All language subtitles for Channel4.Christianity.A.History.7of8.God.And.The.Scientists.XviD.MP3.eng

'In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth.'

'And God said,
"Let there be light."'

'The gathering together
of the waters called He seas.'

'God created man in his own image.'

For more than 1,500 years,
Christians saw the Bible

as the primary source of knowledge.

But in the 17th century,
a new movement emerged

that challenged
the Christian view of the world.

The scientific revolution.

It was a time when people
were looking towards a new way
of thinking about the world.

During the Renaissance,
the rising power of science

forced the Catholic Church to
silence rebellious scientists.

The sentence says the reason that
you're burning is because you denied

the divinity of Jesus and because
you questioned our authority.

By the 19th century,
the Enlightenment had given rise to

a new generation of scientists who
pushed Christianity into retreat.

Darwin removed the main argument
for God's existence.

If science continues to make
discoveries that conflict with
Christian doctrine,

I wonder will
the scientific revolution ultimately

make Christianity redundant?

What we now call science emerged

about 400 years ago
through the work of a group

of European thinkers who discovered
new ways of interpreting the world.

They no longer relied on
the delivered word of God.

The scientific revolution put

individual curiosity, enquiry,
reason and experiment
above religious dogma.

To my mind, science is quite simply

the biggest challenge that
Christianity will ever have to face.

I don't believe in God.

Some scientists manage
to retain their faith

but I think science
is our only route to knowledge,

an idea some people
still find threatening.

Nowadays we all recognise the
power of science, we look to science

to explain the world,
to solve our problems.

But science also has its enemies.

I myself was subjected for 15 years
to a campaign of hatred and terror

from animal rights activists
because of the research that I did.

Perhaps it's because science
necessarily challenges

the orthodox view of the day
in order to make progress.

And often that orthodoxy
is fundamentally religious.

Today, I'm professor of neuroscience

here at Oxford.

When the first colleges were
founded in the 12th century,

the Christian Church was
planting the seeds of science.

Oxford's been a seat of learning
for more than 900 years.

Just 30 years after
the Norman invasion in 1066
scholars were teaching here.

Oxford Became a centre
for discussion, for debate,
for investigation,

all of it sponsored and encouraged
by the Christian Church.

The motto of the university says it
all, really -

Dominus illuminatio mea,
'God is my light'.

Believing that God had given
humans the power of reason,

the Church championed
the beginnings of science,

assuming it would confirm
their faith.

This is the Old Schools Quadrangle.

It was built in the early 17th
century and it was the focus of
all the teaching at the university.

It's dominated
by the Divinity School.

There's logic, metaphysics,
grammar and history.

There's mathematics,

there's astronomy, and here,
the School of Natural Philosophy.

Natural philosophy was the
17th century word for science,

science being nurtured
in an ecclesiastical environment

as part of a religious
and classical education.

For hundreds of years
Christians had looked to the leading
experts on the natural world,

the Ancient Greeks,
to explain God's creation.

In Christianity there is a central
notion that God created the world.

Aristotle however, probably
the most important of the Greek
natural philosophers,

argued that the cosmos was eternal,

so they thought that many
Christian ideas were rather silly.

Right from the start, rational
thinkers forced Christians

to consider the possibility that
the Biblical explanation
of the world was wrong.

In the fifth century, the Christian
theologian St Augustine
came up with a solution.

He says, the message we find
in the Bible is accommodated to

human capacities, which is to say
that the Bible speaks in

language that we can understand
and this then will account for

some of the discrepancies
between what we find in Genesis

and what we find in the current
or contemporary science.

St Augustine laid down the rules
for the relationship
between science and Christianity.

The Church would accommodate
science's findings,

as long as they didn't threaten
its authority.

For the next thousand years,
Christianity remained
firmly in control

of all knowledge and helped
generate the first glorious period

of the scientific revolution -

the Renaissance.

Hard to believe but in about 1510,
one of the most significant

developments of the Renaissance
took place not in glorious Rome,

or in Venice, or in Florence,
but here, in this sleepy little town

on the Baltic coast, in Poland.

While Italy was the centre
of Renaissance art

and literature, a local priest made
Poland the focal point for science.

Nicolaus Copernicus
came here in the mid-16th century,

after studying in Italy, and took
services at Frombork cathedral.

But he spent most of his time
watching the sky and studying
the movement of planets.

In this tower in the cathedral
grounds, Copernicus made
an extraordinary discovery

that led to science's first major
challenge to Christian belief.

So, Margaret, what was the standard
dogma in astronomy

at the time that Copernicus
began to study astronomy?

(SPEAKS POLISH)

TRANSLATION: The earth was thought
to be surrounded by unchanging stars

and Christians believed it was
the centre of the universe.

They thought the sun and
the planets circled round

a supposedly stationary earth.

But in his study, Copernicus wrote
a book that argued against
this Christian view.

He claimed that the earth was
actually one of the planets
orbiting the sun.

TRANSLATION: Copernicus finished
his masterpiece in 1533

and he knew his ideas
were revolutionary.

The Vatican realised
that Copernicus's speculations
contradicted the Biblical view

that the earth is stationary,
at the centre of the universe.

But it was willing to tolerate
his ideas, for now.

The Catholic Church
was a powerful institution,

how could it be threatened by one
person, even if his ideas
were revolutionary?

The Pope was hoping that despite
all his research, Copernicus's
conclusions would be proved wrong.

There's no doubt that, here
in Frombork, in the heart of the
Church, Copernicus planted a seed,

a seed of tension between religious
authority and human enquiry

which has grown
over the following 500 years.

It was others who followed
Copernicus, who invented science
to test his views,

who suffered for championing
his dangerous idea.

Copernicus's new theory soon pitted
science and Christianity
against each other

in the scientific revolution's
darkest hour.

This was a true tragedy because the
Church is made of human beings who
don't want to admit they're wrong.

As a scientist today, I'm free to
put forward any idea, as long as

I can back it up with evidence.

But in Italy 400 years ago,

I would also have needed
the approval of the Vatican.

Until the 16th century,

the papacy tolerated scientific
ideas that contradicted the Bible.

But by the late 1500s, the
Protestant Reformation had emerged

and was accusing the Catholics
of forsaking the true word of God.

In response, the Vatican ruled
that anyone who contradicted

Catholic doctrine was a heretic.

And so began science's darkest hour.

Just a stone's throw from St
Peter's, this forbidding building

is the papal police station.

It's the notorious Inquisition

set up in the 16th century
to defend against heresy.

Scholars who speculated about
the nature of the world

could find themselves branded
heretics.

In the late 1500s,
one of the most original thinkers

was a man named Giordano Bruno.

While studying for the priesthood,
Bruno became captivated

by Copernicus's theory that
the Earth orbits the sun.

Is it fair to say that reading
Copernicus's book set the stage,

as it were, for Bruno's own ideas?
It must have, because Copernicus,

in a way, opens up a new world
for knowledge.

And Bruno says Copernicus stopped
at the sphere of the fixed stars,

and Bruno goes past the eighth,
ninth, tenth

and however many spheres
you'd like to name.

He thought there were other earths.

He thought there might be creatures
on these other earths.

And that's one of the issues that
gets him in trouble with the Church,

because if there are multiple earths,
how many earths is the Pope Pope of?

In 1600, the Inquisition
had Bruno burnt at the stake.

He wasn't a real scientist,

but his death was a huge blow to
the emerging scientific movement.

Would it be fair to say that
what happened in this square,

the execution of Bruno, had a very
serious impact on Italian science?

It's devastating, I think, for
both science and for the Church.

One, it makes
controversial ideas dangerous.

Secondly, it makes publication
of controversial ideas dangerous.

I think Bruno's execution
marked the beginning of a battle

between faith and reason.

The dangers I faced for my science
came from a small group of fanatics.

But during the Renaissance,
most threats to scientists

had the backing of
the mighty Catholic Church.

This is the Inquisition
handbook of torture, 1643.

Oh, it's volume one, actually.

You know, the Inquisition might not
have invented these kinds of

horrendous techniques but they
certainly adopted them with relish.

Not only to force confessions
from those who were accused

but, quite frankly, to put the
fear of God into everyone else.

Questioning Catholic dogma
could have fatal consequences.

In Italy, fear of the Inquisition
forced scientists underground.

Those brave enough to speak out
were quickly silenced.

It seems very likely that poor
Bruno had a contraption like this

clamped on his head just
before he was burnt at the stake.

It's an interesting device, really.

It clamps around the neck,

like that, and this thing
pushes down on the tongue to stop

the victim proclaiming against
the Church at the moment of death.

And what it's resting on is
a papal whipping block.

Knowledge of things like this
must surely have terrified people.

The worst that a scientist can
expect these days is to get their
paper rejected from the journal

they sent it to or maybe their grant
application gets turned down.

Well, in poor Bruno's day, this
is what might have happened to you.

In the 17th century, the Catholic
Church still insisted that the Earth

was the centre of a universe that
was only a few thousand years old.

But today, scientific evidence
has forced it to change its views.

After a successful academic career,

Guy Consolmagno
became a Jesuit brother

and is now one of theVatican's
official astronomers.

So, this is the meteorite lab,
and this is where the work...

You're not serious?Yeah.

We think these things were made 4.5
billion years ago

in a solar nebula of gas and dust.

But what turned the dust
into a solid rock?

Nobody knows.

Can I just pick you up on one thing
you said, just a throwaway remark?

About events that were
happening 4.5 billion years ago?

To say that doesn't raise the
slightest concerns in your mind,

the slightest doubts,
you are totally aligned

with cosmological estimates of
the age of the universe and so on.

The point of the Bible is not
the science of it.

The Bible's not a science book.
I've written science books.

You know that a science book goes
out of date after about three years.

The Bible's been around
for about 2,500 years.

For what it says, it's not out
of date. So it's not a science book.

But isn'tit the word of God?

But isn'tit the word of God?
It is not the dictated word of God,

God whispering this into some
scribe's hand who's writing it down.

We're not Muslims,
it's not the Qur'an.

It is a human interpretation
of divine inspiration.

400 years ago,
it was another astronomer

who'd caught
the Vatican's attention.

Galileo Galilei was one of the
most respected scientists in Europe.

He helped the Vatican set up
its first observatory in Rome

and taught astronomy at the finest
universities in the Catholic world.

In 1609, he even introduced
the Church

to a new invention,the telescope.

Oh, that's wonderful.

The telescope, of course, is first
really demonstrated to the world

by Galileo, as an astronomical
telescope in January of 1609.

One of the first things he did
was to bring it to the Jesuits

at the Roman College and Galileo was
feted as a great conquering hero.

What the Vatican didn't realise

was that Galileo's new
observations of the stars,

planets and their moons supported
the heretical views of Copernicus.

They confirmed that the Earth was
not at the centre of God's universe.

Galileo announced his controversial
discoveries,

hoping that his friend
the Pope would protect him.

Instead, he was tried for heresy.

By a vote of seven to three,
Galileo was found guilty.

He was shown
the instruments of torture.

He was a 69-year-old man with severe
arthritis and he decided to confess.

He said, "I abjure, curse
and detest my errors."

Galileo,
arguably the first true scientist,

was condemned as a heretic.

It was a disaster for science.

The real tragedy of Galileo wasn't
just that he was put on trial

for something that was not
a religious issue,

but that the Church was so slow

in accommodating itself
to the evidence as it piled up,

because the Church is made
of human beings

who don't want to admit
they're wrong.

This was a true tragedy.

The real problem was that Galileo
had changed the rules of the game.

He was the first astronomer
to base his theories on evidence,

and the Church didn't like that
one bit.

The Catholic Church sponsored
and encouraged philosophers

and thinkers, including Galileo,
as long as what they delivered

was simply ideas.

But then Galileo, arguably the very
first scientist, discovered a way,

through experiments,
of testing ideas

and knowing whether they were wrong.

When science started to produce
facts, not just ideas,

the Church just didn't know what
to do. They fought against it.

While the Inquisition's
iron grip was stifling

science in Catholic Italy,
in Protestant Britain,

scholars were laying foundations
for the next phase

of the scientific revolution,

the beginning
of an explosion of knowledge.

In 1609, an Englishman made his way

to take up an appointment here at
St Bartholemew's Hospital in London.

His name was William Harvey,

a physician who'd studied at Padua
in Italy

where Galileo was a professor.

You can almost see
Harvey carrying the baton of science

from Italy, the tradition of Galileo
and so on, across to England.

Yes, and it was an extremely exciting
time for science in this country.

We have the birth of
the Royal Society in 1660s.

It was a time, really, when people

were looking towards a new way
of thinking about the world.

And you can see Harvey

as a sort of a crucial figure at
the beginning of this movement.

The church based its views
of biology on the writings

of ancient philosophers
and the biblical teaching

that man was made in God's image.

But Harvey's revolutionary
observations suggested

that the body was made
like a machine.

There was this concept that
the parts of the body didn't
necessarily have a function,

but they were simply there because
that's the way

that God had designed them and that
was it, the end of the argument.

But one of Harvey's genius
moments was the discovery

and the demonstration that all
the parts of the vascular system

played a very important
mechanical role.

He was able to show that blood
moved around in two closed loops

and, of course, this is
the fundamental basis

of all cardiovascular physiology
ever since.

William Harvey himself
was still half a mystic.

He wrote about the heart as the sun
of the microcosm,

as a household god
that serves the rest of the body.

But the techniques that he brought
back from Italy,

of making observations,
drawing conclusions

and then testing those conclusions
with further observations.

That was certainly the beginning
of the scientific method,

and it helpedto fuel the explosion
of science

that happened in this country
in the 17th century,

giving those early scientists
methods

to allow them to challenge
the written word,

whether it was the words of
Aristotle or the words of scripture.

In the 18th century, a new movement
swept through the Western world.

Thinkers such as Isaac Newton
and John Locke

realised that
the laws of the universe

were there to be discovered,
not read about in the Bible.

It was the age of enlightenment.

Democracy, freedom and science
replaced religion

at the heart of society.

For me, the person who epitomised
the enlightenment is an American,

Benjamin Franklin.

He was not only a statesman
but also a celebrated scientist,

who found a rational explanation
for the wrath of God.

Hello.
Welcome to Benjamin Franklin House.

Thank you very much.

In 1750, Franklin suggested

that lightning was just a form of
electricity.

In the Georgian period, churches were
always the tallest building around

and a lot of them had wood in them,
so when they were struck by lightning

they would just burn down, and it
would be awful for your community.

Not only because your largest civic
building had burnt to the ground,

but also because it showed someone
in your community had done something
pretty bad.

Because God did it.

Exactly.

So Franklin decided that he would
protect churches from this,

from the electrical fluid.

So he went on to develop
the lightning rod.

So if I just slot this in...

I would ask you not to touch the
table for reasons that will become
apparent very quickly.

Churches weren't always keen to have

science mix with religion
in quite this level.

They did see that it was Franklin
trying to circumvent God
and God's will.

Franklin did say that if you don't
want to circumvent God's wishes,

you should actually not have a roof
on your church,

because rain is also
a natural phenomenon.

But obviously, now all churches
have lightning rods on them,
so it does work.

I imagine if God wishes to punish
you, he could find other ways.

Franklin was also the first
scientist

to help found a nation
with a new form of government.

His championing
of scientific rationality

inspired the first country built
on enlightenment principles.

In many ways, Franklin was, really,

if not THE father
of the United States,

certainly
one of the principle thinkers

behind the secular state
of the United States.

Absolutely. He was
one of the founding fathers.

He did not want the organised church

to have anything to do
with the running of a nation.

He thought it was a bad idea to
have church and state combined

and, therefore, split it off, so
creating a secular state in America.

Ben Franklin was the son
of a puritan immigrant.

He intended to go into the church
himself,

but, here in London
at the age of 19,

he first wrote his views
about conventional religion,

rejecting the ceremony,
the pomp, the dogma.

For me, Ben Franklin really
symbolises the enlightenment,

the age of reason, and the free
thinking, the openness,

the rejection of authority
during that period

continued the process of undermining
the authority of the church.

It was scientists brought up on
these enlightenment principles,

who pushed Christianity
into a retreat,

which continues to this day.

Darwin removed the main
argument for God's existence.

I think that science's biggest
challenge to Christianity

was Charles Darwin's
theory of evolution.

In 1859, Darwin published
On The Origin Of Species,

which suggested that life on Earth
was not designed by God,

but had evolved through a process
called natural selection.

My colleague Richard Dawkins
has become the best-known critic

of religion, some would say
the Archbishop of Atheism.

For him, evolution is the best
reason for not believing in God.

Richard, I guess you could say
that after Copernicus and Galileo,

evolutionary theory was
the second great challenge

to conventional religious belief.

How did Darwin himself deal with it?

He was well aware that
it was a great challenge,

and he was appropriately cautious
before releasing it.

He delayed for something like
20 years after writing it out,

and some people think the main reason
for his delay was caution

because of the effect it would have
on the religious establishment.

'Christians had always believed

'that human beings were made
in God's image,

'but Darwin's theory implied
that we are in fact apes.'

Darwin removed the main argument
for God's existence,

because before Darwin,
it looked as though the evident,

apparent design of living things

could only be interpreted
as actual design.

Some people seem to have come to
terms with evolution,

as they did with Copernicanism,

by saying it's just an illumination
of the wonders of God.

I find it remarkably unconvincing,
because the suggestion is that God,

in deciding to create life,
chose to do it in precisely the way

that made it look as though
he wasn't there.

Well, you could say that
the difficult bit was creating

the physics of the universe,
with all its improbabilities,

in such a way that it would
allow evolution to occur.

That's a much better way
to look at it.

I mean, there's a certain amount
of plausibility about that.

I find it ultimately implausible,
because it suggests that...

an intelligent creator would need
an even bigger explanation himself.

This wonderful university
museum at Oxford

exudes Victorian confidence in
the special power of human beings.

It was here in 1860 that Samuel
Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford,

defended Christianity against the
onslaught of Thomas Henry Huxley,

the great champion of Darwin.

There's no doubt that Darwin's
discovery of a natural mechanism

that could explain the origin
of all life on earth,

including human beings,
without divine intervention,

was a serious challenge to
conventional religious belief.

Christians are still
uncertain and divided

about how to respond to evolution.

The overwhelming evidence
for Darwin's theory

has led the mainstream churches
to concede

that humans were not
literally made by God.

But they cling to the idea
that God made evolution possible.

This kind of accommodation
has become a familiar pattern.

It's not a matter of overturning
what we thought before,

it's more a matter of saying that

what we were taught when we were
seven years old is still true,

but there's so much more going on

that we couldn't possibly have
handled when we were seven years old.

Well, you seem to be talking about
a kind of Plasticine God,

a God that can be stretched and
deformed to fit any shape you want,

informed by science,
but stretched, still,

to fit with the changing image
of the reality of the world

that science is giving us.

It's no more Plasticine than
the universe is Plasticine

as our understanding of it shifts.

The Plasticine is up here.

Yes...

As I'm older, my mind can stretch
a little bit closer

to the dimensions of the God
that was out there all the time.

Mainstream Christianity has been
so influenced by the Enlightenment

that its views are now
totally different

from those of 400 years ago.

But the beliefs of some
Christians in the United States

have hardly changed at all.

A recent poll found that almost one
third of Americans still believe

that the Biblical story of creation
is literally true.

It's extraordinary to think
that the word "fundamentalism",

which we nowadays associate
with extreme governments,

Islamic regimes, actually originated
here in the United States.

I want to find out how it could
be that in this secular country,

built on the success of
science and technology,

those kinds of fundamental views
of Christianity could still survive.

This is Dayton, Tennessee,
in the heart of the Bible Belt.

In 1925, a state law was passed

that made the teaching
of human evolution illegal.

A local teacher, John Scopes,
was tried for breaking this new law.

The Chicago defence lawyer
Clarence Darrow was pitted against

William Jennings Bryan,
a former presidential candidate.

The trial took place
in this courtroom.

You have given considerable study
to the Bible, haven't you, Mr Bryan?

Yes, sir, I have tried to.

And you claim that
everything in the Bible

should be literally interpreted?

I believe everything in the Bible

should be accepted
as it is given there.

Some is illustrative. For example,
"Ye are the salt of the earth."

I would not insist that man was
actually salt, or had flesh of salt,

but it is used in the sense of
salt as saving God's people.

Scopes was found guilty. His trial
marked the start of a battle

over the teaching of evolution
that still continues

in some American states.

'I am simply trying to protect
the word of God from the greatest

'atheist or agnostic
in the United States...'

Professor Ron Numbers,
who grew up near Dayton,

was born into
a fundamentalist Christian family.

My father was a fundamentalist
preacher here.

The Seventh Day Adventists
were the people

who gave the world
Young Earth creationism.

"Young Earth" means what, exactly?

Well, that you don't believe
there is anything here

more than about 6,000 years.

Early fundamentalists were appalled
by the diluted form of Christianity

that had emerged
from the Enlightenment.

It was the influence of Germany,

German scholarship and
some English scholarship especially,

that scared the bejesus out
of evangelicals in America.

They would send over young scholars,

and they would come back
tainted with this.

They didn't believe in the Virgin
Birth or the Resurrection any more.

They didn't believe Moses had written
the first five books of the Bible.

It was knowledge of science

that convinced Ron
to abandon his beliefs.

He now lectures on every aspect
of fundamentalism,

including the fundamentalist
version of science.

Almost to a person,

these fundamentalists profess
to love science. They love science.

Back in the 1920s at the time
of the Scopes trial here,

the anti-evolutionist argued
against evolution on the grounds

that it didn't deserve the good name
of science. It was too speculative,

there wasn't enough evidence,
and science was something wonderful.

In the 1970s,
American fundamentalists

came up with
their own version of science -

scientific creationism.

Creationists base
their core principles

not on observation and experiment,
but on the Bible.

The Creation Museum in Kentucky
was set up in 2007

to give Christians a history
of the natural world

that fits with a literal
interpretation of the Bible.

Amazing to think, really,
about one in 500 Americans

have already been to see this
exhibition,even in its first year.

That could have a lot of
influence on opinion.

The Bible states
that God created the universe

and all life on Earth in six days.

So, dinosaurs
in the garden of Eden.

That's scary!

'If you take the Old Testament
literally, dinosaurs and humans

'must have lived at the same time.'

It's amazing, really.

We've got human beings
fully clothed,

collecting carrots with the friendly
dinosaurs in the background.

I mean, it's a nice kind of
Disneyland scene,

but it totally contradicts
the fossil record.

One of the museum's
resident scientists,

Jason Lisle, agreed to talk to me.

I was curious to know how
he reconciles his faith

in the Biblical account of creation

with contradictory
scientific evidence.

This beautiful display

has lots of dinosaur figures in it,

and a lot of the implication of the
creationist story is that dinosaurs

and human beings co-existed
on the Earth.

That's right.

I don't know of any evidence
for that,

and know of a great deal of
evidence against it.

So why do you believe that?

Ultimately, it's because
God has told us in his word

that God made all of
the land animals.

Dinosaurs are land animals,
they walk on their legs.

They were made on the sixth day,

the same day as Adam, so they
definitely lived at the same time.

But you're a scientist.

Yes, I am.

You're an astrophysicist.

Yes.

And you say that's your position

because you believe it
because you read it.

Um...what about experiments,
what about evidence?

I would say that
I believe in experimentation.

In fact, I would expect that
to be possible because God

upholds the universe
in a consistent, logical way,

so science would be possible
because of my faith.

What if experimentation
and observation yielded evidence

that appeared to contradict
the statements in the scriptures?

Well, that can always happen,
but since our mind isn't perfect

and since our observations
aren't always perfect,

if we find some experiment
that seems to, on the surface,

disagree with the word of God,
we go with the word of God.

If you say that when science
contradicts the scripture,

it's scripture you turn to -
that's what's correct,

why bother with science?

The Bible tells us we need to care
for the Earth.

God gave us responsibility
for this Earth.

To do that, we have to know about it.

Therefore, I think the mandate
for doing science is scriptural,

so I might challenge
my non-Christian colleagues

and say "What is your
basis for doing science?"

I have a reason to do it.

I have a reason to expect
that it can yield reliable results...

I can tell you I do science because
I want to find out how things work.

Yeah.

Yeah.
I want to reveal the beauty
of the natural world.

Fair enough. But as a Christian,
I would say the reason

I can trust the methods of science
are mostly reliable,

is because God has made my mind.
God has made the universe.

I would expect those two
things to go well together.

I have to say, it's a pretty
weird place, really.

'What I found really weird,
though, was that Jason,

'who's an established scientist,
that's undeniable,

'can hold such extreme views.

'He seemed to be saying that science
is fine as long as it generates

'results and findings
that fit the views of the Church.'

And when it doesn't, they simply
can't be right, can they,

because they contradict faith.

I really wonder whether that
reveals a fundamental contradiction

between Christianity,
religion and science.

It needn't necessarily be that way,
but it is a real difficulty.

I mean, what is the point of
doing science if it's only right

when it agrees with the Bible?

Today, only a minority of Christians

take everything in the Old
Testament as the literal truth.

But for the New Testament,
it's a different story.

When it comes to the life of
Jesus Christ, all bets are off.

That was a unique moment
in human history.

Thanks to the scientific revolution,
most Christians now accept

that much of the Old Testament
is metaphorical.

But science has had little
impact on Christian attitudes

to the New Testament.

When it comes to the life of
Jesus Christ, all bets are off.

That was a unique moment in human
history where God is inserted

into his creation and we can't
expect that to ever occur again.

But you are stating
this as an assertion.

As a scientist,
you have no evidence.

I have no evidence.

I have no evidence.
And I suspect
you have a good reason to believe

that there will never be evidence
to disprove what you're saying.

Until we invent time machines...

It's easy to make
those kind of assertions.

Until we invent time machines.

Until we invent time machines.
So it's an assertion based on faith.

But it's also based
on the evidence we have,

the recorded evidence of the people
at the time...

Which you have dismissed as the
evidence for all the other things

that the Church
has changed its views on,

like creation in six days and...

But the Church never taught this
as central to its faith.

This is not a core belief
of the Church, this is not

something that's in the creed.

That's different from
the life and death

and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But science has led a few Christians
to question even these fundamental

tenets of Christianity.

I was brought up an Anglican
and there's a lot I still like

about churches -

the hymns, the contemplation,
the sense of community.

I'm here to meet an Anglican priest,
David Paterson,

who belongs to a group of
Christians called the Sea of Faith.

Many of them doubt the divinity
of Jesus Christ

and even whether God really exists.

So let's just be clear.

You mean God didn't make,
literally make, the Universe.

No.

And God didn't engineer
the virgin birth of Jesus.

No.

And Jesus perhaps didn't really
exist as... as a person at all.

Mmm, I think he probably did
actually, yes. Yes, I think he did.

Then, can I just
explore that a bit more?

I mean, what then is God to you?

What I fell in love with...

What I wanted to give my life to.

And its ingredients were, well,
were a lot about the natural world

and a lot about
making relationships with people.

I mean, I empathise with
all of those things,

but I haven't found a necessity to
see God reflected in those things.

The existence of life is
extraordinary, but why any more?

And is there any more, really?

No, there isn't any more.

There is actually no difference
between the theist and the atheist,

it's only the terminology that's
different. Some people have this

deep understanding of the spiritual
nature of reality, of everything,

and they want to personify it
and call it God or a god

or a particular name of God
or something.

Some don't want to do that.

David thinks that the Bible was
never meant to be taken literally.

All the religious stories
are mythological stories

where asking, "Did it happen?"

or "Where did it happen?"

or "What date did it happen?"

is all completely irrelevant.

It's actually all about

this being a story that helps you
to understand what life is all about.

So according to David, all those
fundamental tenets of Christianity,

Virgin Birth,
the Resurrection, life after death,

didn't happen at all.

Seems to me that
that David's version of

Christianity is virtually atheism.

Science provides the facts about the
world, religion gives us the music

and the pictures and tells us
stories about human nature.

For me, it's science, not
religion, that provides our

best hope of understanding
the workings of our universe.

Professor Albert de Rocq has

dedicated his life to exploring the
scientific equivalent of Genesis -

the Big Bang.

Albert practices in this
nondescript, early 21st century

cathedral to science.

Beneath its foundations
lies a crypt containing the most

elaborate scientific instrument
ever constructed.

The project cost over $8 billion

and uses enough electricity
to power a small city.

So we are actually now a
100 metres underground,

and in the main hall
of the experiment.

And this is it, this is CMS.

Amazing. How extraordinary.

Inside this particle accelerator,

particles race through a
circular tunnel 27 kilometres long,

close to the speed of light,
and smash together, simulating

conditions a millionth of a second
after the Big Bang.

One goal is to find evidence

for the Higgs Boson,
which some call the God particle,

because it is thought to have
triggered the birth of the universe.

In a world where there wouldn't have
been the Higgs field,

we wouldn't exist.

That is why it's like a God
particle, it's like God giving...

You know, not everything
is equal any more,

but you have diversity and you
can create diverse things.

Albert has faith in this machine's
ability to find the Higgs Boson,

but if it doesn't,
another theory will emerge.

Unlike religion, science can change
its view if the evidence demands it.

That's the power of science.

Do we see anything in the process

that suggests the intervention
by an intelligent being, by a God?

Certainly, from the scientific
point of view, we don't know.

Personally, I don't believe

that there has to be such an agent at
work, but as a scientist, as I said,

I work only on data, and so far, that
hypothesis, for me, is not excluded,

so I keep it open, but it's
not a working hypothesis for me.

Over the last 400 years,
Christianity has been transformed

by the power of science.

During the Renaissance,
the first scientists showed

that the evidence of nature often
contradicts the word of the Bible.

In the 18th century, it was

scientists who were at the forefront
of the Enlightenment, making reason,

not religious authority,
the driving force in human affairs.

And Darwin's theory of evolution
has divided Christians on how to

reconcile science with their faith.

I believe that science will

increasingly make religion redundant
and will eventually provide us with

an understanding not only of
creation, but also, of ourselves.

I think that the historical record
shows that the power of science

to explain what was previously
mysterious is enormous.

Personally,

I think that science will one day
give us not just a very satisfactory

description of our physical world,
of how we came to be here, but even

of how it is that our brains give us
this need for religious belief.

If that happens,

when that happens,

what will be left for Christianity?

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