The first Federal Budget from the Rudd administration included a number of welcome initiatives to assist the scientific community in Australia. These were warmly greeted by those who appreciate the importance of technical competence to national compet­itiveness in today's global economy, and especially by us university types who devote our careers to training young sci­entists. We worry about the growing problem of attracting the best and brightest to key disciplines such as chemistry and physics, wringing our hands as kids compete like ants around a sugar bowl for law and medicine degrees while science courses barely fill their quotas.

With looming global issues such as the depletion of energy reserves and a grow­ing food shortage, strong scientific expertise is needed to ensure Australia can develop new solutions to these problems. Acknowledging this problem the Rudd government introduced new fiscal mea­sures such as a reduction in the HECS debt incurred by science students as well as funding packages to support 1000 med­ical researchers across the nation.

As wise as these steps are, it's worth pausing to consider whether other non­financial factors might contribute to the waning of scientific interest among young Australians. While our political over class wants us to think they're in the driver's seat when it comes to Australian science, able to change gears and press the accelerator to speed the migration of young Australians into science, what if our cur­rent malaise goes deeper than this? Could our present problems reflect powerful cultural factors that are largely beyond the immediate reach of government?

We could consider many issues in this context, but I'd like to highlight a simple but provocative factor that might contribute to our current predicament. In a nutshell, my idea is that since the Christian faith played a key role in catalysing the development of science within the Western world, the weakening of the Christian worldview in Western societies including Australia will likely produce a corresponding decline in inter­est in science.

To my academic colleagues, long con­ditioned to believe that Christianity is inherently anti-scientific, this idea is met with either indignant hostility or howls of laughter. But I believe it is time for us to get over this undergraduate, knee-jerk attitude. A fair-minded consideration of the historical factors underlying the rise of modern science suggests that there are many ways in which Christianity made the Western world safe for science.

First, as the great historic creeds of the church assert, a fundamental conviction of Christianity is that the God we worship is "the Maker of heaven and earth". In the Christian worldview, the universe is held to be law-like, running predictably according to physical laws upheld by its wise and benevolent Creator. In Christian societies this faith produced widespread confidence in the regularity of the world. This factor alone was a vital ingredient in the emergence of modern science.

Second, a related conviction was that since the same God designed both the external world and the human mind, humans were capable of understanding nature.

These basic Christian beliefs about the relationship between humans and the uni­verse provided a much more welcoming environment for science than that prevail­ing in pagan societies where nature was considered unfriendly, unpredictable and unknowable.

Thirdly, the superiority of the Biblical creation narrative over its pagan equiva­lents was another factor in cultivating science within Christian societies. Since the early chapters of Genesis are often ridiculed by Christianity's cultured despisers or subjected to intense debate by Christians in different interpretive schools, it's easy to overlook the deep footprint the Book of Genesis left on the Western mind. As science historian Stanley Jaki notes, the early chapters of the Bible are "animated by an uncompromising consistency of explanation which is the hallmark of scientific reasoning. In Genesis 2 there is only one effective cause, the power of God ... (Genesis 2) exudes a clear atmosphere undisturbed by what turns all other ancient cosmogonies into dark and dispirited confusion: infighting among the gods."

A fourth way in which Christianity paved the way for science was by creating a cultural mood that prized truthfulness. Few things are more important to science than the ability of researchers to trust reports from other laboratories, allowing them to build on their insights. According to Professor Jaki, this cultural ethos is even more important than individual sci­entific discoveries.

Scientific breakthroughs, or new scientific instruments, are never easy to make. But they should appear to be child's play when compared to the task of bringing about a never-before experienced cultural or rather moral climate in which the good, right and truthful are accorded, in principle at least, unconditional respect.

Because of the importance of these biblical virtues to the practice of sci­ence, it's no surprise that in historical terms, science got its first stable footing within the Protestant cultures of Northern Europe. The free preaching of the Bible together with new social liberties afforded by the Reformation facili­tated the emergence of dynamic scientific communities in Scotland, Germany, Holland, England and later in the Protestant settler societies of the USA, Canada and Australia. With its strong emphases on the glory of God, the love of nature as His handiwork, the welfare of the common people, and the priesthood of all believers, Protestantism provided rich fuel for the emerging scientific quest.

As Alister McGrath put it in Christianity's Dangerous Idea, his recent book on the social impact of Protestantism,

A persistent theme throughout the works of John Calvin was that the wisdom of the invisible and intangible God might be discerned and studied through His works ... Calvin thus commended — and even ventured to express some little jealousy of — natural scien­tists.

It's no surprise that Christians steeped in Calvin's thought, such as the Puritans and their theological descen­dents, punched far above their weight during the critical 17^th and 18^th centuries during which modem science found its feet.

The Protestant mindset also aided the emergence of science by promoting thoughtfulness and seriousness. Popular Puritan works such as The Pilgrim's Progress emphasised that the life we now live is a testing-ground for the eternal life to come. Although deeply concerned about the well-being of church, family and state, above all the Puritans took their personal lives very seriously, carefully cul­tivating habits of self-control and self-discipline. These personal, self-sacrificial qualities were very evident among great pioneers of Western science such as Robert Boyle, the father of chemistry; John Ray, the great English botanist; John Dalton, the inventor of atomic theory; and, later in the 19^th century, the great Scottish physicist and Presbyterian layman James Clerk Maxwell. Today's massive scientific enterprise rests on a histor­ical foundation comprising the powerful Protestant combination of a clear, inquisitive mind, personal piety and extraordinary self-discipline.

Such was the success of Reformational Christianity in sustaining the scientific endeavour that a decade or so ago the French scholar Pierre Chaunu could boast that societies shaped by Calvin and Zwingli had claimed 80% of Nobel prizes and 90% of patents for usable inventions.

But before we start getting too big for our breeches we must sadly note an unin­tended consequence of Protestantism that opened the door to the stark secularism that now grips the Western mind. For as Os Guinness noted years ago, the Reformation gave humanity so much freedom under God that it was free to walk away from Him. With the benefit of hindsight, it is ironic that the turning from Christianity among Western intellectuals was inspired by one of Protestantism's greatest cultural achievements, the scientific endeavour. Like a man having used a ladder to climb unto a balcony, only to kick it away and declare himself free from the need for ladders, in the late 19^th century a sustained effort was made to divorce Western sci­ence from its Christian underpinnings.

A flood of books appeared promoting the idea that Christianity was fundamentally opposed to science, such as Draper's bestselling History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875), White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), and later in 1925, Simpson's Landmarks in the Struggle between Science and Religion. Although modern research has cast considerable doubt on the historical evidence these books present to support the notion of "warfare" between science and religion, the idea that Christianity is the enemy of science remains entrenched in the Western imagination.

This brings us back to our original topic, the seeming disinterest in science among large numbers of young Australians. My suggestion is that this loss of scientific interest is an indirect consequence of the spiritual vacuum that now exists throughout the Western world.

I used the image of a car hurtling along a freeway as a metaphor for the modern scientific enterprise. Our politicians would like us to think that they can accelerate the car in response to emerging needs for scientific and technical compe­tence, but what if the car's progress is instead fuelled by centuries of accumulated cultural momentum that was inspired by Christianity? Now that Christianity in general, and Protestantism in particular, is greatly diminished throughout the West, could it be that the petrol tank on which science has been drawing is near depletion? Is the scientific enterprise running on empty?

Painting the scenario this way highlights a deep problem facing Western soci­eties in many areas of contemporary life, namely the inadequacy of secularism to supply viable alternatives to Christian motivations for forms of behaviour that once ensured the cultural pre-eminence of the West. In place of the self-disciplined, others-focussed concern of the Christian worldview, postmodernism promotes a radically individualistic mindset that cele­brates self-expression and freedom from restraint. This outlook produces a society that seems incapable of taking anything seriously.

Twenty years ago, Amusing Ourselves to Death by US academic Neil Postman highlighted how a superficial, television-saturated mentality was corrupting modern politics, academia and religion, but his book failed to explore how this ethos would affect the scientific world. For among all the social behaviours of human beings, few depend so heavily on habits of seriousness and thoughtfulness as the practice of science. While other sectors of society such as the entertainment industry can thrive in our new social setting, the scientific culture seems particularly vulnerable to ero­sion by the hedonistic, celebrity-obsessed and ultimately relativistic worldview that has displaced Christianity. As US researcher Dr Paul Anderson put it in his speech on receiving the 2006 Priestly Medal, a prestigious award for high-achieving industrial chemists, "a culture that would rather be entertained than be engaged in innovation will not continue to be an economic powerhouse."

Jesus told a wonderful story about a young man who grew up in a wealthy family but rebelled against his father and squandered his inheritance on "riotous living". His resources exhausted, he finally came to his senses and returned to a welcome reception thrown by his father that exceeded his wildest dreams. In much the same way, Australian society might yet discover that a return to historic Christianity produces the most unexpected of happy outcomes: a rejuvenation of its scientific enterprise.