For me, science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.
Interpretation
Science reveals the wonders of nature, making fantastical beliefs seem trivial.
In this quote, Paul Davies emphasizes the incredible revelations that science offers in understanding the universe through disciplines like physics, cosmology, and astrobiology. He suggests that these scientific discoveries are so awe-inspiring that they render fanciful beliefs, such as alien abductions, insignificant by comparison.
In practice
During a science presentation, one might say, 'As Paul Davies pointed out, science unveils a wonderland of knowledge that far surpasses supernatural beliefs.'
The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.
Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.
Although the elusive 'cure' may be a distant dream, understanding the true nature of cancer will enable it to be better controlled and less menacing.
Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.
Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.
The laws of physics ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose.
Yet if anyone believes that the earth rotates, surely he will hold that its motion is natural, not violent.
From the growth of the Internet through to the mapping of the human genome and our understanding of the human brain, the more we understand, the more there seems to be for us to explore.
All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist.
Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunise against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin.
Whether conservative or liberal, fundamentalist or agnostic, the more students learn of biology, the more they accept evolution.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
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