In the empty chapel at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, Owen Gingerich settles into a pew. He has come to England from Harvard to give a lecture on that archetypal struggle between science and religion — Galileo's conflict with the Vatican — and the thorny questions surrounding scriptural faith and scientific fact are much on his mind.

"Dare a scientist believe in design? In an intelligent designer of the universe?" he asks, his steady, measured voice echoing faintly in the quiet, shadowy room. He is repeating an interviewer's question, which was itself drawn from the text of one of Gingerich's voluminous output of books, articles and scholarly monographs during his long career.

"It seems to me that the bottom line is, yes," he says. "But this is a complex question, however," he adds quickly. "'Intelligent design' has become a code word for something that is very controversial. I hope my position on the topic is nuanced in a way that is different from the code word. Thus, I wouldn't consider myself part of the intelligent design movement, even though I believe that there is a God as a designer, who happens to be using the evolutionary process to achieve larger goals — which are, as far as we human beings can see, [the development of] self-consciousness and conscience."

While Gingerich objects to the more simplistic notions of "intelligent design" — such as the blinkered "creationism" that erupted in Kansas this summer — he finds strict Darwinism to be equally unsatisfactory.

"The idea of design is contrasted to the kind of randomness of classical Darwinian evolution — non-directed, without a goal, without purpose. Now, that is a way of looking at the scientific record. But I am offended by some of the evolutionists who not only use this as a working relation, but declare that this how the universe is, that evolution teaches us the nature of the universe. And I say, No — it is just a working rule for one way of going about making an explanation."

But here too, his position is carefully nuanced. "Having said that, I do think we have to look at what the universe is telling us. And plainly, it is telling us that there are a lot of interrelationships between all living creatures, whether they are plants or animals. We find this incredible relationship in the DNA structures. For example, some people are shocked to hear that we share 98.4 percent of our genes with chimpanzees — but we also share a certain percentage of our genes with bananas!" he laughs.

"It's also plain that living things are built up by what Jacques Monod calls bricolage, like the do-it-yourself homeowner who uses whatever washers or screws or gizmos that happen to be at hand to fix things. Life on earth is strongly conditioned by its antecedents, and everywhere you find what Darwin would have called imperfect adaptations. I was particularly impressed by seeing the red-footed boobies on the Galapagos Islands, web-footed ducks who nest in trees. This is clearly an adaptation, because here was a niche and there were the ducks, who happened to get there first before birds with talons, who you might more reasonably expect to find in these trees.

"The world is filled with examples like these," he says, "so I can't accept a view that says God has independently designed and individually created all these ingenious organisms. I would have to say that God has worked out his purposes in other ways, such as setting into motion a universe that has the potentialities of life."

One of the key concepts in Gingerich's thought is the idea of coherence. In light of the findings of modern science, he says, which view is the most coherent, which makes the most logical sense: that of a universe driven by design, or one that has been thrown together by random chance?

"What interests me is the fact that science doesn't march ahead by proofs," he says. "Science advances by coherency, not proof. I've written about this extensively."

For example, in Science and Theology: Questions at the Interface, Gingerich says: "Newton had no proof the earth moved or that the sun was the center of the planetary system. Yet without that assumption, his system didn't make sense. What he had was an elaborate and highly successful scheme of both explanation and prediction. Most people had no trouble believing it, but what they were accepting as truth was a grand scheme whose validity rested on coherence, not proof. Now, if we understand that science's great success has been in the production of a remarkably coherent view of nature than in an intricately dovetailed set of proofs, then I would argue that a belief in design can also have a legitimate place in human understanding, even if it falls short of proof."

As the afternoon shadows shift slowly around the Wycliffe chapel, Gingerich returns to this theme. The data of science is forever open to interpretation, to the unavoidable vagaries of human subjectivity, he says. Richard Dawkins looks at the scientific record and sees a "blind watchmaker," a mechanistic process without rhyme or reason; others, like Gingerich, see "astonishing details in the physical world" that speak clearly of design.

These include the almost unbelievably fine balance of chemical and biological processes necessary to create and sustain life in the universe, a balance in which the minutest change in the formation of certain atoms — such as the all-important "carbon-oxygen resonance" — would have killed all possibility of organic life.

"It depends on how you choose to look at it, on what you make of the data," he says. He likens the scientific record to another structure of ordered information: music. "Someone from another age or culture — or a different planet — might encounter a work and hear nothing more than a cacophony of sounds; but to us it would be Mozart. For some of us, then, hearing Mozart — seeing purpose and design — is a more coherent way of looking at all the data at our disposal. There is coherence. It makes sense." He pauses for a moment.

"Otherwise, the universe is just a macabre joke."

But yet again, the nuances come into play. Although Gingerich has written insightfully about "natural theology" — the notion of approaching an understanding of God through the exercise of reason, examining the natural world without recourse to special revelation — he recognizes that it is a "one-way street."

"You can only get so far with these arguments from natural design," he says. "If you are already within a scriptural tradition, then, yes, you can go back and understand the scriptures in a modern scientific framework. You realize that of course the scriptural account is historically situated in a very different scientific climate, but nevertheless, it is still possible to make sense of it within modern science. But I think this runs only in one direction. You can start with the scriptures and look at the natural world, but it's very difficult to look at the natural world and from that deduce that there should be a figure like Jesus Christ. It seems to me there is a striking discontinuity."

Thus you cannot get from the idea of a intelligent creator — even a nuanced one who eschews supernatural intervention in favor of natural processes like evolution — to the specific, historically conditioned revelation of this creator in the life and person of Jesus of Nazareth (or other manifestations of deity). Scientific truth can only carry you so far toward God, says Gingerich; religious belief remains, in the end, a leap of faith.

But not a blind leap, he quickly points out. "Faith is very closely akin to hope. It is also based on an element of trust. When you use the phrase 'leap of faith,' there is always the implication that it is in some way a blind leap. But it is not a blind leap. It's a decision based on trust and on hope, rather than simply flipping a coin and doing something blindly."

The interview is near an end; the agon of Galileo and Pope Urban VIII awaits. But Gingerich presses home a final thought. Science cannot offer proof of a creator, he says, but scientific arguments and data can help build up the trust needed to make the move of faith — a move that is not so much a leap, he says upon further reflection, not a wild, heedless bound, but something quieter, more clear-eyed and considered.

"A step of faith," he says. "That's a better way to put it. Not a leap, but a step."

Chris Floyd is the Associate Editor of Science & Spirit.