Paul Davies Quotes

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.

I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science. All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.

People who dismiss science in favor of religion sometimes confuse the challenge of rigorously understanding the world with a deliberate intellectual exclusion that leads them to mistrust scientists and, to their detriment, what they discover.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen! If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

Our true mentor in life is science.

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.

Science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion.

In science , all conclusions are provisional, subject to new evidence and better arguments, the very antithesis of religious faith.

Religion can have psychological and social roles, but in terms of really explaining how things work, science works differently. Science is based on material elements at the core.

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

I really believe in science. It is a faith. It is a reverence akin to religion. But as we always say, it's different from religion in that, as near as we can tell, it exists outside of us. It has an objective quality, the process of science.

Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.

In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

Science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea’s worth