Bacon’s vision of a technological future clearly signals a radical shift that was to occur in our attitude to the physical world. Dr Robert Bartlett, Inside the Medieval Mind I: Knowledge, BBC 2008
The giant shift from the pre-modern to the scientific frame of mind. Adam Nicolson, The Century that Wrote Itself II: The Rewritten Universe, BBC 2013
Why do you want to start this science lark in the first place? Seven Days to Noon 1950 starring Barry Jones & Olive Sloane & Andre Morell & Sheila Manahan & Hugh Cross & Joan Hickson & Ronald Adam & Marie Ney & Wyndham Goldie & Russell Waters & Martin Boddey et al, director Roy and John Boulting, her to him
It’s you and your sort – inventing things, interfering with nature – that’s what’s causing all the trouble. ibid.
Science is fundamentally a game. It is a game with one overriding and defining rule: Let us see how far and to what extent we can explain the behaviour of the physical and material universe in terms of purely physical and material causes, without invoking the supernatural. Richard Dickerson, Journal of Molecular Evolution 34:277
The supernatural has no longer a standing in science; it has vanished like a dream, and the halls consecrated to its thraldom of the intellect are becoming radiant with a more cheerful faith. Charles Otis Whitman, 1919
How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself ... Does scientific explanation of the world diminish its spiritual beauty? I think not. Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
Being a sceptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing. Michael Shermer
There’s no evidence we need anything other than the laws of physics. 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God, Professor Lawrence Krauss
I do not believe in an anthropomorphic God. ibid. Robert Coleman Richardson
I can’t believe the special stories that have been made up ... Too provincial. ibid. Richard Feynman
It’s a subject for comedy. ibid. Professor Simon Blackburn
If it were true, then we’d have to abandon everything we believe about the causal universal. ibid. Professor Colin Blakemore
There is no need to invoke the material soul. ibid. Professor Steven Pinker
The word God – I’m not sure I really know what it means ... I’ve never seen much in the idea that the universe was designed. ibid. Professor Alan Guth
I try not to have faith. ibid. Professor Noam Chomsky
I have abandoned it. ibid. Professor Nicolaas Bloembergen
A lot of theology is grappling with phantoms ... They infer that no-one can ever understand it. ibid. Professor Peter Atkins
What concerns me is when belief is used to influence and corrupt education politics ... A form of madness. ibid. Professor Oliver Sacks
Even the simplest things are hard to understand – a hydrogen atom for instance. That makes me rather suspicious of anyone who claims to have a quick and easy answer to everything. ibid. Lord Martin Rees
I’m actually an agnostic on the grounds that I don’t know. ibid. Sir John Gurdon
I see no evidence whatever for any of the Christian dogmas. ibid. Sir Bertrand Russell
That theory doesn’t disprove God but it makes him unnecessary. ibid. Professor Stephen Hawking
Irrational thinking of any kind is very dangerous. ibid. Riccardo Giacconi
We have no reason to believe in it now. ibid. Professor Ned Block
I don’t think a notion such as afterlife has any scientific basis. ibid. Gerard ’t Hooft
I realised the whole thing was pretty illogical. ibid. Professor Marcus du Sautoy
It sounds good so it makes a good funeral. ibid. James Watson
If God says something is right that isn’t right, God’s wrong. ibid. Professor Colin McGinn
I don’t believe in God. ibid. Professor Patrick Bateson
I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball turning him blind. ibid. David Attenborough
Through the scientific methods that keeps away all the irrationalities that seem to dominate human activities. ibid. Martinus Veltman
I was brought up in a culture when no-one is religious. ibid. Professor Pascal Boyer
I’m certainly not religious. ibid. Professor Partha Dasgupta
It’s a question of the rationality of belief. ibid. Professor A C Grayling
I don’t like religion. ibid. Ivar Giaever
We would all like to believe that there is a meaningful world beyond our own capacity to inject meaning into it ... We like there to be justice in the end. ibid. Professor John Serle
If you’re not comfortable with the unknown, it’s very difficult to be a scientist. ibid. Professor Brian Cox
Wishful thinking. ibid. Herbert Kroemer
The arguments for God’s existence don’t work ... This does not look like the kind of world empirically is created by a good and caring and powerful God. ibid. Professor Rebecca Goldstein
A person’s culture or the family in which he or she was raised has a real impact on the content of that experience. ibid. Professor Michael Tooley
Most science is atheistic. ibid. Sir Harry Kroto
I don’t believe the universe was designed by an intelligence. ibid. Leonard Susskind
It’s a very powerful route into trying to understand human psychology. ibid. Professor Quentin Skinner
That’s just the intelligence of its own mechanism. ibid. Theodore W Hansch
We can look for evidence of it. ibid. Professor Mark Balaguer
No. ibid. Richard Ernst
Whether God really intended to cast three quarters of human kind into outer darkness because they hadn’t heard of him. ibid. Professor Alan MacFarlane
Most places in the universe will kill life instantly. Instantly. People say, oh the forces of Nature are just right for life – excuse me! ibid. Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson
I certainly have no idea what God might be. ibid. Douglas Osheroff
We don’t need to bring in God. ibid. Professor Hubert Dreyfus
I’ve always had a sceptical streak. ibid. Lord Colin Renfrew
What is faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence ... Believing when there is no compelling evidence is a mistake. ibid. Professor Carl Sagan
A monstrous doctrine to believe that God would create a world in which say a two year old child would die a slow and lingering death from hunger and thirst. ibid. Professor Peter Singer
Eventually a lot more will be understood. ibid. Rudolph Marcus
What you see is what you get. ibid. Professor Robert Foley
God has been designed to be beyond the verification process of Science. ibid. Professor Daniel C Dennett
Science ... is corrosive of religious belief. And it’s a good thing too. ibid. Steven Weinberg
In heaven all the interesting people are missing. ibid. Friedrich Nietzsche
The ancient texts ... don’t do justice to what we know about the universe now. Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God, Frank Wilczek
The divine spark – which we scientists don’t believe in. ibid. V S Ramachandran, BBC Newsnight
What does God mean? ibid. Professor Bruce C Murray
An essentially human product. ibid. Sir Raymond Firth
There’s nothing that science is teaching us how we are that supports different religious fables about what we’re supposed to be. ibid. Professor Alva Noe
There were all these books about apparent contradictions in the Bible. ibid. Professor Alan Dundes
There’s no such thing as spiritual apprehension. ibid. Professor Massimo Pigliucci