100 books like Inventing the Universe

By Alister McGrath,

Here are 100 books that Inventing the Universe fans have personally recommended if you like Inventing the Universe. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?

Peter Bussey Author Of Signposts to God: How Modern Physics and Astronomy Point the Way to Belief

From my list on science and religion with mutual support.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been intrigued by science since childhood, especially astronomy, and I became a university academic, teaching physics to students and researching in experiments with elementary particles. I was raised in a Christian family and have maintained my faith. I don’t find any real issues with science–it shows how clever God was in creating the universe! At the same time, I know many people have difficulties in this area. My book was written to help them, and I think the recommended books will help them, too.

Peter's book list on science and religion with mutual support

Peter Bussey Why did Peter love this book?

I see this as an outstanding explanation of why the theory of evolution and the Biblical story of creation are compatible, contrary to what many believe. No, we don’t have to choose, we should have both!

Dr Alexander is an expert biologist and a committed Christian, and he presents the theory of evolution and the story of life on Earth well from a scientific point of view. He then shows how the Biblical account can very reasonably be read in a faithful way that fits in with modern knowledge.

Many people have problems in this area, and I think they can get much help from this book, even though it is a bit technical in places.

By Denis Alexander,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Creation or Evolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Creation or Evolution helps you make sense of the complex common ground between the biblical doctrine of creation and the scientific evidence behind the theory of evolutionary.

With the guidance of neuroscientist Denis Alexander - a passionate believer in both the Bible and science, you can build a fully integrated understanding of the tricky questions that have divided so many for too long.

This book combines the latest genetic research with an exploration of what we mean by creation and evolution to overcome the common scientific and religious objections to each. He addresses the argument that evolution is atheistic and…


Book cover of Scientists of Faith: Forty-Eight Biographies of Historic Scientists and Their Christian Faith

Peter Bussey Author Of Signposts to God: How Modern Physics and Astronomy Point the Way to Belief

From my list on science and religion with mutual support.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been intrigued by science since childhood, especially astronomy, and I became a university academic, teaching physics to students and researching in experiments with elementary particles. I was raised in a Christian family and have maintained my faith. I don’t find any real issues with science–it shows how clever God was in creating the universe! At the same time, I know many people have difficulties in this area. My book was written to help them, and I think the recommended books will help them, too.

Peter's book list on science and religion with mutual support

Peter Bussey Why did Peter love this book?

I always feel that personal stories are the best recommendation for what people believe. Dan Graves gives us many prominent scientists who were at the same time sincere Christian believers.

They lived over many centuries and worked in various scientific fields, making some of the most important discoveries. Some were Catholics; some were protestants. I think this is a very readable book, and if anyone ever tries to say that a good scientist can’t be a Christian or the other way around, it provides complete proof that this is untrue.

By Dan Graves,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Scientists of Faith as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Scientists Of Faith


Book cover of Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians

Peter Bussey Author Of Signposts to God: How Modern Physics and Astronomy Point the Way to Belief

From my list on science and religion with mutual support.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been intrigued by science since childhood, especially astronomy, and I became a university academic, teaching physics to students and researching in experiments with elementary particles. I was raised in a Christian family and have maintained my faith. I don’t find any real issues with science–it shows how clever God was in creating the universe! At the same time, I know many people have difficulties in this area. My book was written to help them, and I think the recommended books will help them, too.

Peter's book list on science and religion with mutual support

Peter Bussey Why did Peter love this book?

We are still living in the aftermath of the myth that before the age of modern science, people believed that the Earth was flat. I was taken by surprise to find how utterly mistaken this is and that nineteenth-century writers were the ones who propagated this false idea. It is usually coupled with the notion that in former times, folk believed both in a flat earth and in religion, but that nowadays, people believe in neither.

This is all nonsense, and I was delighted to read the proper historical story in this excellently written book. Christopher Columbus and his associates never believed that the Earth was flat!

By Jeffrey B. Russell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Inventing the Flat Earth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Neither Christopher Columbus nor his contemporaries thought the earth was flat. Yet this curious illusion persists today, firmly established with the help of the media, textbooks, teachers-even noted historians. Inventing the Flat Earth is Russell's attempt to set the record straight. He begins with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages, examining what Columbus and his contemporaries actually did believe, and then moves to a look at how the error was first propagated in the 1820s and 1830s and then snowballed to outrageous proportions by the late 19th century. But perhaps the most intriguing focus of the book…


Book cover of Theism and Humanism

Peter Bussey Author Of Signposts to God: How Modern Physics and Astronomy Point the Way to Belief

From my list on science and religion with mutual support.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been intrigued by science since childhood, especially astronomy, and I became a university academic, teaching physics to students and researching in experiments with elementary particles. I was raised in a Christian family and have maintained my faith. I don’t find any real issues with science–it shows how clever God was in creating the universe! At the same time, I know many people have difficulties in this area. My book was written to help them, and I think the recommended books will help them, too.

Peter's book list on science and religion with mutual support

Peter Bussey Why did Peter love this book?

Disputes between scientists and believers have been around for a long time, and many different people have written on the subject. I was hugely impressed by Arthur Balfour’s lectures reprinted here–yes, it is the same person who was British Prime Minster a century ago and who prepared the way for the modern state of Israel!

He was a sincere Christian and had a profound grasp of the important issues of religion and science, and they haven’t changed very much. Slightly old-fashioned language but on the ball all the time, and this is a book that C. S. Lewis learned from.

By Arthur James Balfour, Michael W Perry (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Theism and Humanism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1962, Christian Century asked the well-known Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, to name the books that had most influenced his thought. Among those that Lewis listed was Arthur J. Balfour's Theism and Humanism (1915). This was no passing whim. Almost twenty years earlier, in 1944, Lewis had lamented in "Is Theology Poetry" that Theism was "a book too little read."

Many others shared Lewis' enthusiasm. When Balfour gave the original lectures on which the book was based, some 2,000 people crowded into Bute Hall at the University of Glasgow on a weekday winter afternoons to cheer and laugh. Even…


Book cover of Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives

David N. Livingstone Author Of The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea

From my list on the history of ideas.

Why am I passionate about this?

My love for ideas and their history was born when I was still in high school. It was my old English teacher who first opened up the power of ideas in literature to change the world. I’m pretty sure he loved Eleanor Roosevelt’s comment: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Whether or not that’s true, my taste was further sharpened when I took a two-year course on the history of thought about nature and culture as an undergraduate student. I was captivated. 

David's book list on the history of ideas

David N. Livingstone Why did David love this book?

This book has long been my go-to guide on all matters related to the relationship between science and religion. Its beauty is that it takes a cool, clear-headed look at the history of a subject that frequently stimulates more heat than light.

It’s now over thirty years old but has aged extremely well–certainly better than I have! I still find it illuminating on episode after episode. The connections are subtle and complex; Brooke never allows us to settle for comfortable simplicity. 

By John Hedley Brooke,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Science and Religion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe

Nicholas Spencer Author Of Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion

From my list on science and religion through the ages.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been working on science and religion for 15 years now. While there are a number of books on Darwinism and religion (too many to count), the number on Darwin himself and his own (loss of) religion is far smaller. So, I wrote a short "spiritual biography" of the great man. Reading through the Darwin archives, it emerged that there was so much more to the story than “man finds evolution but loses God,” and the more I read around this topic and spoke to the leading academic scholars on the subject, the more I realized that that was the case for science and religion overall.

Nicholas' book list on science and religion through the ages

Nicholas Spencer Why did Nicholas love this book?

Simon Conway Morris is a Cambridge academic, and his book is published by Cambridge University Press–but don’t let that put non-academic readers off. This is one of the few books I think you can genuinely call important.

It takes on the now wearyingly familiar idea that evolution is pure random chance, with no direction, no purpose, no goal, and dismantles it–with page after page of detailed information.

This is absolutely no ill-informed, anti-evolutionary rant but the work of a great scholar with complete mastery of his subject. While it does not engage with religion directly, the implications for religion (and indeed for so many other vital human beliefs and activities) are left hanging in the air.

By Simon Conway Morris,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Life's Solution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The assassin's bullet misses, the Archduke's carriage moves forward, and a catastrophic war is avoided. So too with the history of life. Re-run the tape of life, as Stephen J. Gould claimed, and the outcome must be entirely different: an alien world, without humans and maybe not even intelligence. The history of life is littered with accidents: any twist or turn may lead to a completely different world. Now this view is being challenged. Simon Conway Morris explores the evidence demonstrating life's almost eerie ability to navigate to a single solution, repeatedly. Eyes, brains, tools, even culture: all are very…


Book cover of Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists Versus God and Religion

Brendan Sweetman Author Of Evolution, Chance, and God: Understanding the Relationship Between Evolution and Religion

From my list on religion, evolution, and chance.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a teacher, philosopher, writer, Professor of Philosophy, and holder of the Sullivan Chair in Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. I'm the author/editor of sixteen books on such topics as religion and science, religion and politics, contemporary European philosophy, and political philosophy. I'm particularly interested in how religion and science, especially evolution, can be shown to be compatible with each other, as well as in developing an argument that there is no chance operating in nature (including in biology). My book and the books below explore these fascinating topics from almost every possible angle, and should whet readers’ appetites for further thinking about these intriguing matters!

Brendan's book list on religion, evolution, and chance

Brendan Sweetman Why did Brendan love this book?

There are a group of leading thinkers in science and religion who simultaneously provoke fertile thought in their readers and irritate them at the same time! This group includes biologists Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson, and physicists Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg, who have become public intellectuals, articulating a much larger vision for science and what role it should play in the modern worldview. The scientific prestige and literary eloquence of each of these thinkers combines to transform them into what can only be called oracles of science. Curiously, these thinkers create a very misleading and culturally damaging impression that science as a whole is incompatible with religion. Giberson and Artigas offer an informed analysis of their views, carefully distinguishing science from philosophy and religion in the writings of the oracles. Overall, the book is a great introduction to many of the fascinating questions…

By Karl Giberson, Mariano Artigas,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Oracles of Science as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Oracles of Science examines the popular writings of the six scientists who have been the most influential in shaping our perception of science, how it works, and how it relates to other fields of human endeavor, especially religion. Biologists Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson, and physicists Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg, have become public intellectuals, articulating a much larger vision for science and what role
it should play in the modern worldview. The scientific prestige and literary eloquence of each of these great thinkers combine to transform them into what can only be called…


Book cover of The Darwin Wars: The Scientific Battle for the Soul of Man

Nicholas Spencer Author Of Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion

From my list on science and religion through the ages.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been working on science and religion for 15 years now. While there are a number of books on Darwinism and religion (too many to count), the number on Darwin himself and his own (loss of) religion is far smaller. So, I wrote a short "spiritual biography" of the great man. Reading through the Darwin archives, it emerged that there was so much more to the story than “man finds evolution but loses God,” and the more I read around this topic and spoke to the leading academic scholars on the subject, the more I realized that that was the case for science and religion overall.

Nicholas' book list on science and religion through the ages

Nicholas Spencer Why did Nicholas love this book?

In the last decades of the 20th century, there emerged an increasingly acrimonious argument over what Darwinism meant, especially for humans. This wasn’t simply between creationists and Intelligent Design advocates on one side and Darwinians on the other. The Darwinists disagreed among themselves, something with as much fury as they disagreed with the other side.

Andrew Brown is a journalist who, unusually, has genuine expertise in both science and religion. More importantly, he is a cracking writer, and The Darwin Wars is not only intelligent and profound but also clever and witty.

By Andrew Brown,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Darwin Wars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is an account of neo-Darwinist theories, including the influential Selfish Gene theory - and the misunderstandings they provoke. Divided between "Dawkinsians" and "Gouldians", these theories are explained and evaluated, showing the profound impact they have had on beliefs and culture.


Book cover of Faith and Science with Dr. Fizzlebop: 52 Fizztastically Fun Experiments and Devotions for Families

Alyssa Clements Author Of The Size of Everything: Ginormous Galaxies, Itty-Bitty Quarks, and Me

From my list on children’s science for Christian families.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a third-grade teacher turned book editor and writer who loves learning about the fascinating world God has made and exploring how it all points back to him. During my time in the classroom, I worked at a Christian classical school where my grade’s scientific focus was astronomy. I loved introducing my students to this awe-inspiring, gigantic universe that we are a part of and considering together just how big, powerful, and loving God must be to have designed and created it all. I am also mom to two wonderfully curious children who love to read, explore, and ask big questions. 

Alyssa's book list on children’s science for Christian families

Alyssa Clements Why did Alyssa love this book?

This wacky science experiment/devotional book is a great resource for families with kids of all ages to explore the deep connection between faith and science.

It has over fifty fun, relatively uncomplicated, hands-on science experiments along with areas for kids to practice core scientific skills, including creating and testing hypotheses and recording observations. Each experiment is also paired with a Scripture passage and related devotion in a way that feels natural and not contrived.

I love that I can easily pull this book off the shelf for a quick science experiment with my kids, or I can choose to turn it into a longer devotional time for our family. I also love that it clearly lays out how all science is meant to point us to God!

By Brock D. Eastman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Faith and Science with Dr. Fizzlebop as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 6, 7, 8, and 9.

What is this book about?

Faith and Science with Dr. Fizzlebop features 52 easy experiments kids and parents can do together once a week or at their convenience. Each experiment will have a how-to video featured in the free Fizzlebop Labs web series launching in fall ’21. Building on Dr. Fizzlebop’s desire to show kids how faith and science connect, each experiment connects to a devotional that allows kids to go deeper and learn about God’s amazing design for everything around them. On average, each experiment takes 5 to 10 minutes and the devotional is an additional 5 minutes.Our expert and guide, Dr. Phineas Einstein…


Book cover of Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion

Nicholas Spencer Author Of Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion

From my list on science and religion through the ages.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been working on science and religion for 15 years now. While there are a number of books on Darwinism and religion (too many to count), the number on Darwin himself and his own (loss of) religion is far smaller. So, I wrote a short "spiritual biography" of the great man. Reading through the Darwin archives, it emerged that there was so much more to the story than “man finds evolution but loses God,” and the more I read around this topic and spoke to the leading academic scholars on the subject, the more I realized that that was the case for science and religion overall.

Nicholas' book list on science and religion through the ages

Nicholas Spencer Why did Nicholas love this book?

The academic world began to dismantle the idea that there had always been a conflict between science and history about 50 years ago, but this book was one of the first to try and tell that story more widely.

It isn’t all one-sided. The authors dismantle some other popular "harmony" myths too (e.g., that Einstein believed in a personal God or that Quantum Physics proves free will), but for the most part, the myths they take apart–that mediaeval world thought the world was flat, or that the Church denounced anaesthesia on biblical grounds–are the ones that have lodged the idea of warfare in our cultural mind without justification.

Book cover of Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?
Book cover of Scientists of Faith: Forty-Eight Biographies of Historic Scientists and Their Christian Faith
Book cover of Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians

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