Paul Davies

Paul Davies (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He is affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University in California. He has held previous academic appointments at the University of Cambridge, University College London, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Adelaide and Macquarie University. His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology.

The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe, 1988

"There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all .. . It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe ... The impression of design is overwhelming." p203

Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory

"If nature is so 'clever' as to exploit mechanisms that amaze us with their ingenuity, is that not persuasive evidence for the existence of intelligent design behind the universe? If the world's finest minds can unravel only with difficulty the deeper workings of nature, how could it be supposed that those workings are merely a mindless accident, a product of blind chance?" p235-236.
Cited by Neil Thomas, "Taking Leave of Darwin", p61.

"If physics is the product of design, the universe must have a purpose, and the evidence of modern physics suggests strongly that the purpose includes us." p243
Cited by Strauss p43

Wiki-Quote, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Darwinism

"The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly... even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life--almost contrived-- you might say a 'put-up job'."

Cited by Meyer on p141 of "Return of the God Hypothesis".

The Mind of God

"sooner or later we will have to accept something as given, whether it is God, or logic or a set of laws or some other foundation for existence ... whether we call this deeper level of explanation God or something else is essentially a semantic matter."p5-6
Cited by Neil Thomas on p127 of "Taking Leave of Darwin".

"we can pursue rational inquiry till the cows come home, but" "my instinctive belief [is] that it is probably impossible for poor old homo sapiens to get to the bottom of it all." p15
Cited by Neil Thomas on p134 of "Taking Leave of Darwin".

"I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate ... We are truly meant to be here." p232.

Reason and Reality

Associated Press Report, 30 January, 1999, p3.

"The increasing application of the information concept to nature has prompted a curious conjecture. Normally we think of the world as composed of simple, clod-like, material particles, and information as a derived phenomenon attached to special, organized states of matter. But maybe it is the other way around: perhaps the universe is really a frolic of primal information, and material objects a complex secondary manifestation."

Cited by Clive Cookson, "Scientists Who Glimpsed God",Financial Times, 29, April 1995, p20"

On the multiverse and M-theory, quoted by Lennox in "God and Stephen Hawking, p53"

Of M-theory "It is not testable, not even in any forseeible future."

"Found in Space?" Interview, Third Way, July 1999"

"Of course, science has a cultural aspect; but if I say that planets moving around the sun obey an inverse-square law of gravitation and I give a precise mathematical meaning to that, I think it is really the case. I don't think its a cultural construct - it's not something we have invented or imagined just for convenience of description - I think it's a fact. And the same for the other basic laws of physics."

"Universe or Multiverse"

"Consider the most general multiverse theories .. where even laws are abandoned and anything at all can happen. At least some of these universes will feature miraculous events - water turning into wine, etc. They will also contain thoroughly convincing religious experiences, such as direct revelation of a transcendent God. It follows that a general multiverse set must contain a subset that conforms to traditional religious notions of God and design."

Templeton Prize Address, 1995

"Science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview. ..even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a law-like order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us."

The following quote from the Apologist's net may be the same quote - at least has some common content:

"People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature - the laws of physics - are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least not in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview."

The Accidental Universe

Taking Science on Faith

"All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed." "Davies then observed that scientists take the orderly laws of physics 'on faith' and that those laws 'all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships.'" Davies then asked "But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?" Davies said that after this his email was "overflowing with vitriol".

Cited by Frank Turek in "Stealing from God", pg 17

Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology

"If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of space-time itself." p78-79

Cited by Stephen Meyer in "Return of the God Hypothesis", pg 116