Dr. Robert Jastrow, astronomer and agnostic.
. . . the Universe was constructed within very narrow limits, in such a way that man could dwell in it. This result is called the anthropic principle. It is the most theistic result ever to come out of science, in my view.
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
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Professor Frank Tipler, mathematician and physicist.
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.
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Dr. Paul Davies, astronomer, phyicist.
There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. . . . It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe. . . . The impression of design is overwhelming.
The temptation to believe that the universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming....the belief that there is 'someting behind it all'.
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Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer, physicist and evolutionist.
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect 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 the conclusion almost beyond question.
"The chance that higher life forms might have emerged [by coincidence] is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials herein." From Hoyle's book, The Intelligent Universe.
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Alan Sandage, astronomer.
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.
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John Maynard Smith, biology professor.
It turns out that the physical constants have just the values required to ensure that the universe contains stars with planets capable of supporting intelligent life....the simplest interpretation is that the universe was designed by a creator who intended that intelligent life should evolve. This interpretation lies outside science.
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Dr. Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist, agnostic.
In fact, if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that produced life like ours are immense.
The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the big bang are enormous....I think clearly there are religious implications whenever you start to discuss the origins of the universe. There must be religious overtones. But I think most scientists prefer to shy away from the religious side of it.
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Dr. Robert Jastrow, astronomer.
...The smallest change in any of the circumstances of the natural world, such as the relative strengths of the forces of nature, or the properties of the elementary particles, would have led to a universe in which there could be no life and no man. For example, if nuclear forces were decreased by a few percent, the particles of the universe would not have come together in nuclear reactions to make the ingredients, such as carbon atoms, of which life must be constructed.
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Professor Wernher von Braun, pioneering scientist of America's space program.
I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknoweldge 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.
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Professor Arno Penzias, winner fo the Nobel Prize for physics.
Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan.
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Professor John O'Keefe, NASA astronomer and scientist.
We are.....a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.....If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision, we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.
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