Seven Scientists Who Believe in God
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Gottfried W. Leibnitz (1646-1716)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Charles B. Thaxton (living)
Selected Lists of Scientists and Advances
Some Far Eastern Scientific Advances
Indian Subcontinent Advances
Middle Eastern Advances
Former Soviet Union / Finland Advances
Some Western Scientists Who Believed in God
Non-Theistic Scientists / Engineers
Scientists with Other Beliefs
Scientists with Beliefs Unknown to me

"All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths come from on high and contained in the sacred writings." John Herschel (1791-1871) discoverer of over 500 new nebulas.

Galileo was born in Pisa in 1564. His father Vincenzio was a mathematician and musician. As a child Galileo studied logic, Greek, and Latin, but disliked science, though he liked inventing machines. He was also a good musician and painter. Until he was 17, his father kept him away from math, because he was afraid studying math would take him away from his study of medicine. Galileo became interested in math when he overheard a lesson in geometry. His father reluctantly sent him to college, Later he had to drop out though, because of lack of money.

He enjoyed reading of Copernicus and Kepler, but he was at first reluctant to get into astronomy because he feared ridicule. His first telescope was 3X magnification, but his best was 32X. They were used all over Europe. He was the first to see the mountains on the moon, the moons of Jupiter, and sunspots. He believed comets were solar reflections on the air.

Galileo showed off his telescope to Rome in 1611. The Catholic Church said his views were against scripture. Galileo explained why they were not, and produced other verses to show the Copernican system (earth goes around the sun) was true. He received a semi-official warning in 1615 and the next year he had to pledge to Pope Paul V he would not speak of this anymore.

In 1633 Galileo later tried to get this pledge revoked, but instead got examined by the Inquisition. He was released but had to live secluded for the rest of his life.

Galileo's troubles with the established church are famous, but his problem was with the Catholic Church, not Christianity. Galileo himself was a Christian who witnessed to people and saw support for his scientific studies in the Bible.

Pascal was a Jensenist, Catholics who believed in much of Calvinism and incurred the displeasure of the Jesuits. They especially would not like Pascal, as he gave some witty answers. He knew at least some of the Bible, and much of the early church fathers, including Augustine, Prosper of Aquitaine, Chrysostom, Hilary, and Tertullian. He also knew of Maimonides, Josephus, and Philo. Unfortunately, like many Catholic scholars, he focused more on tradition and the early church fathers than on the Bible.

Like other Catholics, Pascal believed in purgatory, the apocrypha, transubstantiation, and that the Pope is the head of the church, though he acknowledged that many popes were biased. Here are a few quotes from his main work, the Pensees.

"Christianity is strange. It bids man recognize that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject." Pensees 7.537.

"It is a deplorable thing to see all men deliberating on means alone, and not on the end. Each thinks how he will acquit himself in his condition; but as for the choice of condition, or of country, chance gives them to us. It is a pitiable thing to see so many Turks, here-tics, and infidels follow the way of their fathers for the sole reason that each has been imbued with the prejudice that it is the best. And that fixes for each man his condition of locksmith, soldier, etc." Pensees 2.98

Belief in God amounts to great potential gain and no potential loss. Not believing in God means great potential loss and no potential gain. Great potential gain with no potential loss is better than great potential loss with no potential gain. So it is better to believe in God than not to believe in God.

"...Nothing is so important to man as his own state, nothing is so formidable to him as eternity; and thus it is not natural that there should be men indifferent to the loss of their existence, and to the perils of everlasting suffering...." Pascal's Pensees 3.194.

"I see many contradictory religions, and consequently all false save one. Each wants to be believed on its own authority, and threatens unbelievers. I do not therefore believe them. Every one can say this; every one can call himself a prophet. But I see that Christian religion wherein prophecies are fulfilled; and that is what every one cannot do. Pascal gave a list of messianic prophecies to show the truth of Christianity in Pensees 11:727 (p.315-316)

"...The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the author of mathematical truths, or of the order of the elements; that is the view of heathens and Epicureans. He is not merely a God who exercises His providence over the life and fortunes of men, to bestow on those who worship Him a long and happy life. That was the portion of the Jews. But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom He possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and His infinite mercy, who unites Himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than Himself...." Pensees 8.556.

"...All who seek God without Jesus Christ, and who rest in nature, either find no light to satisfy them, or come to form for themselves a means of knowing God and serving Him without a mediator. Thereby they fall either into atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian religion abhors almost equally. Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it should needs be either that it would be destroyed or be a hell...." Pensees 8:556.

4. "To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

101 "I set it down as a fact that if all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world...."

102. "Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk."

100. "...There are different degrees in this aversion to truth; but all may perhaps be said to have it in some degree, because it is inseparable from self-love...."

Robert Boyle was the 14th child of the earl of Cork, Ireland. He learned Latin and French as a child and went to Eton when he was 8 years old. At 14 he was in Florence studying Galileo. Most know of him for Boyle's law in chemistry, that at constant temperature the pressure times volume is constant. Fewer people know that he gave large amounts of money for Bible translations, learned Greek and Syriac, and he founded the Boyle lectures to prove the truth of Christianity vs. atheism, theism, paganism, and Islam. He wrote on Genesis.

Born on Christmas day 1642, and lived 85 years until 1727. His father died two months before he was born, and his step-father was a rector in a church. He was raised by his grandmother. He was a poor student, until he got into a fight with another boy, and out of jealousy decided to show everyone what he could do, and became the top of his class. At 14 Newton was taken out of school to help out on his mother's farm. He was not a very good farmhand though, always wasting his time doing mathematics.

He eventually was sent back to school and graduated from Cambridge. In 1665 he discovered the binomial theorem, and differential calculus, which he called "fluxions" In 1666 he left Cambridge due to the plague, and he started to think about gravity and the moon, as well as optics and color. He was elected to the Royal society in 1672 (when he was 30) due to his experiments on color. One of Newton's key conclusions, "that the length of the band of colors a given distance from a spectrum is the same for a prism of any substance provided the angle was the same" was wrong. This is why Newton thought telescopes were of limited use, because chromatic aberration was uncorrectable. Newton later learned of his mistake from others and after that made some telescopes.

In 1692 Newton had an 18-month attack of insomnia and nervousness. In 1696 John Bernoulli challenged mathematicians to solve two problems within six months. Newton did not see the problems until a few months later, but he solved them the next day, transmitting the papers anonymously. They figured out who it was though. In 1703 he became the president of the Royal Society, and did not discover anything else of importance for the last 24 years of his life.

One time an atheist friend of Newton's came over and saw this scale model of the solar system that Newton had. He remarked at how beautiful it was and asked who made it. Newton nonchalantly replied that no one did; it just made itself. The atheist asked again, got the same answer, and started to get angry. Newton replied, "if you cannot believe something as simple as this model cannot make itself, how can you believe the heavens made themselves?"

Newton wrote more on theology than he did on science. However, his writings were heretical as he denied that Jesus was God. Newton became wealthy, invested a lot in the stock market which he lost in 1680 in the "South Sea Bubble." Intellectual genius does not necessarily mean financial acumen.

Leibnitz and Newton independently invented calculus. Leibnitz first used the term "function".

Leibnitz knew both Latin and German at 8. His father was a professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig, and died when Gottfried was 8. After that, Leibnitz was for the most part self-taught, and had begun learning Greek by age 12. Between 12 and 15 he studied logic and Protestant theology. At 15 he went to the University of Leipzig to study law, which started with a two year study of Neo-Aristotelian philosophy. He wrote a number of brilliant essays on law, philosophy "what is an individual", and mathematics before he was 21.

Leibnitz thought the Cartesian philosophy was only the ante-room of truth. He wrote a chapter by chapter critique of Locke's Essay. He thought a newborn soul is not a blank tablet, but rather an unworked block of marble, with hidden veins that affect its ultimate form.

Apart from calculus, Leibnitz was concerned with answering why God allowed evil. Leibnitz wrote at great lengths to explain why this was the best of all possible worlds God could have created. Unfortunately Leibnitz was off-base here. As Christians we do not need to defend this fallen place as the best of all possible worlds, for it is not. The best of all possible worlds is Heaven, and as Norm Geisler said, this is the best of all possible paths to the best of all possible worlds.

While Einstein was getting his Ph.D., he worked in the patent office, where he was bothered by the Michelson-Morley experiment that implied the speed of light was constant regardless of direction. Ten years later in 1905 he wrote his first paper, on the general theory of relativity, including E = mc². Later he published his special theory of relativity, primarily dealing with gravity. Einstein extended Planck's theory of quantum mechanics, but he was against results that appeared to make some natural effects indeterminate. He is famous for his saying, "God does not play dice with the universe"

Albert Einstein supported Zionism but was a non-practicing Jew, a liberal pacifist who wisely left Germany when Hitler came to power. He could not see a universe that was self-created, without God. Yet like many Jews of that time, he was somewhat bitter toward God for allowing the Holocaust. Concerning the view that western religion is the basis for science, Einstein said, "To the Sphere of religion belongs the faith that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that it 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." (Einstein: His Life and Times by Philipp Frank. 1953. p.286) Unfortunately Einstein rejected a personal God, believing instead in the pantheistic God of Benedict Spinoza. He also rejected rewards or punishment in the afterlife.

Most curiously, Einstein put a "fudge factor" in some of his equations so a "Big Bang" origin would not be required, because that would imply a personal God. When others noticed this, he admitted his error and reluctantly concluded that the universe was created. See The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norm Geisler p.213-215 for more info.

Professor Rejer Hooykas was a Dutch historian of science who wrote of the profound impact Christianity has had on the rise of modern science. Thaxton was greatly influenced by him at Harvard in 1971.

With Walter L. Bradley and Clarence Meninga, they authored, The Mystery of Life's Origin : Reassessing Current Theories in 1984. In this book they show how temperature, sunlight, and estimated early atmospheric oxygen (0.2 to 0.4%) making the concentration of organics in the supposed "primeval organic soup" 10^-7 Molar, about the same as the organics in the ocean water today without the life. Since that book was published, many non-theistic scientists have abandoned the idea that life could have evolved in the open water. Current theories include hot water vents, clay deposits, and panspermia, that life was "seeded" here from another place.

Meekness and Truth™ Ministries, Inc.

Irrigation, silk, gunpowder, fireworks, catapults, paper, abacus, block printing, medicines, Mongol bows, advanced lacquer, Samurai swords, compass.

Recently airplane, engines, memory chips, supercomputers, video machines, flat panel screens

Irrigation, zero in math, indoor plumbing (1800 B.C.)

"Allah is omniscient does not justify ignorance" al-Biwini(sp?) 1048 A.D.

Irrigation, Damascus swords, shipbuilding, musical instruments, military cannons, coffee and spices, great maps, surgery, sanitation to fight plague, and cataloging plants and animals. Babylonians solved quadratic algebraic equations and a few cubic ones.

Many strong mathematicians, rockets, nuclear

Some of this was taken from Morris, Henry. Men of Science Men of God : Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible, revised edition. Master Books. 1988. the AskJeeves.com Web site, Encyclopedia Britannica, and the World Almanac Book of Facts.

"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." 1 Cor. 1:26-27 NIV

See www.askjeeves.com/main/famous physicists www.nidlink.com/~jfromm/history.htm

For more info please contact Christian Debater™ P.O. Box 144441 Austin, TX 78714 www.BibleQuery.org

by Steven M. Morrison, PhD.