I use physicists because they are the guys that study nature at the most fundamental level.
I’ve heard a lot of physicists use the word “God” in thier descriptions of the universe, and I wonder what it really means to them.
I know that a lot of people will say, “well, belief is belief and no-one is going to ridicule them”. Okay fine. But I mean do any physicists ever seriously take into consideration the possibility that there may actually be a God, some sort of being or thing that governs and/or creates the laws of nature?
Aside from beliefs I mean. Actual skeptical analysis (or somewhat “rational” thinking) where they would admit to the possibility of it?
And what does the physics community at large have as a general assumption about whether there could be some form of being/thing such as God? Is the notion totally ridiculed?
–I’m not trying to be silly here. I know that it is extremely difficult to even think of beggining to find some sort of “proof” for God - and since there is no proof there cannot be any reasonable expectation of a ratified response (by the community) to the idea (experimental data and all that). I just wanted to know whether the majority rule it out, out of hand. And whether any physicists have seriously argued for some acceptance of the possibility. Basically, what’s the debate going on amongst physicists about this thorny issue?–
None of the current big names in physics are religious, or believe in god in any literal sense.
The heavy hitters of the past - Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Eddington, Planck, et al, were atheists or agnostics. Atheists and Deists argue over Einstein, each side claiming him as their own, but a thorough investigation of his writings makes it clear that he didn’t believe in god.
A great book I suggest is Quantum Questions : Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists - a collections of essays by the greatest physicists of the 20th century concerning god, spirituality, and metaphysical ponderings in general. Much of the writings are surprisingly poetic, and dare I say spiritual.
Physicists tend to be atheistic.
And mathematicians tend to be relatively theistic.
This is due to the aristotilean/platonic split between physics and mathematics/logic.
Physicists tend to see and observe the apparent absence of God.
Whereas, mathematicians tend to create logical theorems to demonstrate the theoretical and hypothetical ability of a deistic entity to exist.
Rationalistic logic itself imposes order from above and thus tends toward theism.
Empirical science does not.
Thus, the greatest logician of the century Kurt Godel (one of the three greatest logicians in world history) was deeply religious, whereas most physicists are not.
As for Isaac Newton, it should be remembered that he was the most famous occultist of the seventeenth century,
the vast majority of his work dealt with alchemy, astronomy, and apocalypticism,
he spent his last years trying to write a geography of hell.
“And everything science has taught me–and continues to teach me–strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.”
–Werner Von Braun “Father of the V-2 Rocket and Space Exploration”
(from the opening of Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon)
Didn’t New Scientist magazine do some kind of recent poll of physics workers? I recall that the results were fairly high, like 1/3 of the people responding said that they were religious. (But was that physicists? Or physical scientists including bio/chem etc.?)
I recall that the CSICOP site had an article about this topic, and they found that the least religious scientists were the psychologists, not the physicists.
Of course “being religious” doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with believing in a male Christian god (Jehova.)
How many physicists believe in a Goddess? Or how many are Buddhists, Taoists, or any of the non-god religions? As Ranchoth points out, belief in spiritual topics like “The Afterlife” doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with god (Jehova) or goddess or Hindu multiple gods. I think you have to ask about Jehova specifically, not “The Creator” or similar, since some physicists might believe in gods which always existed with no beginning or end.
Hmmm. I wonder how many physicists believe in paranormal topics in general, topics like Christianity, afterlife, “god,” or any similar things.
The existance or nonexistance of God is apparently a question beyond the scope of physics: That is to say, if God does not exist, then physics cannot demonstrate that He does not exist, and even if He does exist, it doesn’t appear that physics can demonstrate that, either. The physics community as a whole, therefore, does not make any assumptions one way or the other. All we can deal with, as physicists, is the laws of nature, and while it’s conceivable that a surpreme being might be able to supercede those laws, He certainly hasn’t shown any great inclination to do so.
Of course, many physicists do personally believe in some form of Deity, for reasons not particularly connected to their scientific pursuits. But you seem to be excluding such beliefs from consideration.
Einstein said “God don’t play dice”, arguing with Schrodinger about the need for probability in describing quantum mechanics.* Why would an atheist/agnostic talk about God? God only knows.
People have observed that ours is the first age to equate truth with factuality. Religious truth is not the same as scientific fact, nor is it incompatible.
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.” ~ A. Einstein
Even if you understand quantum physics as far down as we understand it today, it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a conscious being behind setting it all up. (Just because you can reverse-engineer a piece of software and figure out how it all works doesn’t mean you’ve disproved the existence of the programmer.)
I know lots of scientists who are religious, physicists and cosmologists included. The nature of scientific logic is that you can’t disprove things, you can only prove them. There’s nothing there to stop anyone from believing in a god. The reason why scientists are generally thought of as being atheistic is because when you’re doing science, you don’t accept something as true unless you have evidence. Some scientists become non-religious because of that, i.e. not having any proof for the existence of God. But you don’t have to be a physicist to learn that way of thinking-- all scientists do.
But that’s what faith is about… and anyone who wants to be religious generally does it without any solid evidence.
There are at least two physicists in America who are born-again Christians. I know this because they worked with my sister (also a physicist). From the way she told me about them, though - hell, from the fact she told me about them - they would seem to be extremely rare in their field.
The OP specifies “God,” i.e. The Judeo-Christian deity, “God.” (Aka Yahweh, aka Jehovah)
The afterlife realms I mentioned aren’t run by that deity, but by the Aesir and the Olympians, respectively. They would be called “gods,” but not “God.”
And, conceivibly, if there was an afterlife where the souls of the dead wandered the Earth as ghosts, that might be seen an afterlife without a “divinity” behind it.
Eh, I’ve seen weirder, I live across the hall from a genetics and biology major in college who is a passionate Biblical literalist and a firm Creationist, Flat-Earther, and Anti-Evolutionary.
Not thorough enough, evidently. He specifically told my grandfather that he did believe in God, just not an anthropomorphic God. This was in 1939 and it’s been documented in various places.