Bill Bryson, former Chancellor of the University of Durham, in his deservedly best-selling and prize-winning book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, describes stromatolites - a kind of living rock made by billions of microscopic cyanobacteria - as having paved the way for more complex living things. Are we all descended from this rock? Some of us certainly become granite-like when it comes to showing respect for the views of others.
Bryson wrote: ''Whatever prompted life to begin, it happened just once. That is the most extraordinary fact in biology, perhaps the most extraordinary fact we know. A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all. Biologists sometimes call it the Big Birth. Science is fascinating it can answer many questions. It cannot answer all questions.
How did everything begin? If there was nothing in the beginning how did nothing become something? If there was something, how did it get there?
If we cannot answer these questions it is not unreasonable to believe in eternity, there was no beginning and there will be no end, at least not in terms of time as we understand it. If there was no beginning, is it unreasonable to believe that some designer, or creator always existed and, at some point in eternity decided to design or create? Those of us who believe in God believe this to be God.
St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiæ, building on the work of Aristotle, says that the existence of God can be proved in five ways, which he then sets out cogently.
Lesser minds with grand gestures such as the waving of dismissive hands or shrugging shoulders dismiss the possibility of the existence of a God, though I suspect most of them have never read the Summa Theologiæ. They simply dismiss all belief in God as the stuff of fairytales.
Sincere
I can well understand how and why people may not believe in God but I cannot accept that they should have the right to dismiss the sincere and well grounded beliefs of those who do believe.
I want to challenge the idea that somehow all religion is daft and we are now in a post-religious era. This is not the case for billions of people throughout the world.
Like science, religion does not give us all the answers. For Christians, for example, the New Testament is Revelation, and God continues to reveal Himself because theology (i.e. knowledge of God) is itself a work-in-progress, a striving to understand this Revelation.
In his recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVl states: ''Openness to God makes us open towards our brothers and sisters and towards an understanding of life as a joyful task to be accomplished in a spirit of solidarity.'' From whatever religious background believers come, most would, I think, agree with that statement. Nor do those with religious belief hold themselves out to be more virtuous than those who do not. We all share a common humanity, we all need that solidarity.
Seek the truth
In the book he jointly authored with Marcella Pera (Without Roots), the Pontiff states: ''Very often they (secular people) are people who passionately seek the truth, who are pained by the lack of truth in mankind.'' This is a statement which I also think most would agree with. Those of us who believe in God must respect those who do not. We too are worthy of respect, there can be real unity in diversity. There has to be respect for that which the other group holds sacred, but we are not all the same and cannot all hold the same views. There is diversity, that diversity must be regarded, respected, nourished. It is respect for diversity that will keep this continent united in determination to remain at peace and stable. Never again can we return to the mayhem that was Europe for the first half of the Ttwentieth Century.
In his recently published book Back from the Brink, economist Marc Coleman concludes: ''We have absorbed the fallacy that humanity can only be improved by government acting from the top down. The Twentieth Century saw several failed attempts to improve the human condition by pursuing secular political philosophies that saw government as the only useful instrument in improving the human condition.'' Earlier he wrote on the current financial crisis: ''[To] argue for a third way between capitalism and socialism is to miss the point entirely about what has gone wrong with economics. Unless individuals are strongly motivated by a deep sense of right and wrong and are immune from corruption, even the strongest state management of the economy can only replace socialist corruption with capitalist corruption.''
Religious belief has a part to play in providing that motivation for believers. Non-believers may find their motivation elsewhere.
In searching for that moral structure it is entirely reasonable that individuals and groups be informed by their religious beliefs. The passing of the Lisbon Treaty confirms the unity that diversity can bring. Unity requires mutual respect, those with religious belief must insist that their part of the Diversity is included in the Unity.
