The more we refine our understanding of God to make the concept plausible, the more it seems pointless. Steven Weinberg More Quotes by Steven Weinberg More Quotes From Steven Weinberg This doesn't mean that they commit themselves to the view that this is all there is. Many scientists (including me) think that this is the case, but other scientists are religious, and believe that what is observed in nature is at least in part a result of God's will. Steven Weinberg religious mean believe On balance the moral influence of religion has been awful. Steven Weinberg atheism balance religion It is positively spooky how the physicist finds the mathematician has been there before him or her. Steven Weinberg spooky mathematician physicist Maybe nature is fundamentally ugly, chaotic and complicated. But if it's like that, then I want out. Steven Weinberg ugly nature want The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. Steven Weinberg money education life In complexity, it is only simplicity that can be interesting. Steven Weinberg complexity simplicity interesting I can hope that this long sad story, this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas, will come to an end. I hope this is something to which science can contribute ... it may be the most important contribution that we can make. Steven Weinberg atheism important long I don't need to argue here that the evil in the world proves that the universe is not designed, but only that there are no signs of benevolence that might have shown the hand of a designer. Steven Weinberg evil might hands This is often the way it is in physics - our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort. Steven Weinberg real agreement mistake [C]reationists [and] other religious enthusiasts [are], in many parts of the world ..., the most dangerous adversaries of science. Steven Weinberg atheism religious world We have simply arrived too late in the history of the universe to see this primordial simplicity easily... But although the symmetries are hidden from us, we can sense that they are latent in nature, governing everything about us. That's the most exciting idea I know: that nature is much simpler than it looks. Nothing makes me more hopeful that our generation of human beings may actually hold the key to the universe in our hands - that perhaps in our lifetimes we may be able to tell why all of what we see in this immense universe of galaxies and particles is logically inevitable. Steven Weinberg nature keys science The universe is an enormous direct product of representations of symmetry groups. Steven Weinberg groups beauty art It is almost irrestible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. Steven Weinberg special life believe There is now a feeling that the pieces of physics are falling into place, not because of any single revolutionary idea or because of the efforts of any one physicist, but because of a flowering of many seeds of theory, most of them planted long ago. Steven Weinberg long-ago science fall Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity, one way that we can find a purpose is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own. Steven Weinberg atheism humanity way If there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. Steven Weinberg hard-work men science They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it's a good thing. Steven Weinberg atheist religious thinking Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic...could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot. Steven Weinberg idiot designer evolution It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong. Steven Weinberg may science way As for me, I have just enough confidence about the multiverse to bet the lives of both Andrei Linde and Martin Rees’s dog. Steven Weinberg multiverse enough dog
