Quotes by John Polkinghorne

“The widespread success of science is too significantan issue to be treated as if it were a happy accident that we arefree to enjoy without enquiring more deeply into why this isthe case. Critical r...”

“If we are seeking to serve the God of truth then we should really welcome truth from whatever source it comes. We shouldnt fear the truth. Some of it will be from science, obviously, but by no mean...”

“Inthe scientific community, the adjective theological is some-times used pejoratively to refer to a vague or ill-formulatedbelief. I believe this usage to be very far from the truth. It sad-dens me...”

“As a consequence, scientists who are carefully reflectiveabout their activity do not instinctively ask the question Is itreasonable? as if they were confident beforehand what shaperationality had t...”

“The doctrine of creation of the kind that the Abrahamic faiths profess is such that it encourages the expectation that there will be a deep order in the world, expressive of the Mind and Purpose of...”

“Claims for theoccurrence of miraculous events will have to be evaluated ona case-by-case basis. There can be no general theory to coverthe character of unique events, but the refusal to contemplate...”

“If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.”

“I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try...”

“Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character...”

“Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.”

“I'm a very passionate believer in the unity of knowledge. There is one world of reality - one world of our experience that we're seeking to describe.”

“Of course, Einstein was a very great scientist indeed, and I have enormous respect for him, and great admiration for the discoveries he made. But he was very committed to a view of the objectivity ...”

“Inthe scientific community, the adjective ‘theological’ is some-times used pejoratively to refer to a vague or ill-formulatedbelief. I believe this usage to be very far from the truth. It sad-dens ...”

“Quantum theory also tells us that the world is not simply objective; somehow it's something more subtle than that. In some sense it is veiled from us, but it has a structure that we can understand.”

“God is not a God of the edges, with a vested interest in beginnings. God is the God of the whole show.”

“God didn't produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.”

“There is much cloudy unpredictable process throughout the whole of the physical world. It is a coherent possibility that God interacts with the history of creation by means of information input int...”