The Faith of a Scientist

Key Takeaways

Under Consideration — to be added.

Interconnections

Under Consideration — to be added.

Highlights

• BELIEVERS AND ATHEISTS ALIKE ARE PRONE TO MUDDY the waters of truth in ill-informed discussions on the subject of science and religion.
• It is that, disregarding the theories and conjectures of the advocates on either side, true science and true religion are and must always be in complete harmony; that this must be so because truth is consistent—no one truth can conflict with another truth; and that the existence of a loving, personal God who offers a beneficent plan for man’s eternal progression is not only consistent with scientific truth but is for him as much a reality as any of the findings of science.
• He also declares that he has no difficulty in reconciling the principles of true science with the principles of true religion, since both are concerned with the eternal verities of the universe.
• For me there has been no serious difficulty in reconciling the principles of true science with the principles of true religion, for both are concerned with the eternal verities of the universe.
• During Christmas week (1963) he gave the first series of five popular lectures on science at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia; these lectures have been described as a revival of the famous Faraday Christmas lectures given at the Royal Society of London over a century ago.
• With Eyring, mathematics is a tool and not an end. The physical and chemical nature of the problem, or the answer, is never submerged in mathematical obscurity.
• And yet there are many people, and particularly among our youth, who regard the field of science and the field of religion as two wholly different spheres, the one entirely separated from and unrelated to the other.
• I believe that many of our young people have impoverished their lives by a thoughtless denial of all aspects of the faith of their fathers in their desire to be what they call scientific and objective.
• I should like to say that true religion was never a narrow thing. True religion concerns man and the entire universe in which he lives. It concerns his relationships with himself and his fellow men, with his environment, and with God his Creator. It is therefore limitless, and as boundless as that eternity which it teaches lies ahead of every son of God.
• Now, curiously enough, there are good people who would have you believe that man, who conceives all these wonderful things, and masters them in part, is no more than the dust of the earth to which his body returns. To me, this is unbelievable.
• Here is the spirit of true religion, an honest seeking after knowledge of all things of heaven and earth.
• Touching on Newton’s position, the mathematician E.T. Bell, in his book Men of Mathematics, says: “… Newton was an unquestioning believer in an all-wise Creator of the universe.”
• History, unlike laboratory experiments, cannot be tried over again, just because we are not quite sure what the happenings meant. In this sense, religion differs from such laboratory sciences as chemistry and physics, and is more like astronomy or historical geology, where we must depend in part on inference. In the end, however, if the inquiry is broad enough and careful enough, we need be no less sure of our final conclusions.
• I would like to suggest to the youth who may feel inclined to disparage religion as he pursues other studies, that he might bring enrichment to his life by cultivating faith and an interest in things of the spirit as he follows his other pursuits. Such faith will never detract from his abilities in other fields, but it will broaden his thinking and give added depth to his character.
• It is interesting to recall that in ages past, religious men felt that their faith hinged on the notion that the earth was flat. However, when it was found to be round, they discovered that their basic religious ideas had survived without perceptible damage. In fact, the great underlying principles of faith were brought into bolder relief when the clutter of false notions was removed from about them.
• Mechanical determinism meant that if one were given the state of the universe at any instant of time, a sufficiently expert mathematician could calculate the state of things at all times to come. This left no place for the great religious principle of free will. Then quantum mechanics brought with it the uncertainty principle. This principle eliminates the possibility of predicting the future exactly, and tends to confirm that fundamental Christian tenet that man enjoys free agency as a divine gift.
• The atomic bomb dramatically emphasized a fact discovered earlier in relativity theory and in laboratory experiments. This fact is that matter can disappear only to reappear again as energy. This liberalization in our conceptions regarding matter gives added significance to the doctrine that the spirit is composed of a refined kind of matter.
• God grant that in seeking the mysteries of His handiwork, we may also learn His great religious truths, which we have been prone to disregard, that our efforts might become a blessing unto us.
• In religion, too, there are two ways of proceeding. There are those truths we know by revelation and by long experience. Then there are the myriads of problems which are interesting but go far beyond the things we know. One type of mind goes plunging into the mysteries and explains them all to his own satisfaction. This probably does little harm, if one doesn’t end up believing one’s own daydreams. It is just as important to keep fact and fancy separated in religion as in science.
• Thomas Aquinas, for example, undertook to weave all knowledge into a single consistent scheme to support his religious convictions. He leaned heavily on Aristotle and wove what is now very bad mechanics into some of his proofs of the existence of a Creator. The result is a philosophy shot through with palpable error.
• Perhaps the believer never does more disservice to religion than to support the truth with bad arguments.
• All these wonderful findings in nature should increase our reverence for the omniscient wisdom of the Creator in fashioning this exquisitely complex universe as a school for His children. Since the Gospel embraces all truth, there can never be any genuine contradictions between true science and true religion.
• We, in this age, live in six worlds. They can be represented by a point surrounded by five circles. The first, or central, world is the world of the atomic nucleus and of the atomic bomb. The nucleus where most of the weight of an atom is situated has a diameter less than one ten-thousandth that of the atom. Vibrations inside the nuclei of atoms are about a million times more frequent than the vibrations between atoms. The second world is the world of chemistry, made up of atoms and molecules. This is still a tiny world. It would take just 100 million atoms placed side by side to reach an inch. A molecule finishes one of its vibrations in about a ten million millionth of a second. We call this length of time a “jiffy” for lack of a better name. Our third world is the world of the living cell, the world of biology. Cells vary in size but typically they are about a micron across, that is about one ten-thousandth of a centimeter. An active cell divides into two cells about every twenty minutes. The human cell has near its center a cell nucleus containing forty-six chromosomes. Twenty-three of these come from the father and twenty-three from the mother. The chromosomes are made up of about a million genes which constitute our inheritance. A gene controls the synthesis of essential molecules such as enzymes which build and regulate our unbelievably complicated bodies. The fourth world is the world of everyday. Here, we measure time in seconds or minutes and distances in feet or miles. This is the rorld we know most about. If we next look at the stars, we see the fifth world. By using the largest telescope, we can see out so far that the light reaching our eyes started on its journey toward us almost two-and-one-half billion years ago. Scientists estimate that this is back toward the beginning of our present universe. The sixth, or the eternal world, includes and surrounds all the others. In it we know neither beginning nor end of space nor of time. Presiding over all is the Creator whom we worship. Holding everything together are the eternal laws which will require an eternity for us to master. Such is man’s prospect; such is his destiny.
• If one picked up a watch far from human habitation and found it running, one would ask not only who made it, but also who wound it up. So it is with this universe. It was not wound up by chance, but by some as yet unfathomed operation of eternal law.
• The revelations to the prophets, both ancient and modern, testify to the immanence, or closeness, of God to His children. His guiding hand is to be seen in all creation by those who are sensitive to the influence of His Spirit. In fact, there are two ways of drawing nearer to Him: first, through the intellectual contemplation of God’s handiwork; second, through spiritual communion with the Creator in which we gain direct experience of His presence. The Latter-day Saint who lives up to his opportunities will do both.
• Human beings are born into the world with great potentialities but no learning. The knowledge which makes the difference between civilized man and the untutored savage flows to us from others in an unending stream from birth until death. All of us are involved in this process of communication, and the well-being of society measures directly how well the job is being done.
• The Gospel, in all its beauty and perfection, is effective also only as it is communicated.
• There seems no reasonable alternative to the conclusion that the Creator has methods of communication which travel by other means and at speeds unknown and perhaps unknowable to mortal man. Somehow, the universe is coordinated and regulated by influences which transcend the laws of physics now known to man. Nor should this seem strange if one remembers that such marvels as radar, radio and the telegraph were unimaginable a century and a half ago. What wonders can we not hope to unravel in the endless eternity ahead? It is interesting to note that Orson Pratt raised this same question regarding divine communication and answered it in much the same way about a century ago. Though our knowledge of the universe is always expanding, the fundamentals of the Gospel endure unchanged.
• The people who catch hold of men’s minds and feelings and inspire them to do things bigger than themselves are the people who are remembered in history. The cold person who simply propounds some logical position, however important and interesting it may be, cannot do for the Lord’s children what is done by those who stir feelings and imagination and make men struggle toward perfection.
• One of the problems of the Church is the unsound arguments sometimes used in its defense. People examine such arguments, find they won’t hold water, and say, “My, the Gospel must be unsound.” The conception that the Gospel should only be defended on the right ground is of utmost importance, since otherwise one may choose a position to defend which is indefensible; and in defeat it may be mistakenly supposed that the Gospel is at fault.
• The Gospel is not the people in the Church. The Gospel is not even the people who direct it. The Gospel is the truth.
• If the eclipse were ever so little off schedule, this would make headline news around the world. Here we are treated to two miracles: first, fabulously exact laws exist; and second, man has the genius to unravel these mysteries and reduce the existing order to codified laws which he then manipulates in the service of mankind.
• I am obliged, as a Latterday Saint, to believe whatever is true, regardless of the source. Questions involving pre-Adamic man, organic evolution, or who shall be given the Priesthood at present, are interesting and important questions. They will all receive adequate answers in accord with the truth in due course. Whatever the ultimate answers are, the Gospel will remain and new questions will take the place of those we solve. For me, the truth of the Gospel does not hinge on such questions, interesting as they are.
• If I can keep Henry Eyring doing what he ought to do, I am sure the Gospel will seem wonderful.
• People ask me, “Well, now, have you converted anybody?” And I say, “Well, I doubt it, but I’m thankful that no more people have apostatized than have on my account. At least I try to live as well as I can, and I try to get the main points first.” I try to see what the Gospel really depends on. I try to keep from worrying about the kind of things I am not sure about. If I start arguing about them, I’ll get it half wrong and maybe nearly all wrong—because I don’t understand them. These matters are unfinished. They will be clarified in due course.
• With each new discovery, the skeptic finds less need for God, while the devout Latter-day Saint sees in it one more evidence of His overruling hand.
• Later, when Galileo verified the theories of Copernicus and said the earth moved about the sun and so could no longer be considered the center of creation, there were bigots ready to burn him at the stake. When the smoke of battle cleared away and men looked at matters calmly, it became apparent that nothing essential had been lost. A lot of human philosophy disappeared, but it turned out to be unnecessary.
• La Place, who worked out the first mathematical theory of physical creation, the nebular hypothesis, pointed out, probably correctly, that if the atoms of which a person is made obeyed Newtonian mechanics, then a sufficiently expert mathematician could predict each person’s every thought and act.
• At the beginning of the twentieth century, Max Planck of Germany discovered that Newton’s laws just do not apply to atoms. In fact, atomic behavior is uncertain enough that strict predestination of a person’s actions, in the mathematical sense of La Place, just isn’t so.
• The moral is—believe everything scholars can strictly prove and suit yourself about the rest. Their guesses, like other people’s, are often right.
• As parents and teachers, we pass on to our pupils our world picture. Part of this picture is religious, and part of it deals with the world around us. If we teach our pupils some outmoded scientific notions which fail to hold water when they go on to the university, we run grave risks. When our understudy sheds the bad science, he may also throw out some true religion, i.e., “throw out the baby with the bath.” The solution is to avoid telling them the world is flat too long after it has been proved round.
• He said, “Son, you don’t have to accept anything that isn’t true to believe the Gospel. Learn all you can. If you live clean and are not profane, you will stay close to the Gospel. If you will do these things, I’ll be satisfied with the result.” This was just the right thing to say.
• The statement that we can never know everything about the Gospel is thus a mathematical certainty, since here is one truth which has no answer in finite terms. There is an endless number of such questions without an exact answer.
• President Clark in his book On the Way to Immortality and Eternal Life, chapter IV, points out how completely this view departs from that recorded in the New Testament.
• It should be clear that there is a definite change in the very nature of our thinking as we jump from the very large to the infinite. This jump is a delicate one to make in mathematics and has led to some very unhappy contradictions with theologians who have gone on their own well beyond what God has revealed. Speculation is only harmful as we confuse fact and fancy.
• An interesting calculation illustrates the complete improbability of a hot sun arising by chance. We suppose that in order again to become hot the sun must accumulate an amount of heat equal to that it gives off in its lifetime. This must be accumulated from its surroundings, which we shall assume in the heat death drop to a temperature of 700° Centigrade. Then using the straightforward theory of chemical reactions we find that a length of time in years equal to at least one with a hundred thousand, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion zeros must elapse before a hot sun has a “fifty-fifty” probability of occurring again by chance. This is almost no chance at all! Surely our hot sun did not arise by such a chance fluctuation. The Creator accomplishes His purposes by much more subtle means.
• Gauss had this to say, “There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics—for example, touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science.”
• Years of association with university students makes it clear that an advisor’s influence is proportional to his general understanding of the students’ problems.
• Before 1920, high school students were routinely taught that the elements were indestructible. The atomic bomb spectacularly contradicts this age-old concept.
• The principle of parity which was accepted as true for 25 years states that an atom does not know one end from the other. It is interesting to see how this statement was proved to be untrue.
• Sir Isaac Newton three hundred years ago thought of light moving in straight lines and in general behaving much as material particles would. This point of view was given up when the Dutchman Hyghens showed that many experiments involving light were better understood if we thought of light as waves being deflected much as water waves are deflected by the obstructions on a pond. Still later, Maxwell developed the general theory of the wave nature of light to such a degree of perfection that the particle theory seemed completely discredited. The interesting point is that everyone felt that the particle theory and the wave theory of light were mutually exclusive. Light could be a particle or a wave, but it could not be both. Then, in 1905, Albert Einstein published his theory of the photoelectric effect for which he was given the Nobel prize. If light hits a metal surface, electrons are ejected provided the light is violet enough in color. Further, the energy with which the electron is ejected is proportional to the frequency of the light and to nothing else. This can be understood if light is made up of particles with energy proportional to their frequency. Einstein called these light particles “photons,” and with the acceptance of this particle theory, a full-blown paradox was born. Physicists were at first thoroughly disturbed with this split personality exhibited by light, but as time went on they learned to live with it.
• Lee’s success as a general depended to a very great extent on the gathering of information about the strength, position and intentions of his adversary before and after the battle started. The result is that any story of Lee as a general would tell about his influence permeating the whole sphere of his activities and very little about Lee the man. In this sense Lee is two people, the man like anyone else, and the farflung intelligence system which governed the motion of himself and his army much as the wave is spread out in space and governs the motion of a photon or a material particle.
• Professor Harlow Shapley, emeritus professor of astronomy at Harvard University, has written an interesting book Of Stars and Men[1] in which he estimates that there are a hundred million, million, million suns in space. Now our sun has at least one planet—Earth— which is suitable for life; and in addition, Mars and Venus may support life. Shapley assumes that this may not be true of all suns, but he very conservatively estimates that at least one sun in a thousand should have acquired planets and that of those with planets, at least one in a thousand has a planet at the right distance for life. Of those having a planet at the right distance, at least one in a thousand should have a planet large enough to hold an atmosphere and finally that one in a thousand of those having a large enough planet at the right distance should have an atmosphere of the right composition to support life. Thus one concludes that there should be at the very minimum one hundred million planets in space which could support life, and the number is probably many times more. From the scientific point of view, it is hard to doubt that there are myriads of worlds suitable for human habitation.
• What about the earth itself? The scriptures tell us of six creative periods followed by a period of rest. During these periods the earth was organized and took essentially its present form. The accounts of creation in modern scripture serve to corroborate the biblical account. In the King James version of the Bible, the phrase “creative periods” is rendered as “days.” The use of this term has led to at least three interpretations. In the first, the days are construed to mean the usual day of 24 hours. In the second the days of creation are interpreted as thousandyear periods following such statements as occur in II Peter 3:8: “… one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” The third interpretation accepts “creative periods” as times of unspecified length and looks to a study of the earth itself to give added meaning to the exceedingly brief scriptural accounts.
• Most scientists using this and other kinds of evidence agree on an age for the earth of about four and one-half billion years. On the other hand, the exact age of the earth is apparently of so little import religiously that the scriptures sketch earth history only in the briefest terms. The present heated religious controversies on the subject will undoubtedly be resolved in time and will then appear as quaint as the medieval arguments on the shape of the earth seem to us now.
• IT IS NATURAL FOR ME TO WORSHIP THE SUPREME INTEL-ligence of the universe. This Supreme Intelligence necessarily exists since the world is full of unequally intelligent beings. Harlow Shapley estimates there are some 1020 suns having companion satellites analogous to our earth. Most of these satellites are at such distances from their suns that they are either too hot or too cold to support life as we know it. Still others lack life-giving water, while others lack the necessary oxygen. However, after guessing that at least one in every 1012 of these planets should be uninhabitable, Professor Shapley is left with at least 108, or 100,000,000 planets on which it is reasonable to suppose that life could and does exist.
• An argument of excessive complexity in effect supposes that the Supreme Intelligence could not work such wonders since the doubter would be hard pressed himself to do it.
• Another argument sometimes directed against religious beliefs is that as man’s knowledge grows, his reasons for being religious disappear along with his other ill-founded superstitions. Instead, I believe that every brilliant conquest made by man is but a manifestation of the divine spark which sets him apart from the rest of creation. Man is in the image of God, destined to go on learning and perfecting himself throughout eternity. To accept the idea that the human personality ends with death is to accept life as a futile, meaningless gesture. God would be less compassionate than many good men if life ended at the grave. Broken, uncompleted lives are the best possible reason for a hereafter in which the scales of justice are balanced by a just God. To believe otherwise is to attribute to God a lack of the sensitivity that we find regularly in good men. Such a supposition is incredible to me.
• 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. Only as one’s understanding approaches the Divine will all seeming contradictions disappear. Such complete understanding is to be approached as a part of the eternal progress which will continue in the life to come. In the meantime, we can only continue our quest for the balanced view that comes from weighing all evidence carefully in the search for enduring values. The road is a long one, but the outcome is assured if we are willing to travel it.
• Something like this dualism exists with respect to the concepts of God. The scriptures picture Him as an exalted Being, while some later interpretations dwell on the fact that His influence fills the universe. Rather than being contradictory, these are probably best thought of as two aspects of the same exalted being. The influence of even a great earthly ruler may extend to every corner of his realm. This powerful influence, however, is quite properly not confused with the person of the earthly ruler. In an analogous fashion, God may be thought of as more than the great influence which He exerts upon the world.
• Science deals only with how the world works and has little to say about why the world is as it is. Values, also, are something apart from science. We must find the meaning of life in religion and in metaphysics. Even if by breaking the genetic code, for example, we should learn how to change human inheritance and so affect human destiny, the meaning of life would remain as tantalizing a question as it was before. If we think of the universe as analogous to a great machine, then man is learning through science something about how the machine works, but only through philosophy and religion can he catch a glimpse of the purposes of the Designer and His reasons for the grand design. Many of the burning questions which are the substance of human hopes and fears are answered by religion for the believer.
• I have often met this question: “Dr. Eyring, as a scientist, how can you accept revealed religion?” The answer is simple. The Gospel commits us only to the truth.
• I, as a mere man, instruct others. I am dedicated as a scientist and the significant thing about a scientist is this: he simply expects the truth to prevail because it IS the truth. He doesn’t work very much on the reactions of the heart. In science, the thing IS, and its being so is something one cannot resent. If a thing is wrong, nothing can save it, and if it is right, it cannot help succeeding. So it is with the Gospel. I had the privilege of serving with four other Church members in a conference in which, as a group, we undertook to answer the questions the assembled young folk might ask us. One of the questions was addressed directly to me. A young man said: “In high school we are taught such things as pre-Adamic men, and that kind of thing, but we hear another thing in Church. What should I do about it?” I think I gave the right answer. I said, “In this Church, you only have to believe the truth. Find out what the truth is!”
• Some have asked me: “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. Through the eternities, we are going to get closer and closer to understanding the mind of God, then the conflicts will disappear.
• God is so gentle, so dedicated to the principle that men should be taught correct principles and then govern themselves, that they should take responsibility for their own mistakes, that His children can actually question whether He exists. To me, that in itself is one of the testimonies that He exists. I cannot think of anything which more wonderfully typifies His mercy, His kindness, His consideration for us, His concern for us, than that He does it all with bonds that are like strongest steel but are so gentle that you cannot see them.
• I ask you to look at the wisest man you know and ask yourself whether you believe he is the greatest intellect in the universe. Do you think the tremendous order and wonderful things that have come into the world were created by something with no more understanding than this wise man you know? Of course you do not. It is unthinkable.
• “What is the position of your Church with respect to war?” The answer was easy. Like the Quakers, we are against war. The problem is how to prevent it. The ultimate solution to the problem is to teach the Gospel to the whole world and to have it accepted. Nothing less will really resolve our difficulties. In the meantime, it is not likely that our country will be attacked if we are excellent enough in our character, in our science and engineering, in our economy and in our armaments. This puts the challenge back where it belongs—to each of us to reach the highest potential of which he is capable. Anything less could spell disaster.
• Nothing of importance is ever accomplished by man except by obedience to correct principles. Obedience is, in very deed, the price of freedom.
• THE WORLD MAY BE LIKENED TO A GREAT BUILDING filled with people who are unable to reach the windows high above the floor unless they are willing to make an almost superhuman effort. At one end is the one-way entrance. Here we see the infants enter, mature, labor, and grow old, and most of them never make the struggle to reach the windows where they could catch a glimpse of the otherwise invisible world that surrounds them. Instead, they talk with each other, and not finding anyone who has actually looked through the windows, they decide that probably there aren’t any after all and that the stories handed down of great men who by their struggle have glimpsed a world beyond are the inventions of knaves or fools.
• From my earliest memory loyalty to the Gospel and loyalty to truth have been considered synonymous.
• I never cease being thankful for the absence in Gospel teaching of “the party line” which conspirators have always found indispensable since the time when Lucifer first proposed the abrogation of free agency down to the latest ruthless dictatorships which have swallowed up most of Asia and Eastern Europe. In contrast, the Lord’s Church can entrust the truth to lay teachers and to a lay clergy. I was taught early that the Gospel, being true, is priceless, but also that because it is true it is immensely sturdy—not fragile.
• Finally, steeped in the sciences as I am, I can always turn to the teachings of Orson Pratt, James E. Talmage, or John A. Widtsoe and get just the right slant on the Gospel for scientific friends—young and old. The divine Gospel is unchanging, but it is wonderfully presented anew in our generation.
• How do you find things out? One procedure is to keep studying and learning until you are fully prepared with all known knowledge before trying to understand that which is new. If you do this, you will wait forever. The correct procedure is quite different. If you want to find something out start on it right now! Ulysses S. Grant said it something like this: The way to pay off the national debt is to pay off the national debt.
• There is probably no better way to deepen faith in the Gospel than to try to think out how this magnificently complicated world came about. Only a profound scholar of the physical sciences is able to calculate the utter improbability of any universe arising by chance.
• Lowell Bennion, speaking from his wide experience in teaching in the LDS Institute at the University of Utah, said it this way: “At first I thought the big problem of university students would be questions in logic and philosophy, but I soon found out that when they were happy and socially accepted, their imagined difficulties melted away.”
• NO VIRTUE IS MORE BECOMING THAN HUMILITY, AND IN no way does humility shine more brightly than in the honest recognition of one’s own limitations. Who has not been delighted by the down-to-earth speaker who knows when to say, “I don’t know”?
• Will Rogers said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” People are generally tolerant of those whom they take the trouble to understand.
• Since it is obvious that individuals are born under unequal circumstances and ordinarily seem to fail to receive justice in this life, it is natural for me to believe in an immortality which achieves this justice.
• RICKY NELSON, SON OF OZZIE AND HARRIET NELSON, while on location in Arizona for the filming of “Rio Bravo,” expressed the teenager’s concern over adult criticism. The Deseret News and Salt Lake Telegram quotes him this way: As far as I have been able to find out, older people have been complaining about the wildness of kids for centuries. My father insists his generation was exposed to the same type of criticism that we are today. I just don’t understand why the accused so often have turned into the accusers.
• You will never quite understand your father until you stand in his place. Because he is so anxious that you avoid his mistakes, he must try to help you. Be patient with him as you expect him to be patient with you.
• The Gospel answers for me the why about the world and about my existence, much as science answers the how. Life loses most of its meaning unless we have a satisfactory answer as to where we came from and where we are going.
• What is the effect of this breathtaking speed in scientific matters on man’s religious outlook? Our century has witnessed a turning away from the mechanistic determinism of the 19th Century which led the famous scientist, La Place, to answer Napoleon’s query about God with, “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.” Many men these days, scientists among the rest, feel they have very great need for turning to the Supreme Architect of the universe. The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics is a humbler approach to the mysteries of creation than mechanistic determinism.
• Good scientific endeavor, like good carpentry, professional golf or any other skill, is in large measure the product of at least two factors: a great amount of hard work and a degree of natural ability.
• Even as a boy Newton was not robust. Instead of playing rough games, he spent his time inventing interesting mechanical toys such as water wheels, a toy mill to grind flour which was turned by a captive mouse.
• Perhaps those who find this simplified treatment of the motion of heavenly bodies difficult to comprehend will understand better why the scriptures are not written as scientific textbooks. Things which must be trivially simple to the Lord are often inscrutable mysteries to us. These results provide an interesting perspective on eternal progression. There is apparently no end to learning and no end of things to learn.
  • Thinking of space as the thing that was moving - from Star Trek
• Newton’s book The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms will interest many people. He was busy working on it for the last thirty years of his life and was not quite through revising it when he died at eighty-five. This indicates his deep concern with religious questions.
• Max Planck was a deeply religious person. The serious student of science and religion will want to read his entire “SCIENTIFIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY”
• On the other hand, religion and natural science do have a point of contact in the issue concerning the existence and nature of a supreme power ruling the world, and here the answers given by them are to a certain degree at least comparable. As we have seen, they are by no means mutually contradictory, but are in agreement, first of all on the point that there exists a rational world order independent from man, and secondly, on the vein that the character of this world order can never be directly known but can only be indirectly recognized or suspected. Religion employs in this connection its own characteristic symbols, while natural science uses measurements founded on sense experiences. Thus nothing stands in our way— and our instinctive intellectual striving for a unified world picture demands it—from identifying with each other the two everywhere active and yet mysterious forces: The world order of natural science and the God of religion. Accordingly, the deity which the religious person seeks to bring closer to himself by his palpable symbols, is consubstantial with the power acting in accordance with natural laws for which the sense data of the scientist provide a certain degree of evidence.
• “The most predominant point of difference between Latter-day Saints and sectarians is that the latter are all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprives its members from believing anything not contained therein, whereas the LDS have no creed, but are ready to believe all true principles that exist, as they are made manifest from time to time….”
• Brigham Young said at Nephi, Utah: “Place good teachers in the school rooms and have beautiful gardens and teach them to know and enjoy the beauties of flowers and plants and their uses—when old enough, place within their reach the advantages and benefits of a scientific education. Let them study the formation of the earth, the organization of the human system and other sciences. Take for instance, the young ladies now before me, as well as the young men, and form a class in geology, in chemistry or mineralogy; and not confine their studies to theory only, but let them put in practice what they learn from books, by defining the nature of the soil, the composition or decomposition of a rock, how the earth was formed, its probable age, etc. All these are problems which science attempts to solve, although some of the views of our great scholars are undoubtedly very speculative. In the study of the sciences I have named, our young folks will learn how it is that, traveling in our mountains, we frequently see sea-shells, shells of the oyster, clam, etc. Ask our boys and girls to explain these things and they are not able to do so, but establish classes for the study of the sciences and they will become acquainted with the various facts they furnish in regard to the condition of the earth.” Deseret News, April 18, 1874, p. 6.
• Our lack of understanding of cancer at present parallels the confused situation with respect to all diseases in Pasteur’s time. If one could come out now with a sure cure for cancer, the excitement would approximate that caused by Pasteur’s successful treatment of rabies in July, 1885.
• We will quote only two of his many religious sayings: Science, which brings man nearer to God. There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observation, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in the hope—the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die.
  • Pasteur
• In this connection it is interesting to recall the statement in Doctrine and Covenants 137:7-8 that spirit is a more refined form of matter. This might well have troubled the materialists of an older generation, but now that we know of the interchangeability of energy and matter, such difficulties disappear. When one contemplates the wonders of the universe, it is natural to have faith in an omnipotent Creator. This seems also to have been Einstein’s point of view.
• In a paper “On Physical Reality” (1936) Einstein said: “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
• Addressing a Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion (1940), Einstein says that belief in regularity in nature, to which he subscribes, belongs to religion. To quote: To this [sphere of religion] 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.
• The book Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist by Paul Arthur Schlipp
• All of us are tempted at times to give easy answers. We are asked for bread and we give our questioner a stone. This is usually because we just do not know the correct answers.
• God would be less compassionate than many good men if life ended at the grave. Broken, incomplete lives are the best possible reason for a hereafter in which the scales of justice are balanced by a just God. To believe otherwise is to attribute to God a lack of the sensitivity that we find regularly in good men. Such a supposition is incredible to me.
• I have often met this question: “Dr. Eyring, as a scientist, how can you accept revealed religion?” The answer is simple. The Gospel commits us only to the truth. The same pragmatic tests that apply in science apply to religion. Try it. Does it work?