A packed theater audience listened and participated eagerly in a serious yet congenial discussion of religion, science, and their influence on everyday life Monday night.

Entitled "The God Delusion," the lecture was held in Miller Theater and featured a lively dialogue between Alister McGrath, a professor of historical theology at Oxford University, and David Helfand, the chair of Columbia's astronomy department. Throughout the evening, the two debated the contentious question of "are science and religion incompatible?" It was the second of two such discussions held this fall by Columbia's Veritas Forum. Ron Choong, from New York's Academy of Christian Thought, moderated the discourse on religion and science as they were presented in Richard Dawkins' book, also titled The God Delusion.

Dawkins, a British evolutionary scientist, wrote that the science of evolution disproves the existence of a god and the abolishment of religion will effectively do away with violence.

The story of McGrath and Helfand's individual paths to the beliefs they hold today is a story of dynamic change. McGrath made the "pilgrimage from atheism to Christian belief". Helfand, on the other hand, who had a Methodist mother and Jewish father, found himself one day trying to calculate the intensity of the sound waves needed to break down the walls of Jericho. "This is silly," he said, referring to his not spending more time on his interest in science. He eventually became an atheist.

"The point I simply want to make is that I wonder if religion were simply to be abolished whether the violence we see would actually disappear," responded McGrath to Dawkins' book. Helfand agreed, but added, "Atheism also has been a cause of violence."

Both speakers had the same opinion of science as a limited endeavor.

"I don't think science can prove anything," said Helfand who described science as only a method of describing the natural world through models and not a way of explaining why things are the way they are.

The discussion, however, was not without its points of disagreement. "I don't think why we are here is an intellectual question. I agree science can't answer it. I just simply don't find it interesting," said Helfand.

"It seems to me to be a question many people would want to ask," responded McGrath. "Maybe we need to look somewhere else if this question can be answered at all."