Students today are being indoctrinated to believe science and religion are incompatible. Religion, we are told, is the shadow of the past: the last vestige of a dark, gloomy age, in which the masses were subjected to the fear of spirits, ghosts, devils, God, and other imaginary beings by ecclesiastical authorities seeking to maintain political control. Science, however, supposedly provides humanity with empirically verifiable knowledge -- understanding the world through quantifiable observation, analysis, reduction and reason.

Current theories in astrophysics cannot account for the formation of galaxies. General relativity contradicts quantum mechanics: these theories cannot be integrated on a sound mathematical basis. The equations needed to explain planets condensing from clouds of gas and dust have not yet been solved, and the origin of the solar system itself remains a mystery.

Evolution is mostly speculation. The physical evidence from the past is fragmentary; of the one billion species believed to have existed, 99 percent did not leave fossils. In the deliberate breeding of species, there are limits to the changes one can make. When pushed beyond a limit, species become sterile and die out or revert to their standard design. We can induce changes in existing forms via breeding, but cannot generate new complex structures.

If this cannot happen by man's conscious efforts, why should it happen by blind natural processes? No satisfactory evolutionary models have ever been made.

In biology, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe calculated the probability of proteins forming from the random interaction of amino acids -- the building blocks of life. They found the odds were one out of ten to the 40,000th power. Given these extreme odds, it is hard to imagine the self-organization of matter without the deliberate intervention of some kind of higher power(s) or intelligence(s).

All life is thus precious and sacred. Dr. Francis Crick has admitted, "the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle." Future scientists and science teachers would do well to approach the study of the phenomenal world with this kind of reverence.