Regarded as the father of modern chemistry, Boyle made a number of revolutionary scientific discoveries. He established the relationship between changes in the pressure applied to air and the volume air occupies, which became known today as "Boyle's law of gasses". His other inventions included a kind of litmus paper and a primitive refrigerator. He demonstrated that water expanded when it froze. The modern definition of "element" was given by him, and he contributed to the theory of atomism, arguing that if air is compressible there must be void between its particles.
While responsible for such great scientific discoveries, Boyle was a devout believer in God. He believed there to be an intelligent design in nature, which was created by an all-powerful Creator. Boyle taught in his lectures and writings that science and belief in God should stand side by side. In a lecture, he was to have said: "Remember to give glory to the one who authored nature… Use knowledge to bring good to mankind."
Elsewhere, he commented that the perfection in living things explicitly reveals God's existence:
The excellent contrivance of that great system of the world, and especially the curious fabric of the bodies of animals and the uses of their sensories and other parts, have been made the great motives that in all ages and nations induced philosophers to acknowledge a Deity as the author of these admirable structures.
Antonie von Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
Antonie von Leeuwenhoek
Leeuwenhoek's microscope by which he observed bacteria.
Bacteria types
Bacteria types
Blood Cells
It was Leeuwenhoek who discovered bacteria. Leeuwenhoek learned to grind his own magnifying lenses to examine cloth. Intrigued by what he saw, he began producing other magnifiers - and became the first man to see and describe bacteria through a microscope.
His goal to refute the idea of spontaneous generation without a Creator led him to conduct important scientific studies. To this purpose, he studied the nutrient systems of plants and animals, he examined spermatozoa, the transportation of nutrients in plants, and the structure and function of various parts of plants. Blood cells also became subjects of his investigations. He was the first to study capillaries and actually see blood cells passing through them. Before Leeuwenhoek, no one understood that muscles were made of fibers.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Principia Mathematica
Isaac Newton
Considered the greatest scientist who ever lived, Newton was both a mathematician and a physicist. His greatest contribution to science was his discovery of the law of universal gravitation. He added the concept of mass to the relation between force and acceleration; introduced the law of action and reaction, and put forward the thesis that a moving object will continue moving in straight line at a constant speed unless acted on by a force. Newton's laws of motion remained applicable for four centuries, from simplest engineering calculations to the most complex technological projects. Newton's contributions were not limited to gravity, but also extended to the fields of mechanics and optics. Discovering the seven colors of light, Newton thus laid the ground for a new discipline, namely optics.
Isaac Newton's drawing showing the passage of light from a small opening through a lens, and then through two prisms that separate light into colors.
In addition to his groundbreaking discoveries, Newton wrote critical essays refuting atheism and defending Creation. He supported the idea that "creation is the only scientific explanation". Newton believed that the mechanic universe, a gigantic clock working non-stop, in his analogy, could only be the work of an all-powerful and all-wise Creator.
The above picture shows Newton separating light into a spectrum of colors with the use of a prism.
Behind Newton's discoveries, which changed the course of the world, was his desire to come closer to God. Newton investigated the objects of God's creation to know Him better. To this end, he devoted himself to studies with great energy. Newton communicated the reason underlying his zeal for scientific endeavor with the following words, in his famous work Principia Mathematica:
...He (God) is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is …eternal and infinite; …he endures and is present. He endures forever, and is everywhere present; and, by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space... We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things... [W]e reverence and adore him as his servants…
He was the founder of the famous Greenwich observatory and the first astronomer royal of England. Flamsteed, who, after innumerable observations, produced the first great star map of the telescopic age, was also a devout clergyman.
John Woodward (1665-1728)
Woodward was one of the great founding fathers of the science of geology. One of Woodward's valuable contributions was the establishment of an important paleontological museum at Cambridge, and the geology branch there.
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)
Linnaeus, a scientist of great piety, conducted very important studies in botany. He proved that plants reproduce sexually, and introduced to science the notion of "biological taxonomy".
Jean Deluc (1727-1817)
Deluc was a Swiss physicist who coined the term "geology". He and his father developed the modern mercury thermometer and the hygrometer. He is known for his belief in creation, and for his challenge to the idea that the universe and life came about by coincidence.
Sir William Herschel (1738-1822)
Herschel was one of the most accomplished astronomers of the 18th century. Herschel, who constructed the most advanced reflecting telescopes of his day, and cataloged and studied the nebulae and galaxies as never before, was a scientist of faith. It was Herschel who said "The undevout astronomer must be mad", remarking that it is astounding that a scientist studying astronomy, and bearing witness to the perfect order in the universe, could not believe in God.
William Paley
Sir William Herschel continued his observations with the telescopes he devised, supported by the grants he received from King George III.
William Paley (1743-1805)
Paley was a scientist who believed in creation. His work Natural Theology was one of the best-selling books of his time. Paley felt that "if works of art are products of man, then living things must be the product of a being far superior to man". According to Paley, the fact that all living things are equipped with all kinds of features they need to survive in their habitat is a "mark of contrivance, in proof of design, and of a designing Creator."
George Cuvier
George Cuvier (1769-1832)
Cuvier was one of the greatest anatomists and paleontologists. He is considered to be the founder of the science of comparative anatomy, and one of the chief architects of paleontology as a separate scientific discipline. He was a firm creationist, even participating in important creation/evolution debates.
Humphrey Davy
Humphrey Davy (1778-1829)
Known as a man of faith, Davy was one of the great chemists of his day, and the man under whom Faraday served as apprentice. He was the first to isolate many important chemical elements, to develop the motion theory of heat, to invent the safety lamp, and to demonstrate that diamonds are carbon, along with many other pivotal contributions.
Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873)
One of England's leading 19th century geologists, Sedgwick, is especially famous for identifying and naming the major rock systems known as Cambrian and Devonian. He was also a clergyman, and although he was a friend of Charles Darwin, he always opposed his evolutionary ideas.
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Universally acknowledged as one of the greatest physicists of all time, Faraday was especially gifted with developing the new sciences of electricity and magnetism. He also made key contributions in the field of chemistry.
Faraday was a scientist who believed in the existence of a Creator, and that science and religion are in harmony. Because one God created the world, he believed, all of nature must be interconnected as a single whole. Based on this idea, he concluded that electricity and magnetism must be interlinked.
Samuel Morse (1791-1872)
Morse was a remarkable scientist known for his invention of the telegraph. He also built the first camera in America.
Morse believed in the existence of a Creator who created everything for a certain cause. He felt that the material world and the spiritual world work in harmony. Just four years before he died, Morse wrote: "The nearer I approach to the end of my pilgrimage, the grandeur and sublimity of God's remedy for fallen man are more appreciated and the future is illumined with hope and joy.
Joseph Henry (1797-1878)
The great American physicist and devout scientist, Joseph Henry, was a professor at Princeton University. Henry, who invented the electromagnetic motor and the galvanometer, had made it a regular habit to stop to worship God, and then to pray for divine guidance, at every important juncture of an experiment, in all his experimentation.
Louis Agassiz
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
Agassiz, widely recognized as the greatest American biologist, was an inveterate opponent of evolutionism.
Agassiz saw the divine plan of God everywhere in nature, and could not reconcile himself to a theory that did not acknowledge design. As he wrote, in his Essay on Classification:
The combination in time and space of all these thoughtful conceptions exhibits not only thought, it shows also premeditation, power, wisdom, greatness, prescience, omniscience, providence. In one word, all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know, adore, and love.
James Prescott Joule (1818-1889)
James
Prescott Joule
Besides his discovery of the first law of thermodynamics, Joule also showed how to calculate the heat produced by an electric current moving through a wire, and was the first to calculate the velocity of a gas molecule. His greatest discovery was the value of the constant known as the "mechanical equivalent of heat". This discovery led to the formulation of the law of conservation of energy, the most basic and universal of all scientific laws.
Joule, as the discoverer of these important scientific laws, was a scientist who believed that he could come closer to God as he came to know the laws of nature. His belief urged him to proceed with further investigations. He was one of the 717 scientists who signed a manifesto against Darwin in 1864. He expressed his beliefs about science in these terms:
After the knowledge of, and obedience to, the will of God, the next aim must be to know something of His attributes of wisdom, power and goodness as evidenced by his handiwork. It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintanceship with the mind of God therein expressed.
George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903)
George Stokes was a great British physicist and mathematician, who made major contributions in a number of fields. He expanded the knowledge of gravitational discrepancies, astrophysics, chemistry, sonic problems, and heat. He showed that unlike glass, quartz is transparent to ultraviolet radiation. With Lord Kelvin, he was one of the first to appreciate the electro-thermodynamic explorations of James Joule. Stokes showed that X-rays were also part of Maxwell's electromagnetic spectrum. For a time, Stokes was president of the Victoria Institute of London, and an active member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
He was a scientist who investigated nature with a belief in the Creator, and he wrote specifically emphasizing his belief in God. In one of his works, he said that "the laws of nature are carried out in accordance with his will, he who willed them may will their suspension"
Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902)
Virchow's main scientific contributions were in the field of medicine. He is considered the father of modern pathology and of the study of cellular diseases. He was the first to describe leukemia, and was active in anthropological and archeological research. Virchow was one of the most renowned scientists to strongly oppose the evolutionary teachings of Darwin and Haeckel. He also entered actively into politics and fought vigorously against allowing evolutionist teaching in the schools of Germany.
Gregory Mendel derived the laws of inheritance from his experiments on garden peas. Mendel, also a monk, put Darwin's theory of evolution into a quandary with his discovery.
Gregory Mendel (1822-1884)
Gregory Mendel
With his discovery of the three laws of genetics, Mendel went down in history as the person who founded the principles of inheritance. Mendel's principles of inheritance have turned out to be the most compelling proofs exposing the fallacy of the theory of evolution.
Having refuted the theory of evolution with his discovery of the principles of inheritance, Mendel further believed that God had created the world, and that blind chance could not be responsible for the outcome.
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
Pasteur is one of the greatest figures in the history of science and medicine, chiefly because of his establishment of the germ theory of disease, and his strong opposition to the theory of evolution. He was the first to explain the organic basis and control of fermentation, and as his research led him further and further into bacteriology, he isolated a number of disease-producing organisms, and developed vaccines to combat them - notably the dreaded diseases of rabies, diphtheria, anthrax, and others - as well as the processes of pasteurization and sterilization.
Pasteur, who was a firm believer in God, was the object of fierce opposition because of his resistance to Darwin's theory of evolution. He was a defender of the compatibility of science and religion, which he would often emphasize in his writings. As he put it:
The more I know, the more does my faith approach that of the Breton peasant (i.e., the faith which is serene, complete, unquestioning)
Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.
Lord Kelvin is recognized as the leading physicist of his time, and is also known for his strong faith in God. He is held in high regard in the scientific community for his contributions to physics and mathematics, as well as his practical inventions. He developed a successful method to liquefy hydrogen and helium. He established the scale of absolute temperatures, so that such temperatures are today measured as so many "degrees Kelvin". He established thermodynamics as a formal scientific discipline, and formulated its first and second laws in precise terminology.
He openly espoused his faith in God in his works. He said:
Do not be afraid to be free thinkers. If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to the belief in God.
With regard to the origin of life, science… positively affirms creative power.
J. J. Thomson (1856-1940)
In 1897, J. J. Thomson discovered the electron. He was a professor of physics at Cambridge University. Thomson, who was a devoutly religious man, made this statement in Nature, drawing attention to the fact that the conclusions reached by science point to the existence of God:
In the distance tower still higher [scientific] peaks which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects and deepen the feeling whose truth is emphasized by every advance in science, that great are the works of the Lord.
According to the Doppler effect, the spectrum of light waves change in direct proportion to a galaxy's distance to the Earth. This picture shows this change. Sir Huggins, who was the first to identify the Doppler effect, was a scientist who believed in God.
Sir William Huggins (1824-1910)
Huggins was well known both as a scientist of faith and as a brilliant astronomer. He was the first to demonstrate that stars were comprised mostly of hydrogen, along with smaller amounts of the same elements existing on Earth. He was also the first to identify the Doppler effect (that the light of stars shift from red to blue as they move away from each other) in astronomy, which led to the idea of the expanding universe.
Maxwell lived a short, but uniquely productive life. Recognized as the father of modern physics, Maxwell demonstrated the unity of light and electricity, bringing light, electricity, and magnetism together under one set of equations. Einstein relied on Maxwell's equations to formulate the theory of relativity.
Albert Einstein called Maxwell's achievement "the most profound and most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton." He was strongly opposed to evolution, and was able to develop a thorough mathematical refutation of the famous "nebular hypothesis" of the French atheist LaPlace. He also wrote an incisive refutation of the evolutionary philosophies of Herbert Spencer, the great advocate of Darwinism. In a letter he mused that the scientist of faith has an obligation to conduct such work as will benefit religion.
John Strutt (1842-1919)
John Strutt pursued studies on the motions of electromagnetic waves, making noteworthy contributions in optics, sonics, and gas dynamics. He was the co-discoverer of argon and the rare gases. He was also well known as a devout believer. As a prefix to his published papers he wrote: "The works of the Lord are great".
George Washington Carver (1865-1943)
George Washington Carver
Agriculture became a very important discipline beginning from the turn of the 19th century. Carver was a noted agricultural researcher who made a number of critical discoveries.
Carver was known for his belief in God, to which he almost always referred to in his speeches and interviews. As he told a reporter for the Atlanta Journal who questioned him about the permanency of the clay paints he had developed: "All I do is prepare what God has made, for uses to which man can put it. It is God's work-not mine."
Sir James Jeans (1877-1946)
Prominent physicist Sir James Jeans believed that the universe was created by a Creator of infinite Wisdom. Some of the statements in which he elaborated his views are:
We discover that the Universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling Power that has something in common with our own minds.
A scientific study of the universe has suggested a conclusion which may be summed up . . In the statement that the universe appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician.
Albert Einstein was one of the greatest scientists in history. Einstein is also known for his faith in God as well as his important discoveries.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Albert Einstein, who is one of the most important scientists of the last century, was also known for his faith in God. He did not hesitate to defend that science could not exist without religion. As he put it:
I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame.
