In talking with some members of my atheist discussion group last night, I ended up explaining how, unfortunately, for a number of reasons, some segments of Christianity have come to conclude that science and faith are incompatible.  That is, one cannot be a scientist and believe in God.     Nothing could be further from the truth.  If, as modern science insists, quantum physics notwithstanding, the world is an orderly phenomenon governed by unchanging physical laws, well, that is exactly what Christianity insists.  The breaking point is, of course, the fact of God.  One believes that the order is of God; the other holds that the order emerged as an inevitable result of natural forces.  Either way, the fact of order remains.  And both sides trust it.  They trust it implicitly.

     It's no secret that science as we know it today developed as Christian thinkers, convinced of the existence of God, sought, through thought and experimentation, to understand the intrinsic order of the universe.  Yes, they said, God created it, but this didn't mean that we cannot explain it with the tools of logic and falsification.

     That the world is here no one doubts.  The lingering question is, why?

     For this question is far more important than how it came to be here.