Paul Davies Quotes

Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.

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.

One universe, four forces, billions of galaxies. The precision and complexity of our world is enough to make even the famous cosmologist go just a little bit crazy. How does it all fit together? Is there a single, overarching design to the cosmos? And if we find it, will we glimpse the mind of God?

The universe began in an instant, is expanding, and exhibits design, order, and complexity. Every effect must have a Cause, and design must have a Designer.

Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it as a brute fact....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.

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.

The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.

In Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes.

Everything in the world is part of a design. Everything has meaning and purpose and a place in the pattern of existence, only it's not always possible to understand what that design is. Only God can understand the design, because he invented it.

The Builder of this Universe was wise, He plann'd all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and Æons by, Was-Heavens!-was thy small Nine-and-thirty Articles!

I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance.

I think life's too complex to be an accident.

Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession.

God and nature create nothing that does not fulfill a purpose

This [the intelligent design movement] isn't really, and never has been, a debate about science, it's about religion and philosophy.

How good the design is doesn't matter near as much as whether the design is getting better or worse. If it is getting better, day by day, I can live with it forever. If it is getting worse, I will die.

The man who is wantonly profuse of his promises ought to sink his credit as much as a tradesman would by uttering a great number of promissory notes payable at a distant day. The truest conclusion in both cases is, that neither intend or will be able to pay. And as the latter most probably intends to cheat you of your money, so the former at least designs to cheat you of your thanks.

Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.

The Universe, wrought for us by a supremely good and orderly Creator.

It was an effort to include intelligent design and treat it as science, disparaging evolution along the way. That will not stand.

As far as design theorists are concerned, theistic evolution is American evangelicalism's ill-conceived accommodation to Darwinism .

If we could sufficiently understand the order of the universe, we should find that it exceeds all the desires of the wisest men, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is, not only as a whole and in general but also for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as we ought to be, to the Author of all, not only as to the architect and efficient cause of our being, but as to our master and to the final cause, which ought to be the whole aim of our will, and which can alone make our happiness.