Huff Post: by Carol Kuruvilla, from November 2014
Author Dan Brown has sparked plenty of intellectual debate during his career as a novelist by exploring the relationship between science and religion.
While delivering the Penguin Annual Lecture in India this week, the writer revealed that he believes that the lines between science and religion are actually starting to “blur.”
“Science and religion are partners. They are two different languages telling the same story . . . While science dwells on the answers, religion savors the questions,” Brown said, according to The Hindu.
“Ironically, we now turn to God for only for a handful of existential questions which science has never been able to answer like ‘Where did we come from? Why are we here? And what happens when we die?” he continued. Brown has been struggling with these questions for quite some time. His father was a mathematics professor and his mother was a devout Christian and a church organist. For the lecture, Brown brought along two old license plates from his parents’ cars. His dad’s read METRIC, while his mother’s read KYRIE, meaning Lord, according to the Times of India. This contrast in views reportedly set the scene for a lifetime of investigations.
As a teen, Brown began to question apparently irreconcilable contradictions between religion and science that he found at his mother’s church. But as he grew older, he began to understand that both ways of examining the world were important.
The ultimate question for him is how to celebrate and further the achievements of science without losing the beauty of faith.
“The world is getting smaller everyday and now, more than ever, there is enormous danger in believing that we are infallible. That our version of the truth is absolute and that everyone who does not think like we do is wrong and therefore our enemy,” Brown said.
Read further and watch a video
Additional Reading and viewing
If the Atheists and the Christians Debate, Islam Wins!
A Slight Twist Makes David Attenborough a Great Teacher for God of the Abrahamic Faiths
Da Vinci code and the search for the Holy Grail
Science: The Only Present Day Arbiter Between Religions?