- 14 minutes ago
The relationship between science and faith has long been discussed, debated, and often misunderstood.
Many people assume that scientific progress naturally leads to atheism, yet the historical record shows a more nuanced picture.
Across centuries, a number of celebrated scientists have spoken openly about God, divine intelligence, or a purposeful universe.
Their statements do not prove theology in a laboratory sense, but they do demonstrate that scientific achievement and belief in God are not mutually exclusive.
Many people assume that scientific progress naturally leads to atheism, yet the historical record shows a more nuanced picture.
Across centuries, a number of celebrated scientists have spoken openly about God, divine intelligence, or a purposeful universe.
Their statements do not prove theology in a laboratory sense, but they do demonstrate that scientific achievement and belief in God are not mutually exclusive.
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00:00So there's this idea floating around that science and belief in God can't sit at the same table.
00:05That one has to cancel out the other. But when you actually go back and look at the people who
00:10built modern science from the ground up, the ones who gave us gravity, genetics, quantum theory,
00:15the laws of planetary motion, a different picture shows up. These are people whose names are on the
00:21walls of every physics and biology classroom on earth. And they didn't see a wall between their
00:26lab notebooks and their belief in a creator. Today we're going through seven of them,
00:31one at a time, and looking at exactly what they said and why. Let's start with the guy who basically
00:36invented modern physics. Isaac Newton gave us the three laws of motion, calculus, and the theory of
00:43universal gravitation. Stuff every science student on the planet still learns first. But Newton wasn't
00:49just tinkering with equations in isolation. He spent an enormous amount of his life studying
00:54scripture. And by some estimates, he wrote more about theology than he did about physics.
01:00Newton looked at the sheer order of the solar system. The way planets moved in predictable,
01:05calculable paths, and concluded it couldn't be an accident. He put it plainly, what we know is a drop,
01:11what we do not know is a vast ocean. The admirable arrangement and harmony of the universe could only
01:16have come from the plan of an omniscient and omnipotent being. That's not a side comment. That's Newton's
01:22actual reasoning for why the universe works the way it does. He wasn't shy about faith outside of
01:28physics either. Sources describing his personal habits note, he studied the Bible daily. And by
01:34most historical accounts, he was a devout believer. Even though his specific views on doctrine,
01:39particularly around the Trinity, were unconventional enough. That had they been public, he would probably
01:45have been deemed a heretic. But there is no doubt that he believed firmly in the idea of God.
01:50His disagreement wasn't with God's existence, it was with how the church wanted him worshipped.
01:56So here's a guy who mapped out the mechanics of the entire universe, and still landed on the same
02:01conclusion, the ancient prophets did. That something intelligent, designed the whole operation.
02:07Newton's gravity explains how planets move. It never explained to him, why there was a universe
02:13capable of that kind of order in the first place. That question he answered with God.
02:18Before Newton could build his laws of motion, he needed Kepler's math.
02:22Johannes Kepler cracked the code of planetary motion in the 1600s, figuring out that planets
02:28move in ellipses, not perfect circles like everyone before him assumed. This one correction rewired
02:34astronomy. And Kepler, unlike a lot of scientists who kept their beliefs quiet, put God right into the
02:40title of his life's work. Kepler had actually planned to become a theologian before astronomy pulled him in.
02:46And he saw no conflict between the two callings. He said outright, I had the intention of becoming
02:52a theologian. But now I see how God is by my endeavors also glorified in astronomy. For the
02:58heavens declare the glory of God. For Kepler, doing astronomy wasn't a departure from faith,
03:04it was an extension of it. Every equation was, in his mind, another verse in the same hymn.
03:09He wrote about the mechanics of planetary motion, with the same tone most people reserve for prayer.
03:15In one of his most quoted lines, he laid it out directly, God is great. Great is his power,
03:21infinite his wisdom. Praise him, heaven and earth, sun, moon, and stars in your own language.
03:26And in a more personal passage, addressing his findings directly to the creator, he wrote,
03:31My Lord and my creator, I would like to proclaim the magnificence of your works to men,
03:36to the extent that my limited intelligence can understand. Kepler even framed the human ability
03:41to understand physics, as a gift, specifically designed by God. He believed the laws governing
03:47the cosmos, were things humanity could grasp, because God wanted us to recognize them. By
03:52creating us after his own image, so that we could share in his own thoughts. In other words,
03:57Kepler thought the human mind was built on purpose, to be capable of doing science. And that capability
04:03itself, was evidence of a creator behind it. Now here's the name everyone expects on this list,
04:09and for good reason. Einstein reshaped how humanity understands time, space, and energy.
04:15He's the most recognized scientist of the 20th century. And his relationship with God is one
04:20of the most quoted and most argued over topics in science history. Einstein wasn't a church-going man
04:26in any traditional sense. And he rejected the idea of a God who micromanages individual human lives.
04:33But he was consistent, for decades, in describing something bigger than the universe operating behind
04:39its laws. He said flatly, science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind. That's a
04:45man drawing a straight line connecting the two, not severing them. Einstein went further when describing
04:51what drove him to do physics in the first place. He wasn't chasing individual data points for their
04:57own sake. He said, I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or
05:02that phenomenon,
05:03in the spectrum of this or that element. He wanted the mind behind the mechanism,
05:08not just the mechanism itself. And on the broader relationship between rigorous science and belief,
05:14Einstein was blunt about what he thought happened to people who went deep enough into research.
05:18He said, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit
05:24is manifest in the laws of the universe. A spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the
05:30face of
05:30which we with our modest powers must feel humble. For Einstein, going deeper into equations didn't
05:36lead him away from something greater. It led him closer to standing in awe of it. Move a generation
05:41forward, and you hit Max Planck. The physicist credited as the father of quantum mechanics.
05:47The guy who cracked open the subatomic world, and in doing so, kicked off one of the biggest
05:52scientific revolutions of the last century. And like Kepler two centuries before him,
05:57Planck didn't treat belief in God as separate from his physics. He treated it as a requirement for
06:03physics to even function. Planck laid out the relationship in a lecture that's still quoted
06:08by physicists and theologians alike. He said, both religion and science require a belief in God.
06:14For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists he is at the end of all considerations.
06:20To the former he is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized
06:25worldview. Notice the structure of that sentence, he's not saying science tolerates belief. He's
06:31saying science needs it to reach its own conclusions. Planck went even further, describing science and
06:37religion as partners rather than rivals. He put it this way, there can never be any real opposition
06:43between religion and science. For the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective
06:49person real. Eyes is the religious part of human nature has to be cultivated alongside everything
06:55else. If a person wants their mind and soul working in balance, he wasn't hedging. He was a devout
07:01Christian and a member of the Lutheran Church in Germany his entire life, according to those who
07:06have documented his biography closely. For a man who helped prove that energy itself comes in discrete
07:12packets, quanta, rather than smooth continuous waves. Rewriting how humanity understood matter
07:18at its most basic level. Planck still looked at the edifice of physics and said the crown at the top
07:23of it was God, not a final equation. Before Planck, before Einstein, there was Michael Faraday. The man
07:30whose experiments with electricity and magnetism basically made the modern electrical world possible.
07:36Faraday came from almost nothing. Working class family, barely any formal schooling. And he clawed his
07:42way into becoming one of the most respected scientific minds in Britain. And the entire time,
07:48his faith wasn't a side note. It ran through everything he did. Faraday belonged to a small, strict
07:53Christian group called the Sandemanians his entire life. And by every historical account, this wasn't a casual
08:00affiliation. He was elected an elder in his congregation and preached on alternate Sundays. His personal Bible
08:07reportedly had over 4,000 verses marked with vertical lines next to them. A level of engagement that shows this
08:14wasn't performance for public image. Since Faraday generally kept his religious views private and rarely
08:20discussed them publicly. When he did bring faith into his science, it was to point past the mechanism
08:25toward its source. At the close of one of his lectures on the fundamental forces of nature, Faraday told his
08:31audience to turn their thoughts toward him who hath wrought them. Then quoted the Apostle Paul on how the
08:37invisible things of God are made clear through what's been created. In another public statement,
08:42he described nature this way. The creator governs his material works by definite laws resulting from
08:48the forces impressed on matter. And when it came time to be buried, Faraday made a choice that says as
08:53much as any quote could. He was offered a spot in Westminster Abbey next to Kings and next to Newton
08:59himself. He turned it down. He wanted something simpler, in line with the modest faith he'd lived by his whole
09:05life. Rather than the grand recognition, his discoveries had earned him. Next up is Louis Pasteur,
09:12the chemist and microbiologist who gave the world pasteurization and the foundations of modern
09:17vaccination. A man whose work single-handedly saved more lives than almost anyone in scientific history
09:22by proving that invisible microbes, not bad air, cause disease. That's not a small discovery,
09:29that upended centuries of medical assumptions. But Pasteur didn't treat his discoveries as replacing the
09:35need for God. He treated the mind itself, the very tool he used to make those discoveries,
09:40as something granted to him by a higher source. He said directly, the gift of mental power comes
09:46from God, divine being. And if we concentrate, his focus and effort, the results of that gift
09:52belonged to something bigger than himself. For Pasteur, brilliance wasn't self-generated, it was borrowed.
09:58This lines up with how Pasteur approached the natural world more broadly. Describing nature
10:03under a microscope with the same wonder others reserved for cathedrals. The deeper he looked
10:08into the microscopic architecture of life, the more convinced he became that what he was looking
10:13at wasn't chaos assembling itself, it was design. Pasteur's legacy is usually taught purely in terms
10:20of milk safety and rabies vaccines, and that's fair. Those achievements changed public health forever.
10:26But strip away the lab coat, and you find a man who consistently credited his ability to see what nobody
10:32else could see. To a creator who built both the natural world, and the mind capable of studying it.
10:38And finally bringing this all the way into the modern era, Francis Collins. If Newton and Kepler
10:43represent the birth of modern science and Einstein, and Planck represent the 20th century revolution,
10:49Collins represents right now. He led the Human Genome Project, the massive international effort to map out
10:55every letter of human DNA. Arguably one of the most significant scientific achievements of the last
11:0130 years. Collins didn't start out religious. He was an atheist through much of his early scientific
11:08training. But he's been open about a slow, data-driven shift in his thinking. Eventually becoming an
11:14evangelical Christian, while continuing to run one of the most important genetics labs on the planet.
11:20When the Genome Project wrapped, standing next to the President of the United States,
11:24as the achievement was announced to the world. Collins didn't distance himself from the God talk
11:29in the room. He leaned into it, calling the moment, humbling for me, and awe-inspiring. To realize that
11:35we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God.
11:40Collins has been direct about why he thinks faith and genetics aren't in competition. He said the two
11:46threats, abandoning science out of fear it threatens God, or abandoning faith because science seems to
11:51replace it, are both profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth, both diminish the nobility of humankind,
11:58both will be devastating to our future, and both are unnecessary. For him, the two aren't rivals
12:03fighting for the same territory. He's put it simply, the God of the Bible is also the God of the
12:09genome.
12:09He can be worshipped in the cathedral, or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome,
12:15intricate, and beautiful. Collins later went on to lead the National Institutes of Health for over a
12:21decade, guiding American medical research through some of its biggest challenges. All while remaining
12:27publicly open about where he thinks the deepest questions of existence actually get answered. And
12:32it isn't in a genome sequencer. Seven scientists, four centuries, same conclusion, arrived at from wildly
12:39different corners of the lab.
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