Freeman Dyson on Theology

Freeman Dyson

Freeman Dyson

What will mind choose to do when it informs and controls the universe? This is a question which we cannot hope to answer. When mind has expanded its physical reach and biological organization by many powers of ten beyond the human scale, we can no more expect to understand its thoughts and dreams than a Monarch butterfly can understand ours. … In contemplating the future of mind in the universe, we have exhausted the resources of our puny human science. This is the point at which science ends and theology begins.

Infinite in All Directions, page 118, New York: Harper Perennial, 2004

Related Quotes

Nick BostromNick Bostrom

It may be possible for simulated civilizations to become posthuman. They may then run their own ancestor-simulations on powerful computers they build in their simulated universe. Such computers would be “virtual machines”, a familiar concept in computer science. (Java script webapplets, for instance, run on a virtual machine – a simulated computer – inside your desktop.)

Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein

I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written.

Joseph SmithJoseph Smith

This day I have been walking through the most splended part of the City of New York, ... and the language of my heart is like this: “Can the great God of all the Earth, maker of all things magnificent and splendid, be displeased with man for all these great inventions sought out by them?” My answer is no. It cannot be, seeing these works are are calculated to make men comfortable, wise, and happy.