Quotes are from Robert Jastrow, former leading NASA
Scientist, Geophysics Professor at both Columbia and Dartmouth Colleges, and an
Agnostic who almost believed. (Wikipedia describes him as “Robert Jastrow
(September 7, 1925 – February 8, 2008) was an American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist. He was a
leading NASA scientist, populist
author and futurist.)
“For the scientist who has lived by
faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled
the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he
pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who
have been sitting there for centuries.” -Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers.
"Now we see how the
astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world.
The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical
accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced
suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and
energy."
"There is a strange ring of
feeling and emotion in these reactions [of scientists to evidence that the
universe had a sudden beginning]. They come from the heart whereas you would
expect the judgments to come from the brain. Why? I think part of the answer is
that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be
explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in
science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony
in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product
of some previous event; every effect must have its cause, there is no First
Cause. … This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the
discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known
laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we
cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he
really examined the implications, he would be traumatized."
"Consider the enormity of the
problem. Science has proved that the universe exploded into being at a certain
moment. It asks: What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter or
energy into the universe? And science cannot answer these questions, because,
according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the
Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of
a fire beyond human imagination. The shock of that instant must have destroyed
every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the
great explosion."
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the
power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of
ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over
the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting
there for centuries."
NOTE:Climate Change
Jastrow together with Fred Seitz and William Nierenberg
established the George C.
Marshall Institute[3] to counter the scientists who were arguing
against Reagan's Starwars
Initiative, arguing for equal time in the media. This institute
later took the view that tobacco was having no effect, that Acid Rain was not caused
by human emissions, that ozone
was not depleted by CFCs,
that pesticides were not environmentally harmful and it was also critical of
the consensus view of anthropogenic
global warming. Jastrow acknowledged the earth was experiencing a
warming trend, but felt the cause was likely to be natural variation likely related to solar activity.
