SCIENCE FINDS GOD

By the Newsweek’s July 20, 1998- Special Report “Science finds God” by Sharon Begley:

Allan Sandage:

It might be supposed that the more deeply scientists see into the secrets of the Universe you'd expect, the more God would fade away from their hearts and minds. But that's not how it went for Allan Sandage. Now slightly stooped and white-haired at 72 Sandage has spent a professional lifetime coaxing secrets out of the stars, peeling through telescopes from Chile to California in the hope of spying nothing less than the origins and destiny of the Universe. As much as any other 20th century astronomer Sandage actually figured it but: his observations of distant stars showed how fast the Universe is expanding and how old it is (13.8 billion years or so). But through it all Sandage, who says he was "almost a practicing atheist as a boy," was nagged by mysteries whose answers were not found in the glittering panoply of supernovas. Among them: why is there something rather than nothing? Sandage began to despair of answering such questions through reason alone, and so, at 50 he recognized himself to accept God "It was science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science," he says. "It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence."

Robert Russell:

It's amazing where old horses have arrived in science and religion. Throughout history they have ranged from mutual support to bitter antagonism. While religious doctrine led to the birth of the empirical method for centuries, faith and reason soon took different paths. Galileo, Darwin and others who were faced with the dogma of the church for its investigations, were accused of heresy and the most civilized solution found to reconcile science with theology was to agree to each keep their own spheres: science tries to find answers to empirical questions about ¿what? and ¿how?; religion is responsible for the spiritual, or the ¿why?. However, as science took on more authority and power since the beginning of the "enlightenment", that distinction was lost. . .

... Now "theology and science are entering into a new relationship," says physicist turned theologian Robert John Russell who in 1981 founded the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley...

... Theologian supporters of science and scientists that do not support the spiritual emptiness of empiricism are creating schools in which both sides are being integrated...

Steven Weinberg:

In 1977, the Nobel Prize in Physics Steven Weinberg, of the Texas University, reported a disappointing interpretation: the more we understand the Universe through cosmology, we see less sense. But now, the same science that seemed to have "killed" God is restoring the faith, according to some believers. Physicists have stumbled on signs that the cosmos is tailored to give rise to life and consciousness. It turns out that if the constants of nature, i.e., the unchanged values as the force of gravity, the charge of the mass of electrons and protons, were changed in the slightest (infinitesimal size), then the atom would lose its integrity, the stars would not shine, and life would never have arisen.

Jhon Polkkinghome, Charles Townes:

"When you realize that the laws of nature must be coordinated with maximum precision that will result in the visible Universe," says John Polkkinghorne, who had a distinguished career as a physicist at the University of Cambridge before becoming an Anglican priest in 1982. "It's hard to resist the idea that the Universe is not accidental, but must be a purpose of Him." Charles Townes, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the principles underlying the laser, said further: "Many feel that the intelligence had something to do with the creation of the laws of Universe."

... Albert Einstein discarded the ordered Universe of Newton with his novel theory of relativity. "Science without religion limps. Religion without science is blind" he said later..