John Polkinghorne Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Evolution, of course, is not something that simply applies to life here on earth; it applies to the whole universe.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Hope is much more than a mood. It involves a commitment to action.... What we hope for should be what we are prepared to work for...as far as that power lies in us.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“God didn't produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“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 of cosmic history.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“The rational transparency and beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“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.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“I think it's very important to maintain the classical Christian distinction between the Creator and creation.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true; they just hope to find out what reality is like.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Nevertheless, all of us who work in quantum physics believe in the reality of a quantum world, and the reality of quantum entities like protons and electrons.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“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.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“The remarkable insights that science affords us into the intelligible workings of the world cry out for an explanation more profound than that which itself can provide. Religion, if it is to take seriously its claim that the world is the creation of god, must be humble enough to learn from science what that world is actually like. The dialogue between them can only be mutually enriching.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Science and religion...are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there's a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don't agree. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if people in this so-called 'scientific age' knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they'd find it easier to share my views.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Theologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“The physical fabric of the world had to be such as to enable that ten billion year preliminary evolution to produce the raw materials of life. Without it there would not have been the chemical materials to allow life to evolve here on earth.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“People, and especially theologians, should try to familiarize themselves with scientific ideas. Of course, science is technical in many respects, but there are some very good books that try to set out some of the conceptual structure of science.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“I very much enjoyed my career in science. I didn't leave science because I was disillusioned, but felt I'd done my bit for it after about twenty-five years.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“It is the faithfulness of God that allows epistemology to model ontology.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“So Whitehead's metaphysics doesn't fit very well on to physics as we understand the process of the world.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Of course, nobody would deny the importance of human beings for theological thinking, but the time span of history that theologians think about is a few thousand years of human culture rather than the fifteen billion years of the history of the universe.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“However, as the Eastern churches have always maintained, through Christ creation is intended eventually to share in the life of God, the life of divine nature.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“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.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“God is not a God of the edges, with a vested interest in beginnings. God is the God of the whole show.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“At present, too much theological thinking is very human-centered.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Those theologians who are beginning to take the doctrine of creation very seriously should pay some attention to science's story.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“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.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Whitehead reacted strongly against the idea of God as a cosmic tyrant, one who brings about everything.”
-- John Polkinghorne -
“Yes, I was a parish priest for five years. I was a curate in a large working class parish in Bristol and the Vicar of a village in Kent.”
-- John Polkinghorne
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