Mal Fletcher comments

This is not the realm of science at all, but that of faith.

Some would argue that this is the purview of theology and philosophy, yet in a sense even they can't help us. They are academic constructs which try to systematize what is in reality non-systematic and subjective.

Worthy though they are, in the end it's only a very personal faith that can help us bridge the gap between the mystical or transcendent and the real or mundane.

Yes, faith is subjective. But that doesn't mean that it is not rooted in objective realities. For example, there would be no Christian faith without the actual historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth.

And everything involving human beings is, to some degree, subjective - including science.

The scientific philosopher Thomas Kuhn showed how scientists, being human, must base their findings not simply on the facts they see - but on the assumptions they make about those facts.

They rely upon those assumptions in order to build paradigms and theories which they can then test through experiments.

The scientist takes a paradigm, based on partly subjective assumptions, and uses it as a basis for further exploration. So, in a sense, even scientists must place their 'faith' in something, before they can prove anything.

For a long while now, our overly-secularized, materialistic culture has preached a dogma that relegates faith to the realm of harmless eccentricity. Science, says this belief system, is concerned with facts, while faith deals with fantasy.

In fact, in the wake of scientists like Darwin many people have grown up thinking of science as a "no God" zone. But there have always been many scientists, including some very big names, who've had a strong religious faith.

There still are. These people see no conflict between pure science and faith. In fact, some of them have come to faith because of science, not in spite of it.

In response to the fuss about super colliders this week, many people of faith will ask: 'What came before the Big Bang?' If everything that exists must have a cause, going back far enough should bring us eventually to a great uncaused cause - or, in religious terms, God.

But that particular journey, beyond the physical into the metaphysical or spiritual, isn't one that we can take using science. The existence of God will never be proven in a laboratory.

In fact, the existence of God is probably not as important a subject as the nature and character of God. After all, if God is a complete tyrant, a celestial psychopath, we're all in a lot of trouble and the future isn't bright.

We might say that science, at its best, honours the Creator and helps equip us to be better stewards of his cosmic creation. And, in these fast-paced, demanding times, I think we should all be grateful for the life-enhancing (and often life-saving) technologies science has given us.

But unless we're willing to explore the questions of faith, to shake off our present preoccupation with pure secularism and pop-atheism, we can't possibly claim to be anywhere near unlocking the deepest mysteries of life in our universe.

Knowing our deepest selves - and knowing God - is not something we can achieve by colliding photons.