When science meets God
By Robert Winston
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4488328.stm

When science meets God
By Robert Winston
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4488328.stm

The world today is dominated by science, but faith has not withered
away. Robert Winston, respected scientist and committed Jew, examines
the relationship between science and religion.

If you look carefully, you might see one of those slim, elongated
boxes attached to the front doorpost of one of the houses near you.
They appear on houses across the world - wherever Jews have lived.

The box contains a tightly rolled parchment on which a qualified
scribe will have written Hebrew letters in special ink.

The text contains a commandment from Deuteronomy to attach a sign to
all doorposts of your house. It starts with an affirmation, central to
Jewish faith, of the existence of a single God.

The little box is called a mezuzah in Hebrew. My house bears such a
box, and when I leave home on a workday morning, my head crammed with
the usual worldly thoughts and worries, I occasionally touch it.

Simultaneously, as I am closing my front door, an elderly merchant in
Tashkent, some 4,500 miles from where I live, escapes the noon heat.
Wearing a white lace cap, he stretches an old, small woollen carpet on
the floor in his warehouse. He slips off his sandals and prepares to
recite Zuhr, the midday prayers.

Baby-making

At the same time, some 4,000 miles away in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a
young woman carefully lays out some tropical fruits and flowers on a
burnished metal platter.

Faith has not been overcome by science
She lights some incense sticks at a small brightly coloured box - a
box that to our western eyes resembles the top of a clean bird table.
She bows briefly, then stands up for a second. She bows once more.

Like me and the merchant, she has, for a few brief moments, given her
mind and her body over something that was not physically present.
These examples of ritualised behaviour or prayer are repeated many
times over in many places and nearly all human cultures.

I am a medical scientist, who has spent his career fascinated with one
of our more basic human instincts: the compulsion to reproduce. For
some of my scientific colleagues, humans are mere expression of an
intricate genetic programme which creates that drive to have babies.

For some scientists, this belief - and I deliberately call it that -
has some consolations of religion. It attempts to make sense of every
corner of existence and of our place within all that exists.

The most enduring is the idea of a supernatural dimension to our
existence

Scientists tend to build a reputation on refuting the theories of
those who have gone before. Yet, whatever we hypothesize, observe,
measure or record about the natural world, it leaves more unanswered
questions.

Though a very superficial view might argue the contrary, science does
not give us certainty about ourselves or our origin. Some ideas
endured and the most enduring is the idea of a supernatural dimension
to our existence. I call it the "Divine Idea".

The idea of a divinity unites millions
For some people, the very fact that the "idea of God" has survived is
proof enough of God's reality. But it is a simplistic theory; things
survive for all sorts of random reasons.

But in any case, this is not an enquiry into the existence of God. My
purpose is to tell the story of an idea, how humans approach that idea
and how that idea has shaped human life.

It does not matter whether you believe there lurks a real God or gods
behind the idea. The idea is real and, as a scientist who studies
"real things", I believe it deserves to be examined.

Jacob's story

In the book of Genesis there is an extraordinary, puzzling episode
involving Jacob and a silent man who he wrestles all night. The man
leaves before dawn so that Jacob never actually sees his face.

Many English translations of the Bible call Jacob's antagonist an
angel. Some Jewish sources argue he is Jacob's guardian Angel or
saviour. Other suggest it is himself, his own conscience. But perhaps
it is God.

Whatever the meaning of Jacob's story, it gives a powerful image for
the impulse underlying what I am saying. Virtually all of us at one
time or another have wrestled with God.

Ritualised prayer is found in nearly all human cultures
I think humans have always wrestled with the Divine Idea - an idea
that unites and separates, creates and destroys, consoles and
terrifies. Throughout human history, it is an idea that seems
sometimes to have caused whole populations to rise up and slaughter
one another.

It is also a kind of bond, a mode of human expression that links me, a
Jew, the merchant in Tashkent and the woman in Cambodia.

All paths to the divine involve a wrestling match. Wherever God is
considered, there are radically conflicting ideas. Spirituality on its
own could not have been sufficient for human consciousness: we need to
formalise our beliefs, to give them structure, to arrive at a frame
work for the rules of living.

Religion has endured since the dawn of human consciousness precisely
because it encompasses so much of being human. No idea has endured so
long, gathered up so many disparate needs and wants and feelings, and
inspired so many different paths towards understanding it.

The modern age is dominated by science
In some ways, the wrestling match is typified by the apparent conflict
between God and science. This dispute is largely vacuous. They are
both essentially two different ways of looking at the natural world,
though each gives an important insight into the other.

But we must not confuse religion with God, or technology with science.
Religion stands in relationship to God as technology does in relation
to science. Both the conduct of religion and the pursuit of technology
are capable of leading mankind into evil; but both can prompt great
good.

My book is not an exhaustive history of the struggle between science
and the divine. I have compressed the story, preferring to focus on
some influential religious movements and the more interesting examples
from science.

I hope also that a personal account of some of my own struggles with
God, and an impression of how I continue to attempt to resolve that
conflict, as an averagely rational scientists and a Jew will be of
some interest.

The Story of God is broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 4 December at 1900
GMT. The Story of God by Robert Winston is published by Bantam Press.