John Polkinghorne Quotes

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• Science and religion...are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there's a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don't agree. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if people in this so-called 'scientific age' knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they'd find it easier to share my views.

  John Polkinghorne

  Religious, Knowledge, Science

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• When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.

  John Polkinghorne

  Nature, Everything Happens For A Reason, Law

  "Science Finds God". www.washingtonpost.com. July 20, 1998.

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• God didn't produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.

  John Polkinghorne

  Done, World, Able

  "Quarks, Chaos & Christianity". Book by John Polkinghorne, 1994.

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• The remarkable insights that science affords us into the intelligible workings of the world cry out for an explanation more profound than that which itself can provide. Religion, if it is to take seriously its claim that the world is the creation of god, must be humble enough to learn from science what that world is actually like. The dialogue between them can only be mutually enriching.

  John Polkinghorne

  Humble, Profound, World

  John Polkinghorne (1995). “Serious Talk: Science and Religion in Dialogue”, p.75, A&C Black

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• I need the binocular approach of science and religion if I am to do any sort of justice to the deep and rich reality of the world in which we live.

  John Polkinghorne

  Reality, Justice, Needs

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• The rational transparency and beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents.

  John Polkinghorne

  Happy Accidents, Transparency, Remarkable

  John Polkinghorne, Nicholas Beale (2009). “Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief”, p.12, Westminster John Knox Press

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• God is not a God of the edges, with a vested interest in beginnings. God is the God of the whole show.

  John Polkinghorne

  Interest, Shows, Whole

  "Quarks, Chaos & Christianity". Book by John Polkinghorne, 1994.

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• Evolution, of course, is not something that simply applies to life here on earth; it applies to the whole universe.

  John Polkinghorne

  Earth, Evolution, Courses

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• Theology differs from science in many respects, because of its different subject matter, a personal God who cannot be put to the test in the way that the impersonal physical world can be subjected to experimental enquiry. Yet science and theology have this in common, that each can be, and should be defended as being investigations of what is, the search for increasing verisimilitude in our understanding of reality.

  John Polkinghorne

  Reality, Understanding, Tests

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• Hope is much more than a mood. It involves a commitment to action.... What we hope for should be what we are prepared to work for...as far as that power lies in us.

  John Polkinghorne

  Lying, Commitment, Action

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• It is the faithfulness of God that allows epistemology to model ontology.

  John Polkinghorne

  Ontology, Faithfulness, Epistemology

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• Quantum theory also tells us that the world is not
  simply objective; somehow it's something more subtle than that. In some
  sense it is veiled from us, but it has a structure that we can
  understand.

  John Polkinghorne

  World, Structure, Quantum

  "Divine Action". Interview with Lyndon F. Harris, "Cross Currents", Volume 48, Issue 1, www.aril.org. Spring 1998.

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• Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

  John Polkinghorne

  Character, Age, Doctrine

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• The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.

  John Polkinghorne

  Science, Progress, Encounters

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• Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe.

  John Polkinghorne

  Teaching, Math, Keys

  John C. Polkinghorne (2010). “One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology”, p.55, Templeton Foundation Press

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• I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science.

  John Polkinghorne

  Thinking, Giving, Temptation

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• If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.

  John Polkinghorne

  World, Revolution, Strange

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• After all, the universe required ten billion years of evolution before life was even possible; the evolution of the stars and the evolving of new chemical elements in the nuclear furnaces of the stars were indispensable prerequisites for the generation of life.

  John Polkinghorne

  Stars, Years, Generations

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• Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true; they just hope to find out what reality is like.

  John Polkinghorne

  Moving, Reality, Thinking

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• Theologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything.

  John Polkinghorne

  Inquiry, Problem, Speak

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• However, as the Eastern churches have always maintained, through Christ creation is intended eventually to share in the life of God, the life of divine nature.

  John Polkinghorne

  Church, Christ, Creation

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• Those theologians who are beginning to take the doctrine of creation very seriously should pay some attention to science's story.

  John Polkinghorne

  Doctrine, Attention, Stories

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• At present, too much theological thinking is very human-centered.

  John Polkinghorne

  Thinking, Too Much, Theological

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• Nevertheless, all of us who work in quantum physics believe in the reality of a quantum world, and the reality of quantum entities like protons and electrons.

  John Polkinghorne

  Believe, Reality, World

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• I very much enjoyed my career in science. I didn't leave science because I was disillusioned, but felt I'd done my bit for it after about twenty-five years.

  John Polkinghorne

  Years, Careers, Twenties

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