Since I realized I was an atheist, I have welcomed all efforts to persuade me that the God of the Bible exists. Truly there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to arguments in favor of his existence, but the one that forms the basis of such efforts is this: We don't know, so it must have been God.


Much is made of the fact that science does not have an explanation for the existence of the universe, or of the origins of life. So it must have been God.

By this same logic, there must be aliens flying around, since science cannot explain every UFO sighting. Seemingly, it's not acceptable to admit ignorance, one must have an answer, and one must have it right now. By contrast, science admits its ignorance and diligently seeks answers.

Here's one way science and religion can get in sync... Let's all agree that we don't yet know the answers. Let's admit that "God did it" is not an explanation.

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Blogger's Note: Today I heard a snippet of a radio sermon. "If there is no God, then life is without meaning and the existentialists are right," said the preacher. But doesn't that logic (or lack of) just indulging in wishful thinking? The question shouldn't be which way would make life seem more bearable, but if something represents reality or not. Hence this article...

NewScientist - March 2, 2009, by Ewen Callaway

Religion might not be the only reason people buy into creationism and intelligent design, psychological experiments suggest.

No matter what their religious beliefs, college-educated adults frequently agree with purpose-seeking yet false explanations of natural phenomena - finches diversified in order to survive, for instance.

"The very fact of belief in purpose itself might lead you to favour intelligent design," says Deborah Kelemen, a psychologist at Boston University, who led the study

Kelemen has documented the same kind of erroneous thinking - called promiscuous teleology - in young children. Seven and eight-year olds agree with teleological statements such as "Rocks are jagged so animals can scratch themselves" and "Birds exist to make nice music". These mistakes diminish as kids take more science classes and learn causal explanations for natural events.

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Guardian - February 22, 2009, by Colin Blakemore

When I was a medical student at Cambridge in the Sixties, I walked to lectures past the forbidding exterior of the Cavendish Laboratory, as famous for Crick and Watson's unravelling of DNA as for Rutherford's splitting of the atom. One day, scrawled on the wall, was a supreme example of Cambridge graffiti: "CRICK FOR GOD".

The process of Christian accommodation is a bit like the fate of fieldmice confronted by a combine harvester, continuously retreating into the shrinking patch of uncut wheat.

No surprise that pivotal advances in science provoke religious metaphors. Crick and Watson's discovery transformed our view of life itself - from a manifestation of spiritual magic to a chemical process. One more territorial gain in the metaphysical chess match between science and religion.

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was certainly a vital move in that chess game - if not checkmate. In an interview for God and the Scientists, to be broadcast tonight in Channel 4's series on Christianity, Richard Dawkins declares: "Darwin removed the main argument for God's existence."

That wasn't, of course, Darwin's intention. In 1827, he scraped into Cambridge to study for the church. But by 1838, with the wealth of experience from the Beagle's voyage inside his head, Darwin had conceived the idea that natural selection - survival of the fittest - had created new species. Even after she accepted his marriage proposal, Darwin's cousin Emma, a strict Unitarian, fretted that his heretical theories would lead to their separation in the afterlife!

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NewScientist - Feb. 4, 2009 by Michael Brooks

WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.

This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.

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A plug for the latest Egan novel I've read. Incandescence is about:

A million years from now, the galaxy is divided between the vast, cooperative meta-civilisation known as the Amalgam, and the silent occupiers of the galactic core known as the Aloof. The Aloof have long rejected all attempts by the Amalgam to enter their territory, but have permitted travellers to take a perilous ride as unencrypted data in their communications network, providing a short-cut across the galaxy's central bulge. When Rakesh encounters a traveller, Lahl, who claims she was woken by the Aloof on such a journey and shown a meteor full of traces of DNA, he accepts her challenge to try to find the uncharted world deep in the Aloof's territory from which the meteor originated.

Greg fuses some intriguing math and physics in his stories, even as he develops characters that you care about. A very rare set of gifts.

His web site offers supplemental information for his novels, which I think is very cool.

If humanity survives and evolves, Egan's vision of its future seems to me to be a very probable outcome. Traveling through the galaxy in data form, leaving backups along the way, becoming embodied when and where and how you choose...what's not to like?

Greg Egan 

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