Red Baron discussed his relationship to religion in general and to God in particular in various blogs:
2014
World Without God;
True Religion?
Physicists seem to be fascinated by religious questions. The latest example is Frank Wilczek, theoretical physicist and Nobel
Prize winner of 2004. He received the Templeton Prize 2022 for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. According to the Templeton Foundation, Wilczek uses "the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the
universe and humankind's place and purpose within it," which renewed my interest in
the topic.
As an introduction, here are a few statements by Wilczek:
"My everyday life has been very much enhanced by occasionally reflecting on what's going on under the hood,"
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| Frank Wilczek in 2017 (©Julia Reinhart/Getty Images) |
"My everyday life has been very much enhanced by occasionally reflecting on what's going on under the hood,"
"In studying how the
world works, we are studying how God works and thereby learning what God is.
In that spirit, we can interpret the search for knowledge as a form of worship and our discoveries as revelations,"
His friends and students describe Wilczek as a kind and generous scientist who never lost his childlike wonder at the immense beauty of the world and how it all works. Still, one of his scholars distinguished curiosity and wonder, "Curiosity is an intellectual outlook, but wonder suggests there is something in your soul that compels you to know more about the world. That's something Frank embodies in a real, genuine way."
Recently, the Los Angeles Times published a Q&A: Talking God, science, and religion with theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek and my favorite blogger Jerry Coyne - who else? - was eager to weigh in.
When Wilczek was asked whether he is an atheist or agnostic, he answered that he is a pantheist, "I believe that the whole world is sacred, and we should take a reverential attitude toward it."
This stand excludes a personal God and is near to the idea of Spinoza, who identified God with reality with his creation. But Wilczek goes one better, "So, to me, God is under construction. My concept of God is really based on what I learn about the nature of reality."
You already find the metaphor of an unfinished and dynamic world in St. Paul's letter to Romans 8:22, "We know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now." Wilczek takes Paul's statement one step further, "God is not only the world as it is but the world as it should be."
Several questions remain open. They were not asked and answered. What does Frank mean by a sacred world that should be reverenced? Is this an extended version of Albert Schweitzer's Reverence for Life? And how should this world be? Shouldn't God have made it right from the beginning? And does He, as the creator, interfere with evolution? Coyne rightly calls the Los Angeles Times Q&As a softball interview.
One of Jerry's favorite subjects is the conflict between science and religion. On this subject, Frank said, "No, they are not in conflict with each other. There have been problems when religions make claims about how the world works or how things got to be the way they are that science comes to make seem incredible. For me, it's very hard to resist the methods of science which are based on the accumulation of evidence."
"On the other hand, science itself leads to the deep principle of complementarity, which means to answer different kinds of questions, you may need different kinds of approaches that may be mutually incomprehensible or even superficially contradictory."
O, Lord. Quantum mechanics eventually comes to the rescue of religion? Is the Copenhagen interpretation the open door to spirituality? No, because science is based on evidence of how badly complementarity is understood, while religion is based on faith.
Does a "nonpersonal "God have a will? On which Wilczek said, "Not a will as we would ascribe to human beings, although I'm not saying that's logically impossible. I would say it's really a stretch, given what we know. The form of the physical laws seems to be very tight and doesn't allow for exceptions."
"The existence of human beings, as they are, is a very remote consequence of the fundamental laws."
Frank stresses the well-known point that the world's existence, including space, is an interplay of tightly fitting physical constants. Slight differences in their values would have led to instability and diverged the "creation." Finally, atheist Richard Feynman took the view that the universe doesn't look as if it were constructed with humans in mind.
His friends and students describe Wilczek as a kind and generous scientist who never lost his childlike wonder at the immense beauty of the world and how it all works. Still, one of his scholars distinguished curiosity and wonder, "Curiosity is an intellectual outlook, but wonder suggests there is something in your soul that compels you to know more about the world. That's something Frank embodies in a real, genuine way."
Recently, the Los Angeles Times published a Q&A: Talking God, science, and religion with theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek and my favorite blogger Jerry Coyne - who else? - was eager to weigh in.
When Wilczek was asked whether he is an atheist or agnostic, he answered that he is a pantheist, "I believe that the whole world is sacred, and we should take a reverential attitude toward it."
This stand excludes a personal God and is near to the idea of Spinoza, who identified God with reality with his creation. But Wilczek goes one better, "So, to me, God is under construction. My concept of God is really based on what I learn about the nature of reality."
You already find the metaphor of an unfinished and dynamic world in St. Paul's letter to Romans 8:22, "We know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now." Wilczek takes Paul's statement one step further, "God is not only the world as it is but the world as it should be."
Several questions remain open. They were not asked and answered. What does Frank mean by a sacred world that should be reverenced? Is this an extended version of Albert Schweitzer's Reverence for Life? And how should this world be? Shouldn't God have made it right from the beginning? And does He, as the creator, interfere with evolution? Coyne rightly calls the Los Angeles Times Q&As a softball interview.
One of Jerry's favorite subjects is the conflict between science and religion. On this subject, Frank said, "No, they are not in conflict with each other. There have been problems when religions make claims about how the world works or how things got to be the way they are that science comes to make seem incredible. For me, it's very hard to resist the methods of science which are based on the accumulation of evidence."
"On the other hand, science itself leads to the deep principle of complementarity, which means to answer different kinds of questions, you may need different kinds of approaches that may be mutually incomprehensible or even superficially contradictory."
O, Lord. Quantum mechanics eventually comes to the rescue of religion? Is the Copenhagen interpretation the open door to spirituality? No, because science is based on evidence of how badly complementarity is understood, while religion is based on faith.
Does a "nonpersonal "God have a will? On which Wilczek said, "Not a will as we would ascribe to human beings, although I'm not saying that's logically impossible. I would say it's really a stretch, given what we know. The form of the physical laws seems to be very tight and doesn't allow for exceptions."
"The existence of human beings, as they are, is a very remote consequence of the fundamental laws."
Frank stresses the well-known point that the world's existence, including space, is an interplay of tightly fitting physical constants. Slight differences in their values would have led to instability and diverged the "creation." Finally, atheist Richard Feynman took the view that the universe doesn't look as if it were constructed with humans in mind.
According to Sartre,
man/woman was just "thrown" into the world?
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