(2023-06-05, 07:49 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
– Max Planck
You turn to a series of quotes from scientists, but this is not the way science is done. In the scientific literature, we look at the arguments, evidence and reasons of other scientists, rather than quotes.
You have found a rather impressive list of quotes. Some of these are a little hard to know what they are talking about in context. Some are translations that might not pick up the nuance of the original statement of the original language.
Let's look at the quote above from a scientist I have a lot of respect for, Max Planck. What is he saying? He appears to be saying that, when we look for the fundamental source behind molecules, for instance, we find something else like atoms. And if we look for the fundamental source behind atoms, we find smaller particles and quantum mechanics. When we get to the bottom of it all, and ask for the fundamental source behind that, Planck says we find consciousness.
What consciousness does he mean by that? We don't know. But if we look at his religious background, there is little doubt he is talking about God. He might mean a deist God rather than a Christian God, but we don't really know.
Planck was Lutheran. He wrote, "Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations … To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view."
So we know he sometimes made statements in line with Christian faith. At other times he appeared to be more deist or universalist, so we don't really know his inner beliefs. But he certainly did sometimes make statements in line with his inherited Lutheran faith.
He also wrote, "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent spirit [orig. geist]. This spirit is the matrix of all matter."
And that certainly looks like a theological statement, declaring God as being behind it all.
In light of these other statements, it looks to me like the consciousness he said was fundamental to all existence was God. In other words, this statement you quoted above appears to be a statement of theistic (or perhaps deist) belief. It is not a statement of scientific discovery.
So yes, as I said, many great scientists were theists, and yes when speaking theology, they often used faith as their criteria, not science. And no, we cannot take Planck's statements of faith as holding the same scientific weight as his statements based on science. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck .