But the moment one photon is observed the polarisation of the other

But the moment one photon is observed, the polarisation of the other becomes fixed. There has been no communication between the two, yet, by observing one, we are influencing the atomic process which produced both. If that process holds true within a laboratory then it must also hold true across the scale of the universe. It is possible to imagine such an atomic process taking place in a distant galaxy and the photons taking billions of years to reach us. We would thus be influencing processes within that galaxy by pointing our telescope at it.

It is arguable that an observer, be it a mouse, an astronomer or even a computerised detection system, could have the same effect. In some real sense the act of observation is a creative one.That leads to the greatest heresy of all, the final anthropic principle. If the universe is dependent on conscious observers deducing knowledge of it for its very existence, then knowledge and consciousness must come to pervade the entire universe, for without its place in consciousness nothing in the universe can have existence. Scientists such as the US physicist Frank Tippler, who have proposed this, provoke extreme reactions among their peers. Yet all they are saying is what mystical religions have been saying for centuries - that the universe is held in consciousness.THE ATHEISTSThere are many scientists who feel that they do not need any religious belief or even a philosophy beyond that of science itself to explain the universe Some of them are particularly outspoken on the subject.

The biologist Professor Lewis Wolpert, of University College, London, says that he can find no evidence in science for a god, and that if there were one he can find no evidence that such a god would match that of any religion Wolpert upholds the dualism formulated by Galileo. "Science," he says, "is about the external world and does not need God. The world of religion is an internal world and thus unverifiable. Science and religion have no common ground whatsoever."Another outspoken critic of attempts to bring God into science is Professor Richard Dawkins, also a biologist, from Oxford. The title of his book The Blind Watchmaker turns on its head the assertion of the 18th-century English theologian William Paley, who stated that the likelihood of the intricate structure of the world being the result of chance is comparable to the suggestion that a watch might have been assembled by random causes.