Several years ago I was a guest at a dinner party at which the hostess made a remark that stuck in my mind. It was just after the taking of the American embassy in Iran, and we were all rather upset and worried about the fate of the hostages. After a while, my hostess said something to the effect that she envied, or almost envied, the consolation that their intense faith in Islam must give the Iranian people, and that we are in a disconsolate position because "science has taught us that the universe is an uncaring machine."