Down the centuries there have been various attempts to prove the existence of God, and to demonstrate God's action in the world. Russell Stannard, the distinguished physicist and author, looks at what modern science can bring to the discussion.

Shoot an arrow at a wall, and then paint a target around it so that the arrow sticks squarely in the bull's eye. Alternatively, paint a fixed target on a wall, and then shoot an arrow so that it sticks squarely in the bull's eye. How do these situations differ? In both instances the precise place where the arrow lands is highly improbable. Yet in the one, one can do no better than attribute the arrow's landing to chance, whereas in (...) the other one rightly attributes the arrow's landing to the archer's skill. ;Highly improbable events occur all the time, and by themselves may legitimately be attributed to chance. Yet when an event also conforms to a pattern given independently of that event , one rightly refuses to attribute the event to chance. Patterns given independently of events are called specifications. This dissertation explicates the relation of independence between specification and event, and sets precise bounds on what may count as a probability small enough to eliminate chance. Although this dissertation connects with how statistics eliminates chance, it considerably extends and clarifies the range of application for chance-elimination arguments based on small probabilities. ;The dual notions of specification and small probability together help justify a regulative principle of probability called the Law of Small Probability, which asserts that specified events of small probability do not occur by chance. This principle engenders a form of inference called the design inference, and a mode of explanation called design. To infer design in explaining an event is to eliminate decisively explanations of that event which appeal to law-like regularities or chance. (shrink)

Change and necessity is a statement of Darwinian natural selection as a process driven by chance necessity, devoid of purpose or intent.

Don Cupitt argues that our age has recently become post-Christian and post-philosophical. Uncertain what to make of the new situation, people are becoming highly disoriented. Will either philosophy or theology ever again be able to focus our culture around a coherent, rational and commonly-acknowledged view of life? By way of an answer, Don Cupitt offers a reinvention of metaphysics. He aims to reconcile the scientific vision of the world, which brings everything down to a motion of tiny packets of energy, (...) with the 'arts' vision that reduces everything to a movement of cultural signs. He argues that an anti-realist interpretation of the scientific world-picture both does full justice to the cultural importance of science and opens up new religious possibilities. After the church comes the kingdom: this may be the first textbook of post-Christianity, describing a time of fulfilment when religion can at last become completely sensuous, rational and this-worldly. (shrink)

ncongruous places often inspire anomalous stories. In early 1984, I spent several nights at the Vatican housed in a hotel built for itinerant priests. While pondering over such puzzling issues as the intended function of the bidets in each bathroom, and hungering for something other than plum jam on my breakfast rolls (why did the basket only contain hundreds of identical plum packets and not a one of, say, strawberry?), I encountered yet another among the innumerable issues of contrasting cultures (...) that can make life so interesting. Our crowd (present in Rome for a meeting on nuclear winter sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences) shared the hotel with a group of French and Italian Jesuit priests who were also professional scientists. (shrink)