A fine-tuned universe: the quest for God in science and theology

Are there viable pathways from nature to God? Natural theology is making a comeback, stimulated as much by scientific advance as by theological and philosophical reflection. There is a growing realization that the sciences raise questions that transcend their capacity to answer them --above all, the question of the existence of God. So how can Christian theology relate to these new developments? In this landmark work, based on his 2009 Gifford lectures, Alister McGrath examines the apparent "fine-tuning" of the universe and its significance for natural theology. Exploring a wide range of physical and biological phenomena and drawing on the latest research in biochemistry and evolutionary biology, McGrath outlines our new understanding of the natural world and discusses its implications for traditional debates about the existence of God.

God and the new atheism: a critical response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens

In God and the New Atheism, a world expert on science and theology gives clear, concise, and compelling answers to the charges against religion laid out in recent best-selling books by Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (The End of Faith), and Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great). For some, these "new atheists" appear to say extremely well what they believe to be wrong with religion. But, as John Haught shows, the treatment of religion in these books is riddled with logical inconsistencies, shallow misconceptions, and crude generalizations. Can God really be dismissed as a mere delusion? Is faith really the enemy of reason? And does religion really poison everything? God and the New Atheism offers a much-needed antidote to the extremist claims of scientific fundamentalism. This provocative and accessible little book will enable readers to see through the rhetorical fog of this recent phenomenon and come to a clearer understanding of the issues at stake in this crucial debate.

Science, Art and Nature in Medieval and Modern Thought

A. C. Crombie sees the history of Western Science as the history of a vision and an argument, initiated by the ancient Greeks in their search for principles at once of nature and of argument itself. 

This scientific vision explored and controlled by argument, and the diversification of both vision and argument by scientific experience and by interaction with the wider contexts of intellectual culture, constitute the long history of European scientific thought. 

Underlying that development have been specific commitments to conceptions of nature and of Science and its intellectual and moral assumptions, accompanied by a recurrent critique; their diversification has generated a series of different styles of scientific thinking and of making theoretical and practical decisions which he describes and analyses.

Fifty years in science and religion: Ian G. Barbour and his legacy

Fifty Years in Science and Religion brings together nineteen leading scholars in the field to offer an appreciative yet critical assessment of the impact of Barbour's work on science and religion and to point ahead towards future critical areas, goals and tasks that await new research and visionary exploration. This book includes a unique autobiography by Barbour in which for the first time he shares and reflects on his life and work.

Rare is the theologian or philosopher so versed in contemporary science as to offer original insights with credibility for both fields. Robert John Russell, Professor of Theology and Science in Residence, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif., and founding director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences there, is such a thinker. Among his many important publications are six influential volumes that he edited for the joint Vatican Observatory/Notre Dame University Press series on scientific and theological perspectives on divine action. Russell's contributions to the field, says Ian Barbour, are "extraordinary and enduring."

The Language of God

An instant bestseller, The Language of God provides the best argument for the integration of faith and logic since C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity .

It has long been believed that science and faith cannot mingle. Faith rejects the rational, while science restricts us to a life with no meaning beyond the physical. It is an irreconcilable war between two polar-opposite ways of thinking and living. Written for believers, agnostics, and atheists alike, The Language of God provides a testament to the power of faith in the midst of suffering without faltering from its logical stride. Readers will be inspired by Collin’s personal story of struggling with doubt, as well as the many revelations of the wonder of God’s creation that will forever shape the way they view the world around them.

Francis S. Collins is one of the country's leading geneticists and the longtime head of the Human Genome Project. Prior to coming to Washington, he helped to discover the genetic misspellings that cause cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and Huntington's disease. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, and in his spare time he enjoys riding a motorcycle and playing guitar.

When Science Meets Religion

Over the centuries and into the new millennium, scientists, theologians, and the general public have shared many questions about the implications of scientific discoveries for religious faith. Nuclear physicist and theologian Ian Barbour, winner of the 1999 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion for his pioneering role in advancing the study of religion and science, presents a clear, contemporary introduction to the essential issues, ideas, and solutions in the relationship between religion and science. In simple, straightforward language, Barbour explores the fascinating topics that illuminate the critical encounter of the spiritual and quantitative dimensions of life.

The Big Questions in Science and Religion

Can religious beliefs survive in the scientific age? Are they resoundingly outdated? Or is there something in them of great importance, even if the way they are expressed will have to change in the new scientific context? These questions are among those at the core of the science-religion dialogue. 

In The Big Questions in Science and Religion, Keith Ward, an Anglican minister who was once an atheist, offers compelling insights into the often contentious relationship between diverse religious views and new scientific knowledge. He identifies ten basic questions about the nature of the universe and human life. Among these are: Does the universe have a goal or purpose? Do the laws of nature exclude miracles? Can science provide a wholly naturalistic explanation for moral and religious beliefs? Has science made belief in God obsolete? Are there any good science-based arguments for God? 

With his expertise in the study of world religions, Ward considers concepts from Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity, while featuring the speculations of cosmologists, physicians, mathematicians, and philosophers. In addition, Ward examines the implications of ancient laws and modern theories and evaluates the role of religious experience as evidence of a nonphysical reality. Writing with enthusiasm, passion and clarity, Keith Ward conveys the depth, difficulty, intellectual excitement and importance of the greatest intellectual and existential questions of the modern scientific age. The diversity of views provides the general reader as well as opinion leaders with unbiased information in the science-religion field.

Science vs Religion. What Scientists Really Think

The ongoing and irreconcilable antagonism between science and religion has been taken for granted. And in the wake of recent controversies over teaching Intelligent Design and the ethics of stem cell research, the divide seems to remain as unbridgeable as ever.

In Science vs Religion, Elaine Howard Ecklund investigates this unexamined assumption in the first systematic study of what scientists actually think and feel about religion. Ecklund surveyed nearly 1700 scientists, interviewed 275 of them, and centers the book around vivid portraits of 10 representative men and women working in the physical and social sciences at top American research universities. She finds that most of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. Nearly 50 percent of them are religious. Many others are what she calls "spiritual entrepreneurs," seeking creative ways to work with the tensions between science and faith outside the constraints of traditional religion. Her respondents run the gamut from Margaret, a chemist who teaches a Sunday-school class, to Arik, a physicist who chose not to believe in God well before he decided to become a scientist. Only a small minority are actively hostile to religion. Ecklund reveals how scientists --believers and skeptics alike-- are struggling to engage the increasing number of religious students in their classrooms and argues that many scientists are searching for "boundary pioneers" to cross the picket lines separating science and religion.

With broad implications for education, science funding, and the thorny ethical questions surrounding stem-cell research, cloning, and other cutting-edge scientific research, Science vs Religion offers a welcome dose of reality to the science and religion debates.

What's so great about Christianity

Is Christianity obsolete? Can an intelligent, educated person really believe the Bible? Or are atheists correct? Does science disprove Christianity, debunk it as a force for good, and discredit it as a guide to morality? In his groundbreaking new book, What's So Great About Christianity, bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza is the first to tackle these questions and challenge atheists on their own secular turf. Approaching atheism with the skeptical eye usually reserved for religion, D'Souza uses the latest scientific (among other) evidence to show why Christianity makes sense, why the atheists' arguments are wrong, and why there really is something great about Christianity. 

What's So Great About Christianity explains: 

Why Christianity explains what modern science tells us about the universe and our origins-better than atheism does 

How Christianity created the framework for modern science, so that Christianity and science are reconcilable, but atheism and science may not be 

Why the alleged sins of Christianity-the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Galileo affair-are vastly overblown 

Why atheist regimes are responsible for the greatest mass murders of history 

Why evolution does not threaten Christian belief, but actually supports the "argument from design" 

Why atheists fear the Big Bang theory and the "anthropic principle" of the universe, which are keystones of modern astronomy and physics 

How Christianity explains consciousness and free will, which atheists have to deny 

By revealing the superiority of Christianity, D'Souza raises the culture war debate to a whole new level. 

What's So Great About Christianity proves that Christianity and science are not at odds with each other; that atheism is philosophically, factually, and demographically bankrupt; and that a resurgent Christianity is the real wave of the future-and atheism a trend of the past.

Science, Faith, and How We Make Sense of Things

In Surprised by Meaning, through a non-technical discussion of science and faith, Alister E. McGrath, the author of the best-selling The Dawkins Delusion explains how both science and faith help with the overriding human desire to make sense of things.

We live in an age when the growth of the Internet has made it easier than ever to gain access to information and accumulate knowledge. But information is not the same as meaning, nor is knowledge identical with wisdom. Many people feel engulfed by a tsunami of facts in which they can find no meaning.

In thirteen short, accessible chapters McGrath, author of the bestselling The Dawkins Delusion, leads the reader through a nontechnical discussion of science and faith. How do we make sense of the world around us? Are belief in science and the Christian faith compatible? Does the structure of the universe point toward the existence of God?

McGrath's goal is to help readers see that science is neither antithetical to faith, nor does it supersede faith. Both science and faith help with the overriding human desire to make sense of things. Faith is a complex idea. It is not a blind leap into the dark but a joyful discovery of a bigger picture of wondrous things of which we are all a part.

Religion and science

Religion and Science is a definitive contemporary discussion of the many issues surrounding our understanding of God and religious truth and experience in our understanding of God and religious truth and experience in our scientific age. This is a significantly expanded and feshly revised version of Religion in an Age of Science, winner of the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence and the Templeton Book Award.  

Ian G. Barbour --the premier scholar in the field-- has added three crucial historical chapters on physics and metaphysics in the seventeenth century, nature and God in the eighteenth century, and biology and theology in the nineteenth century. He has also added new sections on developments in nature-centered spirituality, information theory, and chaos and complexity theories.

Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life

Writing with bracing intelligence and clarity, internationally renowned evolutionist and bestselling author Stephen Jay Gould sheds new light on a dilemma that has plagued thinking people since the Renaissance: the rift between science and religion. Instead of choosing them, Gould asks, why not opt for a golden mean that accords dignity and distinction to each realm?

In his distinctively elegant style, Gould offers a lucid, contemporary principle that allows science and religion to coexist peacefully in a position of respectful noninterference. Science defines the natural world; religion our moral world in recognition of their separate spheres of influence. In exploring this thought-provoking concept, Gould delves into the history of science, sketching affecting portraits of scientists and moral leaders wrestling with matters of faith and reason. Stories of seminal figures such as Galileo, Darwin, and Thomas Henry Huxley make vivid his argument that individuals and cultures must cultivate both a life of the spirit and a life of rational inquiry in order to experience the fullness of being human.

In Rocks of Ages, Gould’s passionate humanism, ethical discernment, and erudition are fused to create a dazzling gem of contemporary cultural philosophy.

The Faith of Scientists

The Faith of Scientists is an anthology of writings by twenty-one legendary scientists, from the dawn of the Scientific Revolution to the frontiers of science today, about their faith, their views about God, and the place religion holds--or doesn't--in their lives in light of their commitment to science. This is the first book to bring together so many world-renowned figures of Western science and present them in their own words, offering an intimate window into their private and public reflections on science and faith. 

Leading religion scholar Nancy Frankenberry draws from diaries, personal letters, speeches, essays, and interviews, and reveals that the faith of scientists can take many different forms, whether religious or secular, supernatural or naturalistic, conventional or unorthodox. These eloquent writings reflect a spectrum of views from diverse areas of scientific inquiry. 

Represented here are some of the most influential and colossal personalities in the history of science, from the founders of science such as Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein, to modern-day scientists like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Jane Goodall, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, Edward O. Wilson, and Ursula Goodenough. Frankenberry provides a general introduction as well as concise introductions to each chapter that place these writings in context and suggest further reading from the latest scholarship. As surprising as it is illuminating and inspiring, The Faith of Scientists is indispensable for students, scholars, and anyone seeking to immerse themselves in important questions about God, the universe, and science.

Science and Religion in Dialogue

This two-volume collection of cutting edge thinking about science and religion shows how scientific and religious practices of inquiry can be viewed as logically compatible, complementary, and mutually supportive.

Features submissions by world-leading scientists and philosophers.

Discusses a wide range of hotly debated issues, including Big Bang cosmology, evolution, intelligent design, dinosaurs and creation, general and special theories of relativity, dark energy, the Multiverse Hypothesis, and Super String Theory.

Includes articles on stem cell research and Bioethics by William Hurlbut, who served on President Bush's Bioethics Committee.

How John Polkinghorne Found God in Science and Religion

Using key events in the life of physicist Sir John Polkinghorne, this is an introduction to the central ideas that make the relationship between science and religion such a fascinating field of investigation. 

An engaging biography-cum-appraisal of John Polkinghorne's life and work, this book uses his story to approach some of the most important questions in life, including How should a scientist view God? Why do we pray, and what do we expect from it? Does the universe have a point? and What happens after death? Sir John Polkinghorne is a British particle physicist who, after 25 years of research and discovery in academia, resigned his post to become an Anglican priest and theologian. Since then he has written more than 20 books exploring the relationship of science and theology. As a physicist, he participated in the research that led to the discovery of the quark, the smallest known particle. Here, both his religious and scientific beliefs are explored in full detail.

Dean Nelson, Karl Giberson

Science and Faith within Reason

Scientists, historians, philosophers and theologians often engage in debates on the limitations and mutual interactions of their respective fields of study. Serious discussions are often overshadowed by the mass-produced popular and semi-popular literature on science and religion, as well as by the political agendas of many of the actors in these debates. For some, reducing religion and science to forms of social discourse is a possible way out from epistemological overlapping between them; yet is there room for religious faith only when science dissolves into one form of social discourse? The religion thus rescued would have neither rational legitimisation nor metaphysical validity, but if both scientific and religious theories try to make absolute claims on all possible aspects of reality then conflict between them seems almost inevitable.

In this book leading authors in the field of science and religion, including William Carroll, Steve Fuller, Karl Giberson and Roger Trigg, highlight the oft-neglected and profound philosophical foundations that underlie some of the most frequent questions at the boundary between science and religion: the reality of knowledge, and the notions of creation, life and design. In tune with Mariano Artigas’s work, the authors emphasise that these are neither religious nor scientific but serious philosophical questions.

God and Nature

Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science

Since the publication in 1896 of Andrew Dickson White's classic History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, no comprehensive history of the subject has appeared in the English language. Although many twentieth-century historians have written on the relationship between Christianity and science, and in the process have called into question many of White's conclusions, the image of warfare lingers in the public mind.

To provide an up-to-date alternative, based on the best available scholarship and written in nontechnical language, the editors of this volume have assembled an international group of distinguished historians. In eighteen essays prepared especially for this book, these authors cover the period from the early Christian church to the twentieth century, offering fresh appraisals of such encounters as the trial of Galileo, the formulation of the Newtonian worldview, the coming of Darwinism, and the ongoing controversies over “scientific creationism.” They explore not only the impact of religion on science, but also the influence of science and religion.

This landmark volume promises not only to silence the persistent rumors of war between Christianity and science, but also serve as the point of departure for new explorations of their relationship, Scholars and general readers alike will find it provocative and readable.

Science and Ethics

Philosophy of science used to be identified with the logical and methodological analysis of scientific theories, and any allusion to values was considered as a deplorable intromission in a philosophical investigation that should remain strictly epistemological. As a reaction against this view, an opposite «sociological» approach downplayed the usual virtues of scientific knowledge (such as logical rigor and empirical adequacy) as artificial imageries that cover the actual nature of science, that is a social product submitted to all the kinds of social conditionings and compromises. A more balanced view is badly needed today, when technoscience is permeating all aspects of our civilization and wise persons understand that we cannot survive without using science and technology but at the same time we need to steer their development in view of the real benefit of humankind. We must investigate how science, technology and values are legitimately interconnected and, in particular, how the discourses of ethics, politics and religion can enter a fruitful dialogue with science. The essays presented in this volume offer a valuable contribution to this interdisciplinary study.

Evandro Agazzi, Fabio Minazzi

Galileo in Rome

Galileo's trial by the Inquisition is one of the most dramatic incidents in the history of science and religion. Today, we tend to see this event in black and white--Galileo all white, the Church all black. Galileo in Rome presents a much more nuanced account of Galileo's relationship with Rome.

The book offers a fascinating account of the six trips Galileo made to Rome, from his first visit at age 23, as an unemployed mathematician, to his final fateful journey to face the Inquisition.

The authors reveal why the theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun, set forth in Galileo's Dialogue, stirred a hornet's nest of theological issues, and they argue that, despite these issues, the Church might have accepted Copernicus if there had been solid proof.

More interesting, they show how Galileo dug his own grave. To get the imprimatur, he brought political pressure to bear on the Roman Censor. He disobeyed a Church order not to teach the heliocentric theory. And he had a character named Simplicio (which in Italian sounds like simpleton) raise the same objections to heliocentrism that the Pope had raised with Galileo.

The authors show that throughout the trial, until the final sentence and abjuration, the Church treated Galileo with great deference, and once he was declared guilty commuted his sentence to house arrest. Here then is a unique look at the life of Galileo as well as a strikingly different view of an event that has come to epitomize the Church's supposed antagonism toward science.

William R. Shea, Mariano Artigas

Dawkins' Case Against God

Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God

The essential book for dismantling Richard Dawkins' atheistic agenda. Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker collaborate to debunk Dawkins' theories and show how inconsistent and illogical his conclusions truly are. This is the definitive book for college students or faithful Christians hoping to answer Dawkins' claims and assert the logic and beauty of their faith.