Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

Though remaining an agnostic (he denied he was an atheist), Jastrow finally arrived, along with most of his colleagues, at the inescapable conclusion that the universe came into existence at some point in the finite past. He described the embarrassing realization like this: “The scientist has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”