Those in the university science departments have noticed that the philosophy departments of our universities have become clubhouses for atheists. Robert Griffiths, winner of the Heinemann Prize in mathematical physics, said: “If we need an atheist for a debate, we go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.”

It is extraordinary, isn’t it, that you don’t go to the science department (the place of all things empirical and rational) to find an atheist; you go to the philosophy department. Now, I know Griffiths’ comment is a generalization, but it nonetheless it makes you think.

The geneticist, Baruch Shalev, documented the religious views of all 719 Nobel Prize winners from 1901 to 2000, noting the percentage that were atheists, agnostics or ‘freethinkers.’ Surprisingly, only 10.5% fell into that godless category. Very significantly, this figure dropped to only 4.7% for physicists, and rose to 35.2% for winners in literature. It would seem that those who really ‘know’ the empirical reality of the universe are those who believe in God.

If this is true, it rather suggests that our atheistic philosophers don’t know enough.

Christian Anfinsen, Nobel Laureate in chemistry said the same thing with rather less grace: “I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place.”

The extraordinary order scientists see in the universe demands some sort of explanation. The American astrophysicist, Gregory Benford, writes: “The overwhelming impression is one of order. The more we discover about the universe, the more we find that it is governed by rational laws … You still have the question: why does the universe bother to exist?”

Whilst science can lay bare the workings of the universe, it can’t tell us why it exists. As such, it is silent on the really big questions of life. Erwin Schrödinger (1887 – 1961) a Nobel Prize-winning physicist put it well when he said: “The scientific picture of the world around me is very deficient. It gives me a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us.”

So, what does this mean for you?

I invite you think in a BIG way… and reach out to the God who holds his hands out to you.