Imperfect Creation

Marcelo Gleiser promises to prompt more questions than to provide answers as he examines scientific and religious attempts to “make sense of existence”.

He sees the attempts of both as a search for “oneness” in what is meaningless life in a purposeless universe.

Among the unifiers are the scientists, who attempt to uncover laws and make sense of it all; and the believers, for whom only a supernatural power could transcend material reality and create it.

Both presume a perfection either found in a new scientific world view or in a supernatural power. In rejecting both, he finds militant atheists “as inflammatory and intolerant as the religious fundamentalists they criticise”.

The main thrust of his argument is that our cosmos does not need perfection to exist, but unbalance.

Scientific method dictates results that can be duplicated while the religious look for meaning and purpose. Each falls short.