Science and Religion

Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution

by Karl Giberson

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"Saving Darwin is an excellent book! A must read! It is a very accessible analysis of the "origins" controversy in American culture. Giberson preserves the integrity of science while being religiously sensitive and encourages us to see the harmony, in principle, of science and Christianity.

Giberson convincingly argues for the explanatory mission of science as the detection of natural mechanisms as causes for natural phenomena, while steering carefully between two serious misunderstandings of science. On the one hand, popular cultural icons of science who represent evolutionary theory as entailing a naturalistic worldview--or even any particular philosophical position such as ethical relativism or social Darwinism--are misrepresenting science as such and thus harming our cultural discussion. On the other hand, religious fundamentalists who think that biblical sources should be imported into scientific work--as in "creation science"--are equally misguided about what science is. The more recent Intelligent Design movement also displays an egregious misunderstanding in insisting that science can inquire into transcendent or ultimate (supernatural) causes for natural phenomena. Giberson exposes the serious defects in these religiously-based "alternative" ways of doing science which continue to polarize the cultural discussion in their own ways.

Although Giberson's autobiographical journey, so well portrayed in the book that many can identify with him, carried him away from his early anti-evolution fundamentalism, it did not erode his Christian belief because he came to see evolution as an expression of God's creativity. Giberson shows that more sophisticated (less simplistic) categories for understanding the Bible and Christianity, coupled with a realistic, nonagendized view of science, make it entirely possible for a faithful believer to embrace evolution as a fascinating part of the total truth about God's ways with the world.

The reader of this book will be invited into the thought process that led the writer to see Christianity and evolution as compatible and even as mutually enlightening one another. The reader will also learn the history of the origins debate in this country, some of the real history of science and its positive relation to Christianity, and some helpful conceptual distinctions for making sense of this important issue. "

Publisher: HarperOne | More reviews: amazon.com

The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View

by Richard Tarnas

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"This book starts well. I found the introduction to Greek philosophy rewarding in the way it made clear various strands running through the work of Plato and Aristotle. Later he piqued my interest in medieval scholastic philosophy. His summaries of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler seem sound. In fact as far as Kant it's hard to find fault with this book.Unfortunately after Kant things become a little different. You see this is not what it purports to be - an introduction to the history of Western thought. It is the history of Western thought from the point of view of a member of a philosophy department in a Western university - and not just any philosophy department - a *Continental* philosophy department. To read this book you'd think that much of the intellectual life of the twentieth century had simply never happened. Tarnas chooses to completely ignore almost all Anglo-American empiricist philosophy in the last 100 years and clearly has little or no knowledge of sc! ! ientific developments. Almost his only mention of twentieth century scientists, besides the obvious Einstein, is a list of scientists who have prominence purely because of popular science literature - and even here Tarnas is unable to distinguish between genius and merely crackpot.The book has a chapter called the 'Crisis in Science'. Besides the obvious and well known moral issues surrounding science this chapter bears no relation to anything that I experienced as someone who grew up within the scientific tradition. In fact I am at a complete loss to know what his crisis is - unless it be the general problem that academic work (in all fields) is now so specialised that philosophers, who like to make their field *everything*, can no longer hope to understand what takes place outside their field.It's not just in the 'hard' sciences that Tarnas is out of his depth - I was astonished to find him citing the work of Sapir and Whorf in linguistics which has now been completely! ! discredited. Tarnas believes the feminist so-called critiq! ue of science to be one of the most significant advances in the philosophy of science - and yet a large number of intellectuals would find it laughable (though one might argue, of course, that this is a sign of genius).Nonetheless I have still awarded this book a generous 3 out of 5 because the earlier parts of this book are so illuminating and because, for all I know, the later parts are a genuine reflection of the author's own particular strand of Western thought if not of a major part of it.One last word: readers of this book would do well to review the epilogue first - that way they can find out just where the author is coming from."

Publisher: Ballantine Books | More reviews: amazon.com

Intelligent Design 101: Leading Experts Explain the Key Issues

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"The point of this book is to give a short primer on the subject. Hence the "101" in the title. The authors that contributed to it (as any non-activist ID opposer familiar with their work knows) present intelligent, debatable arguments for their positions. Phillip Johnson, J.P. Moreland and Michael Behe are far from narrow minded fundamentalists. The positions and arguments they make here present significant challenges to scientific materialism. Those challenges are not defeated by quick dismissals or name calling.

If a person subscribes to the view that science cannot even suggest design in the universe, that's alright. They disagree with the authors, who by the way are saying that it merely suggests design. But to label the authors as mere creationists trying to get God back in schools (or worse), they do a strong disservice to the concept of scientific debate, and in fact partake in the narrow minded, dogmatic practices they accuse others of.
Of course there are many other highly esteemed scientists (in non-dogmatic circles) who are proponents of ID who did not write for this particular book. But their reasons for supporting ID are just as strong, valid and maybe even stronger than the ones presented here. But again, the point of this book is to give a short primer on the subject.
For the life of me I cannot understand the rabid, froth-mouthed opposition to any pro-ID person or argument out there. And the opposition says that ID proponents are the intolerant ones. It's astounding. Astounding and sad. "

Publisher: Kregel Publications | More reviews: amazon.com

Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, and Evolution

by Deborah B. Haarsma

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"This book is for Christians who are seeking a better understanding of the spectrum of views that Christians hold on how to relate the findings of science with interpretation of the Bible. In presenting and discussing the spectrum of views, "Origins" makes a useful distinction, not often seen, between "Interpretations of Genesis" and "Views on Origins," and includes nice summary tables of each.

Under Interpretations of Genesis, the Haarsmas (professors in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan) present and discuss Young Earth, Gap, Day-Age, Appearance of Age, Visionary Day, Proclamation Day and Ancient Near East Cosmology interpretations, along with "Creation Poem" and "Kingdom-Covenant" interpretations. The latter two interpretations both seem to be virtually identical to the Framework Interpretation of Meredith Kline et al., yet there is no reference to the Framework Interpretation, either in the text, the table or the bibliography, which I find surprising and unnecssarily confusing.

Under Views on Origins, the Haarsmas present and discuss Young Earth Creation, several flavors of Progressive Creation, and several flavors of Evolutionary Creation, as well as Intelligent Design.

The book has questions for reflection and discussion and a brief bibliography at the end of each chapter, but no index. It contains numerous references to short supplemental articles or additional examples located on a particular web site. Personally, I would have greatly preferred that this material be included as sidebars or additional appendices.

Overall, I found "Origins" to be a good introduction to the wide spectrum of Christian views, although, compared to other books on the same subject, it does have a relatively weak treatment of the implications of original sin on the various views presented.
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Publisher: Faith Alive Christian Resources | More reviews: amazon.com

The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?

by Paul Davies

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"Must Read

Davies has written a book about physics generally and cosmology in particular. To a person interested in but not formally trained in these th disciplines, it must necessarily be hard going. But anyone who can find a better up-to-date attempt at what Davies has achieved will be indeed fortunate. I am in my seventies and count myself blessed that I have survived long enough to become knowledgeable about the the universe as a whole, albeit understanding aspects of it very imperfectly.

Davies has performed an extraordinary service to those afflicted with curiosity about the topics he tries to elucidate. I am confident that there is no better work of this scope in print.

INVICTUS"

Publisher: Mariner Books | More reviews: amazon.com

Mind and Life: Discussions with the Dalai Lama on the Nature of Reality (Columbia Series in Science and Religion)

by Pier Luigi Luisi

For over a decade, a small group of scientists and philosophers-members of the Mind and Life Institute-have met regularly to explore the intersection between science and the spirit. At one of these meetings, the themes discussed were both fundamental and profound: can physics, chemistry, and biology explain the mystery of life? How do our philosophical assumptions influence science and the ethics we bring to biotechnology? And how does an ancient spiritual tradition throw new light on these questions?Pier Luigi Luisi not only reproduces this dramatic, cross-cultural dialogue, in which world-class scientists, philosophers, and Buddhist scholars develop a holistic approach to the scientific exploration of reality, but also adds scientific background to their presentations, as well as supplementary discussions with prominent participants and attendees. Interviews with His Holiness the Karmapa, the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, and the actor and longtime human rights advocate Richard Gere take the proceedings into new directions, enriching the material with personal viewpoints and lively conversation about such topics as the origin of matter, the properties of cells, the nature of evolution, and the ethics of genetic manipulation. A keen study of character, Luisi incorporates his own amusing observations into this fascinating dialogue, painting a very human portrait of some of our greatest-and most intimidating-thinkers. Deeply textured and cleverly crafted, Mind and Life is an excellent opportunity for any reader to join in the debate surrounding this cutting-edge field of inquiry.

Publisher: Columbia University Press | More reviews: amazon.com

Is God a Mathematician?

by Mario Livio

Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than that -- mathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true. Is mathematics ultimately invented or discovered? If, as Einstein insisted, mathematics is "a product of human thought that is independent of experience," how can it so accurately describe and even predict the world around us?Mathematicians themselves often insist that their work has no practical effect. The British mathematician G. H. Hardy went so far as to describe his own work this way: "No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world." He was wrong. The Hardy-Weinberg law allows population geneticists to predict how genes are transmitted from one generation to the next, and Hardy's work on the theory of numbers found unexpected implications in the development of codes.Physicist and author Mario Livio brilliantly explores mathematical ideas from Pythagoras to the present day as he shows us how intriguing questions and ingenious answers have led to ever deeper insights into our world. This fascinating book will interest anyone curious about the human mind, the scientific world, and the relationship between them.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster | More reviews: amazon.com

When God Is Gone, Everything Is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist

by Chet Raymo

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"Chet Raymo's newest book, When God Is Gone, Everything is Holy, follows in the tradition of reflective nature writers like Lewis Thomas and, more recently, Ursula Goodenough. Although repetitious in places, perhaps because at least some of the book reproduces previously published essays, the style is for the most part gracefully fluid and even in places poetic. Such skill is only to be expected from an author who quotes and clearly loves poets: Hopkins, Williams, Wordsworth, Whitman, Kazantzakis.

Raymo defends what he calls religious naturalism, and sometimes calls himself a Catholic agnostic. He long ago dropped the personal theism in which he was raised, but his life-long immersion in science has convinced him that nature is far greater than the human mind will ever encompass, and that the incredible beauty and complexity and mystery of the cosmos properly elicits from us responses of wonderment, reverence, gratitude, and celebration. The 100 trillion neuronal connections in the human brain; the genetically determined flight of a humming bird; the infinite spaces of a starry night that can exhilarate and terrify: these kind of phenomena, explored by science, rather than dusty and arcane tales of miracles, are the stuff of Raymo's religion.

Throughout the book runs a constant encouragement for us to cultivate simple awareness of the realness of things, an awareness of what poet Hopkins called the "inscape." In one of his most enigmatic and yet revelatory poems--one quoted by Raymo--William Carlos Williams reminds us of the basic truth that "so much depends" on our being able to really "see" the simple things of life like red wheel barrows glazed with rain water. An alert attentiveness is a good habit for the empirical scientist to cultivate, but it's also a human habit that re-connects us to the world. And as Raymo reminds us, "religion" means "re-connection."

A gentle, wise series of reflections. Recommended, especially as a cleansing alternative to the screechy atheist-theist wrangle currently going on.
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Publisher: Sorin Books | More reviews: amazon.com

Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society

by David Sloan Wilson

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"It has become inescapable to see ourselves as having evolved for group living. In "Origins of Virtue," Matt Ridley described the overall situation admirably well, and concluded that selfish organisms can evolve mechanisms that exploit the advantages of living together in groups, so long as those mechanisms don't sacrifice too much for the individual. The great fountain of selfish gene imagery, Richard Dawkins, once wrote that Ridley's book could well serve as a followup to "The Selfish Gene" as applied to human beings. So there is little doubt that even a theory based on "selfish genes" can be seen as explaining behavior that takes advantage of living in groups. David Sloane Wilson first acknowledges that traits which promote us to sacrifice ourselves "for the good of the group" are unlikely to spread in a population. He find great value in fields like evolutionary psychology for finding innate human psychological traits that promote individual reproduction and survival. However, he also takes a thought provoking look at important transitions in evolutionary history and finds that under certain special conditions, individuals become united and begin to function in a very real sense as a larger organism. Genes become united into chromosomes, cells become organisms, organisms become hives. None of this is new so far of course. What is unique is the claim that some of these transitions cannot be explained without having some form of competition between groups whose traits are widely divergent. The basic problem is that behavior that allows one group to fare better than another must also allow the individuals to survive and reproduce within their own group. So self-sacrificing behavior that makes a group of berzerkers unbeatable in battle against other groups has a hard time taking root _within_ the group of berzerkers unless it also serves them there. Wilson claims that the bias against seeing selection occurrring at multiple levels, especially by the way genetic fitness calculations are averaged, prevents most biologists from seeing "group selection" when it does occur. He then proposes that the missing piece is human moral systems themselves, which provide mechanisms that lower the cost of behavior "for the group" in terms of individual fitness. For example, social controls such as rewards and punishments are known to strongly foster cooperation even though cooperation is very fragile otherwise. We have tended to see this either in terms of individual self-determination or entirely in terms of social pressure. Wilson's view allows a middle ground, of innate traits which social controls can leverage powerfully to produce cooperation. Wilson's main point is that such traits probably require a multi-level selection theory to explain. Wilson uses scholarly study of religion from a variety of fields to illustrate how human behavior shows evidence of forming groups as adaptive units in the evolutionary sense. This was an idea that was proposed by Darwin (thus "Darwin's Cathedral") and seen as fundamental by many social scientists, but was roundly rejected for the difficulties it brings into population models of evolution. In addition, the recent critiques often brought to bear on social science sometimes tend to see social science concepts such as those of Emile Durkheim as something needing to be slashed and burned rather than just seen in a new light. Wilson takes a new look at Durkheim's functionalist view of society and the various critiques of it, and finds plenty of archaic ideas, but also notes that the central theme of religion serving to unify human groups remains out of the ashes. In Darwin's Cathedral, Wilson compares his view of religion as something that unifies human groups with the competing views of religion as a collection of arbitrary Gouldian "spandrels" or byproducts of evolution, the view that religion is a form of catchy imagination, and the Dawkinsian view that religious beliefs are mental parasites, and makes his case very well. He is very careful in his analysis and pulls from a wide range of scholarly material to make his case that, provided we are very careful about how we measure Darwinian fitness and very careful not to look for group selection where behavior can be explained otherwise, we can explain aspects of human behavior that simply can't be explained in terms of inclusive fitness for the genes of our relatives or even by playing games of reciprocal altruism. Wilson makes many of the same points as Pascal Boyer does in "Religion Explained," but seems to tie things together more neatly with his theoretical framework. Since he is not limiting himself to psychological adaptations that solely promote individual survival and reproduction, Wilson has the added flexibility to pose adaptations for punishment and reward that serve social ends, which makes for much more elegant and powerful theory that explains a wider range of phenomena such as the tendency of human beings to see themselves readily as members of groups, their willingness to punish defectors, the the joy most of us get out of finding that we've helped someone else.The only problem with this book is that Wilson takes on too much of a task here for one slim volume. The data on human religion is massive. I'm reminded of Frazer's classic "Golden Bough" and how virtually no one has ever actually read it all the way through in its single highly condensed volume, much less the dozen or so volumes he originally wrote. And yet he makes his point. Wilson also makes his point, and then draws from the massive data but seems to suffer in trying to navigate it all. He spends a lot of time looking at Calvinism from various angles for example. Everything he reviews seems to help him support his theory of religion as adaptive and unifying, but there is so much more to look at that in the end it feels oddly incomplete. This is wonderful interdisciplinary theoretical work that deserves much more followup than a single person can possibly give it."

Publisher: University Of Chicago Press | More reviews: amazon.com

Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language (ConversantLife.com®)

by William A. Dembski

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""Understanding Intelligent Design" is intellectual child abuse aimed at the hearts and minds of children who lack ample appreciation and understanding as to what constitutes valid mainstream science; nothing more and nothing less. It is a well-written polemic co-written by Discovery Institute mendacious intellectual pornographer Bill Dembski and a "Christian" educator, Sean McDowell, who claim that Intelligent Design is truly a valid scientific alternative not only to contemporary evolutionary theory, but indeed, all of mainstream science, period. This is the rare occasion where I am reviewing a book here at Amazon.com that I have not yet read, but their publisher, Mr. David Bartlett, has reneged on his promise to send me gratis a review copy. So I am writing this review not only to demonstrate that I - as someone trained in paleobiology and evolutionary ecology, can review at least part of it without actually reading it - but more importantly, to advise potential purchasers that they would be making a serious mistake by acquiring this book for their adolescent children, thinking that it was presenting a "valid scientific alternative" to contemporary evolutionary theory.

In Chapter Four of "Understanding Intelligent Design", Dembski and McDowell contend that there is a serious problem with the so-called "Cambrian Explosion", since hard part skeletonized multicellular life seems to have appeared "suddenly" in the Cambrian Period, more than 530 million years ago. However, their inane assertion flies in the face of excellent paleontological and stratigraphic research done by paleobiologists and biostratigraphers for generations, especially those in the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (Since both countries possess the best exposures of late Precambrian through Cambrian sedimentary sequences.). As eminent American vertebrate paleobiologist Donald Prothero has stated in his recent book, "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters", the "Cambrian Explosion" should be regarded instead as a "Cambrian Slow Fuse", since the appearance of hard part skeletonized multicellular organisms occurred gradually over a period of eighty million years, from the late Precambrian through the early Ordovician. Moreover, overall taxonomic diversity was relatively low, with at most, 60 genera recognized from the middle Cambrian "Burgess Shale Fauna".

Dembski and McDowell have made the same breathtakingly inane observations about the "Cambrian Explosion" uttered by fellow 20th Century Fundamentalist Protestant Christian creationists like Henry Morris and Duane Gish. Indeed, their published remarks merely offer more evidence that they should be regarded as creationists, period; an astute observation which Prothero has noted for Michael Behe, whom he refers to as an "Intelligent Design creationist" in his book. If you want a realistic depiction of the fossil record as important evidence for the fact of evolution, then you will be much better off acquiring Donald Prothero's "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters".

Much to my amazement, Chapter Four of Dembski and McDowell's latest published example of intellectual pornography, lacks any discussion about mass extinctions. Such a discussion is truly important given the facts that mass extinctions have altered fundamentally the structure and diversity of Earth's biosphere not just once, but at least 7 times. Moreover, each of these instances saw a sudden drop in marine biodiversity of at least 40 to nearly 90 percent (The terminal Permian mass extinction that occurred 245 million years ago, involved a loss of more than 80 percent of Earth's marine biodiversity.). Instead, they are, like other creationists, fixated on the Cambrian "explosion" as though that was the most important event in the history of life on Planet Earth.

From a purely philosophical perspective, one must ask how efficient an "Intelligent Designer" would be in "designing" life, especially after realizing that this new "creation" would be decimated by mass extinctions not just once, but indeed, more than 7 times throughout the history of life on Earth in the past 600 million years. Indeed, this would be a rather illogical means of having an "Intelligent Designer" devote so much time in "designing" this life.

The University of California, Berkeley's evolution website has this fascinating portrait of University of Chicago marine invertebrate paleobiologist David Jablonski and the important research he has done in trying to understand mass extinctions:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/jablonski_01

Jablonski's work is quite important simply because he was among the first - if not the first - to recognize a fundamental distinction between "background" (normal) extinctions and mass extinctions.

"Understanding Intelligent Design" also lacks any credible discussion of the significance of the discovery of paleontological "missing links" in order to understand the evolutionary history of lineages as diverse as avian dinosaurs, whales, horses and fishes, for example. Recently fellow Amazon.com customer Tim Beazley has noted succinctly:

"This just in: Apparently scientists have discovered yet another fossil in the fish-tetrapod sequence.

See: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7199/abs/nature06991.html

This raises the question: If evolution is as useless as the ID-iots keep telling us, then why is it that evos are making all the discoveries like the above, not ID-iots?"

Alas, I could not have said it better myself.

For nearly two decades Intelligent Design advocates like Bill Dembski and his scientifically-trained Discovery Institute colleagues Mike Behe and Jonathan Wells have had ample opportunity to present their Intelligent Design ideas in the rational marketplace known as mainstream science by submitting their work for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals, demonstrating how they have developed hypotheses, tested and refined them, and yielding publishable results in support of their ideas. They have not yet done so, but rather, instead, have engaged in substantial public relations work via lectures, media appearances, and the publication of books like this one in support of what eminent Columbia University philosopher of science Philip Kitcher has referred charitably as "dead science" while yours truly has noted repeated here at Amazon.com and elsewhere that Intelligent Design is merely mendacious intellectual pornography. So should you, the potential purchaser, acquire this book for your school-age children? Sadly, the answer ought to be all too obvious: NO.

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Publisher: Harvest House Publishers | More reviews: amazon.com