I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.
Paul A.M. DiracTag: imagination politics reality injustice natural atheism fantasy atheist control materialism nobel-laureate problem-of-evil church-and-state physicist false-assertions imagining-god
I am not religious in any sense; in fact, I consider myself an atheist.
Subrahmanyan ChandrasekharTag: science atheism atheist physics views beliefs irreligious nobel-laureate
[When asked by a student if he believes in any gods]
Oh, no. Absolutely not... The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don't have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to understand.
Tag: science biology atheism ignorance understanding atheist physics watson nobel-laureate dna god-of-the-gaps double-helix watson-and-crick
Individual events. Events beyond law. Events so numerous and so uncoordinated that, flaunting their freedom from formula, they yet fabricate firm form.
John Archibald WheelerTag: cosmology physics laws-of-nature quantum-mechanics big-bang nobel-laureate quantum-fluctuations acausal origin-of-the-universe origin-of-universe physical-law quantum-cosmology
My laboratory is interested in the related challenges of understanding the origin of life on the early earth, and constructing synthetic cellular life in the laboratory. Focusing on artificial life frees us to explore novel chemical systems, but what we learn from these systems helps us to understand possible pathways leading to the origin of life. Our basic design for a synthetic cell involves the encapsulation of a spontaneously replicating nucleic acid, which acts as the genetic material, within a spontaneously replicating membrane vesicle, which provides spatial localization. We are using chemical synthesis to make nucleic acids with modified nucleobases and sugar-phosphate backbones.
Jack W. SzostakTag: science biology chemistry nobel-laureate origin-of-life artificial-life early-earth early-life first-life laboratory synthetic-life
I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reactions at a surface.
Walter Houser BrattainTag: science biology importance chemistry nobel-laureate planet phenomena elements sunlight conversion surfaces electronics chemical-reactions circuits
I think that the event which, more than anything else, led me to the search for ways of making more powerful radio telescopes, was the recognition, in 1952, that the intense source in the constellation of Cygnus was a distant galaxy—1000 million light years away. This discovery showed that some galaxies were capable of producing radio emission about a million times more intense than that from our own Galaxy or the Andromeda nebula, and the mechanisms responsible were quite unknown. ... [T]he possibilities were so exciting even in 1952 that my colleagues and I set about the task of designing instruments capable of extending the observations to weaker and weaker sources, and of exploring their internal structure.
Martin RyleTag: science power universe possibility space observation astronomy intensity nobel-laureate structure telescope galaxies source mechanism milky-way andromeda andromeda-galaxy light-years radio-astronomy radio-telescope
I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist.
Subrahmanyan ChandrasekharTag: atheist views preface beliefs indian gita nobel-laureate scientist
In some strange way, any new fact or insight that I may have found has not seemed to me as a “discovery” of mine, but rather something that had always been there and that I had chanced to pick up.
Subrahmanyan ChandrasekharTag: science knowledge lost strange fact information insight discovery found nobel-laureate scientist scientific-discovery
Now I know what the atom looks like.
Ernest RutherfordTag: wisdom science truth reality knowledge nature physics nobel-laureate atom
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