Steve Martin has posted a list of ten books that, in his opinion, are reasonably well-written (all by scientists) and "[promote] the compatibility between biological evolution and an Evangelical expression of the Christian faith"
See his post for the list. I've read some of these, and need to read some more. Unfortunately, several of these were published by obscure publishers, and may be difficult to find. One exception is The Language of God, by Francis Collins. The paperback version was published by the Free Press in 2007, with the hardback version published in 2006. Collins has recently retired from working several years as the US head of the Human Genome project. Because of his prominence, and the importance of the book, it should be found in most public libraries. If it isn't, ask them to add it to their collection. Although I haven't read all of the books on Martin's list, I would guess that the Collins book is the best one, for most readers.
I did a series of six posts on Collin's book. The last one of these is here.
Thanks for reading.
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
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The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
2 comments:
Hi Martin,
Thanks for the link. That is a good point that some of these books are difficult to find & and are published by obscure publishers. Note that the current Giberson Book "Saving Darwin" seems to be getting good promotion ... it is published by Harper One.
But I wouldn't want to short change other books because of obscure publishers. Although I liked Collin's book as well, I would say that depending on the reader, one or more of the other books are much more appropriate. For example, for Christians that grew up in very conservative homes where YEC was intimately tied to the gospel, I'd say "Coming to Peace with Science" or "Paradigms on Pilgrimage" are better. Both are written by authors that struggled a lot with the science / faith conflict & so these books tend to connect more with these types of readers (including myself!) rather than the Collins book (who grew up an atheist).
Thanks, Steve Martin, and also, thanks again for publishing that list, which was a real service. I'm trying to have all of the books ordered for the library of the University I'm affiliated with, and I hope to read all of them eventually.
I'm sure that you are right that Collins isn't the best of these for everybody.
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