Religion and science are different things and we need them both.
Science is about explanation. Religion is about meaning.
There’s a view expressed by Epicurus, Nietzsche and Nobel Prize winning physicist Steve Weinberg, that life is meaningless. I don’t mean individual lives. We each live, and dream, and pursue our dreams. But on their view, the universe is blind to our existence, indifferent to our suffering. We are born, we live, we die, and it is as if we had never been.
On Rosh Hashanah we dare to believe otherwise: that life does have meaning; that there is a Presence, vaster than the universe yet closer to us than we are to ourselves, who lifts us when we fall, and forgives us when we fail.
Over 3000 years, empires have come and gone, but the Jews still survive. Surely, the continued existence of the Jewish people, despite centuries of persecution, proves God’s existence.