Best 86 quotes in «science vs religion quotes» category

How strange it is beholding this, and, very confident, proclaim that such magnificence occurred by accident.

Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science — by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans — teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us.

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

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.

I know about dance, like the creationist knows about science, and typically treat it with a similar contempt

Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, that this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. To me, that understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.

I don’t make any pretence of knowing about the existence of a Supreme Entity, neither do I make any attempt to create any friction among religions. If anything, I have spared myself no pains in my endeavor to smoothen the ongoing friction among all religions of the world.

I esteem myself happy to have as great an ally as you in my search for truth. I will read your work ... all the more willingly because I have for many years been a partisan of the Copernican view because it reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypothesis. To refute the latter I have collected many proofs, but I do not publish them, because I am deterred by the fate of our teacher Copernicus who, although he had won immortal fame with a few, was ridiculed and condemned by countless people (for very great is the number of the stupid). {Letter to fellow revolutionary astronomer Johannes Kepelr}

If man evolved spontaneously from nothingness to flesh then man must be immortal. Why? Well, man in his development from nothingness to substance did not exist in a controlled environment and so lay prone to countless assaults from elements of his coarse environment. To preserve his viability, he had to ride materially unscathed through all those assaults. So it is reasonable to expect that man must be immune to destruction by all malevolent forces whose vicious tackles he stumbled through in the course of his development from cell to flesh. For how can he in the stoutness of maturity be susceptible to destruction by blows that he absorbed without peril in his infancy?

In America, on the ordinate plane of faith versus reason, the x-axis of faith intersects with the y-axis of reason at the zero point of "I don't give a damn what you think".

In our country religion is not different from philosophy and religion & philosophy don’t differ from science.

Instruction is the Intelligence that programs all creation".

It has always been science versus fundamentalism, not science versus religion.

It is my opinion that education is a key component to peace and progress. Despite their arrogant claims to have all the answers, world religions cannot account for recent insights and discoveries about the natural world and human history. In this, the most tantalizing argument against religious faith comes forth in the way of science and reason. An ever-growing scientific consensus has resulted in the ever-shrinking populous of religious relevance.

I think that when you consider the beauty of the world and you wonder how it came to be what it is, you are naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration and you almost feel a desire to worship something. I feel this, I recognise that other scientists such as Carl Sagan feel this, Einstein felt it. We, all of us, share a kind of religious reverence for the beauties of the universe, for the complexity of life. For the sheer magnitude of the cosmos, the sheer magnitude of geological time. And it’s tempting to translate that feeling of awe and worship into a desire to worship some particular thing, a person, an agent. You want to attribute it to a maker, to a creator. What science has now achieved is an emancipation from that impulse to attribute these things to a creator. -- God Delusion debate Professor Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox

It is not difficult to imagine the Catholic Church adopting, after a Tychonic transition, the Copernican cosmology some 200 years earlier than she eventually did. The Galileo affair was an isolated episode in the history of relations between science and theology. But its dramatic circumstances, magnified out of all proportion, created a popular belief that science stood for freedom, the Church for oppression of thought. Some historians wish to make us believe that the decline of science in Italy was due to the "terror" caused by the trial of Galileo. But the next generation saw the rise of Toricelli, Cavallieri, Borelli, whose contributions to science were more substantial than those of any generation before or during Galileo's lifetime. The contemporary divorce between faith and reason is not the result of a contest for power or intellectual monopoly, but of a progressive estrangement. This becomes evident if we shift our attention from Italy to the Protestant countries of Europe, and to France. Kepler, Descartes, Barrow, Leibniz, Gilbert, Boyle and Newton himself, the generation of pioneers contemporary with and succeeding Galileo, were all deeply and genuinely religious thinkers. The pioneers of the new cosmology, from Kepler to Newton and beyond, based their search into nature on the mystic conviction that there must exist laws behind the confusing phenomena; that the world was a completely rational, ordered, harmonic creation.

My exploration of the biology of beliefs has taught me universal tolerance.

Never under estimate the power of words. I believe my pen may actually be the sword helping me to break through black shatter proof glass that's been standing between me and my brighter past. ~PoetQs

... Protestantism, in its quest for 'rational knowledge' of God's purpose and for an understanding of this world, engendered its own demise, for it lent legitimacy to a secular science that in turn rejected and devalued all religious values. And in this respect, Protestantism effectively devalued or disenchanted itself, for in its attempt to prove its own intrinsic rationality through non-religious means it affirmed the value of science, and with this laid itself open to the charge of irrationalism and to attack from the outside from 'rational', secular forms of this-worldly legitimation.

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

Prayer is better than pills.

Science is great for us. But for someone who see the human evaluation for more than one million years, science is a just a one instant and younger than a baby.

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.

Scientists gladly accept any new truth demonstrated by evidence, that is, proved by the very law of the cosmos. Not so with any new conceptions of religion; these are fought by the use of persecution and venom. Many of the current religious beliefs literally carried into practice would stampede humanity into the old jungle ideas and habits.

Science works through replication, rectification and modification. But when it comes to religion, people simply tend to accept the theoretical preachers and their claims of historical God experiences without a single question. If there has been one experience in this world in any branch of knowledge, it absolutely follows that that experience will be repeated eternally. If they are not repeated through natural processes, the thinking humanity would have no way but to disprove that such an experience ever occurred in the history.

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

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

Science at least, is aware of its capabilities as well as shortcomings, whereas, organized religions, in most cases delude themselves with narcissistic glory.

science feeds our perpetual curiousity and claims that nothing exists until 'proven'. Science cannot prove the existence or non-existence of the human soul any more than a thermometer can prove the colour red or King Henry the eight could discourse on electronics.

Scientific Religion is compatible with Science and in fact, they enrich each other. That's because scientific religion is simply the realization of divinity within one's heart. Therefore, Science and Scientific Religion smoothen each other's path of progress. While on the contrary, far from being compatible with Science, Theoretical Religion consistently tries to impede the development of human society. Moreover, being rigidly based on bookish doctrines, it keeps making efforts to drag the human society back to the Stone Age. I am afraid, if you don't act now, the relentless battle between Theoretical Religions will turn this beautiful planet which we call home, into a barren wasteland.

Science is theology for an atheist

Science and Spirituality are two ends and you have to keep yourself at the middle. Science guys will call it, equilibrium.

There can never be a conflict between science and religion, once you understand the spiritual knack of the human brain circuits.

Tactile receptors weren't needed to experience pain. Tone of voice transported those spores just as easily.

Tarih boyunca peygamberler ve felsefeciler, büyük kozmik plana duyulan inanç olmazsa düzen ve birliğin yok olacağını iddia ettiler. Bugünse kozmik bir tasarıya inanmaya devam edenler, küresel düzen karşısındaki en tehditkar unsurlardır.

The boys learn the Quran by heart, rocking back and forth as they recite. They learn that there is no such thing as science or literature, that dinosaurs never existed and man never went to the moon.

The intangible, as you can guess, creates some decidedly strange and perceived dichotomies for scientific interpretations. Ask a scientist what the definition of electricity is and he might rattle off, “It is the physical phenomena arising from the reaction of electrons and protons…” Note the word “…phenomena…” in the above statement - it is the key word. It is used as a reference in the philosophical usage rather than as a scientific justification.

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.

The Duality of One is the Unity of two.

The gray-haired growser, who proved to be a lawyer, had made it clear how much he loathed the people who were, in his view, attempting to undermine the American Constitution by imposing a state religion—or possibly it was "religion state by state," for his argument grew more confused with each Martini he sank. At any rate he was noisily predicting that the result would be world domination by the Communist bloc because they would wind up with a monopoly of practical science while his own people would be reduced to praying, sticking pins in chance-opened Bibles, and casting lots to decide whose eldest son should be sacrificed to stave off disaster.

There are more cells in your brain than there are brains in your entire body.

There exists indeed an opposition to it [building of UVA, Jefferson's secular college] by the friends of William and Mary, which is not strong. The most restive is that of the priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live. In this the Presbyterian clergy take the lead. The tocsin is sounded in all their pulpits, and the first alarm denounced is against the particular creed of Doctr. Cooper; and as impudently denounced as if they really knew what it is. [Letter to José Francesco Corrê a Da Serra - Monticello, April 11, 1820]

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.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.

There is no separation between the evolution of the species; scientific discovery and the divine sacredness of the totality. The best evidence of this infinite divine sacredness is love itself. All is One.

The visage of Lucifer mushroomed into hideousness above the cloudbank, rising slowly like some titan climbing to its feet after ages of imprisonment in the Earth.

There was no conflict between science and religion ever. The conflicts were actually between two different systems of human understanding – one was science, which was based on rigorous observations and examinations, and the other was fundamentalism, that’s based on undisputed belief on the scriptures.

The soul is a mystery. Scientists and Theologians constantly butt heads on the soul’s definitive and can’t come to grips with its purpose and actual existence. Yet, the basic framework taught in a High School physics class helps with an explanation of the latter - the existence of the soul.

The Ultimate Truth is too sophisticated a concept for you idiots worshiping this-that asinine sky-god.

The will to believe has given us our great saints. The will to doubt has given us our great scientists. The goal of the intelligent man is a character in which the will to believe of the saint and the will to doubt of the scientist meet and mingle.

We can't tell you the origin of the experience. But we can tell you the brain does appear to be built to have these [mystical] experiences. There are examples of people reaching similar states, spontaneously. But for the most part, it takes work. Meditation and these powerful prayer experiences require dedication and practice. But people have figured out how to do this, and the question is, 'What is the source of that experience?' The answer is, 'We don't know.' Science doesn't really have an answer for you.