I attended the Trotter Prize and Endowed Lecture Serious held Thursday evening; the award specifies its recipients as those who "seek to illuminate connections between science and religion." I had the great privilege of hearing from two of science's great minds: Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and from Stephen Weinberg, recipient of the 1979 Nobel Prize. Both of them spoke on the relationship of science and religion, a topic relevant to me personally. I wish to pursue a career in science yet I hold a strong and lasting belief in God. In the course of the lecture, I learned from Collins that within five to ten years one would be able to chart their DNA sequence. It could then be placed on their medical records for doctors to guide their diagnoses and treatments upon. Such an example exemplifies how advances in science are growing at promising, exciting and even alarming rate. Promising because at this time, scientists are learning much about the human body. The human DNA sequence has been mapped and now needs to be deciphered. Exciting because such tremendous advances may lead to cures for diseases that plague our society. Imagine people free from diseases like cancer, HIV, and Alzheimer's. And alarming, what will truly be the outcome of these advances?
Ever since Charles Darwin came out with his theory of Natural Selection some members of society have viewed it as evidence of there being a world without a God. The two lecturers addressed this issue. The first, Collins, claimed that the "language of God" may be found within the advances of science and the latter, Weinberg, proclaimed life "without God." I may be stepping on toes when I express my concern for our world's need of the belief in God, but let their toes be stepped upon. Weinberg provided an eloquent rebuke of the evidence of God in our world. He discredited gospels of the Bible as being inconsistent and asked how a "God" whom asked Abraham to sacrifice his son could be a moral and compassionate God? He reasoned that though some atheists (including himself) lived a life without God, they felt they still had the ability to be moral and compassionate toward a world that is filled with violent struggles between religions. And yes, I do agree that much suffering and death is a result of religious battles. But, are these battles a result of people truly following their religion's ideals? For some, yes. The radical religious beliefs did lead to the fall of the twin towers. But does the act of those people's radical view of others mean that all religion is dangerous and leads to destruction? No! Two of the most notable God believers did great deeds in the world through their faith in God, I am speaking of Mother Teresa and Mohandas Gandhi. And, in defense of an earlier point regarding Bible inconsistencies: Was the Bible not written by man? Our memories are all faulty and recounting them with precision is unlikely. Yet, this does not discredit that there are indeed truths behind the text. The increasingly popular field of Biblical Archaeology has uncovered some stories in the Bible with surprising accuracy. And in regards to Abraham's sacrifice of his son, it was not God being immoral and cruel. It was a test upon his follower Abraham, a test that would strengthen his faith.
Even as this brilliant intellectual provided such logical evidence I could not help but feel saddened by the outlook on life that he, and those that too lack belief in God, possessed. Though he claimed he could still enjoy the simple pleasures of life, he believed that at death he merely ceased to be. Yes this man did receive the Noble Prize and contribute to great advances in science that may indeed have a beneficial ripple effect on others. But, how did this man gain such knowledge? How is it that mankind evolved into such a being? I myself believe in the Big Bang theory. But, I add, was it not God that created the matter for which this "big bang" occurred? Was it not God the mathematician, geneticist, artist, psychologist, biologist, astronomer, and ultimate creator that set the world into its perfect entity that is life?

No, it was not necessarily God. What most agnostics feel is that, we don't know who or what it was (there is little evidence to believe it was a "who," since what covers everything non-human or without a human personality). Surely, we feel that there was a force that led to the creation of matter before the Big Bang. But we don't know what this force was. And there was a force before this force, and so on.

People who believe in God might find the agnostic or atheistic position uncomfortable--that there was a cause before a cause before a cause into infinite regression. And, these are two different ways of looking at the world.

What an atheist (actually, originally David Hume) may ask is, who created God? Most people who believe in God would say--nobody, God by definition encompasses both time and space, and so he needs no creator. But could one not say this of anything? Why does anything need a creator per se, especially if God does not need a creator?

I respect both scientists here, and I am not of the opinion (like many people in the scientific community) that one must be an agnostic or atheist to be a good scientist. As far as I can tell, Newton and Copernicus did pretty well in their fields :) but so did Einstein and Feynman.

Then you might as well ask to explain all important people in all religions. I honestly don't think it was in God's plan to allow humans to create different versions of religion, and then kill each other for 2500 years straight because of these religions.

There are so many because we aren't some communist, marxist robot that is forced to think the same way. We have hundreds of different known views that spread through billions of people.

I mean people still believe the earth is like 8000 years old for goodness sakes. I think they are wrong, but they are entitled to their beliefs so it doesn't hurt anything.

The important thing for those that believe in a higher power is to HAVE FAITH... not which faith it is...

Well, I am not 100% familiar with the Christian religion, but let me respond as best I can:

Allison: We don't fathom that only death awaits after life. We just don't know. We don't know whether it will be heaven, or hell, or a repetition of this life, etc. It seems to me that there are so many possibilities of what could happen that we can't immediately say "it will be like this" unless we have compelling evidence--and most agnostics don't find the Bible to provide that evidence. You also say that we should not question God's beginnings--but why? And you said that we are a tiny tiny part of the universe. I completely agree with that, and your description of "zooming out" absolutely makes sense. But then you ask, "how does man [...] have the right to question" our origins?

What I would ask is, how does man have the right to assume that his origins came from somewhere? To take your stance, one would first have to assume that there is a God, and then feel, look, there is a God, so we can't question him since he knows much more than we do. But agnostics think, well, how can you assume that there is a God? We are so small--how can we even fathom who or what created us? I have no doubt that something (or combination of things) created us, but that thing could have been created by something else, and so on. How can we have the knowledge to assume? I think it is more of a leap to assume than to question.

As for Jesus Christ, I DO believe a man named Jesus Christ existed. As for the miracles, I don't know--and to tell you the truth, I find most of the Bible unconvincing. The accounts of Jesus, as far as I know, were written much after his death. And merely because something is written, we shouldn't assume it to be true. We can assume certain details to be true which we observe today (a human existed), but how can we believe any miracles in the Bible? Especially when books from other cultures clash with the Bible (was there a Zeus? There are written accounts of Zeus)?

I believe Jesus Christ was a good man. CS Lewis raises the argument that you can't get away with just saying that Jesus was a good man--you must either see him as God's son, or as a liar. But I disagree with Lewis. Jesus could have been a good man who told the people what they needed to hear to live a good life (even if what he said was not true). Or, Jesus could have been misinformed himself, yet still have been a good human being. Again, this is speculation, but for me, an skeptical agnostic, there is little reason to believe that a God existed.

Well I honestly do not know what to tell you, you seem set in your beliefs. However, thanks to google, I found this website: godandscience.org, maybe it will provide you with the "evidence" you need.

There is no scientific evidence that god exists; neither is there any scientific evidence that he/she/they/it does not exist. There is only the fact, which Weinberg made Thursday night, that as science continues to provide answers to life's "mysteries", god becomes less and less necessary to explain anything. I believe this is where the conflict between science and religion is rooted. As scientists, none of us are attmeping to disprove the existence of god, as that would be a completly non-scientific line of research - just as those "scientists" who are attempting to prove the existence of god do not use the scientific method.

At this point, I believe that it is misleading and destructive to continue to pit religion versus science. Those who do are doing so in order to forward a selfish political agenda.

"E=mC2."
Albert Einstein 1905

"If a dream were to have mass it would be a physical thing defined by science, taxed by the government and stolen by thieves until you dare dream no more."
Slash '84 2008