Francis collins the language of god pdf free download

The ultimate purpose of preaching, he argues, is to speak God's peace, the message of reconciliation. While Lischer's End of Words will surely be invaluable to pastors and preachers, his honest, readable style will appeal to anyone concerned with speaking Christianly. In this volume, Dr.

Denis R. Alexander offers readers a basic toolkit of information, explanations, and ideas that can help us grasp something of the fascination and the challenge of the language of genetics. Alexander surveys the big picture, covering such topics as the birth of the field; DNA: what it is, how it works, and how it was discovered; our genetic history; the role of genes in diseases, epigenetics, and genetic engineering. The book assumes the reader has little scientific background, least of all in genetics, and approaches these issues in a very accessible way, free of specialized or overly technical jargon.

In the last chapter, Dr. Alexander explores some of the big questions raised by genetics: what are its implications for notions of human value and uniqueness? Is evolution consistent with religious belief? If we believe in a God of love, then how come the evolutionary process, utterly dependent upon the language of genetics, is so wasteful and involves so much pain and suffering? How far should we go in manipulating the human genome?

Does genetics subvert the idea that life has some ultimate meaning and purpose? Genetics is a rapidly advancing field; it seems new discoveries make headlines every other week. The Language of Genetics is intended to give the general reader the knowledge he or she needs to assess and understand the next big story in genetics. It also shows what contribution the theory of metaphor can make when the parables and aphorisms are studied in research on the historical Jesus. The metaphoric nature and polyvalency of the parables and aphorisms of the Jesus tradition undermine their value for research on the historical Jesus.

The author doubts whether the parables and sayings of the Jesus tradition can be employed to reconstruct the historical Jesus. Popular Books. Fear No Evil by James Patterson. Mercy by David Baldacci. The Awakening by Nora Roberts. The HGP as a narcissistic offence The HGP is not the first scientific event that forces us to revise our self-image as human beings in the face of unexpected scientific findings. The Copernican revolution made it clear that we do not occupy a solid and central position in the universe, but live on a lonely, blue planet floating around in godless, silent and infinite immensities.

The Darwinian revolution showed that, biologically speaking, we are not a special kind of entity, but simply a species among others, the outcome of a process of evolution that will continue to shape and change us. One could argue that the HGP entails yet another narcissistic offence: our genome is not that different compared to other species.

At the same time it is clear that there is another side to the story. In the case of the Copernican revolution, for example, although we were forced to abandon our position at the centre of the universe, we received something in return.

Heliocentrism reinforces the uniqueness of our position as an epistemological subject that is unraveling the structure of the universe in all its astronomical complexities. And in this sense we are special. Whereas other species seem to know nothing at all about heliocentrism and remain confined in the closed world of immediate sense perceptions, human beings have the ability to challenge appearances and flesh out rival theories about the world.

Thus, our narcissistic self-image is replaced by something much more fascinating and promising, namely our position without precedent as an epistemological subject. The same goes more or less for evolution. Although evolution theory reveals that we are merely one species among others, our uniqueness is at the same time reinforced.

We are the only species able and willing to formulate questions concerning our descent, our biological past and future. And even dinosaurs would perhaps have evolved into more intelligent beings had they not become extinct sixty-five million years ago.

So far, however, we seem to stand alone in this respect and our epistemological performance remains without precedent. The same argument applies to the human genome project.

It challenges our narcissistic self-image as it expressed itself for instance in our biased estimates concerning the number of protein-coding genes , but at the same time the HGP reinforces our unique position as the only species that is able and willing to sequence its genome, another step on our evolving pathway towards increased self-knowledge.

To put it somewhat paradoxically: we are unique precisely because we are the only living beings that can be offended. Human beings occupy a position of openness towards the world, an openness that allows us to address epistemological issues and to challenge appearances.

Our privilege is not the metaphysical privilege of occupying a central position, as the of creation. Rather, it is the epistemological privilege of being intellectually challenged and offended. A similar position was taken by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, for example, a French author once highly influential, but now more or less forgotten , a scientist and, moreover, a priest.

In his book The Human Phenomenon3, he argued that, while geological and anthropological findings may urge us to question some of our self-indulgent beliefs, they simultaneously reinforce the idea that we are involved in a unique process of self- enlightenment, and encourage us to continue in this direction.

According to Kant, the whole of creation would be a mere wilderness without human beings. We are the entities that give it a meaning, so to speak. We should not read this, however, in a narcissistic fashion. We are not the centre or final goal of natural development as such. Indeed, Carl Sagan is certainly right: we have not been given the lead in the cosmic drama. It began to evolve long before human beings emerged and will continue to develop long after we have disappeared.

It is our unique possibility to be open to such an insight. We have the unique ability to adapt our self-images to science-based discoveries and disclosures. This epistemological privilege is not something that should make us self- indulgent. Rather, it is something like an epistemological responsibility or calling. His book demonstrates, however, that our uniqueness also resides in our epistemological sensitivity: a will to knowledge, a willingness to accept and understand the significance of narcissistic offences.

What is somewhat neglected in Collins book, however, is the importance of cultural and historical factors in the process of anthropogenesis the process of becoming human. Epistemology and morality is evolving in our minds and in our cultural networks, rather than in our genomes. The monastery in which he spent his adult life was a research department hosting various prominent scholars. He belonged to an order that regarded research - even experimental research - as a perfectly legitimate vocation for a priest.

Eine Schwierigkeit der Psychoanalyse. Gesammelte Werke XII. All too often, when claims of miraculous healing have been care- fully investigated by objective observers, those claims have fallen short. Despite those misgivings, and an insistence that such claims be backed up by extensive evidence, I would not be stunned to hear that such genuine miraculous healings do occur on extremely rare occasions.

My "prior" is low, but it is not zero. If, like me, you admit that there might exist something or someone outside of nature, then there is no logical reason why that force could not on rare occasions stage an invasion. On the other hand, in order for the world to avoid descending into chaos, miracles must be very uncommon. As Lewis has written, "God does not shake miracles into nature at random as if from a pepper-caster.

They come on great occasions: they are found at the great ganglions of history—not of political or social his- tory, but of that spiritual history which cannot be fully known by men. If your own life does not happen to be near one of those great ganglions, how should you expect to see one? If God is the ultimate em- bodiment of omnipotence and goodness, He would not play such a trickster role. John Polkinghorne argues this point co- gently: "Miracles are not to be interpreted as divine acts against the laws of nature for those laws are themselves expressions of God's will but as more profound revelations of the character of the divine relationship to creation.

To be credible, miracles must convey a deeper understanding than could have been ob- tained without them. In their view, the laws of nature can ex- plain everything, even the exceedingly improbable. But can this view be completely sustained? There is at least one singular, exceedingly improbable, and profound event in history that scientists of nearly all disciplines agree is not un- derstood and will never be understood, and for which the laws of nature fall completely short of providing an explanation.

Would that be a miracle? Read on. Was Kant's remark merely the sentimental musing of a philosopher not benefited by discoveries of modern science, or is there a harmony achievable between science and faith in the profoundly important question of the origins of the universe? Scientists are constantly reaching into new arenas, investigating the natural world in new ways, digging deeper into territory where understanding is incomplete.

Faced with a set of data that includes a puzzling and unexplained phenomenon, scientists construct hypotheses of the mecha- nism that might be involved, and then conduct experiments to test those hypotheses. Many experiments on the cutting edge of science fail, and most hypotheses turn out to be wrong. Science is progressive and self-correcting: no significantly erroneous conclusions or false hypotheses can be sustained for long, as newer observations will ultimately knock down incorrect con- structs.

But over a long period of time, a consistent set of obser- vations sometimes emerges that leads to a new framework of understanding. That framework is then given a much more sub- stantive description, and is called a "theory"—the theory of gravitation, the theory of relativity, or the germ theory, for in- stance. One of the most cherished hopes of a scientist is to make an observation that shakes up a field of research.

Scientists have a streak of closeted anarchism, hoping that someday they will turn up some unexpected fact that will force a disruption of the framework of the day. That's what Nobel Prizes are given for. In that regard, any assumption that a conspiracy could exist among scientists to keep a widely current theory alive when it actually contains serious flaws is completely antithetical to the restless mind-set of the profession.

The study of astrophysics nicely exemplifies these princi- ples. No doubt more revisions still lie ahead of us. These disruptions can sometimes be wrenching for at- tempts to achieve a comfortable synthesis between science and faith, especially if the church has attached itself to a prior view of things and incorporated that into its core belief system.

Today's harmony can be tomorrow's discord. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo all strong believers in God built an increasingly compelling case that the movement of the planets could be properly understood only if the earth revolved around the sun, rather than the other way around.

The details of their conclusions were not all quite correct Galileo made a famous blooper in his explanation of the tides , and many in the scientific community were initially unconvinced, but ultimately the data and the consistency of the theory's predictions convinced even the most skeptical scien- tists.

The Catholic Church remained strongly opposed, however, claiming that this view was incompatible with holy scripture. In retrospect it is clear that the scriptural basis for those claims was remarkably thin; nonetheless, this confrontation raged for decades and ultimately did considerable harm, both to science and to the church.

The past century has seen an unprecedented number of revisions in our view of the universe. The Heisenberg uncer- tainty principle of quantum mechanics, the realization that it is possible to measure either the position or the momentum of a particle, but not both at once, created particularly disruptive consequences for both science and theology. Perhaps most profoundly, our concept of the origin of the universe has un- dergone a fundamental change over the course of the past seventy-five years, on the basis of both theory and experi- ment.

Most of these massive revisions in our understanding of the material universe have come about within relatively narrow cir- cles of academic investigation, and have remained largely out of view for the general public. Indeed, discoveries about physics in the last few decades have led to insights about the nature of matter that are pro- foundly counterintuitive. The physicist Ernest Rutherford com- mented one hundred years ago that "a theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good.

The six flavors become even stranger when they are described as each having three colors red, green, and blue.

The quirky names given to these particles at least prove that scientists have a sense of humor. A dizzying array of other par- ticles, from photons to gravitons to gluons and muons, create a world so foreign to everyday human experience that they cause many nonscientists to shake their heads in disbelief. Yet all of these particles make possible our very existence. For those who argue that materialism should be favored over the- ism, because materialism is simpler and more intuitive, these new concepts present a major challenge.

A variation on Ernest Rutherford's dictum is famously known as Occam's Razor, a misspelled attribution to the fourteenth-century English logi- cian and monk William of Ockham. This principle suggests that the simplest explanation for any given problem is usu- ally best. Today, Occam's Razor appears to have been relegated to the Dumpster by the bizarre models of quantum physics.

But in one very important sense, Rutherford and Occam are still honored: as puzzling as the verbal descriptions of these newly discovered phenomena are, their mathematical represen- tation invariably turns out to be elegant, unexpectedly simple, and even beautiful. His class style was to work through the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics from first principles. He did this entirely from memory but occasionally skipped steps and charged us, his wide-eyed student admirers, to fill in the gaps before coming to the next class.

Though I ultimately moved on from physical science to biol- ogy, this experience of deriving simple and beautiful universal equations that describe the reality of the natural world left a profound impression on me, particularly because the ultimate outcome had such aesthetic appeal. This raises the first of sev- eral philosophical questions about the nature of the physical universe.

Why should matter behave in such a way? In Eugene Wigner's phrase, what could be the explanation for the "unrea- sonable effectiveness of mathematics"? If one is will- ing to accept the possibility of the supernatural, is it also an in- sight into the mind of God? Were Einstein, Heisenberg, and others encountering the divine? In the final sentences of A Brief History of Time, referring to a hoped-for time when an eloquent and unified theory of every- thing is developed, Stephen Hawking not generally given to metaphysical musings says, "Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist.

If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate tri- umph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God. Is mathematics, along with DNA, another language of God? Certainly, mathematics has led scientists right to the doorstep of some of the most profound questions of all. First among them: how did it all begin? This created certain physical paradoxes, such as how the universe man- aged to remain stable without collapsing upon itself because of the force of gravity, but other alternatives did not seem very attractive.

When Einstein developed the theory of gen- eral relativity in , he introduced a "fudge factor" to block gravitational implosion and retain the idea of a steady-state universe. He later reportedly called this "the greatest mistake of my life. Those data were ini- tially provided by Edwin Hubble in , in a famous set of experiments in which he looked at the rate at which neighbor- ing galaxies are receding from our own.

The far- ther away they were, the faster the galaxies were receding. If everything in the universe is flying apart, reversing the arrow of time would predict that at some point all of these galaxies were together in one incredibly massive entity. Hub- ble's observations started a deluge of experimental measure- ments that over the last seventy years have led to the conclusion by the vast majority of physicists and cosmologists that the universe began at a single moment, commonly now re- ferred to as the Big Bang.

Calculations suggest it happened ap- proximately 14 billion years ago. A particularly important documentation of the correctness of this theory was provided rather accidentally by Arno Pen- zias and Robert Wilson in , when they detected what ap- peared to be an annoying background of microwave signals regardless of where they pointed their new detector. After rul- ing out all other possible causes including certain pigeons, who were initially suspected as the culprits , Penzias and Wil- son ultimately realized that this background noise was com- ing from the universe itself, and that it represented precisely the kind of afterglow that one would expect to find as a con- sequence of the Big Bang, arising from the annihilation of matter and antimatter in the early moments of the exploding universe.

The abundance of deuterium is remarkably constant, from nearby stars to the farthest-flung galaxies near our event horizon. That finding is consistent with all of the uni- verse's deuterium having been formed at unbelievably high temperatures in a single event during the Big Bang.

If there were multiple such events in different locations and times, we would not expect such uniformity. Based on these and other observations, physicists are in agreement that the universe began as an infinitely dense, di- mensionless point of pure energy.

The laws of physics break down in this circumstance, referred to as a "singularity. After that, it is possible to make predictions about the events that would need to have occurred to result in today's observable universe, including the annihilation of matter and antimatter, the formation of stable atomic nuclei, and ulti- mately the formation of atoms, primarily hydrogen, deuterium, and helium.

A currently unanswered question is whether the Big Bang has resulted in a universe that will go on expanding forever, or whether at some point gravitation will take over and the galax- ies will begin to fall back together, ultimately resulting in a "Big Crunch.

The existence of the Big Bang begs the question of what came before that, and who or what was responsible. It certainly demonstrates the limits of science as no other phenomenon has done.

The consequences of Big Bang theory for theology are profound. For faith traditions that describe the universe as having been created by God from nothingness ex nihilo , this is an electrifying outcome.

Does such an astonishing event as the Big Bang fit the definition of a miracle? The sense of awe created by these realizations has caused more than a few agnostic scientists to sound downright theo- logical. In God and the Astronomers, the astrophysicist Robert Jastrow wrote this final paragraph: "At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.

He 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.

The details differ, but the essential elements and the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same; the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and en- ergy. The Big Bang cries out for a divine explana- tion. It forces the conclusion that nature had a defined begin- ning. I cannot see how nature could have created itself.

Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that. But what of the rest of creation? What are we to make of the long, drawn-out process by which our own planet, Earth, came into existence, some 10 billion years after the Big Bang?

Matter began to coalesce into galaxies under the force of gravity. It acquired rotational motion as it did so, ultimately resulting in the spiral shape of galaxies such as our own. Within those galaxies local collections of hydrogen and helium were drawn together, and their density and temperature rose. Ulti- mately nuclear fusion commenced. Larger stars burn faster. As they begin to burn out, they generate within their core even heavier ele- ments such as carbon and oxygen.

Early in the universe within the first few hundred million years such elements appeared only in the core of these collapsing stars, but some of these stars then went through massive explosions known as super- novae, flinging heavier elements back into the gas in the galaxy. Scientists believe our own sun did not form in the early days of the universe; our sun is instead a second- or third- generation star, formed about 5 billion years ago by a local re- coalescence.

As that was occurring, a small proportion of heavier elements in the vicinity escaped incorporation into the new star, and instead collected into the planets that now rotate around our sun. This includes our own planet, which was far from hospitable in its early days.

Initially very hot, and bom- barded with continual massive collisions, Earth gradually cooled, developed an atmosphere, and became potentially hos- pitable to living things by about 4 billion years ago. A mere million years later, the earth was teeming with life. All of these steps in the formation of our solar system are now well described and unlikely to be revised on the basis of additional future information. Nearly all of the atoms in your body were once cooked in the nuclear furnace of an ancient su- pernova—you are truly made of Stardust.

Are there theological implications to any of these discover- ies? How rare are we? How unlikely? Only a second- or third-generation star, and its accompanying planetary system, would carry that po- tential. Even then, a great deal of time would be necessary for life to reach sentience and intelligence.

While other life forms not dependent on heavy elements might potentially exist else- where in the universe, the nature of such organisms is ex- tremely difficult to contemplate from our current knowledge of chemistry and physics. This does, of course, raise the question about whether life exists elsewhere in the universe of a sort that we would recog- nize. While no one on earth has any current data to support or refute this, a famous equation proposed by radio astronomer Frank Drake in allowed a consideration of what the prob- abilities might be.

The Drake equation is most useful as a way of documenting the state of our ignorance. The earth is approximately 4. One might argue, de- pending on one's perspective about the distinct likelihood of our destroying ourselves in the future, whether that fraction will ever get much larger than this.

Drake's formula is interesting but essentially useless, be- cause of our inability to state with any degree of certainty the value of almost all of the terms except for the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Certainly other stars have been dis- covered with planets around them, but the rest of the terms remain hidden in mystery. Nonetheless, the Search for Ex- traterrestrial Intelligence SETI Institute, founded by Frank Drake himself, has now engaged amateur and professional physicists, astronomers, and others in an organized effort to seek signals that might be coming from other civilizations in our galaxy.

Much has been written about the potential theological sig- nificance of the discovery of life on other planets, should that happen to come to pass.

Would such an event automatically render humankind on planet Earth less "special"? In my view, such conclusions do not really seem warranted. If God exists, and seeks to have fellow- ship with sentient beings like ourselves, and can handle the challenge of interacting with 6 billion of us currently on this planet and countless others who have gone before, it is not clear why it would be beyond His abilities to interact with simi- lar creatures on a few other planets or, for that matter, a few million other planets.

It would, of course, be of great interest to discover whether such creatures in other parts of the universe also possess the Moral Law, given its importance in our own perception of the nature of God.

Realistically, however, it is un- likely that any of us will have the opportunity to learn the an- swers to those questions during our lifetime. Consider the following three observa- tions: 1. In the early moments of the universe follow- ing the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were cre- ated in almost equivalent amounts.

But the symmetry between mat- ter and antimatter was not quite precise; for about every billion pair of quarks and antiquarks, there was an extra quark. It is that tiny fraction of the initial potentiality of the entire universe that makes up the mass of the universe as we now know it.

Why did this asymmetry exist? It would seem more "natural" for there to be no asymmetry. But if there had been complete symmetry between mat- ter and antimatter, the universe would quickly have devolved into pure radiation, and people, planets, stars, and galaxies would never have come into existence.

The way in which the universe expanded after the Big Bang depended critically on how much total mass and energy the universe had, and also on the strength of the gravitational constant. The incredible degree of fine-tuning of these physi- cal constants has been a subject of wonder for many experts. Hawking writes: "Why did the uni- verse start out with so nearly the critical rate of ex- pansion that separates models that recollapse from those that go on expanding forever, that even now, 10 thousand million years later, it is still ex- panding at nearly the critical rate?

Re- cent theories involving an incredibly rapid expan- sion inflation of the universe at very early times appear to offer a partial explanation for why the present expansion is so close to the critical value. However, many cosmologists would say that this simply pushes the question back to why the uni- verse had just the right properties to undergo such an inflationary expansion. The existence of a uni- verse as we know it rests upon a knife edge of im- probability.

The same remarkable circumstance applies to the formation of heavier elements. If the strong nuclear force that holds together protons and neu- trons had been even slightly weaker, then only hy- drogen could have formed in the universe. If, on the other hand, the strong nuclear force had been slightly stronger, all the hydrogen would have been converted to helium, instead of the 25 percent that occurred early in the Big Bang, and thus the fusion furnaces of stars and their ability to generate heav- ier elements would never have been born.

Had that force been just slightly more at- tractive, all the carbon would have been converted to oxygen. Altogether, there are fifteen physical constants whose val- ues current theory is unable to predict. They are givens: they simply have the value that they have.

This list includes the speed of light, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces, various parameters associated with electromagnetism, and the force of gravity. The chance that all of these constants would take on the values necessary to result in a stable uni- verse capable of sustaining complex life forms is almost infini- tesimal. And yet those are exactly the parameters that we observe. In sum, our universe is wildly improbable. You may rightly object at this point that this argument is a bit circular: the universe had to have parameters associated with this kind of stability or we would not be here to comment upon it.

This general conclusion is referred to as the Anthropic Principle: the idea that our universe is uniquely tuned to give rise to humans. It has been a source of much wonder and spec- ulation since it was fully appreciated a few decades ago.

We are, however, unable to observe the other universes. We can exist only in a universe where all the physical properties work to- gether to permit life and consciousness. Ours is not miraculous, it is simply an unusual product of trial and error. This is called the "multiverse" hy- pothesis. There is only one universe, and this is it. It just happened to have all the right characteristics to give rise to intelligent life.

If it hadn't, we wouldn't be here discussing this. We are just very, very, very lucky. The precise tuning of all of the physical constants and physical laws to make intelligent life possible is not an accident, but reflects the action of the one who created the universe in the first place. Regardless of one's preference for option 1, 2, or 3, there is no question that this is potentially a theological issue. Hawking, quoted by Ian Barbour,7 writes, "The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enor- mous.

I think there are clearly religious implications. Let's approach it logically. To begin with, we have the observation of the universe as we know it, including ourselves.

We then wish to calculate which of these three possible options is most likely. The problem is, we don't have a good way of de- ciding the landscape of probabilities, except perhaps for option 2. For option 1, as the number of parallel universes approaches infinity, then the likelihood of at least one of them having the physical properties for life could be substantial.

For option 2, however, the probability will be vanishingly small. The likeli- hood of option 3 depends on the existence of a supernatural Creator who cares about a nonsterile universe. On the basis of probability, option 2 is the least plausible. That then leaves us with option 1 and option 3.

The first is logi- cally defensible, but this near-infinite number of unobservable universes strains credulity. It certainly fails Occam's Razor. It could be ar- gued, however, that the Big Bang itself seems to point strongly toward a Creator, since otherwise the question of what came before is left hanging in the air. If one is willing to accept the argument that the Big Bang requires a Creator, then it is not a long leap to suggest that the Creator might have established the parameters physical con- stants, physical laws, and so on in order to accomplish a par- ticular goal.

If that goal happened to include a universe that was more than a featureless void, then we have arrived at option 3. In trying to judge between options 1 and 3, a particular parable by philosopher John Leslie comes to mind.

The order is given, the shots ring out, and yet somehow all of the bullets miss and the condemned individual walks away unscathed. How could such a remarkable event be explained? Leslie suggests there are two possible alternatives, which correspond lo our options 1 and 3.

In the first place, there may have been thousands of executions being carried out in that same day, and even the best marksmen will occasionally miss. So the odds just happen to be in favor of this one individual, and all fifty of the marksmen fail to hit the target. The other option is that something more directed is going on, and the apparent poor aim of the fifty experts was actually intentional. Which seems more plausible? Furthermore, as with other arguments in this chapter and those that precede and follow it, no scientific observation can reach the level of absolute proof of the existence of God.

But for those willing to consider a theistic perspective, the Anthropic Principle certainly provides an interesting argument in favor of a Creator. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the marquis de Laplace, a distinguished French mathematician and physicist, put forward the point of view that nature is governed by a set of precise physical laws some discovered, some yet to be discovered , and nature is therefore unable to avoid adhering to those laws.

In Laplace's view, that requirement would extend to the tiniest particles, the most far-flung parts of the universe, and also to human beings and their thought processes. This represented an extreme form of scientific determinism, obviously leaving no place for God except at the beginning or the concept of free will. It cre- ated quite a stir in the scientific and theological communities. As Laplace famously said to Napoleon, when asked about God, "I have no need of that hypothesis. The revolution known as quantum mechan- ics began, simply enough, as an effort to explain an unsolved problem in physics concerning the spectrum of light.

Based on a number of observations, Max Planck and Albert Einstein demonstrated that light did not come in all possible energies, but that it was "quantized" in particles of precise energy, known as photons. At bottom, therefore, light is not infinitely indivisi- ble, but comprises a flow of photons, just as the resolution of a digital camera cannot be any finer than a single pixel.

At the same time, Niels Bohr examined the structure of the atom and wondered how it is that electrons manage to remain in orbit around the nucleus. The negative charge of each elec- tron should attract it to the positive charge of each proton in the nucleus, ultimately resulting in an unavoidable implosion of all matter. Bohr postulated a similar quantum argument, devel- oping a theory that postulated that electrons could exist only in a certain number of finite states.

This uncertainty principle, which bears Heisenberg's name, overturned Laplacean determinism in one stroke, since it indicated that any initial configuration of the universe could never actually be determined as precisely as would be required for Laplace's predictive model. The consequences of quantum mechanics for an under- standing of the meaning of the universe have been the subject of much speculation over the last eighty years. Einstein himself, though he played an important role in the early development of quantum mechanics, initially rejected the concept of uncer- tainty, famously remarking, "God does not play dice.

As Hawking points out, "We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that deter- mines events completely for some supernatural being, who could observe the present state of the universe without disturb- ing it.

I am reminded of Psalm 19, where David writes, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. In fact, the God hypothesis solves some deeply troubling questions about what came before the Big Bang, and why the universe seems to be so exquisitely tuned for us to be here.

For the theist, who is led from the Moral Law argument Chapter 1 to seek a God who not only set the universe in mo- tion, but takes an interest in human beings, such a synthesis can be readily achieved. The argument would go something like this: If God exists, then He is supernatural. If He is supernatural, then He is not limited by natural laws. If He is not limited by natural laws, there is no reason He should be limited by time.

If He is not limited by time, then He is in the past, the present, and the future. The consequence of those conclusions would include: He could exist before the Big Bang and He could exist after the universe fades away, if it ever does. He could know the precise outcome of the forma- tion of the universe even before it started.

He could have foreknowledge that that planet would lead to the development of sentient creatures, through the mechanism of evolu- tion by natural selection. He could even know in advance the thoughts and actions of those creatures, even though they themselves have free will. I will have much more to say about the latter steps in this synthesis, but the outlines of a satisfying harmony between sci- ence and belief can now be seen.

This proposed synthesis is not intended to gloss over all challenges and areas of discord. Believers in particular world religions certainly encounter specific difficulties with some of the details of the origin of the universe predicted by science.

Deists like Einstein, who view God as having started the whole process but then paying no attention to subsequent de- velopments, are generally comfortable with recent conclusions of physics and cosmology, with the possible exception of the uncertainty principle.

But the comfort level of the major theis- tic religions is somewhat variable. The idea of a finite begin- ning of the universe is not entirely resonant with Buddhism, where an oscillating universe would be more compatible.

But the theistic branches of Hinduism encounter no major conflict with the Big Bang. Neither do most but not all interpreters of islam. In one no- table example. Not all Christian interpretations have been so supportive of this scientific view of the universe, however. Those who inter- pret Genesis in absolutely literal terms conclude that the earth is only six thousand years old, and therefore reject most of the conclusions just cited.

Their position is in some ways under- standable as an appeal to truth: believers in a religion that is undergirded by sacred texts rightly object to loose interpreta- tions of their meaning. Texts that seem to describe historical events should be interpreted as allegory only if strong evidence requires it.

But is Genesis in this category? Unquestionably the lan- guage is poetic. Does it exhibit poetic license? There will be much more to say about this in a later chapter. This is not just a modern-day question; throughout history debates have raged between literalists and nonliteralists. Saint Augustine, probably one of the greatest of all religious intellects, was particularly aware of the risks of turning biblical texts into precise scientific treatises, and wrote, with specific reference to Genesis: "In mat- ters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very differ- ent ways without prejudice to the faith we have received.

In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. The potential conflicts be- tween science and faith, at least as perceived by many mod- ern commentators, will continue to appear. But I will argue that if we wisely apply Saint Augustine's advice, crafted well over a thousand years before there was any reason to be apologetic about Darwin, we will be able to find a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony between these world- views.

When we had no idea how the universe came into existence, it was easier to ascribe it all to an act of God, or many separate acts of God. Similarly, until Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo upset the applecart in the sixteenth century, the placement of Earth at the center of the majestic starry heavens seemed to represent a powerful argument for the existence of God. If He put us on center stage, He must have built it all for us.

When heliocentric science forced a revision of this percep- tion, many believers were shaken up. But a third pillar of belief continued to carry considerable weight: the complexity of earthly life, implying to any reason- able observer the handiwork of an intelligent designer.

But here, as with the other two arguments, I would like to suggest that science should not be denied by the believer, it should be em- braced. The elegance behind life's complexity is indeed reason for awe, and for belief in God—but not in the simple, straight- forward way that many found so compelling before Darwin came along.

It was put forward with particular effectiveness by William Paley in in a highly influential book, Natural Theology, or Evi- dences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collectedfiom the Appearance of Nature. Paley, a moral philosopher and Angli- can priest, posed the famous watchmaker analogy: In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever.

Nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer, which I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there.

Every indication of contrivance, every manifesta- tion of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. Darwin himself, before his voyage on the HMS Beagle, was an admirer of Paley's writings, and professed to be convinced by this view. However, even simply as a matter of logic, there is a flaw in Paley's argu- ment. The point he is making can be summarized as follows: 1.