Science and Religion: The Test

From two of the three essential books reviewed yesterday at American Thinker:

From David Berlinski, “The Devil’s Delusion:  Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions:”

“If we are to be honest,” [
Oxford’s Peter Atkins] argues, “then we have to accept that science will be able to claim complete success only if it achieves what many might think impossible:  accounting for the emergence of everything from absolutely nothing.” . . . .

[T]he Big Bang singularity strikes [modern physicists with] an uncomfortably theistic note.  Nothing but intellectual mischief can result from leaving that singularity where it is.  Who knows what poor ideas religious believers might take from cosmology were they to imagine that in the beginning the universe began?

From David J. Wolpe, “Why Faith Matters,” in a joke about a scientist announcing to God that scientists can now do everything God can do:

There is a moment of silence.  Then a voice booms out of the sky:  “Everything?”

“Yes,” answers the scientist, “everything.”

“Can you make a human being from dust?”

“Absolutely.”

“OK,” says God, “let me see you make a human being.”

The scientist reaches down and digs his hands into the earth.

“Oh, no,” says God.  “Get your own dust.”