Dr. John C. Polkinghorne examines whether a personal, interacting God
is a credible concept in today's scientific age. Encouraging the belief
that there is a compatibility between the insights of science and the
insights of religion, this book focuses on the viewpoint that the world is one in which both
human beings and God have the freedom to act.
A modern
understanding of the physical world is applied to questions of prayer
and providence, such as: Do miracles happen? Can prayer change anything?
Why does evil exist? Why does God allow suffering? Why does God need us
to ask him?
God's involvement in time is considered, from both a
temporal and an eternal perspective. The roles of incarnation and
sacrament are discussed in terms of whether or not they have a credible
place in today's worldview. And the Final Anthropic Principle (FAP) is
presented, with its attempt at a physical eschatology, showing it to be
an inadequate basis for hope. Real hope can reside only with God,
Polkinghorne concludes.
John C. Polkinghorne, internationally renowned priest-scientist,
addresses fundamental questions about how scientific and theological
worldviews relate to each other in this, the second volume (originally
published in 1988) of his trilogy, which also included Science and Providence and One World.
Dr. Polkinghorne illustrates how a scientifically minded person
approaches the task of theological inquiry, postulating that there
exists a close analogy between theory and experiment in science and
belief and understanding in theology. He offers a fresh perspective on
such questions as: Are we witnessing today a revival a natural
theology—the search for God through the exercise of reason and the study
of nature? How do the insights of modern physics into the interlacing
of order and disorder relate to the Christian doctrine of Creation? What
is the relationship between mind and matter?
Polkinghorne states that the "remarkable insights that science
affords us into the intelligible workings of the world cry out for an
explanation more profound than that which it itself can provide.
Religion, if it is to take seriously its claim that the world is the
creation of God, must be humble enough to learn from science what that
world is actually like. The dialogue between them can only be mutually
enriching."
In Species of Origins,
Karl W. Giberson and Donald A. Yerxa examine America's controversial
conversation about creation and evolution. While noting that part of the
discord stems from the growing cultural and religious diversity of the
United States, they argue powerfully that the real issue is the headlong
confrontation between two seemingly incompatible worldviews upon which
millions of Americans rely: modern naturalistic science and traditional
Judeo-Christian religions.
Hawking and the Mind of God examines the pseudoreligious connotations of
some of the key themes in Hawking's work, and how these shed light not
only on the Hawking cult itself, but also on the wider issue of how
scientists represent themselves in the media.
Peter Coles was born in 1963. He received his undergraduate degree from
the University of Cambridge and his doctorate from the University of Sussex. He is a professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff University. His
primary subject of interest is Cosmology and he has written numerous
books on the subject.
Many scientists regard mass and energy as the primary currency of
nature. In recent years, however, the concept of information has gained
importance. Why? In this book, eminent scientists, philosophers and
theologians chart various aspects of information, from quantum
information to biological and digital information, in order to
understand how nature works. Beginning with a historical treatment of
the topic, the book also examines physical and biological approaches to
information, and its philosophical, theological and ethical
implications.
Information and the Nature of Reality
Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen
Tim Maudlin's broad historical overview examines Aristotelian and
Newtonian accounts of space and time, and traces how Galileo's
conceptions of relativity and space-time led to Einstein's special and
general theories of relativity. Maudlin explains special relativity
using a geometrical approach, emphasizing intrinsic space-time structure
rather than coordinate systems or reference frames. He gives readers
enough detail about special relativity to solve concrete physical
problems while presenting general relativity in a more qualitative way,
with an informative discussion of the geometrization of gravity, the
bending of light, and black holes. Additional topics include the Twins
Paradox, the physical aspects of the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, the
constancy of the speed of light, time travel, the direction of time,
and more.
In this concise book, Tim Maudlin, introduces nonphysicists to the core philosophical
issues surrounding the nature and structure of space and time, and is
also an ideal resource for physicists interested in the conceptual
foundations of space-time theory.
This 1896 volume by Reverend J. A. Zahm, a professor of physics at the
University of Notre Dame, considers the Catholic theological tradition
as it relates to evolution. The author discusses Darwin's theory of
evolution in detail, and traces the debate between theologians and
scientists back to the early days of evolutionary theory. He compares
late nineteenth-century evolutionary theory and the beliefs of the
Catholic church, carefully evaluating the arguments and probing errors
and misconceptions in theory and terminology. He also attempts to shed
light on the little-understood relations between evolutionism and
Christianity as a whole, and discusses whether a person of any Christian
denomination can be an evolutionist. Zahm's thoughtful work is
considered to be one of the most important volumes on evolution ever
written by a Catholic.
Here are some facts you probably didn't learn in school:
- People in the Middle Ages did not think the world was flat. In fact, medieval scholars could prove it wasn't
- The Inquisition never executed anyone
because of their scientific ideas or discoveries (actually, the Church
was the chief sponsor of scientific research and several popes were
celebrated for their knowledge of the subject)
- It was medieval
scientific discoveries, methods, and principles that made possible
western civilization's Scientific Revolution
If you were taught
that the Middle Ages were a time of intellectual stagnation,
superstition, and ignorance, you were taught a myth that has been
utterly refuted by modern scholarship.
As a physicist and historian of science James Hannam shows in his book, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, without the scholarship of the "barbaric" Middle Ages, modern science simply would not exist.
The
Middle Ages were a time of one intellectual triumph after another. As
Dr. Hannam writes, "The people of medieval Europe invented spectacles,
the mechanical clock, the windmill, and the blast furnace by themselves.
Lenses and cameras, almost all kinds of machinery, and the industrial
revolution itself all owe their origins to the forgotten inventors of
the Middle Ages."
The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and
uncivilised behaviour. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there
could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution.
In God's Philosophers, James Hannam debunks many of the myths about
the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth
was flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere; the Inquisition
burnt nobody for their science nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution;
no Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero.
God's Philosophers is a celebration of the forgotten scientific
achievements of the Middle Ages - advances which were often made thanks
to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam.
Decisive progress was also made in technology: spectacles and the
mechanical clock, for instance, were both invented in thirteenth-century
Europe.
Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, God's
Philosophers brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses
like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as
putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like
Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Contrary to prevailing opinion, the roots of modern science were planted
in the ancient and medieval worlds long before the Scientific
Revolution of the seventeenth century. Indeed, that revolution would
have been inconceivable without the cumulative antecedent efforts of
three great civilisations: Greek, Islamic, and Latin. With the
scientific riches it derived by translation from Greco-Islamic sources
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Christian Latin
civilisation of Western Europe began the last leg of the intellectual
journey that culminated in a scientific revolution that transformed the
world. The factors that produced this unique achievement are found in
the way Christianity developed in the West, and in the invention of the
university in 1200. As this 1997 study shows, it is no mere coincidence
that the origins of modern science and the modern university occurred
simultaneously in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages.
Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who
has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain,
tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of
the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human beings possessed of
reflective consciousness. Eccles traces the line of human evolutionary
descent through developments such as skilled bipedal walking and dawning
spirituality, linking them with the growth of the human brain. He
conjectures that the beginning of human language came with Homo
habilis and its greatly enlarged brain, while the mystery of
self-consciousness is related to the newly developing neocortical areas
of the brain.
Harvard University researcher Edward Green shows how four forces —ideology, politics, a fixation on technology, and money— have produced AIDS policy failures in Africa, where two-thirds of all AIDS victims live.
Ideological blinders have led to millions of preventable AIDS deaths in Africa. Dr. Edward C. Green, former director of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Project, describes how Western AIDS "experts" stubbornly pursued ineffective remedies and sabotaged the most successful AIDS prevention program on that ravaged continent. He calls for new emphasis on promoting sexual fidelity-the only strategy (besides male circumcision) shown to work there.
Edward C. Green is former director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard School of Health and the author of six previous books, including Rethinking AIDS Prevention, AIDS and STDs in Africa, and AIDS, Behavior, and Culture. For more than 30 years, he has worked in the field of applied anthropology and international health, conducting research in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world. He has served on boards of directors and advisory boards for many organizations, including the Presidential Advisory Council for HIV/AIDS, the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health, the UNAIDS AIDS 2031 Steering Committee, AIDS.org, and the Global Initiative for Traditional Systems of Health.
John F. Haught is Landegger Distinguished Professor of Theology
at Georgetown University and director of the Georgetown Center for the
Study of Science and Religion. He is the author of numerous books,
including God after Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview Press, 1999).
Many scientists today think of the universe as essentially
purposeless. Likewise, modern and postmodern philosophers have often
been suspicious of any religious claims that the natural world embodies
and eternal meaning or teleology. Not all scientific thinkers subscribe
to this cosmic pessimism, however, and some would even argue that
contemporary knowledge is consistent with a religious sense of cosmic
purpose.
This book offers candid reflections on the question of
cosmic purpose written both by prominent scientists and by scholars
representing the world's religious traditions. Examining the issue from a
wide variety of perspectives, this is the only current book to deal
with cosmic purpose from an interreligious and interdisciplinary
perspective.
Science and Christianity. Are they partners or opponents? Christians
have long debated the relationship of science to faith. With the rise of
Darwinism, however, the issue took on new significance. Darwinism
appeared to undermine the authority of the Bible and the credibility of
Christianity by freeing science of the need for a Creator. Rethinking
the relationship between science and Christianity quickly became a
priority.
- How does a faithful Christian respond to the pronouncements of contemporary science?
- Is science a help or a hindrance to belief?
- Are science and the Bible in conflict?
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Christians continue to
wonder whether faith and science are partners or opponents. In this book
six Christian scholars sort through the issues as they present four
different views on the relationship of science and Christianity. These
include Wayne Frair and Gary D. Patterson for "creationism," Jean Pond
for "independence," Stephen C. Meyer for "qualified agreement" and
Howard J. Van Till for "partnership." Each contributor responds to the
other scholars, noting points of agreement and disagreement. Editor
Richard F. Carlson offers an introduction to this contemporary debate as
well as a postscript to help us evaluate the strengths and weaknesses
of each view.
Sweeping in scope, penetrating in analysis, and generously illustrated
with examples from the history of science, this new and original
approach to familiar questions about scientific evidence and method
tackles vital questions about science and its place in society. Avoiding
the twin pitfalls of scientism and cynicism, noted philosopher Susan Haack argues that, fallible and flawed as they are, the natural sciences
have been among the most successful of human enterprises -- valuable
not only for the vast, interlocking body of knowledge they have
discovered, and not only for the technological advances that have
improved our lives, but as a manifestation of the human talent for
inquiry at its imperfect but sometimes remarkable best. This
wide-ranging, trenchant, and illuminating book explores the complexities
of scientific evidence, and the multifarious ways in which the sciences
have refined and amplified the methods of everyday empirical inquiry;
articulates the ways in which the social sciences are like the natural
sciences, and the ways in which they are different; disentangles the
confusions of radical rhetoricians and cynical sociologists of science;
exposes the evasions of apologists for religious resistance to
scientific advances; weighs the benefits and the dangers of technology;
tracks the efforts of the legal system to make the best use of
scientific testimony; and tackles predictions of the eventual
culmination, or annihilation, of the scientific enterprise. Writing with
verve and wry humour, in a witty, direct, and accessible style, Haack
takes readers beyond the "Science Wars" to a balanced understanding of
the value, and the limitations, of the scientific enterprise.
Feeling the Spirit of Enquiry The science delusion is the belief that
science already understands the nature of reality. The fundamental
questions are answered, leaving only the details to be filled in. In
this book, Dr Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative
scientists, shows that science is being constricted by assumptions that
have hardened into dogmas. The 'scientific worldview' has become a
belief system. All reality is material or physical. The world is a
machine, made up of dead matter. Nature is purposeless. Consciousness is
nothing but the physical activity of the brain. Free will is an
illusion. God exists only as an idea in human minds, imprisoned within
our skulls.
Sheldrake examines these dogmas scientifically, and shows
persuasively that science would be better off without them: freer, more
interesting, and more fun. In The God Delusion Richard Dawkins used
science to bash God, but here Rupert Sheldrake shows that Dawkins'
understanding of what science can do is old-fashioned and itself a
delusion.
2008 Christian Bookseller's Covention Book of the Year Award winner!
World-renowned scientist Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion:
"If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be
atheists when they put it down." The volume has received wide coverage,
fueled much passionate debate and caused not a little confusion.
Alister McGrath, along with his wife, Joanna, are ideal to evaluate
Dawkins's ideas. Once an atheist himself, he gained a doctorate in
molecular biophysics before going on to become a leading Christian
theologian. He wonders how two people, who have reflected at length on
substantially the same world, could possibly have come to such different
conclusions about God. McGrath subjects Dawkins's critique of faith to
rigorous scrutiny. His exhilarating, meticulously argued response deals
with questions such as
- Is faith intellectual nonsense?
- Are science and religion locked in a battle to the death?
- Can the roots of Christianity be explained away scientifically?
- Is Christianity simply a force for evil?
This book will be warmly received by those looking for a reliable assessment of The God Delusion and the many questions it raises--including, above all, the relevance of faith and the quest for meaning.
In just a half century, humanity has made an astounding leap in its
understanding of life. Now, one of the giants of biological science,
Christian de Duve, discusses what we've learned in this half century,
ranging from the tiniest cells to the future of our species and of life
itself.
With wide-ranging erudition, de Duve takes us on a
dazzling tour of the biological world, beginning with the invisible
workings of the cell, the area in which he won his Nobel Prize. He
describes how the first cells may have arisen and suggests that they may
have been like the organisms that exist
today near deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Contrary to many other
scientists, he argues that life was bound to arise and that it probably
only took millennia —maybe tens of thousands of years— to move from
rough building blocks to the first organisms possessing the basic
properties of life. With equal authority, De Duve examines topics such
as the evolution of humans, the origins of consciousness, the
development of language, the birth of science, and the origin of
emotion, morality, altruism, and love. He concludes with his conjectures
on the future of humanity —for instance, we may evolve, perhaps via
genetic engineering, into a new species— he shares his personal
thoughts about God and immortality.
In Life Evolving, one
of our most eminent scientists sums up
what he has learned about the nature of life and our place in the
universe. An extraordinarily wise and humane volume, it will fascinate
readers curious about the world around them and about the impact of
science on philosophy and religion.
Over
the course of human history, the sciences, and biology in particular,
have often been manipulated to cause immense human suffering. For
example, biology has been used to justify eugenic programs, forced
sterilization, human experimentation, and death camps —all in an attempt
to support notions of racial superiority. By investigating the past, the
contributors to Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins hope to better prepare us to discern ideological abuse of science when it occurs in the future.
Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers bring together fourteen experts to
examine the varied ways science has been used and abused for
nonscientific purposes from the fifteenth century to the present day.
Featuring an essay on eugenics from Edward J. Larson and an examination
of the progress of evolution by Michael J. Ruse, Biology and Ideology
examines uses both benign and sinister, ultimately reminding us that
ideological extrapolation continues today. An accessible survey, this
collection will enlighten historians of science, their students,
practicing scientists, and anyone interested in the relationship between
science and culture.
Drawing on New Testament studies and recent scholarship on the
expansion of the Christian church, Gary B. Ferngren presents a
comprehensive historical account of medicine and medical philanthropy in
the first five centuries of the Christian era.
Ferngren first
describes how early Christians understood disease. He examines the
relationship of early Christian medicine to the natural and supernatural
modes of healing found in the Bible. Despite biblical accounts of
demonic possession and miraculous healing, Ferngren argues that early
Christians generally accepted naturalistic assumptions about disease and
cared for the sick with medical knowledge gleaned from the Greeks and
Romans.
Ferngren next explores the origins of medical
philanthropy in the early Christian church. Rather than viewing illness
as punishment for sins, early Christians believed that the sick deserved
both medical assistance and compassion. Even as they were being
persecuted, Christians cared for the sick both within and outside of
their community. Their long experience in medical charity led to the
creation of the first hospitals, a singular Christian contribution to
health care.
