Brain-scanning experiments carried out by scientists last week revealed that religious faith is embedded deep within key parts of the brain. This suggests that belief in a higher power evolved at some early point in human history.
Scientists argued that it explained the widespread nature of religion among human cultures, but the findings also highlighted a growing tendency for science to be used as a way of attacking religion.
It comes at a time when the gulf between science and religion could not seem any wider.
As the scientific community celebrates 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009, and 150 years since the publication of his famous work that explained how life evolved on Earth, the conflict between religion and science seems to be escalating.
Darwin’s own life could be seen as almost synonymous with the battle that is now raging between faith and science. As a student he joined Cambridge University with the intention of studying to become a clergyman, but found himself distracted by an interest in collecting beetles.
His hobby led him to become the greatest naturalist of all time. But throughout his life he struggled to reconcile his religious views with his theories on evolution through natural selection.
Today, many leading scientists who hold religious beliefs now face a similar internal struggle as they wrestle with mounting scientific evidence that forces them continually to reassess their view of the Bible.
The mounting debate over evolution and creationism has now left many people asking whether science and religion can ever coexist, or even if scientific research will eventually bring an end to religious belief entirely.
This week, however, leading scientists will debate the issue at the Cambridge Science Festival at the premiere of a new film that attempts to demonstrate that the divide between religion and science is not as great as it has been portrayed.
A growing number of scientists who also hold religious beliefs are now speaking out against the growing antagonism that is emerging between scientists and members of the religious community in many parts of the world.
“The perceived conflict between religion and science belongs much more to the current millennium than any time in the past,” said Dr Denis Alexander, a committed Christian and a biochemist at Cambridge University (until last year when he became director of the university’s Faraday Institute for Science and Religion).
“I think some of the polarisation of faith and secular society following 9/11, combined with the last US administration, goaded the new atheists, like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, to start a campaign attacking religion.
“Their strategy has been to use science like evolution in an ideological way by equating it with atheism. This has created unnecessary conflict.”
The antagonism between religion and science is certainly not new. The man now credited with being the father of modern physics, Galileo, spent much of his life in conflict with the Catholic church.
His assertion that the Earth was not at the centre of the universe, now an accepted fact, was considered heretical and he was forced to recant his ideas by the Inquisition while spending the last years of his life under house arrest.
Darwin’s own theories were both embraced and condemned by different parts of the church for implying that mankind evolved from a common ancestor.
Unlike the time of Galileo and Darwin, however, outspoken criticism of the church is no longer punished or taboo in the modern world.
Indeed, the most outspoken critic of religion, Professor Richard Dawkins, former professor for public understanding of science at Oxford University, has even gone so far as to describe God as a “delusion” and religion as a form of “child abuse”.
Professor Dawkins attacks on mainstream religion and creationism have forced the apparent dichotomy between science and religion into the public consciousness. He contends that the existence of a supernatural curator is a delusion that can be scientifically tested and falsified.
Professor Dawkins stoked controversy at the end of last year by supporting a campaign by the British Humanist Society to place adverts on buses that declared “there’s probably no God”.
Previously he has expressed regret that many scientists choose to combine their professional lives with religion. In one interview he said: “Unfortunately there are many good scientists who do this. Although, I do not clearly understand their position in life, it seems to me, either they act like religious people consciously for some other purpose or compartmentalise their views based on the context.”
The controversy surrounding the mixing of science and religion is such that one leading academic was forced to resign from his position as head of education at the country’s most influential scientific institution, the Royal Society, after expressing a view on the way creationism is taught in schools.
Professor Michael Reiss, a biologist and Anglican cleric, suggested that creationism should be discussed in school science lessons “not as a misconception but as a world view”.
The Royal Society immediately issued a statement clarifying the organisation’s opposition to creationism and Professor Reiss resigned from his post. Many leading scientists have since criticised the Royal Society for failing to stand by Professor Reiss.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the public themselves seem deeply confused on the issue of God and science.
A recent poll carried out on behalf of the theology think tank Theos revealed that one third of people in the UK believe God created the world in the last 10,000 years. More than half said that intelligent design, the idea that a divine designer intervened in the creation of the universe because evolution cannot explain the complex structures of living things, was probably or definitely true.
Yet despite this apparent support for faith over science, most Christian scientists are very clear on their views on creationism.
“Creationism is not helpful at all,” explained Professor Malcolm Jeeves, a neuropsychologist at the University of St. Andrews and former president of The Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is currently president of Christians in Science, an association of British scientists who believe in Christianity.
“I think Creationism is wrong and so do my colleagues in Christians in Science.
“You have to understand that the bible is not a textbook of geology or of science but is revealing something crucially important about God and his world and uses history, poetry and a variety of literary forms to do this.
“It has been possible to misinterpret the early chapters of Genesis so one has this very sad spectacle of creationism that is held so widely in America.
“As a scientist and a Christian, I regard this as extremely sad as I think they are misunderstanding the evidence.”
In many parts of the United States, it is not religion that is under threat from science, but in many states science that is under threat from religion. Over the past 10 years the number of schools teaching creationism and intelligent design as a science has soared.
Dr Jennifer Wiseman, an astrophysicist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, who is leading research on finding planets outside our solar system, said: “The emphasis on trying to perpetuate the idea of a conflict between science and faith is wrong and is robbing many people the excitement of scientific exploration.
“I am an astronomer and I think that by studying the magnificence of the universe, if you believe God was responsible for the universe, it only makes that sense of wonder and faith even stronger when you contemplate how many billions of galaxies and how many other habitable worlds there might be out there.”
Most scientists who hold religious beliefs agree that there is little conflict between their research and their faith.
Speaking on the new documentary, Test of Faith, which was produced by researchers from the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Dr Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and a Christian, said he found no conflict between his work on genetics and the fact it helped prove Darwin’s theories.
He said: “Once you set aside an insistence on an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, you can arrive at a conclusion which is quite comfortable for me as a believer and as a scientist, that yes Darwin was right.”
In fact, the future of science and religion may see theologians and researchers working closer together as they start to wrestle with the knotty ethical and moral questions that emerge as scientific research progresses.
Already religion has played an important role in drawing up the ethical guidelines that govern research on cloning and genetic testing.
For Professor Jeeves, the solution is clear.
“You cannot generate morals from science,” he explained. “That is not what science is about.
“This is certainly where Christians and other religious faiths can work with scientists to make the best informed judgments they can.”
