The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.
It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.
Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.
Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology.
There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion.
But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this 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.
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.
Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.
My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.
It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.
The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science.
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