Metaphors for divine intervention abounded at the God and Science conference held by King's College London's Centre for Philosophical Studies last week. The more empirically minded delegates hunted fruitlessly round the conference hall for a pulley that would release the window blinds. But a passing reverend - Richard Burridge, dean of the college - revealed that rather than searching for the truth within the system he had referred instead to the porters lodge, some distance from the assembly hall and discovered there a control room from which the blinds were operated.