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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.
The Scopes “Monkey” trial was a global media phenomenon and has passed into history as an epic battle, even more dramatic than the Galileo trial 300 years earlier. It certainly is a dramatic story, and Edward Larson retells it in this book with style and pace.
But, as is so often the case in the history of science and religion, the devil is in the detail, and the popular image of ignorant, demented fundamentalists taking on and being humiliated by the cool logic and evidence-based reasoning of secularists is only part of it. Eugenics, racism, politics, economics, biblical theology, and good old-fashioned commercial greed – all have their role to play in the entertaining story of this famous trial.
In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the twentieth century's most contentious courtroom dramas, pitting William Jennings Bryan and the anti-Darwinists against a teacher named John Scopes, represented by Clarence Darrow and the ACLU, in a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. That trial marked the start of a battle that continues to this day -- in cities and states throughout the country.Edward Larson's classic Summer for the Gods -- winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History -- is the single most authoritative account of…
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.
The popular view is that “mediaeval science” is a contradiction in terms, but this is… well, nonsense, really. The mediaeval world did not have “scientists” (the term was only invented in the 1830s), but it did have “natural philosophers” who studied the world about them with great care and interest.
True, they worked within a totally different framework from later scientists, and that made the kind of leaps forward that were made in the 17th century impossible. But nevertheless, they thought logically, examined carefully, reasoned well, and even sometimes experimented successfully.
James Hannam’s book is a great introduction to a world that seems very alien to us but is closer than we might think.
This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilized behavior. 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 is 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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alister McGrath is one of the most readable authors on difficult areas. Here, he deals with some very general issues of religious faith in a scientific age and addresses the personal side of the equation.
Religion won’t go away, and McGrath tells us how and why this is so, bringing in some important philosophical questions that he explains in a very down-to-earth way. Whether we realize it or not, we all have a personal philosophy, and science and faith can help each other. I found it hard to put this book down.
We just can't stop talking about the big questions around science and faith. They haven't gone away, as some predicted they might; in fact, we seem to talk about them more than ever. Far from being a spent force, religion continues to grow around the world. Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists argue that religion is at war with science - and that we have to choose between them.
It's time to consider a different way of looking at these two great cultural forces. What if science and faith might enrich each other? What if they can together give…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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…
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…
I’m a research physicist working in fusion energy and astrophysics. To explain our work, I’ve had to overcome the misconceptions about science that are widespread in the media and among the general population. These books are the best ones I know to correct the mystification of science, especially of topics like quantum mechanics, time, consciousness, and cosmology.
This groundbreaking work, published posthumously, is the first attempt to explain consciousness as the product of the evolutionary process. In doing this, Teilhard de Chardin outlines many characteristics of the evolutionary process that have never been described before. It is his effort to unite evolutionary theory, a Marxist view of evolution, and….Christianity.
The final chapter trying to drag Christ into this scientific work did not impress me, but it does not detract from the earlier chapters either.
Visionary theologian and evolutionary theorist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect, and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile religion with the scientific theory of evolution. In this timeless book, which contains the quintessence of his thought, Teilhard argues that just as living organisms sprung from inorganic matter and evolved into ever more complex thinking beings, humans are evolving toward an "omega point"—defined by Teilhard as a convergence with the Divine.
I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I started as a physics major in college but added a second major in philosophy after encountering the evolutionary theories of Hegel, Bergson, Alexander, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin. This interest continued in graduate school at Northwestern, where my first year coincided with the arrival of Prof. Errol E. Harris, who had a similar focus and would direct my doctoral dissertation in philosophy, whose title was From Ontology to Praxis: A Metaphilosophical Inquiry into Two Philosophical Paradigms. One of the “paradigms” was reductionist; the other was emergentist.
Clayton and Davies selected the diverse essays by various experts in this area of research to show the relevance of the emergentist paradigm to diverse areas of inquiry–including quantum physics, astronomy, cell biology, and primatology.
These lines of inquiry converge on the more provocative question of the emergence of consciousness from the brain...with an added discussion of the relevance of theological questions, including the relation between God and the world.
The thirteen essays of this study are divided into four broad areas: (1) The Physical Sciences, (2) The Biological Sciences, (3) Consciousness and Emergence, and (4) Religion and Emergence. Contributing authors include Jaegwon Kim, David J. Chalmers, and Arthur Peacocke. Here again, my perspective on this subject was broadened by the diversity of these treatments.
Much of the modern period was dominated by a `reductionist' theory of science. On this view, to explain any event in the world is to reduce it down to fundamental particles, laws, and forces. In recent years reductionism has been dramatically challenged by a radically new paradigm called `emergence'. According to this new theory, natural history reveals the continuous emergence of novel phenomena: new structures and new organisms with new causal powers. Consciousness is yet one more emergent level in the natural hierarchy. Many theologians and religious scholars believe that this new paradigm may offer new insights into the nature…
