Noted scientist and best-selling novelist Alan Lightman, a Memphis native, asks what are the boundaries between science and religion, the two greatest forces that have shaped human civilization. What are the different kinds of knowledge in science and in religion? And how do we come by those different kinds of knowledge? Members of the Faith in Memphis panel respond.

I find no theological conflict with scientific knowledge. Knowledge leads us to our foundations. Science explains what God established at creation. That which humans verify in nature, mathematically or by pure reason becomes one less thing to fear. God gave us the inclination to investigate the world resulting in experience and consequence. Psalm 8 demonstrates very well the mind of man penetrating the mysteries of God. The appeal of the unknown encourages us to affirm the word of God that we really have dominion. The creator, himself compels us to know and interpret the Cosmos and because there is order, therefore God is moral. God has granted humankind the gift of intellect and it is natural for humans to search for answers with respect to the immediate and the hidden. We have never failed to prove the world has balance. We are a creation that has never been bound by our physical limitations. To a varying degree, limitations have prompted our intellectual pursuits. Faith in God is the underlying principle in education because we affirm in faith what God has done before we make discovery. In a sense humankind is limitless because we are rational creatures and that rationality takes us to God, who stirs our impulse for discovery.