Skeptics and True Believers Exhilarating Connection Between Science & Religion

Science has proved a spectacularly successful way of knowing the world. Yet many people reject one of its basic points: we are ephemeral parts of a silent universe that is vastly larger than ourselves. Although Chet Raymo disapproves of fundamentalist and New Age beliefs and is skeptical of traditional religion, he argues that science and religion can be mutually reinforcing ways of experiencing the world. In his view, words like God, grace, soul, and sacrament can retain currency in an age of science. Using dynamic and thought-provoking stories - a hilarious episode of alien abduction that didn't happen, or a walk on fire - Raymo argues that science should be embraced by religion, instead of distrusted. He also shows that the wondrous universe revealed by science can hardly fail to excite religious feeling. There are no miracles but one, he writes: the miracle of the creation itself, which is the primordial source of all religious feeling.