Robert Jastrow

Astrophysicist/Author

Jastrow, director of the Mount Wilson Observatory, president of the George Marshall Institute and author of God and the Astronomers appeared on an installment of Ben Wattenberg's Think Tank which aired September 9, 1995. The topic was "Does Science Leave Room for Religion and Vice Versa?".

Jastrow was asked about his own beliefs and said: "I'm a committed reductionist. I think that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts. But I also know that there is no way within my scientific discipline of finding out whether there is a larger purpose or design in the universe. So I remain an agnostic, and not an atheist. To profess a disbelief in the existence of design or of the deity is essentially, in itself, a theological statement which a scientist cannot make on the structure or on the strength of his own discipline. He can only make it as a personal belief."