Before the GB's dive in great piece. As an atheist I don't think that spirituality will even completely die out in humans but organized religion has been in decline for sometime and will eventually die, good riddance to it too.

Not so fast! “The idealist/religious approach arose from the use of magic and spells with the practitioners, the witchdoctors, evolving into priests with their prayers and ceremonies. The materialist/scientific approach arose from experiencing the real world by actually handling it.” This is an entirely false dichotomy. What do you think was going on in the history of Israel? This was a nation that learnt its lessons from its experience of being in the world, it reflected on its experience and wrote a theology that reflected that experience. One of the lessons it learnt was that God could not be understood as a supernatural being along with other beings in the world. The theology of Israel and subsequently the Church is much more sophisticated than that, or should be. I have no sympathy with McGrath’s supernatural God, it is more a product of modernity than of the theology. Unfortunately he leaves himself open to justified attacks such as this one. I suggest the writer read some proper theology, perhaps he should look at some of my articles: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=118

Kenny... we don't need to 'jump in' as u say, Mr Warren has already 'made' our case by declaring:

'Dawkins is a Scientist, McGrath is a Theologian"

All Warren has done is confirm our long held suspicion that 'Scientists and atheists are not always objective' :)

Alister McGrath brief bio.

He gained first class honours in chemistry in June 1975, and began research in molecular biophysics in the Oxford University Department of Biochemistry under the supervision of Professor Sir George K. Radda, FRS, who recently retired as chairman of the Medical Research Council. He was elected to an E.P.A. Cephalosporin Research Studentship at Linacre College, Oxford, for the academic year 1975-6, and to a Domus Senior Scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, for the period 1976-8. During these three years, he carried out scientific research alongside studying for the Oxford University Final Honour School of Theology. In December 1977, he was awarded an Oxford D.Phil. for his research in the natural sciences, and gained first class honours in Theology in June 1978

Quite an interesting article.

I could infer that Warren might be saying “Have faith in God but believe in science”.

His discourse on emotional indoctrination aside, why is it not possible to have a faith in God and certainty in science? Can anyone suggest to me that this is wrong? Why?

Whether or not one has a faith/belief in a supreme being should not colour or bias their involvement in the real world, as far as interacting with it go. If one has a mythical belief that ‘God will save me’ in times of physical danger, I would suppose that one would not be long for the Earth. I believe, Sells, you may have hinted at something like this, preferring the spirituality of ones belief rather than the physical? (My apologies if I misunderstood).

Rather, the presence, dare I say the point of God, would be to provide one with a framework of values and ethics in which to live. Some claim sole rights to these values and ethics, like a patent. I would point out that many who do not believe in God hold strong and high-minded values of their own, so cannot agree that one must believe in God to find them.

I would say that there really is no point to the debate. An individual either has faith or not. How this affects the physical world, I cannot see. Faith in God is a journey to, in some minds, personal salvation and enlightenment. Involvement in the sciences in the physical world is a journey of discovery of what ‘God gave us’. At the end of the day, there is no proving God. There cannot be. Faith is a foundation of religious belief and cannot be tested by man – only by one’s God.

The issue of emotional manipulation/indoctrination is another matter and perhaps should be left for another article. Any takers?

The debate will go on, until evolution presents us with more understanding as to what our universe consists of. I agree with Warren, that one you can experience and record, the other is emotion and hearsay. I actually feel that it is somewhere in the middle and both physical science and supernatural science are both real, they just occupy different spaces.

The supernatural could be what we feel and sense from the interaction of the different dimensions that exist within and around us. It is just interpreted as being this so called all imposing benevolent being. Science believes it is right in what it discovers, but it is always wrong, just learning to understand more.

So the inference by Warren that science goes forward and religion stays the same is part illusion. Both stay the same, religion accepts nothing that may take away its deity mentality, science finds it difficult to accept that there may be energies and intelligent powers that are a part of our lives, that influence them.

Until religion drops their fantasy and science opens its eyes to the possibilities that may actually surround us, then nothing will change. A place to start, would be to drop the big bang and god theories, accept that there may be other logical answers to existence and where it is going. Luckily, science when shown the error of its ways, changes quickly, unlike religions, which has trouble accepting its own history, let alone its future.

For all we know, space could be filled with intelligent life that is another dimension, but a part of ours. If you were an ant and were looking up at a car, because your understanding was at ant level, then it may look dark, alien and empty.

Then again our universe could be a molecule in a drop of water falling from a tap, when it hits the bottom, splat. I just hope god drops by before then, or we will all have gone to water.

To Sells: The distinction between scientific investigation of the world, which we have to use every day, and our belief in the existence of a supernatural world, is not a false dichotomy. The point that I tried to make was that no working scientist (including McGrath when he was one) ever uses the concept of a supernatural force, either God or any other spirit, as part of their explanation of a phenomenon. Any idea of supernatural effects is irrelevant for the work of scientists just as it is irrelevant for the everyday work of carpenters and engineers. The idea of the supernatural with its gods and angels exists only in the mind. Perhaps I can refer you back to my previous article, The Science of Religion, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3252, where I tried to explain how the dichotomy arose, millennia before the Christian God became an idea in some human minds.

Your suggestion that I should read some proper theology is no doubt meant to help, thank you . I have read some of your own articles of course but my problem is how do I know that your theology is more proper than Alister McGrath’s? The problem is that, since the idea of the supernatural only exists in the mind and there are so many different minds, there is no one proper theology.

To understand anything in the world it is always wise to understand its history, its evolution. The present raiments and ceremonies of our clerics clearly betray the origin in the distant past when similar magic spells and procedures were used to gain the favour of one or more of the many gods then regarded as populating the spirit world. If you don't accept that, how do you explain it?