God usually becomes a subject of intense interest whenever stresses build within civilizations. Dangers of any kind, whether wars or natural disasters, commonly invoke a review of the threatened culture’s theology. Easter Islanders, for example, responded to their collapsing ecology by undertaking a frenzy of statue-building, a final supplication to their deities before totally abandoning their religion.

Other stresses create different theological effects. The global terrorism now wracking the world has stimulated vigorous exchanges between Moslems and Christians. Within the Christian community, much debate has been engendered by recent advances in almost every branch of science, whether this be medicine, bio technology, physics, chemistry or geology. All seem to intrude and threaten the property once considered the private domain of religion. Stem cell research and genetic testing, fertility treatment and in-vitro fertilization, sex selection and genetic manipulation all trespass on issues once interpreted religiously.

And this is just the beginning. Genetic engineering is custom-designing bacterial organisms to produce industrial products and is tailor-making crops for agricultural needs. Plants are being “built” to grow medicines. Insects are being genetically manipulated to combat diseases. Pigs with added human genes are being grown so their transplanted heart valves and other organs will not be rejected by human recipients. Fish genes are being added to tomatoes in a cross-phylum mating free-for-all unseen since before the Garden of Eden. Creation and the Creator are pitted against Darwinism and evolution in constant debate. J. Craig Venter, America’s most famous private-enterprise genetic researcher, is now collecting DNA information on thousands of unique marine proteins; one of his objectives is to construct a living organism from raw chemicals. And these are just the first of the escalating incompatibilities between human ingenuity and religious beliefs.

These conflicts seem to occur primarily in the Western world where the two principal religions, Christianity and Islam, take such matters more seriously than in Eastern religions. This is because Christianity and Islam are both linear. With a clear beginning (Creation) and a prescribed ending (The Day of Judgment), everything between becomes critically important. Similarly, the time between birth and death is a once-in-eternity opportunity to think and act correctly. Right or wrong and good or bad are rewarded and punished in absolute terms. Life is very, very serious.

Much less of this theological brinkmanship applies in Eastern religions, where the understanding of existence tends to be circular rather than linear; if we don’t get it right this time, there is always another chance. In Hinduism, for example, the science versus religion debate is less likely to occur because the universe and everything in it is merely the great god Brahman thinking itself into and out of existence in the endless combinations and permutations of its own mind-stuff. In Eastern religions, generally, life and death turn in rhythm with nature’s balances and harmonies. When viewed from this wider perspective, Western religion has invented much of its conflict with science.

The environmental changes that are now beginning to shake the planet are generating a new dilemma for Western religions. “Acts of God” have always been understood as natural anomalies decreed by Jehovah or Allah. Fine weather and generous harvests are a benevolence bestowed by an approving god; floods and droughts are punishments justified by religious explanation.

But climate change is eroding this explanation. We now know that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are heating the planet, altering weather patterns and creating the irregularities once ascribed to divine causes. The more we know about climate anomalies, the more does the responsibility for weather-related “Acts of God” transfer to us.

If our collective human behaviour is increasing the intensity of storms, prolonging droughts, compounding rainfall, and causing innumerable other disturbing climate changes, then divine authority is diminished in direct proportion to the rise in our influence. The omnipotent authority we once allocated to the heavens is now beginning to weigh upon ourselves.

This shift in authority is one of the forces that is provoking so much discussion these days, particularly between Christians and atheists. While the question of free choice has always been a subject for enthusiastic theological debate, the intensity has increased with the impact of human influence on the planet’s environment. Each increase in our ingenuity and influence seems to polarize the opinions further and heighten the fever of disagreement. Where do we allocate responsibility for our fate?

This is an existential and theological issue of profound significance, with huge ramifications for both our secular and religious understanding. In Christian theology, since humanity’s eviction from the Garden, we have taken increasing control of both ourselves and the world of Creation. The forbidden fruit we metaphorically ate from the Tree of Knowledge has proven to be far more nourishing and dangerous than we ever imagined.

Total responsibility, existentialists argue, is the heaviest of all burdens. In Christian theological terms, what we once received for free from nature’s generosity, we are increasingly having to earn and sustain by labour, vigilance and supervision. If we now fail at this task, the consequences are unthinkable. And this is the essence of the dispute between religion and science. Do we live by believing and trusting in divine providence, or do we live by learning and acting with all the ingenuity we can muster? The stakes have never been higher. And we are now feeling the stresses.