Roger Penrose Quotes
Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.
Penrose, Roger. Interview. A Brief History of Time, directed by Errol Morris, Triton Pictures, 1991.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger. His predecessor, John Paul II, had shown no antipathy and had seen no conflict between religion and the concept of evolution. Benedict, was more traditional and particularly sensitive to the randomness of mutations in the process. Other theologians see no contradiction in God having created the evolutionary system with random mutation as the most superior system for developing rational man to whom he gave free will. Others see no need for God in the entire process.
The religious theology of the Church of England had accepted the fact based on Newton’s work, that the heavenly bodies followed a set of scientific laws that were themselves created by God. However, the Church could not accept the same principle when it came to the different species of humans and lower order animals. Each species they believe was created with all its characteristics by God directly and species could not change, develop, regress, go extinct unless God specifically ordained that. It was this inconsistency that Darwin was afraid would produce religious attacks on him and his notions of natural selection while astronomy and physics was treated very different theologically. Darwin delayed publishing his findings for 25 years hoping to find a religious atmosphere that would treat biology much as physics and astronomy. It didn’t come and finally he published and took the heat, which actually was not very great. With the exception of some religious fundamentalists, most other elements of society welcomed and supported Darwin’s ideas which today we realize were among the most important ever put forth in the world of science.
Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS is a British mathematical physicist, mathematician, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, an emeritus fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and an honorary fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and University College London.
