In the coming film adaptation of “The Shack,” a fictional book by William P. Young about a father’s path to renewed faith and healing after his young daughter’s murder, the character of God – as depicted in the novel – is portrayed as a curvy, maternal black woman. For them, changing the name and religion is a superficial issue and a path of escaping the hands of law. Of course, there is no “right way” on the path towards healing, but tuning in with your faith through prayer can offer a quiet sanctuary where you can find strength when you may be feeling your weakest. Galileo, Darwin and others whose research challenged church dogma were branded heretics, and the polite way to reconcile science and theology was to simply agree that each would keep to its own realm: science would ask, and answer, empirical questions like “what” and “how”; religion would confront the spiritual, wondering “why.” But as science grew in authority and power beginning with the Enlightenment, this detente broke down. And if you have a family member or friend who is struggling, you can share one of these prayers with them to send a little (or a lot of) strength their way.

It is a Unesco World Heritage Site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World – named so not only for its sheer size and historical value but also for the many mysteries that the structure poses to modern researchers. Two researchers are invited to each event who present the topic from Jewish and Islamic perspectives and enter into dialog with each other. From Georgetown to Berkeley, theologians who embrace science, and scientists who cannot abide the spiritual emptiness of empiricism, are establishing institutes integrating the two. Something surprising is happening between those two old warhorses science and religion. The achievements of modern science seem to contradict religion and undermine faith. A June symposium on “Science and the Spiritual Quest,” organized by Russell’s CTNS, drew more than 320 paying attendees and 33 speakers, and a PBS documentary on science and faith will air this fall. Others would say that science and religion are not in conflict because they look at different truths. Books like “Science and Theology: The New Consonance” and “Belief in God in an Age of Science” are streaming off the presses. You may also wish to consult a website like the Vision Vocation Network. While it may be frustrating to rekindle your relationship with God after experiencing a painful obstacle, reading verses on trusting God will remind you of His plan for your future.

God,” says Carl Feit, a cancer biologist at Yeshiva University in New York and Talmudic scholar. To most worshipers, a sense of the divine as an unseen presence behind the visible world is all well and good, but what they really yearn for is a God who acts in the world. Some scientists see an opening for this sort of God at the level of quantum or subatomic events. In this spooky realm, the behavior of particles is unpredictable. In perhaps the most famous example, a radioactive element might have a half-life of, say, one hour. Half-life means that half of the atoms in a sample will decay in that time; half will not. But what if you have only a single atom? Then, in an hour, it has a 50-50 chance of decaying. And what if the experiment is arranged so that if the atom does decay, it releases poison gas? If you have a cat in the lab, will the cat be alive or dead after the hour is up? Physicists have discovered that there is no way to determine, even in principle, what the atom would do. Some theologian-scientists see that decision point – will the atom decay or not? will the cat live or die? – as one where God can act. “Quantum mechanics allows us to think of special divine action,” says Russell. Even better, since few scientists abide miracles, God can act without violating the laws of physics. An even newer science, chaos theory, describes phenomena like the weather and some chemical reactions whose exact outcomes cannot be predicted. It could be, says Polkinghorne, that God selects which possibility becomes reality. This divine action would not violate physical laws either. Most scientists still park their faith, if they have it, at the laboratory door. But just as belief can find inspiration in science, so scientists can find inspiration in belief. Physicist Mehdi Golshani of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, drawing from the Koran, believes that natural phenomena are “God’s signs in the universe,” and that studying them is almost a religious obligation. The Koran asks humans to “travel in the earth, then see how He initiated the creation.” Research, Golshani says, “is a worship act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God’s creation.” The same strain runs through Judaism. Carl Feit cites Maimonides, “who said that the only pathway to achieve a love of God is by understanding the works of his hand, which is the natural universe.

For some, showing love means taking out the trash on an exceptionally cold night so your loved one doesn’t have to do it themselves. In contrast, Persinger’s apparatus uses weak complex magnetic signals patterned after physiological processes, such as one derived from limbic burst firing. But through it all Sandage, who says he was “almost a practicing atheist as a boy,” was nagged by mysteries whose answers were not to be found in the glittering panoply of supernovas. Since the birth of the universe could now be explained by the laws of physics alone, the late astronomer and atheist Carl Sagan concluded, there was “nothing for a Creator to do,” and every thinking person was therefore forced to admit “the absence of God.” Today the scientific community so scorns faith, says Sandage, that “there is a reluctance to reveal yourself as a believer, the opprobrium is so severe.” Some clergy are no more tolerant of scientists. Sandage began to despair of answering such questions through reason alone, and so, at 50, he willed himself to accept God.