I've been reading a book on apologetics called Beyond Opinion by Ravi Zacharias and it contains a chapter dealing with scientific challenges to Christianity. There is a bunch of good stuff to learn in this book, I recommend that you read it yourself, but I wanted to raise a couple of the points the book deals with and see what you all think about them.

The basic questions raised by the book are:

1. are science and faith mutually exclusive? in other words can the universe be explained by ONLY one or the other approaches, or does it require a combination of both to truly understand the essence of the universe?
2. what (if any) nature and role does faith have in the pursuit of science?
3. what would be your response to statements such as this one by Bertrand Russel: “Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific method; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know”.

Does anybody have any beliefs one way or the other about the points listed here? If so why do you believe what you do? Let 'er rip!

I agree with you! This is what the book says about the quote in #3:

Russell's statement is not a statement of science, so if his statement is true we cannot know it, which contradicts the very assertion being made! It is therefore incoherent.

An example is given of a Ford motor car. If someone with no understanding of science were to see a car for the first time they might be led to believe that there is a “god” inside the car's engine making it go. If that person were to study engineering and take apart the car's engine he would realize that there is no “god” inside the engine, and also that he did not need to introduce the idea of “god” as an explanation for it working – the physics of internal combustion are adequate to explain this.

I think even atheists would agree that if this person were to conclude that his understanding of how the engine worked made it impossible to believe in a being who designed and created the engine in the first place, that conclusion would be considered rediculous. Why then is it so hard or “irrational” to believe that the same principle applies to the creation of the universe itself, which is infinitely more vast and complicated than an engine?