Ordinary Science, Ordinary Faith

by William D. Phillips, Nobel laureate in physics, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Introduction :

I was born into a family that took religion seriously. We said grace before meals ; we said prayers before bedtime ; we belonged to a Methodist church and attended church school and worship services almost every Sunday. In short, we were like most of the other families I knew as a child. It never occurred to me that religious faith was anything but a natural, ordinary part of life.

As early as I can remember, I was interested in science. At first, I suppose, this was simply the usual child-like curiosity about the way things work. As I became aware that this kind of curiosity could be a profession, I understood that this was what I wanted. By about the age of ten, I knew I wanted to be physicist. Maybe it was because physics was cleaner and less smelly than chemistry and biology (although I am still fascinated by those subjects) or maybe it was because physics addresses the most fundamental questions about the way the universe works (although at that time I had almost no notion of what those questions were). For whatever reasons, I was to be a physicist, and so I am.

It didn’t seem to me that there was a fundamental conflict between my interest in science and my grounding in religion. Of course I knew that the stories in the Bible, especially accounts of the Creation, were in literal conflict with the scientific understanding of the origins of the universe and its inhabitants. But by the time I could see those conflicts clearly, I had also learned about the variety of literary expression, and the ways in which deep meaning emerges from devices like metaphor, allegory, and poetry. My parents at home and my pastors at church encouraged me to pay attention to the spiritual message of the scriptures. Science was one thing and religion was another, and there was no problem.

I am still a church member ; I’m part of the congregation of Fairhaven United Methodist Church in Darnestown MD, and I sing in the Gospel choir. Our family says grace before meals, goes to church almost every Sunday, and I pray less often than I should. I am more liberal in my religious views than some in my church and more conservative than others. In short, my religious life is pretty conventional. So is my scientific life. I am a member of the American Physical Society, the professional organization for physicists. I write papers and give talks that are greeted with the same healthy mixture of respect and skepticism that any physicist should expect. I am privileged to lead a group of some 15 to 20 scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, people whose enthusiasm and intelligence make it a joy to come to work each day. As a professor at the University of Maryland, I have the pleasure of teaching students whose questions provide challenge and satisfaction. In short, I am an ordinary physicist.

Being an ordinary scientist and an ordinary Christian seems perfectly natural to me. It is also perfectly natural for the many scientists I know who are also people of deep religious faith. For others, however, it appears strange, even astonishing, that someone could be serious about science and also serious about faith. Here, I will try to give an impression of how these two aspects of my life work for me, and how they influence and inform each other. Mostly, this is the witness of an ordinary person that one can be serious about science and serious about faith.

My Science :

I think of myself as a quantum mechanic. That is, just as a car mechanic works on automobiles in a practical way, I work on the quantum nature of atoms and light in a practical way. Quantum mechanics is the theory of physics that describes how things work at the sub-microscopic level of atoms and photons (particles of light). It is a marvelously successful theory, and, as far as we can tell, it correctly describes all of the ordinary phenomena we experience in everyday life in addition to a wealth of phenomena that are seen only with the specialized instruments of quantum physicists.

The behavior of things at the microscopic, quantum level is much different from the familiar behavior of larger, macroscopic objects. For example, in ordinary life we are used to saying that you can’t be in two places at the same time. In the quantum world, an atom, a photon, or an electron being in two places at the same time is commonplace. In the macroscopic world of ordinary experience, objects have properties independently of whether we look at those properties or not. A one-way sign on a certain street points either east or west. We may have to look at it to know which way it points, but, if it is a conventional sign, we don’t have to look at it to know that it does point one way or the other. In quantum physics, an atom can be in a superposition of pointing east and pointing west (that is, it is pointing both east and west). And we can show by experiment that it would be wrong to suppose that it is pointing one way or the other before we look.

If these features of quantum mechanics seem strange and confusing to the non-physicist, be assured that they are equally confusing to physicists. We don’t claim to understand why things work in this odd way ; we just know that they do, and we do useful things with that knowledge. Many of the things we take for granted in modern life (consumer electronics, for example) only exist because scientists and engineers have understood the peculiar aspects of quantum physics and made devices that rely on them.

I work with these strange behaviors on a daily basis. To me they are as familiar as the workings of an internal combustion engine are to a car mechanic. If I stop to think about how weird quantum mechanics is, I am as confused as anyone. But I can use my knowledge of that weird behavior to achieve results that are as reliable as the operation of an automobile. (Of course automobiles are not perfectly reliable, and neither are my laboratory experiments, but these failures are not the result of fundamental problems with understanding the mechanics of cars or the quantum mechanics of atoms.)

My specific research has been in the laser cooling and trapping of atoms 1. Rather surprisingly, one can cool a gas of atoms by shining light on it. The temperatures achieved are among the lowest ever seen for any substance—less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Such low temperatures mean that the atoms are moving extremely slowly, less than a centimeter per second. (This is to be compared with hundreds of meters per second for atomic gases near room temperature.) When atoms move this slowly, their wave-like character becomes increasingly evident. Quantum mechanics tells us that all particles also behave like waves, another strange and wonderful aspect of nature. When the particles are heavy or moving rapidly, the wavelength is so small that the wave nature is not usually evident. But, when the velocity of something as light as an atom is reduced below a centimeter per second, the wavelength can become longer than the wavelength of visible light. Then, the wave nature of the atom may become evident even on the macroscopic level, at distance scales much larger than atomic dimensions.

In some of our experiments, we put gas atoms into a special state, called a Bose-Einstein condensate. Only in the past several years has it been possible to make such a state 2. In a condensate the atoms can have a wavelength larger than a tenth of a millimeter : large enough for someone with good eyesight to see with the naked eye. In a sense, my research group and others like it are bringing some of the strange aspects of quantum mechanics from the sub-atomic to the macroscopic world. Although our intuition about what happens under these circumstances is often not very good, we have always found that quantum mechanics continues to give a correct description of what we observe.

Experiments on laser cooled atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates have both fundamental and practical applications. On the practical side, as of the fall of 2001, at least three countries are using atomic clocks with laser cooled atoms to provide their national time standards. The future promises even more excitement. We hope to use laser cooled atoms as qubits (quantum bits) in quantum information processors—quantum computers that will be different from present computers in a more fundamental way than today’s machines are from the abacus. These new quantum computers would have at their heart the quantum weirdness that is so intriguing to physicists, and might be able to solve problems that are inaccessible to ordinary computers.

My Faith :

I am uncomfortable being described as religious. I suppose that for me the term conjures up an image of someone overly concerned with the outward appearances of religious practice, rather than with the spiritual core of religion. So, I have often preferred to describe myself as a person of faith.

The author of Hebrews describes faith as “…the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” Hebrews 11 :1 (KJV). I find this declaration both beautiful and profound. The juxtaposition of the solid words “substance” and “evidence” with the ethereal descriptors “hoped for” and “not seen” emphasizes that faith is belief that has a different foundation from that associated with scientific understanding.

One of the participants in the Physics and Cosmology Panel of Science and the Spiritual Quest II posed this question : “Can you imagine any evidence that would make you stop believing in God ?” The question has great importance because any scientific hypothesis must by falisifiable. That is, one must be able to specify what would show the hypothesis to be false. Statements that are not falsifiable are not scientific statements. My answer to the question about God is : “No, there is nothing that would cause me to stop believing in God 3″. By my definition, this means the belief is not a scientific one.

That said, I nevertheless emphasize that my scientific understanding supports my faith. My faith may be non-scientific (I don’t say “unscientific”), but it is not irrational ! When I examine the orderliness, understandability, and beauty of the universe, I am led to the conclusion that a higher intelligence designed what I see. My scientific appreciation of the coherence, the delightful simplicity, of physics 4 strengthens my belief in God. The structure of the universe seems uncannily suited to the development of life. Small changes in any number of fundamental constants of nature (those numbers that describe, for example, how big is the force between two electrons) or initial conditions for the universe (like the total amount of matter) would have made it impossible for life as we know it to develop. Why is the universe so finely tuned for the existence of life ? More to the point, why is the universe so finely tuned for the existence of us ? A simple answer is that had it not been so we wouldn’t be here to ask the question (the Antropic Principle). This leaves unanswered the question of why, out of all the essentially infinite possible universes that could have been, the one that is, supports intelligent life. It seems so improbable that many conclude an intelligent creator must have designed the universe this way.

Does this constitute legitimate, scientific evidence for an intelligent creator ? It may. But it is not universally compelling. Better and more intelligent scientists than I, people who are better acquainted with the order and beauty of the cosmos, have reached the opposite conclusion. (And better scientists have reached the same conclusion as I have.) Hypotheses about multiple universes address the issue of the incredibly low probability of having a universe suitable for life. (Although these hypotheses, for the moment at least, have no more hard evidence to support them than does a belief in God.)

I have a feeling (a feeling without much scientific or theological support) that we will never find truly convincing scientific evidence about the existence of God. I suspect that God does not leave His 5 “fingerprints” on His handiwork. One sage noted that if there were convincing evidence of God’s existence, what then would be the use of faith ?

Nevertheless, many scientists find the scientific evidence to be compelling enough that they believe in an intelligent creator who set into being and into motion all that we see around us. Many subscribe to a belief in what is sometimes called “Einstein’s God” 6, an embodiment of the intelligence and order behind creation, but not a personality who cares about and interacts with the creation. In other words, not the God of traditional religion. The variety of such belief is as great as that of the believers. In a particularly beautiful and articulate expression of this kind of belief 7 one scientist identifies her favorite hymn : “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” by Walter Chalmers Smith, 1867 :

Immortal, invisible, God only wise, In light inaccessible hid from our eyes, . . All laud we would render : O help us to see ’Tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.

“Immortal, Invisible” is a great hymn, but with the distance at which it puts God, it doesn’t even make my top 20 list. Among my all-time favorites is “In the Garden” by C. Austin Miles, 1913, with its sweet refrain :

And he walks with me, and he talks with me, And he tells me I am his own ; And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known.

“In the Garden” expresses my belief in a personal God, a God who is both the creator of the universe and is intimately concerned with the welfare of the creatures of that universe. “Einstein’s God” is not nearly enough for me. I believe in a God who wants good things for us, and who wants and expects us to care for our fellow creatures. I believe that God wants genuine, loving relationships with us, and wants us to have such relationships with each other. I don’t see how I can call upon the beauty and symmetry of nature, or the astronomically improbable fine-tuning of the universe in support of this kind of belief. So why do I believe in a personal and loving God ?

Another favorite hymn comes to mind, perhaps the first hymn I learned as a child : “Jesus loves me ! This is I know, for the Bible tells me so.” (Anna B. Warner, 1860). I believe in the loving nature of God because of what I have been taught from the scriptures, because of the traditions handed down from ancient times, and because of the wisdom received from my parents and teachers. But there is more. I am convinced of the truth of what I believe about God because I can feel God’s presence in my life and in the world. Prayer comforts me and helps me to make good choices. People are kind and good, sacrificing their own welfare for the welfare of others. All of this is part of the “evidence of things not seen” that convinces me of the reality of a loving God. Of course I am well aware of all the arguments in the other direction : secular meditation has all the benefits of prayer ; psychological and/or survival value lead to altruistic behavior. Nevertheless, I believe.

Are these beliefs held without any doubts ? Hardly ! I have repeatedly asked myself whether this belief in God is just a psychological crutch or an unreflective acceptance of tradition. I wonder from time to time whether there might be a God, but I’ve just got it all wrong : that God doesn’t care or doesn’t exist as a true personality, but only as some ill-defined sum of the myriad consciousnesses of the universe. I don’t have those kinds of doubts about physics, and that is an important difference between my science and my faith. But I accept that such doubts are part of a life of faith. The story of Thomas John 20 :24-29 is, I believe, part of our scripture to comfort us in our doubts. If Thomas, who was a disciple and a daily companion of Jesus, had doubts, then it’s not so bad when we do as well.

Among the things that stir up doubt in a reflective person of faith are the difficult issues faced by anyone, scientist or not, who claims to believe in a personal, loving, active God. Foremost in my mind is “Why is there suffering in the world ?” Of course, some suffering is the result of the sinful acts of those who suffer. People who abuse drugs and alcohol suffer as a result. Less easy to accept is that innocent people suffer because of the misdeeds of others : the children and relatives of the drug abusers, for example. But if God wants to have genuine relationships with us, then we must be free to reject God and all that God wants for us. Suffering of both the guilty and the innocent, as the result of sin, would seem to be an unavoidable byproduct of God’s gift of free will to us. Perhaps most difficult to understand is the suffering of innocent people because of random events beyond human control. Why did God create a world in which volcanoes destroy cities, or disease brings unspeakable pain to small children ? I simply don’t know ! This question is as old as religion itself, and as puzzling today as ever. As I see it, the book of Job was written to address the question, and my understanding of the answer given there is that there are simply some things that we are not going to understand. It may be that to have a world in which God’s creatures are truly free to make choices, God had to allow the possibility of such undeserved suffering. It may be so, but I certainly don’t know.

Another difficult problem, especially for Christians, is the status of those of other faiths. As a Christian I believe that Jesus reveals God. I believe that Jesus is the living proof of God’s desire for person-to-person relationships with us. Jesus, through his sacrificial life and death reconciles us to God, and guarantees us eternal life. So what about everyone who does not accept this view of Jesus ? What about all those who accept the principles of behavior preached by Jesus, and who live up to those principles far better than I ? After all, Jesus often said that he was only preaching what the Law and the prophets had taught long ago. Again, I don’t know ! For me, Jesus is “the way, and the truth and the life” John 14 :6 (RSV). But I cannot claim to speak for God and to say that others who are on a different spiritual journey are taking the wrong path. A great blessing of participating in SSQ II has been what I have learned from other scientists of different faiths. I have been far more impressed by the similarities of our spiritual experience than by the differences. I certainly won’t claim that all religions are the same, but when so many have such common features, I find it hard to argue that the loving and personal God I experience is not at work in the hearts of those people of other faiths.

I believe that I and other people of faith understand some important things about God and God’s purposes, but I also believe there is much that we do not and will not understand, at least in this earthly life. As St. Paul put it : “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then, face to face. Now I know in part ; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” 1Cor. 13 :12 (RSV). From such a position of ignorance, I feel that I must be cautious about being dogmatic in my beliefs, and I must remain open to the insights that others might bring.

How it all fits together :

I have said that belief based on faith is different from belief based on scientific evidence. Why do I believe that there are these two ways of knowing things ? As a scientist trained to accept only reliable, reproducible evidence in support of hypotheses, why do I believe in “the evidence of things not seen.” Why not ? ! I think even those scientists who most firmly believe that only empirical evidence leads to truth find room in their lives for love and romance. Even if they believe that love is just biochemistry, I doubt very much that, in a tender, romantic moment, they behave that way. If we are all comfortable in surrendering an important part of our lives to something as clearly apart from scientific rationality as Love, then why not Faith ? I am not arguing that one should believe in God because Science cannot explain Love. I am arguing that even if science could explain love, it is self-evident that there would be great value in continuing to see and embrace Love in a non-scientific way, and that most of us will continue to do so. If we are willing, even eager, to do that, why should we be less willing to embrace Faith ?

I realize that this argument is a bit flippant, but I still think it has merit. There is no reason to believe there is one and only one way to look at life. I am very much drawn to the observation of physicist Freeman Dyson 8 who says that Science and Religion look at the same reality through different windows. It seems to me that life would be rather dull if we only looked at it through the window of Science.

Another useful insight, well explained by Howard Van Till 9, is that science and religion address different kinds of questions about reality. Science can address questions about how things work and what sequence of events led to the present circumstances ; religion can address questions about our relationship with God, and how we should behave toward others. Trouble comes when we address questions to the wrong discipline. I see the book of Genesis telling us about God as magnificent creator (chapter 1) and as a personal, involved parent (chapter 2). Cosmology tells us about stellar evolution and biology tells us about the origin of species. Trying to learn about cosmology from Genesis not only poses the question to the wrong discipline, it runs the risk of missing the important spiritual messages contained in Genesis.

These descriptions of the relation of Science and Religion might seem to indicate that they are completely separate disciplines, using completely different methods to address completely different problems. I don’t see things that way. As a Methodist, I was taught that belief is founded on the four pillars of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience (the “Methodist Quadrilateral”). I see strong parallels between these and the foundations of scientific knowledge. Scripture (the Bible) and Tradition (the wisdom of religious thinkers throughout history) represent received knowledge. Science has plenty of that. We read the classic texts in physics, and we generally accept the descriptions of experimental evidence without repeating the experiments ourselves. In that sense, we accept a lot of science on faith. There is a key difference, however : in science we could in principle verify the described experiments at any time, and we have a multitude of modern witnesses who have contributed their own verifications. Such verification is not in general available for the received knowledge of religion.

I see reason and experience as being even more similar in science and religion. There is a common misconception that religion must ignore reason and experience in favor of received knowledge, but that is not at all consistent with my religious tradition. Religious thinkers at least as far back as St. Augustine have taught that when clear empirical evidence contradicts the scriptures, we are misinterpreting scripture.

So, if the methods of science and religion are not so very different, and they look at the same reality through different windows, can science and religion in fact work together ? Certainly when moral and ethical questions require scientific knowledge, it seems natural, even imperative that they do so. If, for example, we want to determine the advisability of distributing genetically modified foods and grains in impoverished countries, we need to understand both the science and the ethics. That sort of cooperation, where each brings something different to the same problem seems obviously worthwhile.

Scientific discoveries can also provide support for historic religious teaching. Take, for example, the teaching of many religious traditions that all of us are brothers and sisters in the parenthood of God. Modern biology confirms the genetic identity and common ancestry of all people. Continuing instances of inhumanity to others, even within nuclear families, gives scant hope that such scientific knowledge will dramatically alter behavior, but it certainly confirms traditional teaching.

I also believe that science and faith intersect because God wants us to discover as much as possible about the universe He created. Just as good parents want their children to learn as much as they can on their own, I believe that God rejoices with us in each new discovery. I believe that God wants us to enjoy abundant life through all the opportunities He gives us, including scientific discovery. And I believe God calls us to make the world a better place by increasing our knowledge of it. I believe that scientific research is a deeply religious calling. It is one of the ways in which God makes us partners in a continuing creation.

But this is all simply an expression of my religious belief about the value of science. What about something linking religious belief and scientific knowledge more directly ? Studies of the fine-tuning of the universe and the anthropic principle, along with examination of hypotheses about multiple universes and about intrinsic constraints on physical laws and constants, may someday give far more convincing evidence of intelligence behind creation. (Or they may not.)

Another place where scientific investigation might make significant contributions to religious belief is the area of human consciousness. I find the fact of human consciousness and free will to be a strong argument for some sort of transcendence. If we truly have a free will, if our actions represent true choice and not just results of biochemical reactions following deterministic or random processes, then where does that will come from ? If there is only physics and chemistry, where does decision come from ? Of course, it may be that our impression that we have free will is illusory, or it may be that free will emerges from a sufficiently complex system all of whose components are deterministic or random. But I find these possibilities unconvincing and find it simpler to believe in a transcendence that provides something beyond determinism or chance. I call that transcendence God. But, considering the poor state of our scientific understanding of human consciousness and free will, my conclusion about the necessity of transcendence is not particularly well founded. A better understanding of consciousness, which may come from future scientific investigation, could significantly change this situation.

Could science prove God ? Let us imagine for a moment that we find convincing evidence that there are no intrinsic constraints on how the universe might have been constructed (that is, any combinations of fundamental constants and initial conditions were allowed). Imagine that we find powerful arguments against the multiple universe pictures. And let us also imagine that further investigation solidly confirms that extremely tiny deviations from the actual conditions of our universe would have resulted in an uninteresting wasteland with no stars or planets, let alone intelligent life. Such a situation might well lead most reasonable people to believe that the hypothesis of an intelligent creator is far simpler than the hypothesis of an undirected, spontaneous, and naturalistic birth of the universe. In other words, it might turn out that belief in God becomes by far the most reasonable scientific conclusion.

This would be, for me and for many, a very satisfying outcome (although I strongly doubt that it will come to pass-I doubt that God has left such clear “fingerprints”). But, it would represent scientific support for only a part of my belief in God, and a small part at that. The scenario I have described would not touch on the personal, loving God whom I know.

Can I imagine that science could support my belief in a personal God in the same way that I have imagined it might provide increased, convincing support for the concept of an intelligent Creator ? I doubt it ! Let us suppose that we wanted to test whether God is active, loving and caring. We set up a controlled experiment to test the efficacy of intercessory prayer. (Such experiments have in fact been done, so far with inconclusive results.) Let us assume we find that indeed those for whom we have been randomly assigned to pray are healed at a significantly higher rate than those for whom we do not pray (even though the patients do not know whether or not they are being prayed for). Do we conclude that God is loving and kind because He exerts His healing power, or that He is fickle and shallow because He responds to suffering according to the arbitrary, random choices of the investigators ?

The difficulty of such a question mirrors a continuing theological dilemma I have about intercessory prayer : I find it difficult to understand why my prayers for a suffering friend would induce God to exert healing power when I believe that God already loves my friend far more deeply than I do. Yet I pray. I don’t see that experiments can resolve this question, or provide convincing evidence of a personal God.

All of this discussion about whether we might test for God’s action in the world raises the question of how a God, caring and active in our world, accomplishes action within the framework of physical laws that have always been seen to be trustworthy descriptions of how God’s universe works. Van Till 9 cites the unwavering validity of physical law as evidence of God’s faithfulness to Creation. Then what of miracles or violations of physical law as reported in the scriptures or in more recent religious experience ? I have a number of observations. First we should recognize that the writers of the scriptures did not have the same view of the immutability of physical law as we do today. What we would call “magic” was seen as an everyday occurrence, and accepted as a part of life, so the spiritual message delivered by the account of a miracle did not likely include the idea that God sometimes suspends otherwise immutable physical law. This is not to say that I know God could not or would not do that, or that we would be able to verify such suspensions if they did occur (science, after all, is mostly about reproducible phenomena ; irreproducible phenomena are generally discarded as resulting from untrustworthy observations). On the other hand, it could be that God’s interventions are more subtle, occurring at the level of quantum probability, where physics allows a multiplicity of more or less probable outcomes, from which God might choose without any apparent contradiction of physical law.

These are all interesting and entertaining questions. Nevertheless, I believe they are far less important than questions of how we, as Gods creatures, should act toward our fellow creatures. When I was a boy, I was fond of the story of Samuel 1Samuel 3 :2-10. The boy Samuel hears God calling him in the night, and believes it to be his mentor, Eli. Eli sends the boy back to bed, but when this happens again and still a third time, Eli perceives that it is God calling Samuel, and Eli advises Samuel how to respond. When, as a boy, I would hear soft sounds in the night, and would imagine that I heard my name, I thought that perhaps it was God calling me. As I grew, I realized that night sounds play tricks on the mind and there was nothing of substance in my imaginings. Now, I know that I had it pretty much right the first time. God is calling me, and each of us, all the time to do the work that needs to be done. I am reminded of another of my favorite hymns, “Here I Am, Lord” by Dan Schutte, 1981 (third verse and chorus) :

I, the Lord of wind and flame, I will tend the poor and lame, I will set a feast for them, My hand will save. Finest bread I will provide, till their hearts be satisfied, I will give my life for them Whom shall I send ?

Here I am Lord. Is it I Lord ? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.

One of my favorite passages of scripture is Matthew 25 :31-46. It is not a favorite because I find any comfort in it, but because it seems to tell me most clearly what God expects of me. Here Jesus makes it clear that how we treat those who are hungry, ill and oppressed is of extraordinary importance to him. He tells us “as you did it to the least of these…you did it to me” Mt. 25 :40 (RSV). This responsibility to help those who are in need is awesome and daunting. There is a lot to be done. We should probably get on with it.

Acknowledgements

I thank all of the members of the Physics and Cosmology Panel of Science and the Spiritual Quest II, and to the staff who made possible our meetings. Our discussions, and the ways in which they helped to focus my thinking about these issues, were crucial in what I have written here. The relationships formed in those meetings have been a special blessing. I am also deeply grateful to all the many people who have shaped my faith and my science over the years : my parents, my pastors, my teachers and mentors, my friends and colleagues, the members of the Sunday School and Bible study classes I have enjoyed over the years, and of course, my family who have always been so supportive. Finally, I thank God for all the love, beauty and wonder in this Creation.

Institutional affiliation is given for the purposes of identification only. This work was not supported by or endorsed by NIST or the University of Maryland.

1. W. D. Phillips, “Laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms,” Rev. Mod. Phys. 70, 721-741 (1998).

2. M. H. Anderson, J. R. Ensher, M. R. Matthews, C. E. WiemanE. A. Cornell, “Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Atomic Vapor Below 200 Nanokelvin,” Science 269, 198 (1995).

3. Of course, the honest answer is that I don’t know if there is something that would make me stop believing in God. Others with stronger faith than mine have had it shattered by personal or global tragedies. I hope that would not happen to me, but I don’t know for sure.

4. I sometimes wonder if the reason physicists are more likely to be believers than are biologists is that physicists see a simpler, cleaner, more orderly and understandable world than do biologists.

5. Using personal pronouns like “He” and “His” does not mean that I believe God is male. Rather, it means that I believe God is personal. I believe that the Bible contains appropriate male and female images of God, and that no single image, or even any set of images can give us a complete picture of God. I believe that God is our mother, father, sister, brother, friend, and much more.

6. There has been considerable discussion about just what was Einstein’s view of God, since he sometimes used rather personal references to God, and at other times insisted on a rather impersonal view of God.

7. Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998), p. 13.

8. Freeman Dyson, Acceptance Address upon receiving the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, Washington National Cathedral, Washington DC, May 16, 2000.

9. Howard J. Van Till, The Fourth Day : What the Bible and the Heavens are telling us about Creation (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids MI, 1986).