Francis Collins Quotes

God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer.

Science and religion have to go hand in hand with the mystery, because there's a certain point beyond which you say, "There are no answers."

Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature.

During our religious instruction in school, we always asked: How can one prove the existence of God? And I have learned that the Catholic Church, which is never at a loss for an answer when it comes to existential questions, responds as follows: This question simply does not arise.

He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.

Now if the religious skeptic is right, we can know nothing about God. And if we can know nothing about God, how can we know God so well that we can know that he cannot be known? How can we know that God cannot and did not reveal himself—and perhaps even through human reason?

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

Philosophy is an attempt by man to find cause and effect. Religion has the same goal.

I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by.

Conservatives and liberals understand the Christian faith as a set of ideas because, so understood, Christianity seems to be a set of beliefs assessable to anyone upon reflection.

During my academical life, and from this time forward, I was indefatigable in my search after truth. I read all the authors of greatest repute, for and against the Trinity, original sin, and the most disputed doctrines, but I was not yet of an understanding sufficiently ripe for impartial decision, and all my inquiries terminated in Calvinism.

I'm not sure that Liberation Theology has ever satisfactorily resolved the tensions between Marxism's 'social naturalism' (the claim that all beliefs have their origins in social practice) and religion's supernaturalism (the claims that its beliefs are underwritten by divine will).

Theology is the doctrine or teaching of living to God.

If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth- in a word, to know himself- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.

Some of our philosophizing divines have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that by their force mankind has been able to find out God.

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.

There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent.

Science can prove nothing about God, because God lies outside its province.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

i cannot be called upon to know a negative or to prove a negative. if there is a god and you prove it, that's fine. but you don't tell me you can't know that there isn't. i would say yes i know there isn't because i have been given no evidence.

If there be a God and one has never sought him, it will be small consolation to remember that one could not get proof of his existence.

If God can be fully proved by the human mind, then He is no greater than the mind that proves Him.

As long as a man thinks, this struggle must go on, and so long man must have some form of religion.