The End of Certainty. A challenge to aggressive secularism

Advocates of new atheism typically assert that everything which has meaning falls in the domain of the natural and may at least in principle be explained scientifically. In contrast, Christian belief sees all that is as God's creation, with the person and work of Jesus Christ at the centre of God's mission to the world. As evidence-based science profoundly affects how we live and how we understand ourselves and all of nature, well informed dialogue between science and religion has an important place in discerning the mission of God in today's world. Contemporary science recognizes inherent uncertainty and unpredictability in many natural processes, opening up new avenues for dialogue between science and religion. In particular, uncertainty is a characteristic of the evolution of complex entities such as living organisms and human culture. The open-endedness of processes understood using complexity and emergence undermines deterministic and reductionist views of nature and provides a way of imagining beyond nature as presently conceived. It also resonates with the religious sensibility that there is much we can only intuit, approach with faith, and indeed which may forever be beyond human comprehension. This resonance invites creative conversation between scientific and religious approaches to all creation and to what it is to be human, enabling each to enrich and inform the other.