The Imagined Conflict: On Science and God

Tue 5 May

Woolf Institute

There is widespread belief among the public that there is a conflict between science and God. But the history of science teaches us rather that they complement each other than compete. Many important contributors to science have stood for such a view, and several of them will be presented in this lecture. Conflict is often caused by having too high an idea of science and too low a view of God.

Science may even bring us to awe over the mystery of creation. Both the wonder of cosmic evolution, from Big Bang to the present, and the evolutionary transitions of biological evolution, indirectly point us to a creator. Cosmologist Allan Sandage (1926-2010) expresses it like this: “It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.”

Cost: Free