Many of you may already know Lee Abbey – the wonderful Christian Holiday and Retreat Centre near Lynton in North Devon – but it was great to be able to spend a week there earlier this month, free to immerse myself in science, faith and the wonders of God’s creation.

It always bugs me to hear the faith of youngsters being challenged along the lines ‘They can’t be proper Christians if they don’t accept Genesis 1 ‘literally’’… i.e. unless they’re prepared to accept that creation happened about 6000 years ago, following a strict 6-day timeline and with no hint of evolution!

As our children / grandchildren and their teachers look forward to a new academic year – are we doing enough to defend the young people we know against attacks like this before the issue becomes an enormous stumbling block for them? Is it something we ever talk about?

After a long delay – apologies – a long-awaited revision of teaching resources has now been drafted for God’s Cosmic Cookbook.

All life on earth (and likely all life anywhere) is based on the element carbon. Of all the atoms (all the elements) in the universe, it’s the only one with the right sort of characteristics… It can all get a bit technical at this point, but suffice to say that whereas many types of atom like to pair up or combine with a few others, carbon is a positive ‘party animal’!!..

Doing my research for God’s Cosmic Cookbook, the biggest ‘WOW moments’ came as I stumbled on more and more examples of universe fine-tuning… the natural laws and parameters that had to be exactly and precisely right for a universe to exist and produce life.

Did they make me religious????