A Point of View

BBC NEWS: "In his weekly opinion column, Brian Walden considers the gap between science and religion - and what this might mean for the future of humankind. Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, wrote something recently that chilled me to the bone. Sir Martin is the winner of the Michael Faraday Prize awarded annually by the Royal Society for excellence in communicating scientific ideas in lay terms. In my case he did almost too good a job. He pointed out that though the idea of evolution is well-known, the vast potential for further evolution isn't yet part of our common culture. He then gave an example. He said: 'It will not be humans who witness the demise of the Sun six billion years hence; it will be entities as different from us as we are from bacteria.'"