Introduction As a child I used to go to chapel a lot. As well as morning mass on Sundays, I’d go to rosary and benediction on Sunday evenings, mass every morning before school, and confession on Saturdays. But I’d often go on my own too, when the chapel was empty and quiet, not so much to pray as to reflect, with all the intensity particular to elevenyear-old Catholic girls. One morning, while I was trying to visualize the glories of heaven, I was overwhelmed by the thought that God was just an invention constructed by humans to explain things they didn’t yet understand. Feeling the very structure of everything I’d built my inner life around crumbling away, I tried as hard as I could to push this intrusive thought away. But I was powerless in the face of it. This was a pivotal moment. Remembering it now, I can still see exactly which pew I was kneeling in – next to the Station of the Cross where Veronica wipes the face of Jesus – and I can vividly recall my dismay.
The big questions After that I still went to chapel but the heart had gone out of my devotions. As I entered my teens I turned away from religion altogether, and towards science. I reckoned that if God had just been an explanation for everything in the universe that wasn’t understood, then surely science, particularly the study of physics, would be a better bet in trying to find wisdom in relation to life’s mysteries. I put my hopes on science to provide me with the answers to questions that all began with the word ‘Why?’ But after four years at university, although I gained an honours degree in natural philosophy (as the study of pure physics was called in Scottish universities), and could get my head around mathematical formulas that could fill half this Introduction
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