The problem with science for many religious people is that it is all about doubt. In that sense, science is almost the opposite of faith.
For those of us who are both scientists and Christians this can make life difficult. It is not, as many seem to think, because approaching issues from a scientific or a religious standpoint can lead to different conclusions. We reconcile such different outcomes from different viewpoints and philosophies all the time, throughout our lives—left wing and right wing, adult and teenager, Lions and Blues, Bulldogs and Sharks.
Rather it is because, as a person of faith, many things are held to be certain, not open to question. But as a scientist everything is open to question. Nothing is sacred.
Take one of the great questions of the moment, the morality of research involving embryonic stem cells. Though rarely explicitly stated by either side, the debate really centres around determining or deciding at what point human life begins.
For many people the answer to this question seems simple, evident, and obvious. They believe that human life begins at conception—a distinct, clear, explicit point—end of story. That is what made it easy for President George Bush recently—in vetoing a bill passed by Congress which would have allowed Federal funds to be used for embryonic stem cell research—to equate the destruction of any fertilised human egg with homicide. When asked about the reason for the veto, his press secretary said: 'The simple answer is, he thinks murder is wrong.'
A similar statement accompanied a call by the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, for Catholic stem cell researchers to be excommunicated. 'Destroying human embryos is equivalent to abortion,' he said.
But for many biologists and doctors who are also people of faith, life is not that easy. For starters, if human life begins at conception, what does that make the germ cells that give rise to the fertilised egg? And if every fertilised egg is a human being, why does God allow more than 50 per cent of them to abort spontaneously?
To biologists, conception is only the beginning of a long process which leads to the birth of a baby, but just when that bundle of living cells becomes 'human' is not a question scientists find easy to determine. Is it at conception, after implantation in the mother's womb, when