Quotes from John Polkinghorne

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true they just hope to find out what reality is like.

People, and especially theologians, should try to familiarize themselves with scientific ideas. Of course, science is technical in many respects, but there are some very good books that try to set out some of the conceptual structure of science.

I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science.

If we are seeking to serve the God of truth then we should really welcome truth from whatever source it comes. We shouldn't fear the truth. Some of it will be from science, obviously, but by no means all of it. It will sometimes by perplexing, how this bit of truth relates to that bit of truth; we know that within science itself often enough and we find it outside of science as well. The crucial thing is to be honest.

If the physicists seem to achieve their ends more successfully than the theologians, that is simply a reflection of how much easier science is than theology.

Epistemology models ontology.

scientific discovery requires the boldness of provisional commitment to a point of view, while remaining aware that this may require subsequent modification in the light of further experience.

Claims for the occurrence of miraculous events will have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. There can be no general theory to cover the character of unique events, but the refusal to contemplate the possibility of revelatory disclosures of an unprecedented kind would be an unacceptable limitation, imposed arbitrarily on the horizons of religious thought.

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

The rational transparency and beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents.