Ken Masugi conducts a fascinating interview with Father James V. Schall, S.J., in which they range widely over many topics (disasters, Tolkien, liberal education, to name just a few). By the by, Schall offers this implicit response to those who distinguish in too facile a manner between science and religion:

Both theology and philosophy seek to know the whole of things, including divine and human things. Their paths may be different, but they cross here and there. Just because they have two different methods and starting points, they do not deal with two different worlds. Rather there is one world and all that is in it, a world that need not exist at all. This latter implies a cause of existence that need not create the world from some necessity in Himself.(My emphasis.)

Stated another way, the alternative to Schall’s position (that if the world isn’t necessary, then there is a cause that creates it) is that the world is its own cause. Either there is a "God" (about whose relationship with and love for us this argument doesn’t give us many details, certainly not enough to identify this "God" with the God of the Bible) or, in effect, "the world," being its own cause, is "God."

Read the whole thing, which is much, much better than my blathering commentary.