Quote Mining Operation

I hope the casual observer will forgive my posting of the following seemingly random quotes, but I am using my blog as a repository for such so that I can easily find them in the future....

The following is from the pen of Blaise Pascal, the father of the mathematical theory of probability and combinatorial analysis:

"God makes people conscious of their inward wretchedness, which the Bible calls 'sin', and his infinite mercy, unites himself to their inmost soul, fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, renders them incapable of any other end than Himself. Jesus Christ is the end of all and the center to which all tends.... At the center of every human being is a God–shaped vacuum, which can only be filled by Jesus Christ".

Sir Isaac Newton, who needs no introduction:

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

"There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history."

"...men are apt to run into partings about deductions. All the old heresies lie in deductions. The true faith was in the Biblical texts."

George Trevellian (a secular historian):

"Boyle, Newton and the early members of the Royal Society were religious men who repudiated the skeptical doctrines of Thomas Hobbs. But they familiarized the minds of their countrymen with the idea of law in the universe and with scientific methods of inquiry to discover truth. It was believed that these methods would never lead to any conclusions inconsistent with Biblical history and miraculous religion. Newton lived and died in that faith."

The Hypocrisy of Naturalism

"Naturalism is a prime specimen of that towering speculation, discovered from practice and going far beyond experience, which is now being condemned. Nature is not an object that can be presented either to the senses or the imagination. It can be reached only by the most remote inferences. Or not reached, merely approached. It is the hoped for, the assumed, unification in a single interlocked system of all the things inferred from our scientific experiments. More than that, the Naturalist, not content to assert this, goes on to the sweeping negative assertion "There is nothing except this" -- an assertion surely, as remote from practice, experience, and any conceivable verification as has ever been made since men began to use their reason speculatively. Yet on the present view, the very first step into such a use was an abuse, the perversion of a faculty merely practical, and the source of all chimeras."

C. S. Lewis, "Miracles"

Catching up...

It has been a while since I posted something here. I'll try to do better; I promise! Today, I listened to a great lecture by Fritz Schaefer entitled "The Theological Roots of Modern Science". The lecture is one of the many excellent media files one can find at The Veritas Forum's website. The point of the lecture is to demonstrate someone can be both a committed Christian and a serious scientist, at the same time! I highly recommend listening...