Great Quote, Great Lesson...

My wife and I have been watching a show called Numb3rs (no typo there...). It's an FBI show about a team that, with the help of the brilliant mathematician brother of the lead team member, is able to solve all sorts of crimes. We're in the middle of the second season (YAY DVD!!!). Last night we watched an episode about an archeological find that would have challenged the rights of a local Native American Tribe to gaming, a tribe that truly believed they were the first ever in the area, and that the land was given to them from the beginning of time by the Great Spirit. This find, a skull ten thousand years old, would have brought that right into question.

At the end of the episode, after the crime committed had been solved, the mathematician is sitting with his colleague (and best friend). The two were discussing the case and what the discovery of the skull means. Here's what they said, and I think it resonates beautifully with one of the themes of this blog about faith and science:

Real faith cannot transcend knowledge. It needs to adapt to it and embrace it. And boned, they don't make the man, and they sure don't make the soul...

Let's take a look at this. Real faith, if indeed it is true, can not only explain science and bring it up to a level of Kedusha and give one appreciation for God's works, it can, and will, accept the science and use the science to better explain God's world. On the other hand, the bones, the scientific side of things, do not make the man or soul. They are merely components, parts of a whole and cannot exist as life without faith and soul.

I thought this was a beautiful concept.