Great scientists from past and present plus the great musical composers speak about God and evolution.
The link between modern science and belief in a Creator
C.S. Lewis who was a novelist, poet and academic showed the very strong connection between the development of modern scientific thought and the belief scientists held in a Creator (Lawgiver) when he said;. “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.”1
Great scientists from the past
“Overwhelming strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us … the atheistic idea is so non-sensical that I cannot put it into words.” (Lord Kelvin)
“I am a Christian … I believe only and alone … in the service of Jesus Christ … In Him is all refuge, all solace.” (Johannes Kepler)
“The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.” (Louis Pasteur). Pasteur strongly opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution because he felt it did not conform to the scientific evidence.
Robert Boyle believed in Jesus Christ’s “Passion, His death, His resurrection and ascension, and all of those wonderful works which He did during His stay upon earth, in order to confirm the belief of His being God as well as man.”
“Order is manifestly maintained in the universe … the whole being governed by the sovereign will of God.” (James Prescott Joule)
“There are those who argue that the universe evolved out a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of man or the system of the human eye?” (Werhner Von Braun)
“Almighty Creator and Preserver of all things, praised be all Thou has created.” (Carl Linnaeus)
“I am a believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.” (Sir Joseph Lister)
“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.” “The true God is a living, intelligent and powerful being.” (Sir Isaac Newton)
Michael Faraday was careful to “Thank God, first, for all His gifts.”
Taken from the book 21 Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible by Ann Lamont published by Answers in Genesis, P.O. Box 6302, Acacia Ridge D.C., Queensland, 4110, Australia, 1995.
Present day PhD Scientists
“The evidence points to an intelligent designer of the vast array of life, both living and extinct, rather than to unguided mindless evolution.” (Nancy M Darrall, Speech Therapist at the Bolton Community Health Care Trust in the UK. She holds a PhD in Botany from the University of Wales.)
“Evolutionary theories of the universe cannot counteract the above arguments for the existence of God.” (John M Cimbala, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University. John holds a PhD in Aeronautics.)
“The correspondence between the global catastrophe in the geological record and the Flood described in Genesis is much too obvious for me to conclude that these events must be one and the same.” (John R Baumgardner, Technical Staff Member in the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory. John holds a PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLU.)
“We have already seen that no such system could possibly appear by chance. Life in its totality must have been created in the beginning, just as God told us.” (John P Marcus, Research Officer at the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Plant Pathology, University of Queensland, Australia. John holds a PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of Michigan.)
“The fossil record is considered to be the primary evidence for evolution, yet it does not demonstrate a complete chain of life from simple forms to complex.” (Larry Vardiman, Professor from the Department of Astro-Geophysics for Creation Research, USA. Larry holds a PhD in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University.)
“I … have no hesitation in rejecting the evolutionary hypothesis of origins and affirming the biblical alternative that ‘in six days the Lord God created the heavens and earth and all that in them is’. (Dr Taylor is senior lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University of Liverpool. Dr Taylor has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and has authored over 80 scientific articles.)
“I believe God provides evidence of His creative power for all to experience personally in our lives. To know the Creator does not require an advanced degree in science or theology.” (Timothy G Standish is an Associate Professor of Biology at Andrews University in the USA. Dr Standish holds a PhD in Biology and Public Policy from George Mason University, USA.)
“At the same time I found I could reject evolution and not commit intellectual suicide, I began to realise I could also accept a literal creation and still not commit intellectual suicide.” (AJ Monty White, Student Advisor, Dean of Students Office, at the University of Cardiff, UK. Dr White holds a PhD in the field of Gas Kinetics.)
“So life did not arise by natural processes, nor could the grand diversity of life have arisen through no-intelligent natural processes (evolution). Living things were created by God, as the Bible says.” (Don Batten, a research scientist for Answer in Genesis in Australia. Dr Batten holds a PhD in Plant Physiology from the University of Sydney and worked for 18 years as a research scientist with the New South Wales Department of Agriculture.)
“In the words of the well-known scientist, Robert Jastrow, ‘for the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story [of the quest for the answers about the origin of life and the universe] 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.” (Jerry R Bergman, Instructor of Science at Northwest State College, Archbold, Ohio. He holds a PhD in Evaluation and Research from Wayne State University and a PhD in Human Biology from Columbia Pacific University.)
Taken from the book In Six Days (why 50 scientists choose to believe in creation) edited by John F Ashton PhD, New Holland Publishers, 1999.
Great Musical Composers
George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759)
A servant of Handel swings the door open to Handel’s room. The startled composer, tears streaming down his face, turns to his servant and cries out, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself.” Handel had just finished writing a movement, which would take its place in history as the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)
“Music’s only purpose should be for the glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit.”
Bach frequently initialled his blank manuscript pages with the marking, ‘J.J.’ (‘Help me, Jesus’) or I.N.J. (‘In the name of Jesus’).
At the manuscript end, Bach routinely initialled the letters S.D.G. (‘To God alone, the glory’).
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809)
“Since God has given me a cheerful heart, He will forgive me for serving Him cheerfully.”
“I prayed … that an infinite God would surely have mercy on His finite creature, pardoning dust for being dust. These thoughts cheered me up. I experienced a sure joy so confident that as I wished to express the words of the prayer, I could not express my joy, but gave vent to my happy spirits and wrote the above Miserere, Allegro.”
Once, late in life, when Haydn met a devotee who heaped praise upon him, Haydn cut him off. “Do not speak so to me. You see only a man granted talent and a good heart.”
Haydn said; “Never was I so devout as when I composed ‘The Creation’. I knelt down each day to pray to God to give me strength for my work.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)
“God is ever before my eyes. I realise His omnipotence and I fear His anger; but I also recognise His compassion and His tenderness towards His creatures.”
“Let us put our trust in God and console ourselves with the thought that all is well, if it is in accordance with the will of the Almightly, as He knows best what is profitable and beneficial to our temporal happiness and our eternal salvation.”
Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770 -1827)
“I will place all my confidence in your eternal goodness, O God! My soul shall rejoice in Thee, immutable Being. Be my rock, my light, forever my trust.”
“Nothing higher exists than to approach God more than other people and from that to extend His glory among humanity.”
Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847)
“Pray to God that He may create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us.”
A friend entered Mendelssohn’s study and sees his friends engrossed in the Bible. Mendelssohn glances up at his visitor, showing no signs of surprise and offering no greeting. “Listen” he says, and excitedly begins to read aloud: “And behold, the Lord passed by …” he reads on and on, his voice rising in pitch as the drama of the passage overwhelms him. The visitor recognises the story of Elijah, when suddenly the reading stops. “Would not that be splendid for an oratorio?” asked Felix Mendelssohn, setting the Bible on his desk and searching his friend’s face for a reaction. Thus the greatest oratorio of the nineteenth century was conceived.
Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886)
“I pray to God that He may powerfully illumine your heart through His faith and His love. You may scoff at this feeling as bitterly as you like. I cannot fail to see and desire in it the only salvation. Through Christ alone … salvation and rescue come to us.” Music’s purpose is “to ennoble, to comfort, to purify man, to bless and praise God.”
Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971)
“The more one separates one from the canons of the Christian church, the further one distances oneself from the truth.”
From the book The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers by Patrick Kavanaugh, Sparrow Press, USA, 1992.
1 C. S. Lewis’ formulation of Sir Alfred North Whitehead’s view as quoted in “God’s Undertaker … Has science buried God?” by John C. Lennox, A Lion Book, page 21.
Brilliant modern scientists believe there is a God
There is sometimes a false perception that the only position for any modern, logical thinking scientist is one of disbelief in the existence of God. The author of this article once had this false idea. But in his book, There is a God (why the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind), Antony Flew shatters his illusion. The below scientists may not have believed specifically in the God of the Bible but they did believe there was a God.
Now if you have concluded in your mind that God exists, we urge you come to know the only true living God. The only way the Bible says you can do this is through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to God.
THERE IS A GOD – ANTONY FLEW (ex-atheist)
To the question “Who wrote the laws of nature?” Flew answers, “This is certainly the question that scientists from Newton to Einstein to Heisenberg have asked – and answered. Their answer was the Mind of God.”
Stephen Hawking – the Mind of God
“… We shall all … be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.”
[Sadly, Stephen Hawking has now concluded that the ‘mind of God’ is no longer required and that the universe can supposedly create itself from nothing!]
Werner Heisenberg – science and religion pointing to the same reality
“In the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought [science and religion], for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.”
Paul Dirac – ‘God is a mathematician of a very high order’
“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”
Erwin Schrodinger – science is deficient … it knows nothing of good, God or beauty
“The scientific picture of the world around me is very deficient … It knows nothing of beauty 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. Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity of which we somehow form a part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God, with a capital “G”.
Max Plank – science and religion fighting the incessant battle against skepticism
“There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for one is the compliment of the other.”
“Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against skepticism … against unbelief and superstition … [and therefore] ‘On to God!’”
Albert Einstein – humble in the face of a ‘vastly superior spirit’
Every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
The above brilliant modern day scientists (Einstein, Hawking, Heisenberg, Dirac, Schrodinger and Plank) were well accustomed to showing that invisible things were a reality. As Einstein predicted, the first atomic bomb released the huge amounts of invisible energy trapped in the atom and this was a reality!
Taken from the book There is a God (why the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind)
Once again we encourage you
If you have concluded in your mind that God exists, we urge you come to know the only true living God. The only way the Bible says you can do this is through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to God.
