DEEPLY REAL
“IN HIM WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING” (ACTS 17:28)
A REPLY TO THE NEW ATHEIST ‘SCRIPT’
FR KEVIN O’DONNELL
DEEPLY REAL – REPLYING TO THE SCRIPT OF THE NEW ATHEISTS
Introduction
The media is awash with the views of erudite writers who are militant atheists. Richard
Dawkins is the most famous, particularly with The God Delusion, but others abound such as
Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. Together, these particular four have
been dubbed ‘The Four Horsemen’. They do not only reject religious faith as something
superstitious and childish, but also as dangerous. They can be verbally violent and
downright rude, no matter how clever they are.
Faced with their bruising critique, some people of faith waiver or are rather confused. If
such intellectuals (and many of them are also scientists) come up with such a devastating
critique, might they be right? Here, the maxim holds true, as ever, that a little knowledge is
a dangerous thing, both for the New Atheists and those reading them. Our opponents have
a shallow, superficial view of religion. They attack caricatures.
They are motivated not only by the usual atheistic, materialistic concerns, but also by a
horror of the violence and repression shown by some religious groups, particularly since
9/11. The world of suicide bombers and beheadings has fuelled their rant – understandably
so. Yet, the religion they attack is that of extremist, fundamentalist groups and they do not
have a more subtle understanding of theology, philosophy or various forms of faith. Neither
do they respect, or appreciate, that a number of scientists hold some level of religious faith.
A study in 1997 revealed that 40% believe in a personal God, 45% do not, and 15% are
undecided. (This ignores those who hold to an impersonal Force or Deity.) Respected, highly
intelligent men and women in the sciences believe, such as Francis Collins, the head of the
Human Genome Project.
Two of the priests in Arundel & Brighton have a scientific background, Fr Andrew Pinsent,
who was a particle physicist at CERN and also Fr Stephen Dingley who worked in physics and
cosmology. This should come as no surprise when we trace the steps of people of faith who
have laid the foundations of the scientific method and contributed to our scientific
knowledge down the ages, such as Roger Bacon, the 13th century Franciscan friar who
taught the scientific method of observation and experimentation; Gregor Mendel, the 19th
century Augustinian friar who discovered genetics; Max Planc, one of the founding fathers
of Quantum Physics who was a Lutheran preacher; and Fr Georges Lemaitre who came up
with the idea of the Big Bang.
So, what is the basic script and thrust of the New Atheists? This booklet will answer and
attempt to reply to that. One foundational idea undergirds everything, though. This is the
sense that the only reality is material, ie that which we can measure empirically in a test
tube or under a microscope or some other equipment. Anything else is theory, make believe
or not yet understood. To give one example;
CAN YOU WEIGH A SENTENCE?
The materialist would say that if we measure the electrical impulses in the brain, and isolate
the chemicals produced when a sentence is formed, then, yes, in effect, we can. This
completely ignores the more abstract, intangible aspects though. What about the meaning
and the decision to form it by the individual in the first place? Life is more complex than
what can be empirically measured. There are many unseens that cannot be so easily pinned
down. Reality is perhaps more deep (and spiritual) than they allow in their thinking. Not only
that, but the New Atheists do not really understand much philosophy. They are taking a
philosophical stance when they say nothing is real beyond the material. The scientific
method itself does not demand that we say this. None of the founders of it thought like it,
for they were people of faith who believed in an ordered cosmos, created by God. The New
Atheists are not being scientists when they reject faith,, but philosophers. It is their
interpretation of life.
The Script
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God is just a human idea.
There is no proof that God exists.
God is a pre-scientific way of explaining the world.
The material is the only reality.
The mind is just the brain working.
The universe happened by chance
God is no answer, for who made God?
Miracles are make believe.
Religion is a repressive virus.
(1.) GOD IS JUST A HUMAN IDEA
Their Attack:
We thought up God because we think about the big picture, trying to understand our
world. God is an imaginary Superbeing in the Sky who we thought controlled
everything. The trouble is, that we can dream up anything we want to. Why can’t
there be a religion worshipping a Flying Spaghetti Monster or a Magic Teapot, both
of which evade scientific discovery because they dodge out of the way of all
instruments of detection? By getting rid of belief, we are removing yet one more god
from the pantheon along with Zeus and the others.
Perhaps God belief arose partly because of our ability to speak to ourselves, and to
create Imaginary Friends as children. Perhaps God belief arose out of fear of
mortality or projecting our family bonds onto the Sky?1
Answer:
We do not believe in a God, but God. God is not another thing within the universe.
God is not a Superbeing floating around somewhere but the very foundation of all
reality. God is Spirit. God is deep down things, within us, around us, immanent in
everything. God is the Ground of Our Being, even Being itself. It is that far out,
1
The projection argument was used by Ludwig Feuerbach in the 19 th century.
marvellous and majestically mind-bending. Belief in God is a way of seeing the world;
the cosmos is far more than just the physical and it all happened for a creative
purpose. So, belief is not just about explaining natural forces, but about ultimate
purpose and value.
Human beings are relational, that is how we are designed. It would not be surprising,
then, that we were created by a personal God. Imaginary Friends are our invention
and people know the difference between those in childhood and a divine sense of
Presence today. It really feels like someone else addressing us. Hopes of everlasting
life and the value of love might well reflect that we are made in the imago dei, in the
image of God and are more than animals. We might desire immortality as a plant
reaches out for water or sunlight. It is how we are designed.
(2.) THERE IS NO PROOF THAT GOD EXISTS
Their Attack:
There is no scientific, empirical evidence that God exists. Classical, theological proofs
formulated in the Middle Ages, by the likes of St Thomas Aquinas and St Anselm, are
all circular arguments;
 God is the First Cause and the Prime Mover – things had to begin
somewhere. However, if we have a God then we are adding one more thing
to explain.
 God is the Grand Designer – but maybe things just happened by chance?
 God is the greatest thing you can ever think of and so must exist, for an idea
is inferior to an object. This is really weak!
All of these assume there is a God in the first place.
Claims of religious experience are either madness or misunderstanding, like
thinking the wind whistling through a keyhole is a ghost. People claiming visions
such as the sun dancing at Fatima probably stared at the sun too long and
hallucinated.
Morality is often appealed to, but perhaps this is hardwired into humanity to
assist co-operation which aids survival in mammals which are herd animals.
Answer:
If God is Spirit and not another thing within the universe2, then there could be no
empirical evidence to find. We have to look at our experiences, our values and how
we understand the universe. We are dealing with belief and interpretation and not
2
God, according to Aquinas is ipsum esse subsistens, “a subsistent act of existing itself”, or
Being itself.God is not a ‘thing’ like other things but within and undergirding all things, Being
itself. However, for the empiricist, there are only physical things to monitor.
exact proof, though a number of things point strongly in the direction of God’s
reality.
Classical ‘proofs’ do assume that God is there to begin with and have never claimed
to be QED proofs as such, merely suggestions that show how belief makes sense;
o God as First Cause or Prime Mover means that God is the foundation or
ultimate reason of Being and not a thing within the universe at the end of a
chain of cause and effect.
o God as Grand Designer states that the finely tuned order in the universe is
designed and not by chance.
o To be God is to be the greatest thing possible, Ultimate Reality. (The
idea/object bit is pretty weak, though!)
Religious experience is far more widespread than the New Atheists think, and is
mainly in the form of a sense of a Presence that brings peace, besides claims of
healing prayer as at Lourdes or visions as at Fatima (the people did not stare at the
sun until the last few minutes, their clothes were completely dry afterwards, and
they were spiritually moved. Visions can be divine and spiritual and not mere
hallucination).
We are also moral beings with conscience, and though some of our values might be
programmed into us by biology to aid survival, others cannot. When we seek to aid
people we have no link with out of pure altruism, or protect the unborn and
disabled, we go against the grain of pure biology. What decides what value people
have – utility or essence?
(3.) GOD IS A PRE-SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION
Their Attack:
Before we understood science and the laws of nature, we made up personal beings
who created things and made things move. It was childish, but the best our
ancestors knew how to do. Thus the sun rode across the sky in a chariot, or eyes saw
because fire was put in them by the gods. Gradual discovery and observation led us
away from such superstition. As Richard Dawkins has stated, “Theology not only
lacks decimal places, it lacks even the smallest hint of a connection with the real
world. As Thomas Jefferson said, when founding his University of Virginia, “A
professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution.”…” 3
Answer:
Of course there is some truth in this and some religious ideas have been abandoned
and refined. The basic sense of purpose, value and compassion cannot be so easily
3
Quoted from the Afterword in A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M Krauss.
dismissed, though. Why is there a universe at all? Why can we feel, think and
wonder? God is the Ground of Our Being and not a Man in the Sky pulling the strings.
Faith needs to be intelligent but it still has a place. God is not a mechanical
explanation, a physical thing or a tool within the universe. We are looking at a much
bigger, mystical picture, dealing with meanings and not mechanics. In this way,
theology deals with the real world deeply and truly.
(4.) THE MATERIAL IS THE ONLY REALITY
Their Attack:
Empiricism grew up in the Enlightenment in the 17th-18th centuries after a number of
discoveries and a use of the scientific method. This states that only what can be
observed and measured is reliable, or if something cannot be falsified by data then it
is uncertain speculation. We have a world of cause and effect that can be observed
and measured. There is nothing outside this system unless it is in our imaginations.
(There are, of course, things that we might not yet understand, but one day we
might do. Until then we have to remain silent about them.)
Answer:
Empiricism is a philosophical position, one interpretation of the scientific method
and not the only one possible. There are many things in life that cannot be put under
a microscope or in a test tube – can we fully measure what love is, or awe, or reduce
a Beethoven symphony to mere sounds and flashes in the brain? The New Atheists
are reductionists, reducing everything down to the physical. They are guilty of
‘nothing buttery’.
Science often relies on intuition and imagination in its inventors. Einstein held a deep
conviction that Relativity theory was true before it could be demonstrated.
Science and Religion are not in competition. They follow different rules and reflect
different aspects of reality. Not everything can be measured physically and maybe
many things are beyond human understanding but none the less real. God is not
material, for matter is ‘in potentiality’, to quote Aquinas, whereas God is simple,
perfect, transcendent and Being itself.
(5.) THE MIND IS THE BRAIN WORKING
Their Attack:
There is no immortal soul or ‘ghost in the machine’. The mind is just the brain
working, a by-product that dies with the body. Our minds are wonderful things but
they are random products of evolution. There is much about the human brain that
we do not yet understand, and we certainly do not understand what forms
consciousness. It is a puzzle. There cannot be anything other than the physical, for
this is the only reality that there is.
We can stimulate areas of the brain so that memories are relived. Intense
experiences, even hallucinations, can be produced. Brain damage affects the person;
there can be no souls.
Answer:
The mind and its relationship with the brain is mysterious and wonderful. No one
understands it. There is an intimate connection, a mind/brain correlation, but no one
can say, for definite, that the mind is part of the brain or something extra. It is an
open question. Perhaps the brain is like a TV receiver for the soul. Perhaps the soul is
produced, emerging from complex brain software, but becomes greater than the
sum of its parts as a mental entity.
We can stimulate areas of the brain to create experience but the converse is true;
our thoughts affect our brains and we do not know how. It can work both ways. A
genuine experience of God would affect the brain, too.
Brain damage affects memory and aspects of personality but it does not take away
the irreducible “I’ in our heads. That always remains.
The Church teaches that the spark of individual life gifted to each person is a soul
that will live forever. How this works, of course, is open to debate.
(6.) THE UNIVERSE HAPPENED BY CHANCE
Their Attack:
The universe just is, we don’t know why. The Big Bang produced the laws of physics
and time and space as we know it. There might be other universes, the multiverse,
with different laws. We do not need to look outside its processes to find an answer.
It all unravelled from the singularity point beyond which science cannot investigate,
as far as we know now. It is an incredible occurrence but it could just happen by
chance and natural selection. Humanity took millennia to evolve from early
hominids. Perhaps, too, following Quantum Physics and the seeming spontaneous
existence of virtual particles,4 we have the possibility, however awesome and
incredible, of a universe that caused itself; then we would have no need of a First
Cause or a Prime Mover.5
If we have a God behind it, then we have to ask ‘Who made God?’
4
See, for example, Lawrence M Krauss who argues that he has upset theologians by
redefining ‘nothing’ by which he means ‘empty space’ out there in the universe. It is not
empty, but full of dark matter energy which cannot be seen. When the Church speaks of
creation from nothing , ex nihilo, it means absolutely nothing, non-being.
5 Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in The Grand Design speculate that the causation
might result from a doctrine of temporal parts, whereby conditions in the future can effect
those in the past. So, A can be caused by B at some time in the future in a circularity. It is
wild, speculative and incomprehensible but not beyond reason.
Answer:
The universe is incredibly finely tuned to allow life to exist. The odds against this
happening are immense, set at billions and billions to one! If a few details were
different, we would not be here. This is known as the anthropic principle. Natural
selection itself could not work without certain principles and parameters. The
chances of these arising by pure fluke would be astronomical alone. A long history of
evolution for humanity is no problem for faith. Evolution can be theistic and guided;
Adam and Eve are seen as symbolic of Everyman and Everywoman in an inspired
story that tells us not scientific facts, but moral and spiritual truths for all eras.
The idea of the Multiverse is pure speculation and the materialist wants to believe in
it as this would give an infinite number of universes making it a little more likely that
just one (ours) as lucky to produce order and life. 6
Virtual particles though fascinating, are one tiny example within the universe and it
would be rash to proceed to derive the origin of all things from this. Furthermore,
they do not technically appear from nothing for very faint, low levels (sub-atomic) of
energy exist. Whether the Big Bang came from utterly nothing or something prior is
also irrelevant to theology, even though it is intriguing that for many, it did. 7
God is immense and ineffable mystery and is not a mechanical answer like
something within the universe. God is outside of creation.8 The question of ‘Who
made God?’ will be looked at next.
(7.) GOD IS NO ANSWER, FOR WHO MADE GOD?
Their Attack:
If we posit a Deity, then who designed such a complex Being? We are left with an
infinite regression, a never ending sequence of cause and effect. God answers
nothing in the end. Perhaps we should apply the simplest solution, using the
6
There are five different theories of the Multiverse (M Theory) on offer.
So, even if we did not have a Big Bang, there would be the deeper, existential mystery of
Being itself.
8 Ideas of temporal parts and circular causation might be great SF but even if possible, do
not remove the need for a First Cause as properly understood by theologians. ‘First’ is not
temporal, within the sequence of the universe, but foundational, mystical and metaphysical.
God is Being itself, allowing things to be so all physical causation and mechanics can happen.
Thus, Isaac Asimov’s story, The Last Question, has a super computer working out if entropy
can be reversed. It takes aeons to calculate, and when all is dark and run down, it comes up
with the answer, “Let there be light”. This is clever but sees God as part of the
equation/universe and not as Being itself.
7
principle of ‘Ockham’s Razor’9. The simplest answer is to reduce the levels of
complexity. Just have a universe that just happens.
Answer:
God, to be God, can have no beginning and no end. God is infinite and eternal. We
cannot conceive of this because everything we know has a start and a finish. God,
don’t forget, is not something within the universe, no matter how great. God is
beyond the system, and beyond time and space. God revealed himself to Moses as “I
am”. This is awesome, majestic and mind-blowing. This does not prove that God is
true or not, it just sets out the parameters of what belief in God means. 10
Ockham’s Razor does not apply here for things seem more complicated than
materialism will allow. Here are too many unanswerable questions and things that
cannot be measured. Applying the ‘Razor’ would do damage and distort by over
simplifying. For example, belief in God tells us that the personal, consciousness, is
the most sublime level of reality that there is in the universe. God is more than
personal but cannot be less so. We are left with an awesome, tremendous and
fascinating mystery that moves us to our knees in adoration, and not with data we
can understand.
The materialist is stuck with the Big Bang, a conceptual brick wall that we cannot
penetrate or explain. They also have a conundrum and a mystery.
(8.) MIRACLES ARE MAKE-BELIEVE
Their Attack:
Miracles cannot happen – if they did, it would be unnerving for science! Science
believes in a rational, ordered universe of laws that if they were ever broken by a
tinkering God would make it an unpredictable and scary place. Miracles are make
believe, usually ancient myths and legends or misunderstandings natural forces.
After all, if an ancient Roman saw the internet, he would marvel at it as a gift from
the gods11. Some of the miracles in the Bible are tall tales, some perhaps natural
forces that were not understood. Turning water into wine is akin to Cinderella and
her coach, though. Believing in the resurrection of Jesus is like fairies at the bottom
of the garden.
9
William of Ockham was a 14th century Franciscan friar who argued that you should cut
away any unnecessary information in an argument to go for the simplest and most obvious
solution.
10 Aquinas stated, “There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is
found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is
impossible.” (Summa Theologicae 1.2.3)
11 Arthur C. Clarke framed his ‘Third Law’ which states, “any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Answer:
Some things sometimes described as ‘miracles’ might be natural forces that
happened just at the right time, such as the strong wind that blew all night before
the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea. However, a genuine, full-blown miracle is the
operation of higher powers that we do not (yet?) understand.12 It makes more sense
to think of this way than God cancelling the normal laws. This is much less random
and sees the miraculous as ‘super hi-tech’ at work. Miracles are not magic but suprarational. They are not random for God is ordered and purposeful, present within his
creation and at work day by day in many hidden ways to our senses. A miracle is a
more focussed, intense manifestation of God’s presence.
A miracle is more than an amazing event, though. It is also spiritual in content and
effects people profoundly. We can see many other types of experience that might
not involve God but are unusual and cannot be explained by what is known by the
natural sciences. Thus, a man is hypnotised and a cold iron bar is placed on his arm.
He is told it is red hot and his skin blisters. This shows the power of the mind over
the body. Then there are examples of Carl Jung called synchronicity,13 such as an
overwhelming memory, sense, or dream about something that you discover has
actually happened in reality somewhere else at the same time, such as a dream of
someone having died and you wake up to hear the news that they are, in fact,
deceased. These events are inexplicable and suggest levels of connection between
minds and the physical.
The resurrection of Jesus was attested by many witnesses and had a lasting, lifechanging effect on the first disciples. It birthed a major world faith which continues
to inspire today. It was the work of higher powers and not magic.
(9.) RELIGION IS A REPRESSIVE VIRUS
Their Attack:
Dawkins sees religion as regressive. He attacks parts of the Old Testament for its cruelty
and violence, such as slaughtering the inhabitants of Jericho or stoning people for
collecting sticks on the Sabbath. He feels that Yahweh (God) is a violent, tribal deity and
most of the morals of the OT are concerned with the in-group. Religion has shown bouts
of violent and repressive behaviour through the ages with inquisitions and wars. Recent
terrorist attacks have highlighted this; nothing has changed.
12
This follows the favoured definition of St Augustine, “A portent, therefore, happens not
contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know of nature.”
13 C.G.Jung in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections, gives several examples that happened to
him personally, such as the time he was overwhelmed on a train journey with an image of
someone drowning. He arrived at his daughter’s house to learn that a grandson had almost
drowned at the dame time because of an accident.
Christopher Hitchens felt that religion was inherently violent and worshipped a Cosmic
Dictator who ordered us to love one another through fear (“or else you will go to Hell!”)
When some modern dictators show repressive behaviour then they are suffering from a
God complex. They might claim to be atheistic, but they are trying to be a God figure,
particularly characters like Kim Jong Un in North Korea. The New Atheists argue for a
more democratic sense of government and a lifestyle based on reason.
Religion is transmitted, like many things, through memes. A meme is a way of passing on
folk ideas in sayings, music, poems and story. Religion is dangerous, akin to a virus that is
passed on, though. A virus is a parasite on other things, and religion uses human awe,
reason and language to construct dogmas. Today, these can cause violence and warfare,
and also hold people back from scientific knowledge.
Frustratingly, different religions claim a privileged knowledge of the universe but do not
agree with each other and condemn each other to Hell. They cannot all be true!
The Answer:
There are difficult parts of the Bible, especially the early OT which can be very primitive.
A careful study of the Scriptures shows a progression of awareness about God,
spirituality and morality. From the early, rather tribal material, we find a universalism
whereby God is God of all nations and Israel has a responsibility to be a light, an
example. This comes to fruition in Jesus the man of compassion who dies as Messiah
and Son of God for all, not just one tribe. God is revealed as being Christlike.14 There are
seeds of this later spirituality and ethics in the early material, too, like gems in coal, such
as the command to respect the stranger in your town for once Israel were strangers and
slaves in Egypt.
Dictators do claim a Godlike role, wrongly out of hubris, but God need not be envisaged
as a Cosmic Dictator. God is depth, closer to us than we are to ourselves as the Ground
of Our Being. God is within us and well as without (“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Luke 17:21) Jesus was the Servant King, the humble God who emptied himself and took
flesh for our sakes. As St Irenaeus of Lyons once said, “The glory of God is man fully
alive.” St Paul tells us not to fear, for we are sons and not slaves (Romans 8:14-15)
Religion can cause violence and wars, but so can many things such as politics. Behind
most wars will be claims of power and land, rather than actual faith when you look
closely. Believers have often been counter cultural and show the love of Christ such as St
Francis of Assisi, St Maximilian Kolbe and Blessed Mother Teresa.
Do religions condemn each other to Hell? Not always, and certainly not now. There is
more understanding and more toleration, though there are fundamentalists and
14
A parallel can be seen in SF in Arthur C.Clarke’s 2001 where an advanced alien race slowly
reveal things to humanity through history, only when they are ready to handle the
knowledge.
extremists, too. The Catholic Church accepts all that is true in other faiths, whilst being
honest about differences too.15
As for viruses, memes are neutral. Their content might not be. The New Atheists have a
prejudice against faith and they are attacking the propagation of narrow, fundamentalist
versions of belief. Spirituality is something deeply human that has been with us, as far as
we can see, from the beginning of time.
Dawkins and others are the products of liberal democracy that has been influenced by
many of the values of the Judaeo-Christian worldview, values that they take for granted
but could easily be jettisoned if God goes and all objective morality goes with him. A
glimpse of this danger has already been seen when Dawkins caused outrage in a Tweet
about the value of autistic children over against Downs Syndrome children. The former
have special gifts and can give something back to society. He urged parents to have
Downs Syndrome foetuses aborted. His later apology admitted the hurt he might have
caused but still accused people of following their emotions and not their logic. His value
of human life is utilitarian; the Christians sees each person as sacred for who they are
and not what they can do.
EPILOGUE: DEEPLY REAL!
An early scene in the film, The Theory of Everything, has a young Stephen Hawking, as
played by Eddie Redmayne, explaining to his fiancé Jane, played by Felicity Jones, that he
is an atheist. She is C of E. Jane questions him, probing to see what he worships in life.
His answer is telling; he replies that he worships the equation, and the quest for it, that
explains everything in the universe, why it is the way it is and why it should be at all. There
is a quality of tongue in cheek about this but many a true word is spoken in jest. There is
a palpable awe in the face of the immensity and complexity of the universe. It sounds
almost quasi-religious. Mathematics and its revelation of order and harmony in a timeless
manner has always inspired the philosophers from Pythagoras onwards. Bertrand Russell
claimed that religious thought probably had its roots in mathematics.
Hawking is on a quest, along with others, for a Unified Theory. It can’t be an answer to
everything that is. This is beyond us, but he hopes that physics will tie together various
things to give us a theory of being on an abstract level. Thus he explores String Theory
which sees sub-atomic particles as being connected like string, M Theory which
speculates about the Multiverse, and mathematics which suggests there could be eleven
dimensions, with only four unravelled in our universe. When trying to go smaller and
smaller, he admits that in the sub-atomic world of Quantum Physics we might keep
opening endless ‘boxes within boxes’ as particles reveal infinitely tinier parts. The
universe is turning out to be a more complex and mysterious place all the time. There
are indeed many things in heaven and earth that have not been dreamed of in our
philosophy, to quote Hamlet. Hawking wonders why the universe should bother to exist
15
In the Vatican II document, Nostra aetate, we find, “The Catholic Church rejects nothing
of what is true and holy in any faith.”
at all, and asks “who put the fire in the equations?” meaning the rise of consciousness,
reason, awe and love.
Towards the close of the film Hawking watches his children play around a fountain in
Buckingham Palace and he remarks to Jane, “Look at what we have made!” Indeed, the
human person is perhaps the most sublime thing in existence, more profound and
complex than all the M and String Theories and jumping particles. This speaks of God, of
design and purpose in the vastness of the universe. This is what faith is about, that the
personal is more abiding and deep, right down to the foundation of all things. We might
find old picture language of heaven above us pinching our shoes, but there is more to
reality than just this material level of things.
We can imagine other dimensions and levels in the deep weave of reality, levels like in
computer games where the rules are very different. Faith speaks of a Goal, a Quest, an
Omega Point, the Beatific Vision (Blessed, Holy and Beautiful) in the presence of the
living God for ever. That is truly awesome, and truly, madly, deeply real!
Fr Georges Lemaitre, originator of the Big Bang theory, with Albert Einstein