Le MaitreMendeleNewton

CopernicusBoyle

Einstein

• 40% scientists are religious• Fewer in top level science – but when people earn over

$150 000 a year same• Some very eminent scientists are believers eg Head of

human Genome project Francis watson, co-chair of climate change Sir John Houghton. Brian Heap vice president Royal Society, Prof Bill Phillips won Nobel Prize physics 1996

Religious Roots of Science

Basic assumptions make science possible: tha the world is orderly and can be understood by the human mind

Idea from Hebrews: that the universe is governed by a single God, and not the whims of several according to their own laws. So we can understand the mind of this one designer.

Medieval europe in 1500 knew less than the greeks Archimedes in 3BC. Yet by 1700 Newton’s laws understood the way the world works? Explosion how possible – medievals insisted God was rational – acted in a reasonable way, based on reasons that can be understood. So they started trying to understand - expected law in anature because they believed in a lawgiver. Unique creator God responsible for order and existence of universerChinese thought idea universe is governed by simple laws a person can discover was a foolish idea – they never did any useful discovery in science.Also God could have made the world any way he liked – so to find out what he actually did, you need to look.Francis Bacon – father of modern science – God gave us two books: the Book of Nature and the book of the Bible.

Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Kelvin, Pasteur, Maxwell: all believed in God. Their faith inspired their science – that in giving us a brain, God wanted us to use it to investigate the world, and see God’s glory in the way he has made the world.