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Many assert that the natural laws of the universe appear to be fine-tuned to allow life in the universe

• A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics. Fred Hoyle
• When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it. John Polkinghorne
• Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth – the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. Paul Davies
• The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Edward Robert Harrison
• Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God – the design argument of Paley – updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one…. Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument. Edward Robert Harrison
• The laws of nature seem to have been crafted so as to move the universe toward the emergence and sustenance of life. Antony Flew

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The fine-tuning of the laws of the universe for life point to the existence of an infinitely intelligent divine mind

• I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source. Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than a half century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science. Antony Flew
• This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. Isaac Newton
• If we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we should know the mind of God. Stephen Hawkins

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Many believe that God authored the laws of the universe…

• God is the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion. Robert Boyle
• God created the law of free will, and God created the law of cause and effect. And he himself will not violate the law. We need to be thinking less in terms of what God did and more in terms of whether or not we are following those laws. Marianne Williamson
• God created the world; the laws of nature were created by God. True science tries to find out what God put in the world. Pat Robertson
• God put laws into being – we put them into motion. Kenneth Copeland
• If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures? Martin Gardner
• In the beginning (if there was such a thing), God created Newton’s laws of motion together with the necessary masses and forces. This is all; everything beyond this follows from the development of appropriate mathematical methods by means of deduction. Albert Einstein
• In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested. Michio Kaku
• Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light! Alexander Pope
• The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. George Mason
• The laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics. Galileo Galilei
• The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece. Dan Brown
• Where do the laws of physics come from? Why is it that we have these laws instead of some other set? How is that we have a set of laws that drives featureless gases to life, consciousness and intelligence? Antony Flew
• You believe in God? Dude. Only God could have created physics. Karen Marie Moning
• I believe God is a name we give to the mystery of the world that is beyond our capacity to understand. I believe that the energy of the universe is ordered by forces I cannot comprehend. Robert Jensen
• The world of strict naturalism in which clever mathematical laws all by themselves bring the universe and life into existence, is pure [science] fiction. Theories and laws do not bring matter/energy into existence. The view that they nevertheless somehow have the capacity seems a rather desperate refuge…from the alternative possibility…Trying to avoid the clear evidence for the existence of a divine intelligence behind nature, atheist scientists are forced to ascribe creative powers to less and less credible candidates like mass/energy and the laws of nature. John Lennox
• Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed. Barry Parker

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…using advanced mathematics to do so…

• God built the universe on numbers. Pythagoras
• God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically. Albert Einstein
• God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it. Andre Weil
• God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Paul A. M. Dirac
• God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world. Paul Dirac
• In creating the world, God used arithmetic, geometry, and likewise astronomy. Nicholas of Cusa
• In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven. Edward Everett Hale
• Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. Galileo Galilei
• Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure. Max Tegmark
• The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God. Euclid
• The laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics. Galileo Galilei
• When God produces the world, he produces a thoroughly mathematical structure that obeys the laws of number, geometrical figure and quantitative function. Nature is an embodied mathematical system. Galileo
• The language of mathematics exhibits every quality of design: balance, harmony, symmetry, and some would say beauty. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it. Alexander Polyakov
• THEY call it the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics”. Physicist Eugene Wigner coined the phrase in the 1960s to encapsulate the curious fact that merely by manipulating numbers we can describe and predict all manner of natural phenomena with astonishing clarity, from the movements of planets and the strange behaviour of fundamental particles to the consequences of a collision between two black holes billions of light years away. Michael Brooks

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…and then God breathed fire into the equations…

• Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? Stephen Hawkins
• If it should turn out that the whole of physical reality can be described by a finite set of equations, I would be disappointed, I would feel that the Creator had been uncharacteristically lacking in imagination. Freeman Dyson
• Elegance. These are the qualities that have inspired some of the greatest artists to create their masterpieces, and they are precisely the same qualities that motivate scientists to search for the laws of nature. Like a work of art or a haunting poem, equations have a beauty and rhythm all their own. Michio Kaku
• Take away God and what also disappears is a very good reason for the existence of a universe containing intelligent, finite minds. We are left with the question that Stephen Hawking asked in A Brief History of Time: ‘What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?’ Keith Ward

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…but that God ultimately transcends the laws of the universe

• God is infinite; and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore, – which correspond to the physical element in us, – do not exhaust His agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged energy beyond. James Martineau
• If God is real, and I believe he is, then he is outside of nature. He is, therefore, not limited by the laws of nature in the way that we are. Francis Collins

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Some believe the laws of the universe are the memory of God…

• The physical laws of the Universe act as a kind of ‘latent’ programming or unconscious memory of God, allowing all things to be and acting as the driving force behind gravity, electromagnetism, entropy, evolution, spontaneous self-organization and awareness and consciousness in biological life forms. Poffo Ortiz

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…or the thoughts of God

• All powers, all laws, are but the fair Embodied thoughts of God. John Stuart Blackie
• Laws of Nature are God’s thoughts thinking themselves out in the orbs and the tides. Charles Henry Parkhurst
• The forces of things, the beings of the Universe, interpenetrate, divide and unite themselves according to eternal laws. But the laws of Nature are, to speak after the manner of men, Thoughts of God, in which all lives, that is to say, He is. Heinrich Zschokke
• The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God. Euclid
• Laws of Nature are God’s thoughts thinking themselves out in the orbs and the tides. Charles Henry Parkhurst

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Some assert that the laws of the universe reveal God…

• Like Spinoza, Einstein did not believe in a personal God who interacted with man. But they both believed that a divine design was reflected in the elegant laws that governed the way the universe worked. This was not merely some expression of faith. It was a principle that Einstein elevated (as he had the relativity principle) to the level of a postulate, one that guided him in his work. “When I am judging a theory,” he told his friend Banesh Hoffmann, “I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the world in such a way.” Walter Isaacson
• My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. Albert Einstein
• The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God’s world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy. Alexander MacLaren
• The world is a necessary effect of the divine nature, and … it has not been made by chance. Baruch Spinoza
• The whole of creation, with all of its laws, is a revelation of God. William Ralph Inge
• Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God. Maria Mitchell
• This is the law of God by which He makes His way known to man and is paramount to all human control. Rufus King
• I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind. Albert Einstein
• Science is based on the assumption that the universe is thoroughly rational and logical at all levels. Atheists claim that the laws of nature exist reasonlessly and that the universe is ultimately absurd. As a scientist, I find this hard to accept. There must be an unchanging rational ground in which the logical, orderly nature of the universe is rooted. Paul Davies

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…a God revealed by the order and harmony of the universe

• The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine. Vera Kistiakowsky
• The harmony of natural law reveals an Intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. Albert Einstein
• I believe in God. In fact, I believe in a personal God who acts in and interacts with the creation. I believe that the observations about the orderliness of the physical universe, and the apparently exceptional fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe for the development of life suggest that an intelligent Creator is responsible. William Daniel Phillips
• I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. Albert Einstein
• God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists. Albert Einstein
• There is something so mysterious that it is almost like God. God is in the equations. God is in the fundamental constants. And that’s fine. I mean, that’s just redefinition of that which we find mysterious at the basis of the universe. Richard Dawkins
• This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. Isaac Newton
• The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Allan R. Sandage

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Others believe the laws of the universe explain away God

• The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a God. Stephen Hawking

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Some believe the laws of the universe are how God controls and manages the universe

• I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws. Albert Einstein
• Because God is full of life, I imagine each morning Almighty God says to the sun, “Do it again”; and every evening to the moon and the stars, “Do it again”; and every springtime to the daisies, “Do it again”; and every time a child is born into the world asking for curtain call, that the heart of the God might once more ring out in the heart of the babe. Fulton J. Sheen
• God’s Providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting form on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos Who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom, and Providence of God. Anthony the Great
• Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. Albert Einstein
• One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves. Alfred the Great
• The physical laws of the Universe act as a kind of ‘latent’ programming or unconscious memory of God, allowing all things to be and acting as the driving force behind gravity, electromagnetism, entropy, evolution, spontaneous self-organization and awareness and consciousness in biological life forms. Poffo Ortiz
• God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with color . . . only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business. Bryce Courtenay
• The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles? John Adams

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Some believe that God created the laws of the universe and then, hands off, lets the universe run itself

• A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. Karen Armstrong
• Deism claims that God creates the universe and the laws of nature and then is hands-off, with everything that subsequently happens in nature being due to natural processes. Elliott Sober
• Deistic First Cause. An impersonal Primal Force, Power or Law that set the universe in motion but is neither aware of its existence nor involved with its activity. The idea requires initializing powers but rejects beliefs, intents and purposes, active consciousness, self-awareness or even passive awareness. There is no interaction with creatures (humans). Robert Lawrence Kuhn
• I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. Neil Gaiman
• I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. Albert Einstein
• I simply haven’t the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds. Quentin Crisp
• No intelligent supervisor, no mystic force, no conscious controlling agency swings the molecules into place at the right time, chooses the appropriate players, closes the links, uncouples the partners, moves them on. The dance of life is spontaneous, self-sustaining, and self-creating. Paul Davies
• The definition of deism is the philosophical idea of God as a first cause of the universe, who lays down the laws of nature and lets them run like clockwork, indifferent to the fate of the people subject to them. Elizabeth S. Anderson
• Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. L. Mencken
• It is Deism which depicts God as the passive onlooker rather than the active governor of His world, and which assures us that the guarantee of human freedom lies in the fact that men’s actions are not under God’s control. J. I. Packer
• Deism: Belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe. Oxford Dictionary
• If there is a Creator-God, it has used methods of creation that are indistinguishable from nature, it has declined to make itself known for all of recorded history, it doesn’t intervene in affairs on earth, and has made itself impossible to observe. Even if you believe in that God… why would you think it would want to be worshiped? David G. McAfee

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Still others believe that God is none other than the actual laws underlying the universe

• Another facet of the basic analogy between human thought and the cosmos is that of the Cosmic Architect or Mathematician, which also suggests the influence of consciousness on primordial substance. It implies the presence of a directing power or mind behind the regularities of nature, rather than attributing these to the activities of random chance or mechanical laws. Several scientists of this century have turned to this metaphor, often employed by mystical and Platonic thinkers, to express their intuition of that something which underlies the visible universe. Sarah B Dougherty
• What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics. Nikola Tesla
• God is infinite; and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. James Martineau
• God manifests himself in the laws of the universe as a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. Albert Einstein
• Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. Baruch Spinoza
• The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. William James
• The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by ‘God’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity. Carl Sagan
• The Law which governs all life is God. Mahatma Gandhi
• What could define God, is thinking of God as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God. They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible. Stephen Hawking
• Laws are the silent assessors of God. William Rounseville Alger
• The universe is founded in consciousness and guided by it. The final reality is Universal Consciousness. The Supreme Consciousness is Omnipresent. Its evolutionary powers pervade the entire Universe. All processes of Nature are governed by the laws of this Absolute Force. Shriram Sharma

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God as universal laws is far from a theistic God

• People will listen to sophisticated physicists, using God as a kind of metaphor for the deep constants, the deep problems, the deep principles of physics, and say that in that sense I believe in God. The reaction is, “Oh, this great physicist believes in God – that means I’m free to believe in the trinity and in the crucifixion and in the reincarnation of Christ” – and all that stuff, which of course has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental constants of physics, which is what these physicists are talking about. Richard Dawkins
• Physicists use ‘God’ as a metaphor more often than other scientists– especially in popular writing, but in the technical literature as well. Of course, this is just a metaphor for order at the heart of confusion. A rational or aesthetic pattern underlying reality is far from a theistic God. Taner Edis

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God as universal laws points to an impersonal God…

• God is without passions, neither is he affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain . . . Strictly speaking, God does not love anyone. Baruch Spinoza
• It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Albert Einstein
• I do not believe in a personal God. Albert Einstein
• The Absolute God of the universe, the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe, is impersonal principle. Swami Vivekananda
• We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There’s not much personal about the laws of physics. Stephen Hawking
• The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously. Albert Einstein
• The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. Albert Einstein.
• The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science ‘God’, but it wouldn’t be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions. Stephen Hawking
• We have sunk from theism into impersonal and depersonalizing deism, a scheme of rule by alien and implacable abstract metaphysical forces. Kenny Smith

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…a God that cannot be prayed to…

• Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being. Albert Einstein
• For the Deist … prayer is calling across a void to a distant deity. This lofty figure may or may not be listening. He, or it, may or may not be inclined, or even able, to do very much about us and our world, even if he (or it) wanted to … all you can do is send off a message, like a marooned sailor scribbling a note and putting it in a bottle, on the off-chance that someone out there might pick it up. That kind of prayer takes a good deal of faith and hope. But it isn’t Christian prayer. T. Wright

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… a God that is indifferent to human affairs

• The definition of deism is the philosophical idea of God as a first cause of the universe, who lays down the laws of nature and lets them run like clockwork, indifferent to the fate of the people subject to them. Elizabeth S. Anderson
• In my judgment, the Deists were all successfully answered. The god of nature is certainly as bad as the God of the Old Testament. It is only when we discard the idea of a deity, the idea of cruelty or goodness in nature, that we are able ever to bear with patience the ills of life. I feel that I am neither a favorite nor a victim. Nature neither loves nor hates me. Robert Green Ingersoll
• Some believe in a “Distant God” who “set the laws of nature in motion,” but “has no interest in human activities.” Carolyn Jane Bohler

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God as universal laws points to a God beyond ethics and morality…

• God is the creator of all things, right? He is the force that dictates the laws of the universe, and is therefore the ultimate source of ethics. He is absolute morality… We claim to be doing good. But the Lord Ruler – as God – defines what is good. So by opposing him we’re actually evil. But since he’s doing the wrong thing, does evil actually count as good in this case? Brandon Sanderson
• God gave a law … called justice. But they have made a law for themselves that is terrible and intricate, and they cannot escape it, for the evil will and the good will are caught alike in its meshes, and it is darkness to the eyes that see and a stumbling block to the feet that run. This law is called necessity. Jessie Sampter
• God’s law is ‘right reason.’ When perfectly understood it is called ‘wisdom.’ When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called ‘justice. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible… remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God. Wernher von Braun
• Knowing that all things contrary to God’s laws are transient, let us avoid despair and radiate hope for a warless world. Peace Pilgrim
• Man has made 32 million laws since the Commandments were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai… but he has never improved on God’s law. Cecil B. DeMille
• Man’s laws cannot make moral what God has declared immoral. Dallin H. Oaks
• Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God’s laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man’s injustice to his fellow man. Leo Tolstoy
• Most laws condemn the soul and pronounce sentence. The result of the law of my God is perfect. It condemns but forgives. It restores – more than abundantly – what it takes away. Jim Elliot
• No amount of rationalizing can change God’s laws. No amount of fashion designing can turn immodesty into virtue, and no amount of popularity can change sin into righteousness. Spencer W. Kimball
• Obey God’s law first before considering the laws of man. Manny Pacquiao
• Only a law-order which holds to the primacy of God’s law can bring forth true freedom, freedom for justice, truth, and godly life. Freedom as an absolute is simply an assertion of man’s “right” to be his own god; this means a radical denial of God’s law-order. “Freedom” thus is another name for the claim by man to divinity and autonomy. It means that man becomes his own absolute. J. Rushdoony
• Only the man who lives in the laws of GOD is free. Abd-ru-shin
• Our political way of life is by the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, and of course presupposes the existence of God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and government. John Quincy Adams
• People are more afraid of the laws of Man than of God, because their punishment seems to be nearest. William Penn
• The law… dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. Alexander Hamilton
• The laws of God work in the same way as the laws of Science. You cannot break them – you can only break yourself against them. Maude Royden
• The severity of the law of God is the necessary sequence of his infinite love. Campbell Morgan

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…a God that does not inspire right action

• Who ever heard of a devout deist? Who ever heard of one who was willing to spend his life in missionary labor for the good of others? It is not according to the constitution of the mind that such a system should awaken the affections. And what is true of this system is true of every false system. All such systems leave the heart cold, and, accordingly, exert very little genuine, transforming power over the life. Mark Hopkins

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A God as universal laws is beyond the concepts of good and evil…

• There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don’t care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don’t have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US! Eliezer Yudkowsky

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…yet can explain the existence of evil

• Why Does Evil Exist? The basic laws of nature are such that they are bound to produce destructive as well as creative forces. Some suffering is therefore necessary in a life-producing universe. Keith Ward

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A God as universal laws, some argue, diminishes God’s role to the point of irrelevance

• After Darwin, God’s role changes from being the designer of all creatures great and small to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being perhaps just the chooser of the laws. By the time God’s role has been so diminished, he becomes a bit like a constitutional monarch, presiding ceremonially but not having any more work to do. That’s a place for God if it makes people comfortable to keep God as the presider over the universe. I suppose that is satisfying for many. Daniel Dennett
• Some believe in a “Distant God” who “set the laws of nature in motion,” but “has no interest in human activities.” Carolyn Jane Bohler
• Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense. They give the name of “God” to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves; having done so they can pose before all the world as deists, as believers of God, and they can even boast that they have recognized a higher, purer concept of God, notwithstanding that their God is not nothing more than an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrines. Sigmund Freud
• If language is to be of any use to us, then we ought to try and preserve the meaning of words, and ‘god’ historically has not meant the laws of nature. Steven Weinberg

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God as universal laws points to an ineffable mystery

• I believe God is a name we give to the mystery of the world that is beyond our capacity to understand. I believe that the energy of the universe is ordered by forces I cannot comprehend. Robert Jensen
• We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different 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. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. Albert Einstein

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God as universal laws is a God of order and harmony

• Einstein regarded the universe with the same kind of feeling that religious people direct towards the Judeo-Christian God. He was just amazed and awe-struck by the fact that the universe exists, that it is so ordered, and how mysterious it is. He was also struck by how science and reason could give us access to the structure and order of the universe. Because the universe was so ordered and possible to understand Einstein gave it divine qualities and called the universe – or the laws of nature – God. Sam Woolfe
• Order is manifestly maintained in the universe… governed by the sovereign will of God. James Prescott Joule
• All nature has come to expect from God a sense of orderliness. Whatever God does carries with it His fingerprint. And in the world around us His fingerprint of orderliness is evident to anybody who is honest with the facts. If you look at nature, you will discover a mathematical exactness. Without this precision, the entire world would be in utter confusion. One plus one always equals two no matter what part of the universe you happen to be in. And the laws of nature operate in beautiful harmony, a harmony that is ordered by God Himself. Aiden Wilson Tozer
• I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing. Alan Sandage
• The universe exists under a reign of eternal law, surpassing the imperfect laws of human government. Such orderliness, such domination by law, imply intelligent planning and purpose. Nothing happens of itself. Nowhere, in the age-old experience of man, has continued order been found except as the product of intelligent direction. John Andreas Widtsoe
• The universe owes its existence to the emergence of order from chaos. Deepak Chopra
• When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it’s very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it. Tony Rothman
• Yet who seeing the snowflake, who seeing simple limpid molecules cast adrift in water forming themselves into cell-like hollow lipid vesicles, who seeing the potential for the crystallization of life in swarms of reacting molecules, who seeing the stunning order for free in networks linking tens upon tens of thousands of variables, can fail to entertain a central thought: if ever we are to attain a final theory in biology, we will surely… have to see that we are the natural expressions of a deeper order. Ultimately, we will discover in our creation myth that we are expected after all. Stuart Kauffman
• Order is manifestly maintained in the universe… governed by the sovereign will of God. James Prescott Joule
• Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order. The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation. Alan Lightman
• The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine. Vera Kistiakowsky
• The harmony of natural laws, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. Albert Einstein
• The important point is not merely that there are regularities in nature, but that these regularities are mathematically precise, universal and tied together. Antony Flew

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God as universal laws is the great principle of all minor principles

• God, great principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without a principle, could not conceive Himself, if, in order to do it, He required to know His own principle. Giacomo Casanova
• The synergetic integral of the totality of all principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans–in pure principle–we do not and never will know all the principles Buckminster Fuller

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God as universal laws transcends all religious scriptures…

• It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible. Thomas Paine
• I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of….Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and of my own part, I disbelieve them all. Thomas Paine

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…for creation itself is the true scripture of God

• The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. Thomas Paine

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A God as universal laws, some argue, is one step away from atheism…

• Deism, historically, produces atheism. First you make God a landlord, then an absent landlord, then he becomes simply absent. T. Wright
• A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage. Honore de Balzac
• Some will say Thomas Jefferson was a deist, not an atheist. Atheism, however, simply involves having no theism, and deism — belief that a celestial Clockmaker wound up the universe and set it ticking — is too watery a theism to count. Any religion worthy of the name explains, enjoins and consoles; undemanding deism merely explains, and does this minimally. George Will
• Atheism is not the denial of the existence of God, but having doubts as to whether God is conscious. Slavoj Žižek

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…and one step away from naturalism

• Naturalism is the view that the physical world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws. Naturalism doesn’t come right out and say there’s nothing beyond nature. Rather, it says that nothing beyond nature could have any conceivable relevance to what happens in nature. Naturalism’s answer to theism is not atheism but benign neglect. People are welcome to believe in God, though not a God who makes a difference in the natural order. William A. Dembski

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The laws of the universe, some argue, create the most interesting world possible

• We could say, not that this is the best of all possible worlds, but that it is the only possible world that would allow us, and the distinctive sorts of values and good things that we can enjoy, to exist. Keith Ward
• The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible. Freeman Dyson
• As a working hypothesis to explain the riddle of our existence, I propose that our universe is the most interesting of all possible universes, and our fate as human beings is to make it so. Freeman Dyson
• Perhaps all possible worlds exist in which the good outweighs the bad. Such a selection principle – ‘a world exists for the sake of overwhelming and distinctive value’ – would rule out many possible worlds that would be unbearably bad. Keith Ward

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God is the law of cause and effect

• God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence. Baruch Spinoza
• God is the Immanent Cause of all things, never truly transcendent from them Baruch Spinoza

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God is the laws driving evolution

• Deism is logically compatible with evolutionary theory for the simple reason that the theory says nothing about the origin of the universe or of the laws of nature. Elliott Sober
• All life is evolving, for evolution is God’s law; and man grows slowly and steadily along with the rest. Charles Webster Leadbeater
• Self-organization is embedded in the fabric of the cosmos, acting like an invisible, offstage choreographer to drive evolution. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos

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God is the law of consequences

• When we begin to understand the concept of Karma we will never ever blame God for anything that happens to us. We will realise that we are responsible for all that happens to us. As we sow, so shall we reap. Rich or poor, saint or sinner, miser or philanthropist, learned or illiterate … This is the Universal Law that applies to individuals, to whole communities, societies, nations and races. As we sow, so shall we reap. Dada Vaswani
• I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws. Albert Einstein

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Some believe the laws of the universe can never be circumvented, even by God

• The laws of God, like the law of gravity, do not depend upon how I feel about them. They are inexorable. Scott Hahn
• Don’t ask God to change the laws of nature for you. Nachman of Breslov
• I undertake my scientific research with the confident assumption that the earth follows the laws of nature which God established at creation. … My studies are performed with the confidence that God will not capriciously confound scientific results by “slipping in” a miracle. James W. Skehan
• In my understanding of God I start with certain firm beliefs. One is that the laws of nature are not broken. We do not, of course, know all these laws yet, but I believe that such laws exist. I do not, therefore, believe in the literal truth of some miracles which are featured in the Christian Scriptures, such as the Virgin Birth or water into wine. … God works, I believe, within natural laws, and, according to natural laws, these things happen. Nevill Francis Mott
• Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing. Baruch Spinoza
• No amount of rationalizing can change God’s laws. Spencer W. Kimball
• To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance. That implies that everyone else (such as the opposing football team, driver, student, parent) is de-selected, unfavored by God, and that I am special,above it all. Dan Barker

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Miracles, if they exist, are laws we do not understand yet

• Miracles may be, for anything we know to the contrary, phenomena of a higher order of God’s laws, superior to, and, under certain conditions, controlling the inferior order known to us as the ordinary laws of nature. Charles Babbage
• The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence? Thomas Paine
• A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws, but rather represents laws which are incomprehensible to us. G. I. Gurdjieff
• Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood. George Santayana

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Others believe God can circumvent the laws of the universe if God wishes

• Every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man, is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God. Mary Baker Eddy
• Don’t assume that God will always work in your life the way He always has. A sunset is proof that God colors outside the lines. He has no status quo. Even the laws of nature are His to interrupt. As many times as you’ve prayed before, today may be the day when God sends the answer so swiftly-so divinely-that you’re windburned. Beth Moore
• For the religious, passivism [i.e., objects are obedient to the laws of nature] provides a clear role of God as the author of the laws of nature. If the laws of nature are God’s commands for an essentially passive world …, God also has the power to suspend the laws of nature, and so perform miracles. Brian Ellis
• I think that some “interventionist theisms” are compatible with evolutionary theory. (By “intervention,” I don’t mean that God violates laws of nature; I mean that God affects what happens in nature in ways that are additional to the ones that deism recognizes.) Elliott Sober
• If God made the natural laws, why could he not violate them when it was a particularly significant moment for him to do so? Francis Collins
• Miracles may be, for anything we know to the contrary, phenomena of a higher order of God’s laws, superior to, and, under certain conditions, controlling the inferior order known to us as the ordinary laws of nature. Charles Babbage
• That God normally operates the universe consistently makes science possible; that he does not always do so ought to keep science humble. A. Carson
• If the laws of nature are God’s commands for an essentially passive world …, God also has the power to suspend the laws of nature, and so perform miracles. Brian Ellis

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A God as universal laws is metaphor that appeals particularly to scientists, especially physicists

• This marvelous graceful thing, this joy of physics, this perfect balance between rebellion and obedience, is God’s own signature on earth. Mark Helprin
• A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. Carl Sagan
• Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order…. This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. Albert Einstein
• Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. Albert Einstein
• God is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and figures and perhaps of different densities and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of nature, and make worlds of several sorts in several parts of the Universe. Isaac Newton
• I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science. Wernher von Braun
• I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are details. ~ Albert Einstein
• I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. 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. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. Albert Einstein
• If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. Albert Einstein
• I am very much a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influence in my thinking by the writing of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery. Walter Kohn
• Whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances in this domain science is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence…the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence. Albert Einstein

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A God as universal laws is compatible with science

• God is a scientist, not a magician. Albert Einstein
• Science books are letters from God, telling how He runs His universe. Toyohiko Kagawa
• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. Albert Einstein
• One does not have to appeal to God to set the initial conditions for the creation of the universe, but if one does He would have to act through the laws of physics. Stephen Hawking

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If God is universal laws, then God is best known by reason, not revelation

• In Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes. Thomas Paine
• It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason. Voltaire
• Deism is the philosophical position that rejects revelation as a source of religious knowledge and asserts that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to establish the existence of a Supreme Being or creator of the universe. Alan W. Gomes
• The more we understand particular things, the more we understand God. Baruch Spinoza

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If God is the laws of nature, we should strive to live in harmony with them

• God imposeth no Law of Righteousness upon us which He doth not observe Himself. The Plus Factor makes its appearance in a person’s life in proportion as that person is in harmony with God and His universal laws. Norman Vincent Peale
• Only the man who lives in the laws of GOD is free. Abd-ru-shin
• A man can break God’s laws and be forgiven. That’s what they teach us. But when he breaks Nature’s laws, there’s no forgiveness – and there’s no escape. Sooner or later he pays the penalty, or his children pay it – or his children’s children. It doesn’t matter much. It must be paid. Martha Ostenso
• But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later. Lydia M. Child
• There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty… James Otis
• THIS law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original. William Blackstone
• We cannot break God’s laws – but we can break ourselves against them. Maude Royden
• Knowing that all things contrary to God’s laws are transient, let us avoid despair and radiate hope for a warless world. Peace Pilgrim
• Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws. William Blackstone

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