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WERNER HEISENBERG – NOBEL LAUREATE IN PHYSICS

Nobel Prize: Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen.” In 1927 Heisenberg published the famous principle of uncertainty (indeterminacy) that bears his name.

Nationality: German.

Education: Ph.D. in physics, University of Munich, Germany, 1923; Dr. Phil. Habil., University of Goettingen, Germany, 1924.

Occupation: Professor of Physics at the Universities of Copenhagen (Denmark), Leipzig, Berlin, Goettingen, and Munich.

1. “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.” [“Der erste Trunk aus dem Becher der Naturwissenschaft macht atheistisch, aber auf dem Grund des Bechers wartet Gott.”] (Heisenberg, as cited in Hildebrand 1988, 10).

2. In his autobiographical article in the journal Truth, Henry Margenau (Professor Emeritus of Physics and Natural Philosophy at Yale University) pointed out: “I have said nothing about the years between 1936 and 1950. There were, however, a few experiences I cannot forget. One was my first meeting with Heisenberg, who came to America soon after the end of the Second World War. Our conversation was intimate and he impressed me by his deep religious conviction. He was a true Christian in every sense of that word.” (Margenau 1985, Vol. 1).

3. In his article Scientific and Religious Truth (1973) Heisenberg affirmed:

“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.” (Heisenberg 1974, 213).

4. “Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair.

Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.” (Heisenberg 1974, 219).

5. Einstein believed in strict causality till the end of his life. In his last surviving letter to Einstein, Heisenberg writes that while in the new quantum mechanics Einstein’s beloved causality principle is baseless, “We can console ourselves that the good Lord God would know the position of the particles, and thus He could let the causality principle continue to have validity.” (Heisenberg, as cited in Holton 2000, vol. 53).

See also Heisenberg’s articles:

- Heisenberg, Werner. 1970. “Erste Gespraeche ueber das Verhaeltnis von Naturwissenschaft und Religion (1927).” Werner Trutwin, ed. Religion-Wissenschaft-Weltbild. Duesseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, pp. 23-31. (Theologisches Forum. Texte fuer den Religionsunterricht 4.)

- Heisenberg, Werner. 1973. “Naturwissenschaftliche und religioese Wahrheit.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 Maerz, pp. 7-8. (Speech before the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, on acceptance of the Guardini Prize, 23 March 1973).

- Heisenberg, Werner. 1968. “Religion und Naturwissenschaft.” Bayer, Leverkusen. Sofort-Kongress-Dienst 24, 1-2.

- Heisenberg, Werner. 1969. “Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung wuerde. Drei Atomphysiker diskutieren ueber Positivismus, Metaphysik und Religion.” Die Zeit 24, No. 34, 29-30.

ERWIN SCHROEDINGER – NOBEL LAUREATE IN PHYSICS

Nobel Prize: Erwin Schroedinger (1887–1961) was granted the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory.” Schroedinger also contributed to the wave theory of matter and to other fundamentals of quantum mechanics. He is the founder of wave mechanics.

Nationality: Austrian

Education: Ph.D. in physics, University of Vienna, Austria, 1910

Occupation: Professor of Physics at the Universities of Stuttgart, Jena, Berlin, Zurich, Oxford, and Vienna

1. Schroedinger claims that science is a creative game with rules, which are designed by God himself:

“Science is a game – but a game with reality, a game with sharpened knives.

If a man cuts a picture carefully into 1000 pieces, you solve the puzzle when you reassemble the pieces into a picture; in the success or failure, both your intelligences compete.

In the presentation of a scientific problem, the other player is the good Lord. He has not only set the problem but also has devised the rules of the game – but they are not completely known, half of them are left for you to discover or to deduce.

The uncertainty is how many of the rules God himself has permanently ordained, and how many apparently are caused by your own mental inertia, while the solution generally becomes possible only through freedom from its limitations. This is perhaps the most exciting thing in the game.” (Schroedinger, as cited in Moore 1990, 348).

2. “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 experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it 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.

Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.” (Schroedinger 1954, 93).

3. Schroedinger emphatically denies the claim of some theists that the essence of science is atheistic:

“I shall quite briefly mention here the notorious atheism of science. The theists reproach it for this again and again. Unjustly. A personal God can not be encountered in a world picture that becomes accessible only at the price that everything personal is excluded from it.

We know that whenever God is experienced, it is an experience exactly as real as a direct sense impression, as real as one’s own personality. As such He must be missing from the space-time picture. ‘I do not meet with God in space and time’, so says the honest scientific thinker, and for that reason he is reproached by those in whose catechism it is nevertheless stated: ‘God is Spirit’.” (Schroedinger, as cited in Moore 1990, 379; see also Schroedinger’s Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1958, p. 68).

4. Schroedinger maintains that the human technical inventions have caused a deterioration in Nature:

“The grave error in a technically directed cultural drive is that it sees its highest goal in the possibility of achieving an alteration of Nature. It hopes to set itself in the place of God, so that it may force upon the divine will some petty conventions of its dust-born mind.” (Schroedinger, as cited in Moore 1990, 349).

5. In his book Nature and the Greeks Schroedinger states:

“Whence came I, whither go I? Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.

Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity – the One of Parmenides – of which we all somehow form part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God – with a capital ‘G’.

Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.” (Schroedinger 1954, 95-96).

6. Walter Moore (Professor Emeritus of Physical Chemistry at the University of Sydney, Australia) writes that Schroedinger’s best loved quotation from the Vedas is this:

“Who sees the Lord dwelling alike in all beings

Perishing not as they perish

He sees indeed. For, when he sees the Lord

Dwelling in everything, he harms not self by self.

This is the highest way.”

(Walter Moore, Schroedinger: Life and Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1990, 349).

Regarding this verse Schroedinger says: “These beautiful words need no commentary. Here mercy and goodness towards all living things (not merely fellow human beings) are glorified as the highest attainable goal – almost in the sense of Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life.” (Schroedinger, as cited in Moore 1990, 349 and 477).

7. Schroedinger denies Materialism (i.e. the theory that matter is the only reality). Schroedinger affirms that human consciousness is absolutely different from the material bodily processes: “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” (Schroedinger 1984, 334).

8. “Now I shall not keep free of metaphysics, nor even of mysticism; they play a role in all that follows.

We living beings all belong to one another, we are all actually members or aspects of a single Being, which we may in western terminology call God, while in the Upanishads it is called Brahman.” (Schroedinger, as cited in Moore 1990, 477).

In his book Mind and Matter Schroedinger writes: “One thing can be claimed in favour of the mystical teaching of the ‘identity’ of all minds with each other and with the Supreme Mind – as against the fearful monadology of Leibniz. The doctrine of identity can claim that it is clinched by the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems to be blunt tautology – we are quite unable to imagine the contrary.” (Schroedinger 1958).

9. The science writer Ken Wilber states: “My book Quantum Questions centered on the remarkable fact that virtually every one of the great pioneers of modern physics - men like Einstein, Schroedinger and Heisenberg - were spiritual mystics of one sort or another, an altogether extraordinary situation. The hardest of the sciences, physics, had run smack into the tenderest of religions, mysticism. Why? And what exactly was mysticism, anyway?

So I collected the writings of Einstein, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Louis de Broglie, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Sir Arthur Eddington, and Sir James Jeans. The scientific genius of these men is beyond dispute (all but two were Nobel laureates); what is so amazing, as I said, is that they all shared a profoundly spiritual or mystical worldview, which is perhaps the last thing one would expect from pioneering scientists.” (Wilber 1998, 16).

See Schroedinger’s books:

- My View of the World. Cambridge University Press, 1964.

- Mind and Matter. Cambridge University Press, 1958.

- What Is Life? New York: Doubleday, 1956.

9. ALBERT SCHWEITZER, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

In Reverence for Life Schweitzer stated: “To hope, to keep silent, and to work alone - that is what we must learn to do if we really want to labor in the true spirit. But what exactly does it involve, this plowing? The plowman does not pull the plow. He does not push it. He only directs it. That is just how events move in our lives. We can do nothing but guide them straight in the direction which leads to our Lord Jesus Christ, striving toward him in all we do and experience. Strive toward him, and the furrow will plow itself.” (Schweitzer 1969, 47).

10. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

“If there is any place on earth where earthly distinctions vanish it is in the church, in the presence of God. The nearer the people get to the heart of Christ, the nearer they get to each other, irrespective of earthly conditions.” (Theodore Roosevelt, The Free Citizen, New York, The Macmillan Company, Hermann Hagedorn - editor, 1956, p. 31).

11. FREDERIK DE KLERK, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

“Christians should forgive one another because this is the command of the Lord and the precondition that He sets for our own forgiveness.

Ultimately, however, in our relationship with God, our sins can be forgiven only through the sacrifice and intercession of His Son, Jesus Christ. This, in its deepest sense, is the meaning of forgiveness and reconciliation and it leads not necessarily to peace in this world, but to the peace that passes all understanding.” (de Klerk 1997).

12. JOHN R. MOTT, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

“The Scriptures clearly teach that if men are to be saved they must be saved through Christ. He alone can deliver them from the power of sin and its penalty. His death made salvation possible.

The Word of God sets forth the conditions of salvation. God has chosen to have these conditions made known through human instruments. Christians have a duty to preach Christ to every creature. The burning question for every Christian then is: Shall hundreds of millions of people now living, who need Christ and are capable of receiving help from Him, pass away without having even the opportunity to know Him?” (Mott, as cited in DuBose 1979).

“It is our duty to evangelize the world because we owe all men the gospel.

What a crime against mankind to keep a knowledge of the mission of Christ from two thirds of the human race! It is our duty to evangelize the world in this generation because of the missionary command of Christ.” (John R. Mott 1944).

13. KIM DAE-JUNG, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

“Love of God does not mean we must love Him first. Rather, He loved us first, creating the world and leaving it in our care, sending His only son to us to spread the gospel, and, finally, opening the way for us to deliver ourselves from sin through the crucifixion of His innocent son, Jesus. Through Jesus’ resurrection, God gave us hope for eternal life.” (Kim Dae-jung, Prison Writings, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

14. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

“We believe firmly in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal.” (King, as cited in Oates 1982, 81-82).

15. JIMMY CARTER, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

“Being born again is a new life, not of perfection but of striving, stretching, and searching - a life of intimacy with God through Holy Spirit. There must first be an emptying, and then a refilling. To the extent that we want to know, understand, and experience God, we can find all this in Jesus. It is a highly personal and subjective experience, possible only if we are searching for greater truths about ourselves and God.” (Carter 1998, 20-21).

16. SPINOZA, Dutch-Jewish philosopher, the chief exponent of modern rationalism Spinoza looked on Jesus Christ as a man of transcendent moral genius, standing out above Moses and the prophets. Spinoza looked on Jesus as a Son of God, but not as a God. In discussing the nature of prophetic vision he wrote: “I believe not that any man ever came to that singular height of perfection but Christ, to whom the ordinances of God that lead men to salvation were revealed, not in words or visions, but immediately: so that God manifested himself to the apostles by the mind of Christ, as formerly to Moses by means of a voice in the air. And therefore the voice of Christ may be called, like that which Moses heard, the voice of God. In this sense we may likewise say that the wisdom of God, that is, a wisdom above man’s, took man’s nature in Christ, and that Christ is the way of salvation.” (Spinoza, as cited in Frederick Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy, Adamant Media Corporation, Boston, 2000, 352).

17. BLAISE PASCAL, founder of Hydrostatics and Hydrodynamics

“Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.” (Pascal 1910, No. 528).

“Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery; in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.” (Pascal 1910, No. 545-546).

1. ALEXIS CARREL, Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology

“Jesus knows our world. He does not disdain us like the God of Aristotle. We can speak to Him and He answers us. Although He is a person like ourselves, He is God and transcends all things.” (Carrel 1952, Chap. 6, Part 7).

2. ALBERT EINSTEIN, Nobel Laureate in Physics

Einstein’s attitude towards Jesus Christ was expressed in an interview, which the great scientist gave to the American magazine The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929):

“- To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?

- 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.

- Have you read Emil Ludwig’s book on Jesus?

- Emil Ludwig’s Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.

- You accept the historical Jesus?

- Unquestionably! 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.” (Einstein, as cited in Viereck 1929; see also Einstein, as cited in the German magazine Geisteskampf der Gegenwart, Gütersloh, 1930, S. 235).

3. ARTHUR COMPTON, Nobel Laureate in Physics

“Jesus’ teaching and the example of His life form the most reliable guide that I have found for shaping my own actions. It is because I accept His leadership that I call myself a Christian.

I see Him as the Everest among the world’s many high mountains.” (Compton 1956, 346).

4. ROBERT MILLIKAN, Nobel Laureate in Physics

“The practical preaching of modern science - and it is the most insistent and effective preacher in the world today - is extraordinarily like the preaching of Jesus. Its keynote is service, the subordination of the individual to the good of the whole. Jesus preached it as a duty - for the sake of world-salvation. Science preaches it as a duty - for the sake of world-progress.

Jesus also preached the joy and the satisfaction of service: ‘He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.’ ” (Millikan, as cited in Kargon 1982, 147).

5. FRANCOIS MAURIAC, Nobel Laureate in Literature

“Our hearts remain full of unseen idols until we are stretched on the wood of the Cross with Christ, until we cease trying to nourish ourselves and our desires, and give ourselves completely to the poor, to the needy, to the suffering members of Christ’s body throughout the world.” (Mauriac, Notre Dame, 1964).

6. SIGRID UNDSET, Nobel Laureate in Literature

In her article “Catholic Propaganda” (1927), Sigrid Undset wrote: “There is no room in the Catholic Church for different concepts about the being of God or about the divine-human nature of Jesus Christ or about the motherhood of the Virgin Mary; because Christ himself is the way to God’s kingdom and because his death on the Cross is the secret which opens God’s kingdom to the descendants of Adam, his blood truly cleanses the sinner from all his sin, his body is truly the food which is the life of believers.” (Undset 1993).

7. T.S. ELIOT, Nobel Laureate in Literature

“Christ is the still point of the turning world.” (Eliot, as cited in Castle 2002, 219).

“The division between those who accept, and those who deny, Christian revelation I take to be the most profound division between human beings.” (Eliot, as cited in Yancey 1999, 88).

8. MOTHER TERESA, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

“Charity begins today. Today somebody is suffering, today somebody is in the street, today somebody is hungry. Our work is for today, yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not yet come - today, we have only today to make Jesus known, loved, served, fed, clothed, sheltered, etc. Today - do not to wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow might not come. Tomorrow we will not have them if we do not feed them today.” (Mother Teresa 1991).

“Christ has come to bring the good news for you and for me. And as if that was not enough - it was not enough to become a man - He died on the cross to show that greater love, and He died for you and for me and for that leper and for that man dying of hunger and that naked person lying in the street not only of Calcutta, but of Africa, and New York, and London, and Oslo - and insisted that we love one another as He loves each one of us.” (Mother Teresa, as cited in Thee 1995, 499).

SIR FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626), founder of the scientific inductive method

1. “There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; the first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the creatures, which express His power.” (Bacon, as cited in Morris 1982, 13-14).

2. “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.” (Bacon 1875, 64).

3. In the first chapter “Of Truth” of his Essays (1601), Lord Bacon wrote: “The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last, was the light of reason; and his sabbath work ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light, upon the face of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light, into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light, into the face of his chosen.” (Bacon 1875).

ERNST HAECKEL (1834-1919), German biologist, the most influential evolutionist in continental Europe

1. In his major philosophical work Monism as Connecting Religion and Science: The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science (1892) the pantheistic monist Ernst Haeckel wrote:

“The monistic idea of God, which alone is compatible with our present knowledge of nature, recognises the Divine spirit in all things.

God is everywhere. As Giordano Bruno has it: ‘There is one Spirit in all things, and no body is so small that it does not contain a part of the Divine substance whereby it is animated’.” (Haeckel 1895, 78).

2. “Of the various systems of pantheism which for long have given expression more or less clearly to the monistic conception of God, the most perfect is certainly that of Spinoza.” (Haeckel 1895, 79).

3. “Ever more clearly are we compelled by reflection to recognise that God is not to be placed over against the material world as an external being, but must be placed as a ‘Divine power’ or ‘moving Spirit’ within the cosmos itself.” (Haeckel 1895, 15).

4. “The charge of atheism which still continues to be levelled against our pantheism, and against the monism which lies at its root, no longer finds a response among the really educated classes of the present day.” (Haeckel 1895, 80-81).

5. “I conclude my monistic Confession of Faith with the words: ‘May God, the Spirit of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, be with us’.” (Haeckel 1895, 89).

SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727), founder of Classical Physics and Infinitesimal Calculus

1. At the end of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (London, 1687) Newton wrote:

“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.” (Newton 1687, Principia).

2. “From His true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent and powerful Being; and from His other perfections, that He is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, His duration reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity; He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done.” (Newton 1687, Principia; see also Caputo 2000, 88).

3. “God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him, and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts. And by the same power by which he gave life at first to every species of animals, he is able to revive the dead, and has revived Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who has gone into the heavens to receive a kingdom, and prepare a place for us, and is next in dignity to God, and may be worshipped as the Lamb of God, and has sent the Holy Ghost to comfort us in his absence, and will at length return and reign over us.” (Newton, as cited in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton by Sir David Brewster, Edinburgh, Thomas Constable and Co., 1855, Vol. II, 354).

4. “Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors.

Can it be by accident that all birds, beasts, and men have their right side and left side alike shaped, (except in their bowels); and just two eyes, and no more, on either side of the face; and just two ears on either side of the head; and a nose with two holes; and either two forelegs, or two wings, or two arms on the shoulders, and two legs on the hips, and no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel and contrivance of an Author?

Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom, and the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside a hard transparent skin, and within transparent humours, with a crystalline lens in the middle, and a pupil before the lens, all of them so finely shaped and fitted for vision, that no artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light, and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures, after the most curious manner, to make use of it? These, and suchlike considerations, always have, and ever will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, and has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared. We are, therefore, to acknowledge one God, infinite, eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, the Creator of all things, most wise, most just, most good, most holy. We must love him, fear him, honour him, trust in him, pray to him, give him thanks, praise him, hallow his name, obey his commandments.” (Newton, as cited in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton by Sir David Brewster, Edinburgh, Thomas Constable and Co., 1855, Vol. II, 347-348).

5. “And when you are convinced, be not ashamed to profess the truth. For otherwise you may become a stumbling block to others, and inherit the lot of those Rulers of the Jews who believed in Christ, but yet were afraid to confess him lest they should be put out of the Synagogue. Wherefore, when you are convinced, be not ashamed of the truth, but profess it openly and endeavor to convince your Brother also that you may inherit at the resurrection the promise made in Daniel 12:3, that ‘they who turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.’

And rejoice if you are counted worthy to suffer in your reputation or any other way for the sake of the Gospel, for then, ‘great is thy reward’!” (Newton, as cited in The Religion of Sir Isaac Newton, Frank E. Manuel – editor, London, Oxford University Press, 1974, 112). 6. “The supreme God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity He exists always and everywhere.” (Newton 1687, Principia; see also Caputo 2000, 88).

7. “Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.” (Newton, as cited in Tiner 1975).

8. “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.” (Newton, as cited in Tiner 1975).

9. “I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever.” (Newton, as cited in Morris 1982, 26).

GIORDANO BRUNO (1548-1600), Italian philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, founder of the theory of the infinite universe

1. “Wisdom is most manifest on the surface and body of all created things, for everywhere Wisdom crieth and on all sides her voice is heard. For what are all those things which we see, stars, animals, bodies and the beauty thereof, but the voices and echoes of Wisdom, the works of the Divine Being that shew forth his lofty providence, in which as in a book may be read most clearly the story of Divine Power, Wisdom and Goodness? For the invisible things of God are discovered through those things which are understood. This thou hast from Scripture.” (Bruno, as cited in Singer 1950, 60-61).

2. “God, that most fertile Mind, will indeed send Wisdom, but what sort of Wisdom? Only such as can be adapted to our mental vision, in the shadow of light; as from the Sun who cannot be reached nor apprehended, who in himself continueth mysteriously and steadfastly in infinite light, yet his pervasive radiance descendeth to us by the emission of rays and is communicated and diffused throughout all things.” (Bruno, as cited in Singer 1950, 59-60).

3. “The One Infinite is perfect, in simplicity, of itself, absolutely, nor can aught be greater or better. This is the one Whole, God, universal Nature, occupying all space, of whom naught but infinity can give the perfect image or semblance.” (Bruno, as cited in Singer 1950, 61).

4. “The Universal Intellect is the innermost, most real and essential faculty and the most efficacious part of the world-soul. It is the one and the same thing, which fills the whole, illumines the universe, and directs nature in producing her species in the right way. It plays the same role in the production of natural things as our intellect does in the parallel production of rational systems.” (Bruno 1962, 81).

DAVID HUME (1711-1776), Scottish empiricist philosopher, historian, and economist, founder of modern skepticism

1. In 1745, in his famous letter to John Coutts (Lord Provost of Edinburgh), David Hume wrote:

“Wherever I see Order, I infer from Experience that there, there hath been Design and Contrivance. And the same Principle which leads me into this Inference, when I contemplate a Building, regular and beautiful in its whole Frame and Structure; the same Principle obliges me to infer an infinitely perfect Architect, from the infinite Art and Contrivance which is display'd in the whole Fabrick of the Universe.” (See Hume 1977, 120; A Letter From a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh).

2. In the Introduction to his book The Natural History of Religion (1757), Hume stated: “The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent Author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion.” (Hume 1956, 21).

3. In The Natural History of Religion (1757), Hume wrote: “Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intelligent Power by a contemplation of the works of nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single Being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one regular plan or connected system. …All things in the universe are evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. One design prevails throughout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one Author.” (Hume 1956, 26).

4. “The order of the universe proves an omnipotent Mind.” (Hume 1978; Treatise, 633n).

IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804), one of the greatest philosophers in the history of Western philosophy

1. In his chief philosophical work Critique of Pure Reason, Kant wrote:

“I inevitably believe in the existence of God and in a future life, and I am certain that nothing can shake this belief, since my moral principles would thereby be themselves overthrown, and I cannot disclaim them without becoming abhorrent in my own eyes.” (Kant 1929, 856).

2. “In other words, belief in a God and in another world is so interwoven with my moral sentiment that as there is little danger of my losing the latter, there is equally little cause for fear that the former can ever be taken from me.” (Kant 1929, 857; Critique of Pure Reason).

3. In his Lectures on Philosophical Theology, Kant stated:

“God created the world for His honor’s sake because it is only through the obedience to His holy laws that God can be honored. For what does it mean to honor God? What, if not to serve Him? But how can He be served? Certainly not by trying to entice His favor by rendering Him all sorts of praise. For such praise is at best only a means for preparing our hearts to a good disposition. Instead, the service of God consists simply and solely in following His will and observing His holy laws and commands.” (Kant 1978, 142-143).

4. “God is the only ruler of the world. He governs as a monarch, but not as a despot; for He wills to have His commands observed out of love, and not out of servile fear. Like a father, He orders what is good for us, and does not command out of mere arbitrariness, like a tyrant. God even demands of us that we reflect on the reason for His commandments, and He insists on our observing them because He wants first to make us worthy of happiness and then participate in it. God’s will is benevolence, and His purpose is what is best.” (Kant 1978, 156; Lectures on Philosophical Theology).