the universe is in the business of making life—or that God is an organic chemist. – Cyril Ponnamperuma

The Universe revealed by science is one of far more awesome grandeur than any religion has ever posited. – Ann Druyan

The Universe; This great work, always more amazing in proportion as it is better known, raises in us so grand an idea of its Maker, that we find our mind overwhelmed with feelings of wonder and adoration. – Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

The very idea that there is some kind of conflict between science and religion is completely mistaken. Science is a method for investigating experience… Religion is the fundamental, necessary internalization of our system of more permanent values. – Carroll Quigle

The way in which science and religion by and large complement each other is becoming ever clearer, as are the natures of the various points of tension between them and some possible resolutions of those tensions. – George F. R. Ellis

The whole thing is so much bigger than I am, and I can’t understand it, so I just trust myself to it; and forget about it. – Edwin Powell Hubble

The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms. – John B. S. Haldane

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses. – Albert Einstein

The world will not change by our position in the Universe. Actions change when beliefs change; collective actions and beliefs change the world. – Matthew A. Petti

The worship of God is not a rule of safety — it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure. – Alfred North Whitehead

The “conflict” between the fundamental realities of Religion and the established facts of Science, is seen to be unreal as soon as Religion and Science each recognises the true borders of its dominion. – Joseph Hertz

Theology differs from science in many respects, because of its different subject matter, a personal God who cannot be put to the test in the way that the impersonal physical world can be subjected to experimental enquiry. Yet science and theology have this in common, that each can be, and should be defended as being investigations of what is, the search for increasing verisimilitude in our understanding of reality. – John Polkinghorne

THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. – Ambrose Bierce

There are (or is) indeed no contradiction between science and religion, the fields of which are different, and which, far from mutually fighting and persecute, must, on the contrary, complete each other. – African Spir

There are large numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God, ranging from an abstract humanist God to a very concrete Catholic or Mormon God. There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God. – Kip S. Thorne

There are lots of things, of course, that science does not know, but to me the saddest thing I see is people who feel that science threatens them religiously. It could not possibly threaten us religiously, because the same God who ‘made’ our religion, that same God is making the universe. Science might threaten our understanding of religion. I am not doubting that – that some of us, including me, have such a faulty understanding of our religion that almost anything might threaten it. But the thing that is important about that is if we want to influence our sons and daughters, we must get our religion in the kind of shape that it cannot be threatened by anything that science discovers or does not discover. – Henry Eyring

There are trillions of cells in our body, and no cell claims to be the boss. All the cells have ways to communicate with each other, and the reality of no-self can be found in the way our bodies function. When neuroscientists look into our brain they see so many neurons, and they say it’s like an orchestra without a conductor. The neurons communicate with each other and a decision is made not by one neuron but by all together. The decision is made based on former experiences. Continuation is possible, and that doesn’t need a permanent separate self. It’s wonderful to notice that in the twenty-first century Buddhism and science can go together and support each other in the practice. – Thich Nhat Hanh

There are, it is true, other things in religion chronologically more primordial than personal devoutness in the moral sense. Fetishism and magic seem to have preceded inward piety historically—at least our records of inward piety do not reach back so far. And if fetishism and magic be regarded as stages of religion, one may say that personal religion in the inward sense and the genuinely spiritual ecclesiasticisms which it founds are phenomena of secondary or even tertiary order. But, quite apart from the fact that many anthropologists—for instance, Jevons and Frazer —expressly oppose “religion” and “magic” to each other, it is certain that the whole system of thought which leads to magic, fetishism, and the lower superstitions may just as well be called primitive science as called primitive religion. – William James

There can be no real conflict between the two Books of the Great Author. Both are revelations made by Him to man,—the earlier telling of God-made harmonies coming up from the deep past, and rising to their height when man appeared, the later teaching man’s relations to his Maker, and speaking of loftier harmonies in the eternal future. – James Dwight Dana

There can be no scientific dispute with respect to faith, for science and faith exclude one another. – Rudolf Virchow

There can be no scientific foundation of religion, and belief must always remain the foundation of religion, while that of science is logical reasoning from facts, that is, sense perceptions; and all that we can say is, that the two, science and religion, are not necessarily incompatible, but are different and unrelated activities of the human mind. – Charles Proteus Steinmetz

There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls. – Max Planck

There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment. – P. D. James

There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers, and want others to do the same. – Abhijit Naskar

There has been the conflict between science and religion. Science was the interpretation from the past that is considered today as hermeneutics, but the conflict concerns the experimental science. If we ask the scientists what is the science, they will not have a correct answer. Because they are so concerned with this issue that they can also be far from it. It is said that “human knows more than what he says”. This indicates the existence of the implicit knowledge in the humans. The essence of science is ambiguous. – Khosrow Bagheri

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works. – Stephen Hawking

There is abundant evidence that the Bible, though written by men, is not the product of the human mind. By countless multitudes it has always been revered as a communication to us from the Creator of the Universe. – Sir Ambrose Fleming

There is always a pressure to separate the Bible from science and to separate the Christian religion from things material. – Walter Lang

There is at least as much mystery in science for the modern man as there ever was in religion; in a sense there is more mystery, for the logic of science is still altogether beyond his understanding, whereas the logic of revelation is the logic of his own feelings. – Walter Lippmann

There is more religion in men’s science than there is science in their religion. – Henry Thoreau

There is no conflict between science and religion. Conflict only arises from an incomplete knowledge of either science or religion, or both. – Russell M. Nelson

There is no contradiction between true religion and science. – Abdu’l-Bahá

There is no harm in attempting to resolve apparently conflicting points of view [speaking of science and religion], providing one is not taken in by one’s own sophistry. There are a few good ways in which good people do more harm to those who take them seriously than to defend the gospel with arguments that won’t hold water. Many of the difficulties encountered by young people going to college would be avoided if parents and teachers were more creful to distinguish between what they know to be true and what they think may be true. Impetuous youth, upon finding the authority it trusts crumbling, even on unimportant details, is apt to lump everything together and throw the baby out with the bath. – Henry Eyring

There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.” – Robert Green Ingersoll

There is nothing which Nature so clearly reveals, and upon which science so strongly insists, as the universal reign of law, absolute, universal, invariable law… Not one jot or tittle of the laws of Nature are unfulfilled. I do not believe it is possible to state this fact too strongly… Everything happens according to law, and, since law is the expression of Divine will, everything happens according to Divine will, i.e. is in some sense ordained, decreed. – Joseph LeConte

There is some conflict between religion and science in my world, but that’s nothing new. Science, at its root, is a rational discipline. Religion, on the other hand, is fundamentally trans-rational. Both of them attempt to solve problems, but since their methodology is vastly different, they can’t help but come into conflict. – Patrick Rothfuss

There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism. – Alvin Plantinga

There isn’t anything to worry about between science and religion, because the contradictions are just in your own mind. Of course they are there, but they are not in the Lord’s mind because He made the whole thing, so there is a way, if we are smart enough, to understand them so that we will not have any contradictions. – Henry J. Eyring

There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

There may be some deep questions about the cosmos that are forever beyond science. The mistake is to think they are therefore not beyond religion too. – Richard Dawkins

There was no need for a term like ‘magical thinking’ in the Golden Age of Man…there was only genuine everyday magic and mysticism. Children were not mocked or scolded in those days for singing to the rain or talking to the wind. – Anthon St. Maarten

There will be no true freedom without virtue, no true science without religion, no true industry without the fear of God and love to your fellow citizens. – Charles Kingsley

There will come a time when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the name of science as they now do the burning at the stake in the name of religion. – Henry Jacob Bigelow

There’s a good part of Computer Science that’s like magic. Unfortunately there’s a bad part of Computer Science that’s like religion. – Hal Abelson

There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It … teaches us how to run all our public policy. – Paul Broun

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. – Francis Bacon

This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler. – Isaac Newton

This clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion. – G.K. Chesterton

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being…This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler. – Isaac Newton

This much I can say with definiteness – namely, that there is no scientific basis for the denial of religion – nor is there in my judgment any excuse for a conflict between science and religion, for their fields are entirely different. Men who know very little of science and men who know very little of religion do indeed get to quarreling, and the onlookers imagine that there is a conflict between science and religion, whereas the conflict is only between two different species of ignorance. – Robert Andrews Millikan

This [the intelligent design movement] isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about science, it’s about religion and philosophy. – Phillip E. Johnson

This [the opening of the Vatican City radio station built by Marconi earlier in 1931] was a new demonstration of the harmony between science and religion that each fresh conquest of science ever more luminously confirms, so that one may say that those who speak of the incompatibility of science and religion either make science say that which it never said or make religion say that which it never taught. – Pope Pius XI

Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts… and if piety allow us to say so, our understanding is in this respect of the same kind as the divine, at least as far as we are able to grasp something of it in our mortal life. – Johannes Kepler

Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. – Albert Einstein

Through fear of being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen, the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. – Peter William Atkins

Throughout the last four hundred years, during which the growth of science had gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge of the ways of nature and mastery over natural forces, the clergy have fought a losing battle against science, in astronomy and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in biology and psychology and sociology. Ousted from one position, they have taken up another. After being worsted in astronomy, they did their best to prevent the rise of geology; they fought against Darwin in biology, and at the present time they fight against scientific theories of psychology and education. At each stage, they try to make the public forget their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present obscurantism may not be recognized for what it is. – Bertrand Russell

Thus there is everywhere testimony of the same mind, [there is] no place in creation for the introduction of laws varying from the original design. All is one grand unity. – Olympia Brown

To an honest judge, the alleged convergence between religion and science is a shallow, empty, hollow, spin-doctored sham. – Richard Dawkins

To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. – Albert Einstein

To believe that the assertion that God is an explanation (of anything, let alone everything) is intellectually contemptible, for it amounts to an admission of ignorance packaged into the pretence of an explanation. To aver that “God did it” is worse than an admission of ignorance, for it shrouds ignorance in deceit. – Peter William Atkins

To claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered in Palestine, the pope should get himself down to the dole queue as fast as possible. It is rather to claim that while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it. – Terry Eagleton

To develop a complete mind, Study the science of art; Study the art of science; Learn to see; Realize that everything connects to everything else. – Leonardo da Vinci

To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful workings of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more grateful than knowledge. – Nicolaus Copernicus

To make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning. – Paul Kalanithi

To me the hypothesis of a Creator is no less simple than the hypothesis of no Creator… – John D. Coyle

To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. – Albert Einstein

To quit religion is to start walking in the space! Don’t be afraid, you don’t fall into the void, because you can hold onto God and science! – Mehmet Murat ildan

To sum up all, let it be known that science and religion are two identical words. The learned do not suspect this, no more do the religious. These two words express the two sides of the same fact, which is the infinite. Religion—Science, this is the future of the human mind. – Victor Hugo

To teach doubt and Experiment Certainly was not what Christ meant. – William Blake

Traditional religious creation stories and evolution are complementary. Science and religion together can weave a rich tapestry of new meaning for our age. – Theologian Philip Hefner

Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. – Freeman Dyson

True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness. – Albert Einstein

True science and true religion are twin sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the scientific depth and firmness of its basis. – Thomas Henry Huxley

True science is a discovery of the secret, immutable and eternal laws, by which the universe is governed; and when practically applied, sets in motion the mighty wheels of useful engines, with all the various machinery which genius has invented, or art contrived. It ameliorates the condition of man, by extending the means of intellectual, moral, social, and domestic happiness. – John Taylor

Truth is truth forever. Scientific truth cannot be theological lie. To the sane mind, theology and philosophy must harmonize. They have the common ground of truth on which to meet. – John A. Widtsoe

Truths physical have an origin as divine as truths religious. – Sir David Brewster

TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse – news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion. – Neil Postman

Twin sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their particolored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven. – HD Hitchcock

Two erroneous impressions … seem to be current among certain groups of uninformed persons. The first is that religion today stands for mediaeval theology; the second that science is materialistic and irreligious. – Robert Andrews Millikan

Two things continue to fill the mind with ever increasing awe and admiration: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. – Immanuel Kant

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the atheist movement—which declares religion to be an arbitrary illusion, devised by power-hungry priests, and for the pious belief in a higher Power over us—has nothing but words of mockery, eagerly makes use of the advancing scientific knowledge, and in apparent unity with it, accelerates its subverting action on the peoples of earth in all classes. I need not discuss here in any more detail, that after its victory, not only all the most precious wealth of our culture would topple, but—what is worse—the prospects for a better future. – Max Planck

Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

Until the advent of modern science, man had always expressed his feelings of incapacity in the language of religion. – Sir Edmund Ronald Leach

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. – St. Augustine

Vaccination was discovered, and, like all new discoveries, had at the first to maintain a vigorous battle for existence. It was condemned by the church as a cunning device of the devil to defeat the judgments of God. Nevertheless, it has triumphed, and is now adopted by the best instructed of all nations. – Frederick Douglass

War between religions and science will never end; because they speak difference languages. There is a lack of communication between them. – Mwanandeke Kindembo

We all felt the majesty of the body. In a very short period of time we had seen something that was bigger than each of us. A lot of people, even those who were not religious, were reverent and attributed the success to God. As we saw the artificial heart beat in Dr. Clark, the feeling was not aren’t we great, but aren’t we small. – William C. DeVries

We all have a thirst for wonder. It’s a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to make stories up, you don’t have to exaggerate. There’s wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature’s a lot better at inventing wonders than we are. – Carl Sagan

We all know that there are regions of the human spirit untrammeled by the world of physics. In the mystic sense of the creation around us, in the expression of art, in a yearning towards God, the soul grows upward and finds fulfillment of something implanted in its nature. The sanction for this development is within us, a striving born with our consciousness or an Inner Light proceeding from a greater power than ours. Science can scarcely question this sanction, for the pursuit of science springs from a striving which the mind is impelled to follow, a questioning that will not be suppressed. Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead and the purpose surging in our nature responds. – Arthur Eddington

We are about to move into the Aquarian age of clearer thinking. Astrology and witchcraft both have a contribution to make to the new age, and it behooves the practitioners of both to realize their responsibilities and ob­ligations to the science and the religion. – Sybil Leek

We call the one side [of humanity] religion, and we call the other science. Religion is always right. … Science is always wrong; it is the very artifice of men. Science can never solve one problem without raising ten more problems. – George Bernard Shaw

We can hardly overestimate the significance of the fact that the scientific and religious propensities were one before they became two different activities. Their fundamental unity precedes their separateness. – Philip Hefner

We don’t know how large a proportion of the significant evidence about the universe is excluded by science. Perhaps hardly any. Perhaps so great a proportion that any body of knowledge which excludes it is hardly more than a caricature. Perhaps something in between — so that science finds truth but not the whole truth. – Kitty Ferguson

We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. – Albert Einstein

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount…Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. – Omar Bradley

We have learned that matter is weird stuff. It is weird enough, so that it does not limit God’s freedom to make it do what he pleases. – Freeman Dyson

We have many men of science; too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. – Omar Nelson Bradley

We have passed midnight in the great struggle between Fact and Faith, between Science and Superstition. – Robert Green Ingersoll

We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy. – Joseph Campbell

We may go further. Every person born into the earth has claim upon the assistance of the Spirit of God. That is a species of revelation. Consequently, all good achievements of man, in science, literature, or art, are the product of revelation. The knowledge and wisdom of earth have so come. – John A. Widtsoe

We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion. – John B. S. Haldane

We must take the abiding spiritual values which inhere in the deep experiences of religion in all ages and give them new expression in terms of the framework which our new knowledge gives us. Science forces religion to deal with new ideas in the theoretical realm and new forces in the practical realm. – Harry Emerson Fosdick

We need go back only a few centuries to find the great mass of people depending on religion for the satisfaction of practically all their wishes. From rain out of the sky to good health on earth, they sought their desires at the altars of their gods. Whether they wanted large families, good crops, freedom from pestilence, or peace of mind, they conceived themselves as dependent on the favor of heaven. Then science came with its alternative, competitive method of getting what we want. That is science’s most important attribute. As an intellectual influence it is powerful enough, but as a practical way of achieving man’s desires it is overwhelming. – Harry Emerson Fosdick

We ought, whenever we speak of God, and of His attributes, to stand in great awe. – Robert Boyle

We place no reliance On virgin or pigeon; Our Method is Science, Our Aim is Religion. – Aleister Crowley

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. – Albert Einstein

We should therefore, with grace and optimism, embrace NOMA’s tough-minded demand: Acknowledge the personal character of these human struggles about morals and meanings, and stop looking for definite answers in nature’s construction. But many people cannot bear to surrender nature as a ‘transitional object’–a baby’s warm blanket for our adult comfort. But when we do (for we must) , nature can finally emerge in her true form: not as a distorted mirror of our needs, but as our most fascinating companion. Only then can we unite the patches built by our separate magisteria into a beautiful and coherent quilt called wisdom. – Stephen Jay Gould

We take the highest and best of human faculties, and, exalting them in our imagination to an unlimited extent, endeavour to attain an imperfect conception of that Infinite Power which created everything around us. – Charles Babbage

Well, I don’t think there are any methodological conflicts either. As for those social conflicts, those aren’t conflicts—in my opinion—between science and religion. They’re conflicts between Christians and atheists or Christians and secularists: Christians want to do things one way, secularists want to do things another way. But that’s not a science/religion conflict at all. You might as well say it’s a science/secularism conflict. In each case, each group wants to do science and then use it in a certain way. – Alvin Plantinga

What a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work! – Albert Einstein

What do we really want from religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances? Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish. You might think that grown-ups would be ashamed to put such thoughts into print. The fashionable way of doing this is not to blame the Universe — which seems truly pointless — but rather to blame the means by which we know the Universe, namely science. – Carl Sagan

What is the use of assuring Fundamentalists that science is compatible with religion. They retort at once, Certainly not with our religion. – Luther Burbank

What is truth? In matters of religion it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art it is one’s last mood. – Oscar Wilde

What one must not do is to rule out the supernatural as the one impossible explanation. – C.S. Lewis

What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself. – Lewis Mumford

Whatever opinions we may adopt as to the physical constitution of comets, we must admit that they serve some grand and important purpose in the economy of the universe; for we cannot suppose that the Almighty has created such an immense number of bodies, and set them in rapid motion according to established laws, without an end worthy of his perfections, and, on the whole, beneficial to the inhabitants of the system through which they move. – Thomas Dick

Whatever the subject may be, the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ may be elaborated upon without fear of anyone’s objecting, and the teacher can be free to express his honest conviction regarding it, whether that subject be in geology, the history of the world, the millions of years that it took to prepare the physical world, whether it be in engineering, literature, art — any principles of the gospel may be briefly or extensively touched upon for the anchoring of the student who is seeking to know the truth. – David O. McKay

When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some other grave sin—the virtuous are never struck by lightning. Therefore if God wants to strike any one, Benjamin Franklin [and his lightning-rod] ought not to defeat His design; indeed, to do so is helping criminals to escape. But God was equal to the occasion, if we are to believe the eminent Dr. Price, one of the leading divines of Boston. Lightning having been rendered ineffectual by the “iron points invented by the sagacious Dr. Franklin,” Massachusetts was shaken by earthquakes, which Dr. Price perceived to be due to God’s wrath at the “iron points.” In a sermon on the subject he said,“In Boston are more erected than elsewhere in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God.” Apparently, however, Providence gave up all hope of curing Boston of its wickedness, for, though lightning-rods became more and more common, earthquakes in Massachusetts have remained rare. – Bertrand Russell

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. – Tony Rothman

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

When one contemplates how different our understanding of religion must be from the Creator’s omniscience, one realizes that nothing but growth, reinterpretation and generally widening horizons is appropriate in fields of religion. If we interpret the world precisely as the Prophet Joseph did, we are entirely unworthy of his tremendous precedent-breaking example. The Church, from its top-most councils to the man in the street, is at its best when it is undergoing thoughtful change. – Henry Eyring

When science advances religion goes along with it; science builds the altar at which religion prays. – Joseph Parker

When truth is made subservient to anything else, however great (say religion), it becomes impure and sordid. – George Sarton

When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity. – Adolf Hitler

When we say “science” we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science, the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon. – Wyndham Lewis

When you realize that no one really knows what they are doing and that everyone is doing the best they can according to their own level of consciousness, life gets a lot easier. Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. – Carl Sagan

Where faith commences, science ends. Both these arts of the human mind must be strictly kept apart from each other. Faith has its origin in the poetic imagination; knowledge, on the other hand, originates in the reasoning intelligence of man. Science has to pluck the blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, unconcerned whether these conquests trench upon the poetical imaginings of faith or not. – Ernst Haeckel

Whereas history, literature, art, and even religion, all have national characters and local attachments, science alone of man’s major intellectual interests has no frontiers and no national varieties; that science, like peace, is one and indivisible. – Sir Henry Dale

Whether or not evolution is compatible with faith, science and religion represent two extremely different worldviews, which, if they coexist at all, do so most uncomfortably. – Leonard Susskind

While the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is established for the instruction of men (and women); and it is one of God’s instrumentalities for making known the truth yet he is not limited to that institution for such purposes, neither in time nor place. God raises up wise men (and women) and prophets here and there among all the children of men, of their own tongue and nationality, speaking to them through means that they can comprehend. … All the great teachers are servants of God; among all nations and in all ages. They are inspired men (and women), appointed to instruct God’s children according to the conditions in the midst of which [they] find them. – B. H. Roberts

While the inner sciences have a long history in countries such as India, Tibet and China, they have never rejected the outer sciences, and there has never been a conflict between dharma and science as there has been between Western religion and science. – Rajiv Malhotra

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. – Albert Einstein

Why there is one Body in or System qualified to give Light and Heat to all ye rest, I know no reason, but because ye author of the Systeme thought it convenient. – Sir Isaac Newton

Witchcraft always has a hard time, until it becomes established and changes its name. We hear much of the conflict between science and religion, but our conflict is with both of these. Science and religion always have agreed in opposing and suppressing the various witchcrafts. Now that religion is inglorious, one of the most fantastic of transferences of worships is that of glorifying science, as a beneficent being. It is the attributing of all that is of development, or of possible betterment to science. But no scientist has ever upheld a new idea, without bringing upon himself abuse from other scientists. Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done. – Charles Fort

Witchcraft offers the model of a religion of poetry, not theology. It presents metaphors, not doctrines, and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation of science and religion, of many ways of knowing. – Starhawk

With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul? – Henry Thoreau

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. – Steven Weinberg

With the tremendous strides that science is making in our day, there is dawning upon this age what might termed a scientific spirituality — a new type of mind that studies the truths of faith with the care and caution and candor of science, yet keeping the warmth and glow and power of faith. Spiritual insight is as real as scientific insight. Indeed, it is but a higher manifestation of the same thing. The saint as well as the scientist has witnessed the truth of reality. One may redeem his knowledge revelation, and the other, intellectual conclusion, but in both cases it is insight — the conviction reality. – Hugh B. Brown

Without poetry our science will appear incomplete, and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. – Matthew Arnold

Would not [an] uncluttered mind also see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion? – Peter William Atkins

Y’know, we’re all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion! – L. Ron Hubbard

Yet I will say with regard to miracles, there is no such thing save to the ignorant–that is, there never was a result wrought out by God or by any of His creatures without there being a cause for it. There may be results, the causes of which we do not see or understand, and what we call miracles are no more than this–they are the results or effects of causes hidden from our understandings. – Brigham Young

Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind, and soul. – Amit Ray

You can believe what you want religiously. Religion is one thing, but science, provable science, is something else. – Bill Nye

You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe. – Carl Sagan

You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion. – L. Ron Hubbard

You have read my writings, and from them you have certainly understood which was the true and real motive that caused, under the lying mask of religion, this war against me that continually restrains and undercuts me in all directions, so that neither can help come to me from outside nor can I go forth to defend myself, there having been issued an express order to all Inquisitors that they should not allow any of my works to be reprinted which had been printed many years ago or grant permission to any new work that I would print. … a most rigorous and general order, I say, against all my works, omnia et edenda; so that it is left to me only to succumb in silence under the flood of attacks, exposures, derision, and insult coming from all sides. – Galileo Galilei

You might say that science operates pragmatically and religion by divine guidance. If valid, they would reach the same conclusions but science would take a lot longer. – Peace Pilgrim

Your only real problem is mortality! No religion can solve this problem, but science can do! – Mehmet Murat ildan

Your theories are those which you and many other people find easiest and pleasantest to believe, but, so far as I can see, they have no foundation other than they lead to a pleasant view of life … I agree that faith is essential to success in life … but I do not accept your definition of faith, i.e. belief in life after death. In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining … I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world. – Rosalind Franklin

Zero is powerful because it is infinity’s twin. They are equal and opposite, yin and yang. They are equally paradoxical and troubling. The biggest questions in science and religion are about nothingness and eternity, the void and the infinite, zero and infinity. The clashes over zero were the battles that shook the foundations of philosophy, of science, of mathematics, and of religion. Underneath every revolution lay a zero – and an infinity. – Charles Seife

[Louis Rendu, Bishop of Annecy] collects observations, makes experiments, and tries to obtain numerical results; always taking care, however, so to state his premises and qualify his conclusions that nobody shall be led to ascribe to his numbers a greater accuracy than they merit. It is impossible to read his work, and not feel that he was a man of essentially truthful mind and that science missed an ornament when he was appropriated by the Church. – John Tyndall

“Religious fanaticism is not the only clear and present danger in our world. The greatest dangers confronting human kind are still those ancient enemies of war, poverty, ignorance and disease. These create the breeding grounds in which religious extremism flourishes, because people who have been betrayed by the world’s political and economic systems often seek refuge in the alternatives offered by religion.

It is often said that the most dangerous person in the world is the person with nothing to lose. The more people in our world who have nothing to lose, the greater the danger of extremism is likely to become. If we are committed to struggling against religious fanaticism, and if we really do stand in awe of human potential, then we need to cultivate a much more intelligent debate about the role religion plays in nurturing that human potential through its shaping of ideas and through the hope and meaning it gives to many millions of lives.” – Tina Beattie

“But did he go to heaven?” Katherine persisted.
“That’s between him and God, not him and history,” JB said.
Alex started, jerking so spastically that he kicked the basketball and would have sent it spinning out into the street if Chip hadn’t caught it. Amazingly, Chip still seemed to have a swordsman’s quick reflexes.
“YOU believe in God?” Alex asked JB incredulously. “But you know how to travel through time. You’re a scientist.” He hesitated. “Aren’t you?”
JB rolled his eyes.
“It amazes me how people of your time set up such a false dichotomy between science and religion. Fortunately, that only lasts for another… well, I can’t tell you that,” he said, stopping himself just in time. “But I assure you, the more I travel through time, the more I witness, the more I realize that there are things that are both strange and wonderful, far beyond human comprehension.” (pgs 299-300)” – Margaret Peterson Haddix

“According to the conception of geologists the earth passed through ages of preparation, to us unmeasured and immeasurable, during which countless generations of plants and animals existed in great variety and profusion and gave in part the very substance of their bodies to help form certain strata which are still existent as such.

… Geologists say that these very simple forms of plant and animal bodies were succeeded by others more complicated; and in the indestructible record of the rocks they read the story of advancing life from the simple to the more complex, from the single-celled protozoan to the highest animals, from the marine algae to the advanced types of flowering plant — to the apple-tree, the rose, and the oak.

What a fascinating story is inscribed upon the stony pages of the earth’s crust! … This record of Adam and his posterity is the only scriptural account we have of the appearance of man upon this earth. But we have also a vast and ever-increasing volume of knowledge concerning man, his early habits and customs, his industries and works of art, his tools and implements, about which such scriptures as we have thus far received are entirely silent. Let us not try to wrest the scriptures in an attempt to explain away what we cannot explain.

The opening chapters of Genesis, and scriptures related thereto, were never intended as a textbook of geology, archaeology, earth-science or man-science. Holy Scripture will endure, while the conceptions of men change with new discoveries. We do not show reverence for the scriptures when we misapply them through faulty interpretation.” – James E. Talmage

“Even the most devout and sincere believers in the Bible realize that it is, like most any other book, filled with metaphor, simile, allegory, and parable, which no intelligent person could be compelled to accept in a literal sense. …

The Lord has not taken from those who believe in his word the power of reason. He expects every man who takes his “yoke” upon him to have common sense enough to accept a figure of speech in its proper setting, and to understand that the holy scriptures are replete with allegorical stories, faith-building parables, and artistic speech. …

Where is there a writing intended to be taken in all its parts literally? Such a writing would be insipid and hence lack natural appeal. To expect a believer in the Bible to strike an attitude of this kind and believe all that is written to be a literal rendition is a stupid thought. No person with the natural use of his faculties looks upon the Bible in such a light.” – Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr.

“Both science and religion beget humility. Scientists and teachers of religion disagree among themselves on theological and other subjects. Even in our own church men and women take issue with one another and contend for their own interpretations. This free exchange of ideas is not to be deplored as long as men and women remain humble and teachable. Neither fear of consequence or any kind of coercion should ever be used to secure uniformity of thought in the church. People should express their problems and opinions and be unafraid to think without fear of ill consequences.

We should all be interested in academic research. We must go out on the research front and continue to explore the vast unknown. We should be in the forefront of learning in all fields, for revelation does not come only through the prophet of God nor only directly from heaven in visions or dreams. Revelation may come in the laboratory, out of the test tube, out of the thinking mind and the inquiring soul, out of search and research and prayer and inspiration. We must be unafraid to contend for what we are thinking and to combat error with truth in this divided and imperiled world, and we must do it with the unfaltering faith that God is still in his heaven even though all is not well with the world.

We should be dauntless in our pursuit of truth and resist all demands for unthinking conformity. No one would have us become mere tape recorders of other people’s thoughts. We should be modest and teachable and seek to know the truth by study and faith. There have been times when progress was halted by thought control. Tolerance and truth demand that all be heard and that competing ideas be tested against each other so that the best, which might not always be our own, can prevail. Knowledge is the most complete and dependable when all points of view are heard. We are in a world of restlessness and skepticism, where old things are not only challenged but often disappear, but also a world of miraculous achievement, undreamed of accomplishment, and terrifying power.

Science offers wonderful tools for helping to create the brotherhood of humanity on earth, but the cement of brotherhood does not come from any laboratory. It must come from the heart and mind and spirit of men and women.

Peace and brotherhood can be achieved when the two most potent forces in civilization — religion and science — join to create one world in its truest and greatest sense. We should continue to become acquainted with human experience through history and philosophy, science and poetry, art and religion. Every discovery of science reveals clearly the divine plan in nature. The remarkable harmony in the physical laws and processes of the universe, from the infinitesimal to the infinite, surpasses mortal understanding and implies a supreme architect, and the beauty and symmetry of God’s handiwork inspire reverence.

One of the most important things in the world is freedom of the mind; from this all other freedoms spring. Such freedom is necessarily dangerous, for one cannot think right without running the risk of thinking wrong, but generally more thinking is the antidote for the evils that spring from wrong thinking.

More thinking is required, and we should all exercise our God-given right to think and be unafraid to express our opinions, with proper respect for those to whom we talk and proper acknowledgment of our own shortcomings. We must preserve freedom of the mind in the church and resist all efforts to suppress it. The church is not so much concerned with whether the thoughts of its members are orthodox or heterodox as it is that they shall have thoughts. One may memorize much without learning anything. In this age of speed there seems to be little time for meditation.

While speak of independence and the right to think, to agree or disagree, to examine and question, I need to remind myself not to forget that fixed and unchanging laws govern all God’s creation, whether the vastness of the starry heavens or the minute revolving universe of the atom or human relationships. All is law. All is cause and effect, and God’s laws are universal. God has no favorites; no one is immune from either life’s temptations or the consequences of his or her deeds. God is not capricious.” – Hugh B. Brown

“The truth about science is, then, that it flourishes when scientists show faith in their theories: they embrace them because they are beautiful, and they put up some resistance to abandoning them. They take seriously serious counter-evidence, but they require it to prove its credentials.

It is not hard to make the case that faith is involved when scientists launch out on their voyage of discovery, whether in picking research directions, or intuiting concepts before investing in the effort to elaborate them, and when they publish and promote their ideas. I am not trying to imply that this simplifies the more subtle question of religious faith, only that one should not regard the idea of ‘faith’ itself as an unworthy part of human nature. Faith is not contrary to reason, nor is it an alternative to reason. Faith, in the sense of engagement and eagerness for the journey, is a partner to reason. . . . Faith is not irrational, but it does go beyond what can be proved by reason.” – Andrew Steane

“Accurate dating of events by radioactive elements decaying in the rocks and in textile fibers and elsewhere makes possible an accuracy in chronology which was undreamed of a generationago. In effect, clocks are set going whenever these materials are laid down. These clocks can often be read with great accuracy. Such data, with many kinds of cross-checks, leads to an antiquity for life on this earth of at least some six hundred million years and an age of the Earth of upwards of two billion years. These conclusions are well known and will surprise no one.

My conception of the gospel is that the scriptures record the dealings of God with His Prophets and His People. By living in accordance with their teachings we may expect to reach the Celestial Kingdom. To be understood, the Lord must reveal Himself in a language His Children can understand. Of necessity, many things not necessary for their immediate progress are omitted, to be revealed later, and to be discovered by man’s own enterprise. There are some people who throw away the scriptures and restrict themselves to science and related fields. Others use the scriptures to the exclusion of other truth. Both are wrong. Latter-day Saints should seek after truth by all avenues with earnest humility. There is, of course, no conflict in the gospel since it embraces all truth. Undoubtedly, however science is continually challenging us to think through again our conceptions of the gospel. This should work both ways, of course.

Since I think we don’t accept Archbishops Usher’s chronology as final, it seems to me of interest to check it against other available time scales. Such an investigation won’t affect fundamentals but it will help us as teachers.” – Henry Eyring

“Diversity of opinion does not necessitate intolerance of spirit, nor should it embitter or set rational beings against each other. … Our religion is not hostile to real science. That which is demonstrated, we accept with joy; but vain philosophy, human theory and mere speculations of men, we do not accept nor do we adopt anything contrary to divine revelation or to good common sense.

Our religion is not hostile to real science. That which is demonstrated, we accept with joy; but vain philosophy, human theory and mere speculations of men, we do not accept nor do we adopt anything contrary to divine revelation or to good common sense. But everything that tends to right conduct, that harmonizes with sound morality and increases faith in Deity, finds favor with us no matter where it may be found.” – 1910 LDS Church Christmas statement

“I see science as a way of exploring the universe with a limited set of tools, and religion as another way of exploring with a different set of tools. Science uses telescopes and computers and differential equations. Religion uses music and painting and meditation and ritual and worship. The two ways of exploring show us the same universe, but from different points of view.
Adam Gifford in his will establishing the Gifford Lectures ordained that the subject should be “Natural Theology.” The words “Natural Theology” have a technical meaning. According to Christian doctrine, God gave us two books in which his actions are recorded. One book is the Bible, the other is the Book of Nature. Be reading the Book of Nature we can obtain knowledge of God’s work, whether or not we also read the Bible. That is what Adam Gifford meant when he wrote his will, Natural Theology is the reading of God’s mind as expressed in the words of Nature.
Science and religion can live harmoniously together in the human soul so long as each respects the other’s autonomy, so long as neither claims infallibility. Conflicts occur when organized science or organized religion clams a monopoly of truth.
There is no easy solution to the conflict between fundamentalist Christian dogma and the facts of biological evolution. I am not saying that the conflict could have been altogether avoided. I am saying only that the conflict was made more bitter and more damaging, both to religion and to science, by the dogmatic self-righteousness of scientists. What was needed was a little more human charity, a little more willingness to listen rather than to lay down the law, a little more humility. Scientists stand in need of these Christian virtues just as much as preachers do. The children, over whose hearts and minds the battle is fought, need to see that there is good on both sides, that both their parent’s faith and the wider vision of science are worthy of respect.
Diversity is for me the chief source of beauty and value, in the natural universe around us, in the governance of human societies, and in the depths of our individual souls. The profusion of stars and galaxies in our skies, the profusion of bugs and beetles in our gardens, and the profusion of human genius in our arts and sciences, all proclaim that God loves diversity. Diversity is the spice of life, and the prevalence of evil in our world is the price we pay for diversity.” – Freeman Dyson

“Dialogue between science and faith also belongs to the work of evangelization at the service of peace. Whereas positivism and scientism “refuse to admit the validity of forms of knowledge other than those of the positive sciences”, the Church proposes another path, which calls for a synthesis between the responsible use of methods proper to the empirical sciences and other areas of knowledge such as philosophy, theology, as well as faith itself, which elevates us to the mystery transcending nature and human intelligence. Faith is not fearful of reason; on the contrary, it seeks and trusts reason, since “the light of reason and the light of faith both come from God” and cannot contradict each other. Evangelization is attentive to scientific advances and wishes to shed on them the light of faith and the natural law so that they will remain respectful of the centrality and supreme value of the human person at every stage of life. All of society can be enriched thanks to this dialogue, which opens up new horizons for thought and expands the possibilities of reason. This too is a path of harmony and peace.

The Church has no wish to hold back the marvellous progress of science. On the contrary, she rejoices and even delights in acknowledging the enormous potential that God has given to the human mind. Whenever the sciences – rigorously focused on their specific field of inquiry – arrive at a conclusion which reason cannot refute, faith does not contradict it. Neither can believers claim that a scientific opinion which is attractive but not sufficiently verified has the same weight as a dogma of faith. At times some scientists have exceeded the limits of their scientific competence by making certain statements or claims. But here the problem is not with reason itself, but with the promotion of a particular ideology which blocks the path to authentic, serene and productive dialogue.” – Pope Francis

“Is it unreasonable, is it unphilosophical, thus to look for additional light and knowledge? Shall religion be the one department of human thought and effort in which progression is impossible? What would we say of the chemist, the astronomer, the physicist, or the geologist, who would proclaim that no further discovery or revelation of scientific truth is possible, or who would declare that the only occupation open to students of science is to con the books of by-gone times and to apply the principles long ago made known, since none others shall ever be discovered?

The chief motive impelling to research and investigation is the conviction that to knowledge and wisdom there is no end. “Mormonism” affirms that all wisdom is of God, that the halo of his glory is intelligence, and that man has not yet learned all there is to learn of him and his ways. We hold that the doctrine of continuous revelation from God is not less philosophical and scientific than scriptural.” – James E. Talmage

All human affairs follow nature’s great analogue, the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the invisible growth by the root; the second and much accelerated is the visible growth by the stem; but when root and stem have gathered their forces, there comes the third period, in which the plant quickly flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit.
The beginnings of moral enterprises in this world are never to be measured by any apparent growth. … At length comes the sudden ripeness and the full success, and he who is called in at the final moment deems this success his own. He is but the reaper and not the labourer. Other men sowed and tilled and he but enters into their labours. – Henry Ward Beecher

Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe—that the world is a cosmos and a chaos.
… The divinities of heathen superstition still linger in one form or another in the faith of the ignorant, and even intelligent men shrink from the contemplation of one supreme will acting regularly, not fortuitously, through laws beautiful and simple rather than through a fitful and capricious system of intervention.
… The scientific spirit has cast out the demons, and presented us with nature clothed in her right mind and living under the reign of law. It has given us, for the sorceries of the alchemist, the beautiful laws of chemistry; for the dreams of the astrologer, the sublime truths of astronomy; for the wild visions of cosmogony, the monumental records of geology; for the anarchy of diabolism, the laws of God. – James Abram Garfield

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.
However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research. – Albert Einstein

The familiar idea of a god who is omniscient: someone who knows everything … does not immediately ring alarm bells in our brains; it is plausible that such a being could exist. Yet, when it is probed more closely one can show that omniscience of this sort creates a logical paradox and must, by the standards of human reason, therefore be judged impossible or be qualified in some way. To see this consider this test statement:
This statement is not known to be true by anyone.
Now consider the plight of our hypothetical Omniscient Being (“Big O”). Suppose first that this statement is true and Big O does not know it. Then Big O would not be omniscient. So, instead, suppose our statement is false. This means that someone must know the statement to be true; hence it must be true. So regardless of whether we assume at the outset that this statement is true or false, we are forced to conclude that it must be true! And therefore, since the statement is true, nobody (including Big O) can know that it is true. This shows that there must always be true statements that no being can know to be true. Hence there cannot be an Omniscient Being who knows all truths. Nor, by the same argument, could we or our future successors, ever attain such a state of omniscience. All that can be known is all that can be known, not all that is true. – John D. Barrow

“‘Whoever applies himself to medicine should seriously weigh the following considerations:

First, that he will one day have to render an account to the supreme Judge of the lives of sick persons committed to his care.

Next, whatever skill or knowledge he may, by divine favour, become possessed of, should be devoted above all things to the glory of God and the welfare of the human race.

Thirdly, he must remember that is no mean or ignoble creature that he deals with. We may ascertain the worth of the human race since for its sake God’s only begotten Son became man and thereby ennobled the nature that he took upon him.

Finally the physician should bear in mind that he himself is not exempt from the common lot but is subject to the same laws of mortality and disease as his fellows and he will care for the sick with more diligence and tenderness if he remembers that he himself is their fellow sufferer.” – Thomas Sydenham

“Religion and science have over time clashed and caused chaos along with change. Religion came first and set its roots in human history. Science emerged over time and became extremely controversial for religions and cultures. Many religions have lost followers and received a lot of critique because of scientific discoveries that contradict religious philosophies of life. Regardless to all the modern science that exists and discoveries that contradict certain religious beliefs, the majority of the world is still religious. Additionally, new religions develop all of the time (Barbour 1998 introduction).
……
The vast field of religion and science is understood and interpreted in numerous ways. Some believe that religion and science have always been in conflict and will continue being that. Others believe that science can compliment religion and that their relationship is by no means negative. The theme of the two opposing arguments is it all depends on the commentator. That is, everyone has their right to their opinions and beliefs. If a discussion is to happen without conflict then people need to firstly, learn about other cultures and religions and secondly, be tolerant towards them. Thenceforth, a better understanding of the field religion and science can be reached that is more comprehensive. Inclusion, diversity and open-mindedness are key for a efficacious future relationship. Another alternative, that is a more difficult path, is separating the two fields completely. This could prove to be an impossible challenge, however, some believe it is the only way for science and religion to not conflict with one another. As pointed out earlier from the empirical data, science and religion can very well harmonize with one another since they answer two different questions, meaning they have two completely different perspectives. Religion can answer “why” questions and science “how” questions. The two, being that they are unrelated in many ways, can complement each other. For example, science cannot answer to ethical questions whereas religion can. Therefor, the unreasonable task of separating the two spheres should be reasoned to be redundant.” – Nicole Anni, The relationship between religion and science, READ Full-Text The relationship between religion and science

“Religion and Science are two aspects of social life, of which the former has been important as far back as we know anything of man’s mental history, while the latter, after a fitful flickering existence among the Greeks and Arabs, suddenly sprang into importance in the sixteenth century, and has ?ever since increasingly moulded both the * ideas and the institutions among which we live. Between religion and science there has been a prolonged conflict, in which, until the last few years, science has invariably proved victorious. But the rise of new religions in Russia and Germany, equipped with new means of missionary activity provided by science, has again put the issue in doubt, as it was at the beginning of the scientific epoch, and has made it again important to examine the grounds and the history of the warfare waged by traditional religion against scientific knowledge.

Science is the attempt to discover, by means of observation, and reasoning based upon it, first, particular facts about the world, and then laws connecting facts with one another and (in fortunate cases) making it possible to predict future occurrences. Connected with this theoretical aspect of science there is scientific technique, which utilizes scientific knowledge to pi’oduce comforts and luxuries that were impossible, or at least much more expensive, in a pre-scientific era. It is this latter aspect that gives such great importance to science even for those who are not scientists.

Religion, considered socially, is a more complex phenomenon than science. Each of the great historical religions has three aspects ; (i) a Church, (2) a creed, and (3) a code of personal morals. The relative importance of these three elements has varied greatly in different times and places. The ancient religions of Greece and Rome, until they were made ethical by the Stoics, had not very much to say about personal morals ; in Islam the Church has been unimportant in comparison with the temporal monarch ; in modern Protestantism there is a tendency to relax the rigors of the creed. Nevertheless, all three elements, though in varying proportions, are essential to religion as a social phenomenon, which is what is chiefly concerned in the conflict with science. A purely personal religion, so long as it is content to avoid assertions which science can disprove, may survive undisturbed in the most scientific age.” – Bernard Russel, Religion and Science, by Bertrand Russell

“Where apparent conflicts are found there must be error either in the investigation of the scientist or in the interpretation of the Scriptures. It is very probably that many conclusions arrived at by the scientists are erroneous, and is it not just possible that many of the theories of the expounders of the Scriptures are also in the same category? This is self-evident–that any scientific theory that conflicts with revelation or any interpretation of Scripture that is opposed to positively demonstrated scientific truth is error and must give way before the light of eternal truth.

Any form of religion that ignores these facts must be classified as superstition, and its devotees as fanatics. A scientific conclusion may appear to be correct, from all data at hand, but if more thoroughly investigated might prove to be an error; in such cases there may be apparent conflicts but not real ones.” – Millennial Star

“Whereas reductionism has yielded splendid results in science, there is an important sense in which it is articial, and in this sense false. By starting from wholes and moving ‘down’ into parts, one is moving in the opposite direction from the way matters arise. To grasp how matters arise, one must run the muscle movie backwards, from the subatom to the atom to the amino acid to the protein to the polymer to the cell to the muscle to the contraction. To make such a movie, it is essential to begin with reductionist understandings—otherwise, there is no way to know what to put in the movie. But once the cast of characters is identifed—once it is understood how proteins fold and myosin hydrolyses ATP and so on—it is possible to narrate such understandings in the correct temporal and spatial sequence, moving ‘upwards’ from one level to the next.

Traits common to all organisms include such non-depressing and religiously fertile capacities as end-directedness and identity maintenance; traits common to all animals include awareness and the capacity for pleasure and suffering; traits common to social beings include co-operation and meaning making; traits common to birds and mammals include bonding and nurturance; traits common to humans include language and its capacity to share subjective experiences, and thus to know love. Transmission of genomes is the steady background drumbeat; emergence is the music.” – Ursula Goodenough, et al.

“We have a way of discussing the world, when we talk of it at various hierarchies, or levels. Now I do not mean to be very precise, dividing the world into definite levels, but I will indicate, by describing a set of ideas, what I mean by hierarchies of ideas. For example, at one end we have the fundamental laws of physics. Then we invent other terms for concepts which are approximate, which have, we believe, their ultimate explanation in terms of the fundamental laws. For instance, ‘heat’. Heat is supposed to be jiggling, and the word for a hot thing is just the word for a mass of atoms which are jiggling. But for a while, if we are talking about heat, we sometimes forget about the atoms jiggling — just as when we talk about the glacier we do not always think of the hexagonal ice and the snowflakes which originally fell. Another example of the same thing is a salt crystal. Looked at fundamentally it is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons; but we have this concept ‘salt crystal’, which carries a whole pattern already of fundamental interactions. An idea like pressure is the same.

Now if we go higher up from this, in another level we have properties of substances — like ‘refractive index’, how light is bent when it goes through something; or ‘surface tension’, the fact that water tends to pull itself together, both of which are described by numbers. I remind you that we have to go through several laws down to find out that it is the pull of the atoms, and so on. But we still say ‘surface tension’, and do not always worry, when discussing surface tension, about the inner workings.

On, up in the hierarchy. With the water we have waves and we have a thing like a storm, the word ‘storm’ which represents an enormous mass of phenomena, or a ‘sun spot’ or ‘star’, which is an accumulation of things. And it is nu worth while always to think of it way back. In fact we cannot, because the higher up we go the more steps we have in between, each one of which is a little weak. We have not thought them all through yet.

As we go up in this hierarchy of complexity, we get tc things like muscle twitch, or nerve impulse, which is an enormously complicated thing in the physical world, involving an organization of matter in a very elaborate complexity. Then come things like ‘frog’. And then we go on, and we come to words and concepts like ‘man’, and ‘history’, or ‘political expediency’, and so forth, a series of concepts which we use to understand things at an ever higher level.

And going on, we come to things like evil, and beauty, and hope…

Which end is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? I think that the right way, of course, is to say that what we have to look at is the whole structural interconnection of the thing; and that all the sciences, and not just the sciences but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an endeavour to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty to history, to connect history to man’s psychology, man’s psychology to the working of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse to the chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways. And today we cannot, and it is no use making believe that we can, draw carefully a line all the way from one end of this thing to the other, because we have only just begun to see that there is this relative hierarchy.

And I do not think either end is nearer to God. To stand at either end, and to walk off that end of the pier only, hoping that out in that direction is the complete understanding, is a mistake. And to stand with evil and beauty and hope, or to stand with the fundamental laws, hoping that way to get a deep understanding of the whole world, with that aspect alone, is a mistake. It is not sensible for the ones who specialize at one end, and the ones who specialize at the other end, to have such disregard for each other. (They don’t actually, but people say they do.) The great mass of workers in between, connecting one step to another, are improving all the time our understanding of the world, both from working at the ends and working in the middle, and in that way we are gradually understanding this tremendous world of interconnecting hierarchies.” – Richard Feynman

Religion And Science Quotes From Wikiquote

• Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. An infinitely old universe, always evolving, may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end. Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science.
  • Hannes Alfvén, as quoted by Anthony L. Peratt, Dean of the Plasma Dissidents in “The World and I” (supplement to the Washington Times, May 1988), p. 196.

• My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun?
  • Wernher von Braun from a letter to the California State board of Education (14 September 1972)

• In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible … this grandiose, stirring history of the gradual revelation and unfolding of the moral law … remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God. It is no longer enough that we pray that God may be with us on our side. We must learn again that we may be on God’s side.
  • Wernher von Braun quoted in Bob Phillips, Phillips’ Book of Great Thoughts & Funny Sayings (1993), 42

• Can the Christian proclamation today expect men and women to acknowledge the mythical world picture as true? To do so would be both pointless and impossible. It would be pointless because there is nothing specifically Christian about the mythical world picture, which is simply the world picture of a time now past which was not yet formed by scientific thinking. It would be impossible because no one can appropriate a world picture by sheer resolve, since it is already given with one’s historical situation.
  • Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1984), p. 3

• We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.
  • Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1984), p. 4

• The most difficult thing to reconcile is science and religion … And so we created a 
dilemma for her character that plays right into Mulder’s hands. So that cross she wears,
 which was there from the pilot episode, is all-important for a character who is torn 
between her rational character and her spiritual side. That is, I think, a very smart
 thing to do. The show is basically a religious show. It’s about the search for God. You 
know, “The truth is out there.” That’s what it’s about.
  • Chris Carter as quoted in “A close encounter with Chris Carter” at Salon (28 April 2000).

• I would not expect religion to be the right tool for sequencing the human genome and by the same token would not expect science to be the means to approaching the supernatural. But on the really interesting larger questions, such as ‘Why are we here?’ or ‘Why do human beings long for spirituality?,’ I find science unsatisfactory. Many superstitions have come into existence and then faded away. Faith has not, which suggests it has reality.
  • Francis Collins, WOL.

• Everyone else besides the faithful already knows that religion has nothing useful to say to science.
  • Jerry Coyne, “Science versus religion: Are they “gifts” to each other?” November 29, 2019

• It is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science’s turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.
  • Richard Dawkins (1998). When Religion Steps on Science’s Turf. Free Inquiry. Retrieved on 2008-09-13.

• In the no-man’s land between science and theology, there are five specific points at which faith and reason may appear to clash.The five points are the origin of life, the human experience of free will, the prohibition of teleological explanation in science, the argument from design as an explanatory principle, and the question of ultimate aims.
  • Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions: Gifford Lectures given at Aberdeen, Scotland April-November 1985 (1988) p. 294.

• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
  • Albert Einstein, Science and Religion (1941).

• If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.
  • Stephen Jay Gould, “The Reverent Thomas’ Dirty Little Planet”, Ever Since Darwin (1977).

• Early Buddhism emphasises the importance of the scientific outlook in dealing with the problems of morality and religion. Its specific dogmas are said to be capable of verification. And its general account of the nature of man and the universe is one that accords with the findings of science rather than being at variance with them. … The scientific revolution does not have the same adverse effect on Buddhism as it had on other religious traditions. … Buddhism … holds that the honest impartial search for truth even in matters moral and religious is no bar to one’s spiritual progress. … A scientific outlook was thus considered necessary not only for discovering the truly moral and religious life but even for the continual self-examination which such an outlook demands.
  • K. N. Jayatilleke, “Buddhism and the Scientific Revolution” (1958)

• Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., in Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart

• The alternative of science or religion is fictitious once it be granted that the functions of religion are primarily symbolic, expressive and orientative. Every culture must define its ends as well as perfect its means. The logical and symbolic expressions of the ultimate values of a civilization cannot arise directly from scientific investigation, though it is fair to demand that they should not rest upon premises contrary to known fact or proven theory. A mechanistic, materialistic “science” hardly provides the orientations to the deeper problems of life that are essential for happy individuals and a healthy social order.
  • Clyde Kluckhohn, in Mirror for Man (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1949), pp. 248-249

• Once you realize that the Bible does not purport to be a textbook of science, the old controversy between religion and science vanishes…
  • Monsignor Georges Lemaître, Einstein and Relativity; Lemaître and the Expanding Universe

• Religion to me is science, and science is religion. In that deeply-felt truth lies the secret of my intense devotion to the reading of God’s natural works. It is reading Him. His will — His intelligence
  • Ada Lovelace, Englische Studien, Volume 19

• “Will to truth” does not mean “I do not want to let myself be deceived” but—there is no alternative—”I will not deceive, not even myself”; and with that we stand on moral ground. … You will have gathered what I am getting at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year-old faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), B. Williams, ed. (2001), § 344.

• The reason why all those we have mentioned hold false opinions and make impious or ignorant assertions about God appears to be nothing else but this, that scripture is not understood in its spiritual sense, but is interpreted according to the bare letter.
  • Origen of Alexandria, “How divine scripture should be interpreted,” On First Principles, book 4, chapter 2, § 2, Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 69.

• Our contention with regard to the whole of divine scripture is that it all has a spiritual meaning, but not all a bodily meaning; for the bodily meaning is often proved to be an impossibility.
  • Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles, in Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 75.

• Both Religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.
  • Max Planck Religion and Natural Science (Lecture Given 1937).

• How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought!  The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant.  God must be even greater than we dreamed”?
  • Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 52.

• Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Kepler, Copernicus, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Einstein… These great men, they have been the makers of one side of humanity, which has two sides.  We call the one side religion, and we call the other science.  Religion is always right.  Religion protects us against that great problem which we all must face.  Science is always wrong; it is the very artifice of men.  Science can never solve one problem without raising 10 more problems.
  • George Bernard Shaw, in a dinner speech at the Savoy Hotel, London (28 October 1930), as quoted by Michael Holroyd, “Albert Einstein, Universe Maker,” The New York Times (14 March 1991).

• Since this is the age of science, not religion, psychiatrists are our rabbis, heroin is our pork, and the addict is the unclean person.
  • Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (New York: 1973), p. 64

• For instance, do you know the story about Father on the day they first tested a bomb out at Alamagordo?  After the things went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, ‘Science has now known sin.’  And do you know what Father said?  He said, ‘What is sin?’
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963), written by Newt Hoenikker, Dr. Hoenniker’s younger son; chapter 6.

• Science is magic that works.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963), Chapter 97.

• And though much has been written foolishly about the antagonism of science and religion, there is indeed no such antagonism. What all these world religions declare by inspiration and insight, history as it grows clearer and science as its range extends display, as a reasonable and demonstrable fact, that men form one universal brotherhood, that they spring from one common origin, that their individual lives, their nations and races, interbreed and blend and go on to merge again at last in one common human destiny upon this little planet amidst the stars. And the psychologist can now stand beside the preacher and assure us that there is no reasoned peace of heart, no balance and no safety in the soul, until a man in losing his life has found it, and has schooled and disciplined his interests and well beyond greeds, rivalries, fears, instincts, and narrow affections. The history of our race and personal religious experience run so closely parallel as to seem to a modern observer almost the same thing; both tell of a being at first scattered and blind and utterly confused, feeling its way slowly to the serenity and salvation of an ordered and coherent purpose. That, in the simplest, is the outline of history; whether one have a religious purpose or disavow a religious purpose altogether, the lines of the outline remain the same.
  • H. G. Wells, The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (1920) Book VI Christianity and Islam, Ch. XXIX The Beginnings, The Rise, and the Divisions of Christianity, §3 The new universal religions, pp. 275-276 (1924 edition).

• The early fathers of the Church … impressed upon Christendom more and more strongly the belief that the universe was created in a perfectly literal sense by the hands or voice of God. Here and there sundry theologians of larger mind attempted to give a more spiritual view regarding some parts of the creative work, and of these were St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine. Ready as they were to accept the literal text of Scripture, they revolted against the conception of an actual creation of the universe by the hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this they were followed by Bede and a few others; but the more material conceptions prevailed.
  • Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) p. 3.

• Eine Religion, welche nicht oder nicht mehr fähig ist, sich auf die Höhe der erworbenen Wissenschaft zu erheben, ist eine tote Religion.
  • A religion, which is not able or no more able to raise to the height of acquired science, is a dead religion.
    • Leopold Zunz Quoted in Lippische Mitteilungen aus Geschichte und Landeskunde, Volume 75, p. 127.