Science & the Search for God, part 3

I have been posting on Kitty Ferguson's book, The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion & the Search for God. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995) In my next to last post (see link in previous sentence) I attempted, following Ferguson, to discuss the idea that science has limits. My last post on the book was a compilation of comments on that next to last post.

In the post that was all mine, I quoted one of the great scientists of the previous century, who said, basically, that science cannot tell us why science works. That scientist, Richard Feynman, was not, so far as I know, a believer in a personal God of any sort. (I have read a couple of biographies of Feynman, and they don't mention or suggest such belief.) I would paraphrase Ferguson thus: "There are things that science cannot explain, or that are outside the legitimate realm of science." Does this prove that God exists? No. Does it mean that God must be invoked to explain why science works, or why science frequently seems to succeed when it follows a quest for elegance? I don't think so.

I continue with chapter three of Ferguson.

On her page 74, Ferguson says that, if there is a God, that, in itself, means that there are, most likely, limits to what science can discover.

She goes on to say that God might be better served by trying to prove He does not exist, and failing to do so, than by attempting scientific proof that he does. She draws a parallel with the Big Bang theory, which, originally, was not believed by most scientists. However, that previous disbelief, and the fact that the main evidence for the Big Bang was discovered by scientists who were not looking for such evidence, are now powerful arguments for an initial Big Bang.

Then, writes Ferguson:
A Brief History of Time [by Stephen Hawking] and The Blind Watchmaker [by Richard Dawkins] are two of the finest books ever written for the popular science audience, and both authors seem obsessed with God. Whether or not it is true, both give the impression that the fact that the scientific theory they are writing about erases our need for a God is far more reason for celebrating than the fact that the theory makes a new part of this mysterious universe accessible to human beings. This can't be called a religiously neutral point of view. Science, for Hawking and Dawkins, is not essentially Godless. (p. 76).

In her acknowledgments section, Ferguson thanks both Hawking and Dawkins (and others) for reading and commenting on parts of The Fire in the Equations. She doesn't indicate what parts they read, or what they said about her manuscript.

If Ferguson had written later, she might, or might not, have considered The God Delusion by Dawkins. That book, published after hers, is about what you might expect from its title.

I have read both of the books cited by Ferguson. It's been a while. However, my impression is that her assessment is correct. Both of these important writers do seem to celebrate erasing the need for a God. The later book by Dawkins certainly does.

On page 79, the author puts out an interesting idea. Many people, including, I suppose, most scientists who have thought about the question "why do we have the ability to do science?" believe that our thinking ability is present because it has been selected for. That is, our ancestors must have been able to think, and in ways that helped them to survive and produce viable offspring, more than their peers who weren't able to think as well. Not only that, but even the type of thinking that we do must have been selected for, at least in part, for the same reason. Ferguson suggests that, should there be any intelligent life forms on other planets, they might also be able to think, but might have been selected, because of differences in their environment, in a way different from humans. That, she supposes, might make their science, should they have any, rather different than ours.

I understand that some readers might disagree seriously with the idea that the ability to think, or the way we think, may be the way they are in us humans, at least partly, because of natural selection. But most scientists, especially non-Christian ones, believe it, if they have thought about the question.

On page 84, Ferguson says the following:

. . . hasn't science proved to us in more positive ways than 'Sorry, can't study it' that the supernatural world is only a trick of the brain, only psychological experiences, at most unusual but altogether natural occurrences? Hasn't it shown that what we call God is only the laws of physics, or wishful thinking? Hasn't it shown that meaning is only interpretation -- meaning in the eye of the beholder? And isn't there already good evidence that human mind and personality are only the product of complex physical mechanisms?

No. Science has not yet been able to offer us a complete physical explanation in any of these four areas; we do not know that it has the capacity ever to do so; we do not know whether there are, even in principle, unknowable physical explanations. (84)
Ferguson goes on to say that if such an explanation was forthcoming, for any of these matters, we would still not be sure that it was the only possible explanation. She does not claim, as I see it, that the lack of explanation in these areas proves the existence of God.

This, for now at least, concludes my published musings on Chapter 3 of The Fire in the Equations. Thanks for reading. I expect to continue the series.

Science & the Search for God: A Reaction

I have been posting on Kitty Ferguson's book, The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion & the Search for God. The previous post is here.

There has been an exchange of views between a reader and me, as a result of that post. I thought that it was serious, and perhaps interesting enough, that I ought to reproduce the exchange as a separate post, and have done so, with the permission of the commenter. Inserted material, not in the original comments, is in square brackets - [thus].

Pete DeSanto said

After reading this chapter, I am having serious misgivings about the direction that Ferguson seems headed. She dwells a lot on what science CAN'T do, almost as if she is making the bed of ignorance in which god will rest.

There is a lot of discussion about preconceptions and how that affects the "emergence of scientific knowledge" that seems to ignore the fact that what emerges is always due to the questioning of our preconceptions! How else to explain the move away from natural theology? We have removed the need for god to explain the how to needing god to explain the why, despite centuries of religious claims to truth. Religious preconceptions were overcome with evidence (under penalty of physical and spiritual death), why should we not expect that secular biases will also not be overcome should that be required by evidence?

I would also like to see more contrast of science with Ferguson's religion. E.g. how does religion deal with questioning of preconceptions? How does society and culture influence and change religious belief? Most importantly, what checks are used to determine if a school of religious thought is valid?

I fear Ferguson is digging herself a hole which will collapse in upon itself.

[There was another comment, not germane, by another person, at this point.]

Martin LaBar said

Perhaps so, Pete DeSanto.

My own view is that her comments about what science can't do are a welcome voice. I wouldn't characterize her as proposing a strong argument for God's existence. I would characterize her as showing, in a number of ways, that science can't disprove God's existence. I'm re-reading as I post, and will try to deal with this in due time, perhaps not satisfactorily. I have decided that it makes more sense to write about the book in the order it was written.

As always, thank you for your comments.

Martin LaBar said

Thanks again for your comment, Pete DeSanto. After reading it again, and my response, I apologize for not responding more thoroughly.

First, there are two kinds of preconceptions related to science. One of them is a preconception about what sort of result you will find. There was, at one time, a preconception that protein was the genetic material. And you are quite right. Perhaps the greatest strength of science is that that sort of preconception gets discarded, as discoveries are made.

The second kind of preconception is about the very nature of things, or the scientific enterprise. The quotation from Feynman, [see previous post, in the first link above] as I read and understand it, shows an example of that. Scientists have a preconception that nature will let us discover things. There are other preconceptions of this type, the most fundamental one being that our senses are giving us reasonably accurate information about the world around us.

Certainly, religion has its own preconceptions, and they can be dangerous in a number of ways. But religion gets questioned a lot. There are atheists in a position to do so, and competing religions that question each other. Ferguson's book, to me, in a sentence, says that science is great, but it doesn't tell us everything. It is not principally a book about religion.

Thanks again.

Pete DeSanto said

Feynman was certainly entitled to his opinions, but I think the jury is out on such things. You can always ask a deeper "why?" that doesn't have an immediate answer and assert that it is a matter of metaphysics and not science. In any case, the scientific approachability of nature is not an a priori assumption, but one discovered only after centuries of trial and error at determining answers to questions about nature. It so happens to be shown valid throughout the history of science.

Not to be insolent here, but show me a scientist who begins an experiment with the notion that nature will let us discover things. I would suggest that most experiments (and most human endeavors) are prefaced by the question, "Will this work?" and little else. The fact that we can use results from one experiment to predict expectations of other experiments in a wonderful thing, but certainly not one that was presumed with certainty absent evidence that it might indeed be the case. There was no shining moment when one person claimed such a thing and a whole realm of knowledge was suddenly opened to us. It took considerable effort by many people to come to the point of realization that nature is approachable analytically instead of by revelation.

Comments about what science can't do abound. Answering those comments with "therefore god" is special pleading. Science can't disprove the tooth fairy or santa claus either, yet no one considers that a valid argument for their existence. So I agree that she does not make even a weak argument for the existence of god.

I think it's a bit disingenuous of Ferguson to make arguments about science's inability to disprove any god and then use that to make claims about a specific god. I.e. she uses examples of the Christian god throughout, but not any other.

As for the questioning of religious preconceptions, let's be clear that in the short time during which such questioning was not punishable by death or excommunication the result is ever more divergence in religion. Witness the thousands of Christian denominations based on various interpretations stemming from one group breaking off from another denomination. The situation is quite the reverse in science, where the number of diverse hypotheses gets whittled down to converge upon only those that are best supported by the evidence.

Martin LaBar said [Not as a comment, but as part of this post.]

Thanks again, Pete DeSanto, both for the comments, and for agreeing to allow me to post them as part of a full blog post.

First, let me say something about your comments about religion. I reiterate that my impression is that the book is not primarily about religion, but about science. To summarize it: Ferguson argues that science has its limits. That being said,  perhaps the book would have been stronger if it had dealt with, say, Hinduism. But the three major monotheistic religions of the West, splintered as they may be, are the most influential ones, by far, for the audience who was likely to read the book.

Second, about Christianity. Yes, it is true that Christianity is divided into thousands of denominations. I am not an expert in Christian denominational history, and have no plans to become such an expert, so I don't want to say more about this beyond this paragraph. I will say that I agree that this splintering of Christianity can, indeed, be taken as evidence that we Christians have some serious difficulties in interpreting God's revelation. I think that it is also true that pride and human traditions have led to some of the fracturing of the church. I can see that it would be possible to take this as evidence that God's revelation is non-existent, or at least not relevant. My own experience with God, and what I believe that God has done for me, in spite of my own failure to understand all of what He is saying, and in spite of the flawed humans who introduced me to Christ and accompany me on my Christian journey now, is far more important than these human failures. God is able to work through a church, or a person, with human limitations, even human sins. That's not an excuse for sin.

You mention punishment by Christians for disagreement. That was, and even is, reprehensible. Perhaps this is part of what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 7:21-23, when he said that he never knew some who said "Lord, Lord." (He may have also been referring to some church splitters.) Such things happened, and, a little bit, are still happening, and I'm deeply sorry that they did and are. They were and are wrong -- sinful. I can't do anything about them. I don't want to say more about this, either.

Third, about the main issue -- the limits of science.

You say "You can always ask a deeper 'why?' that doesn't have an immediate answer and assert that it is a matter of metaphysics and not science." That is true. You always can, and to say so is not to trivialize the situation. I contend, and I believe there are a lot of good philosophers, and even scientists, by no means all of them believers, who agree, and would go further, saying that the answers to some "why?" questions are not scientifically answerable, in principle. As I understand him, Feynman did exactly that in the quotation referred to above. Probably the most fundamental such question is "Why is there anything?" That is not a trivial question. Science cannot answer it. I don't think we have any better answer than that God willed it to be so. Perhaps you are right about the approachability of nature not being an assumption, but I don't believe that there is a scientific answer to why nature is approachable.

Let me be as clear as I can about one thing that I am not saying. Should every scientist have a doctorate in the philosophy of science, in order to work at, say, NIH or NASA? No. I have a Doctor of Philosophy degree, but have never had a course in philosophy, either as a graduate or undergraduate student. I expect that that shows sometimes. Most of what most scientists do, and this is the way it should be, is what Thomas Kuhn called "normal science." The Wikipedia article that that link refers to says, following Kuhn, that such work is "not actually challenging or attempting to test the underlying assumptions of that theory." (This and other quotations from the Wikipedia are from the version of July 8, 2010.) That is not a put-down of normal science. It's important. But it's not everything.

It is also not reasonable to expect that most scientists will even care about such matters, or should. But what I am saying is that science, as an enterprise, ought to be careful not to claim, or to give the impression, that all questions can be solved through science. The general public should not believe that, either.

I will go further. There are not only limits to science, but limits within science. In the first post on Ferguson's book, I pointed out that current science says that, at the sub-atomic level, there are things that we cannot know, and that this ignorance is not going to disappear with more expensive instrumentation or more exact measurement. Quantum mechanics could be wrong, I know, but these ideas have been around for the better part of a century now, and show no sign of being overturned. It is also true that mathematics, which is closely tied to science, has a gap in what it is possible to know. To quote from the Wikipedia article that that link refers to, speaking of mathematical systems, "one particular arithmetic truth the system cannot prove is the consistency of the system itself." This idea, too, has been around for the better part of a century, and shows no sign of disappearing.

I should also point out, I guess, that I believe that there are two kinds of "gaps" in scientific knowledge. One such is fundamental gaps, gaps such as the above. Another type is gaps of ignorance. We don't, for example, know what all of the genes in the human genome are, let alone what all of them do. But there is no good reason not to try to find out, doing normal science as we go. For another example, we may not be able to explain exactly how a particular characteristic might have arisen from some pre-existing organism. But that's no reason to suppose that such an explanation will never be found.

Now for another thing that I am not saying. I am not saying, and I don't think Ferguson is, either, that the above limits to science, or others not covered here, are a proof that there is a God. My belief in God does not rest on the limitations of science. The current Intelligent Design movement seems to be acting as if it does, which is both a scientific and a religious mistake. If there is a God, then He is responsible for both what we can understand, and what we can't. If a scientific explanation can be found, that doesn't mean that God wasn't involved, any more than knowledge of how internal combustion engines work proves that humans didn't invent them. My belief in God rests on faith. (Hebrews 11:3) That science has its limits is consistent with that faith.

(You have pointed out, referring to a chapter I haven't posted on yet, that Ferguson may, indeed, be proposing a God-of-the-gaps theology. I expect to deal with that issue again when I post on that chapter. It's an important issue.)

You say, "It took considerable effort by many people to come to the point of realization that nature is approachable analytically instead of by revelation." That is true. Nature is approachable analytically, and, for science, that method is much more likely to yield useful results than trying to approach nature by revelation. In fact, the analytical approach does a pretty good job of opening God's revelation through nature to us. (Psalm 19:1-4, Romans 1:20.) But the analytical method does have its limits. In my first post on Ferguson's book, I paraphrased her list of five assumptions needed for the analytical method to work. The very first assumption, namely that nature has patterns and predictability, is not always true, as I indicated in the paragraph above about sub-atomic unpredictability. Ferguson also discusses chaos theory. Her book is the most that I have read about that subject, so I can't say much about it, but there is a Wikipedia article on Chaos Theory, which says that some systems (such as the weather, and many more) are unpredictable, at least with our present knowledge and instrumentation. The other four assumptions are also not universally applicable. The challenges to their applicability come from scientific thinking, not some sort of religious attack.

Thanks again for your comments, Pete DeSanto. Thanks to any other readers, should there be any such!

Science & the Search for God, part 2

I am attempting a series on Kitty Ferguson's book, The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion & the Search for God. Here is the first post, in which Ferguson points out five assumptions which scientists have operated under for the last couple of centuries, at least, and which have been considered necessary to do science. She also points out that recent scientific thinking has indicated areas where each one of these assumptions may not hold.

In her third chapter, Ferguson considers us -- the observers. Some thinkers believe that modern physics tells us that the observer determines what reality is. Ferguson doesn't go nearly that far, but she does think that what is perceived is not merely an objective reality. She writes:

Can our point of view affect what we find? You don't have to believe things are as uncertain on all levels as they are on the quantum level to see that it can. Nor do you have to believe that a point of view changes objective reality. The choice of an experiment that is more likely to coax out one set of evidence than another; the choice based on a theory as to which evidence will be more significant and ought to be coaxed out; the choice of which theory we ought to take seriously . . . such choices don't change objective reality, but they do help determine what we perceive as reality and what will emerge as scientific knowledge. (p. 41, ellipsis in original)

She discusses the discovery of the W and Z bosons, and concludes, I believe correctly, that they could not have been discovered without the prior proposal of a theory that predicted them. In other words, the observers were, in large measure, determining what reality looked like.

Ferguson continues with a discussion of beauty in science, and the choice of theories. Ferguson does not quote Richard Feynman, but I will:
What is it about nature that lets this happen, that it is possible to guess from one part what the rest is going to do? That is an unscientific question: I do not know how to answer it, and therefore I am going to give an unscientific answer. I think it is because nature has a simplicity and therefore a great beauty. Richard Feynman, "Seeking New Laws," pp. 143-167, in Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, New York: Modern Library, 1994. Quote is from p. 167.

I point out two things about that quotation. First, Feynman, one of the great scientists of the twentieth century, says that science can't explain why nature is susceptible to our examination. Second, scientists, especially in physics, are attracted by theories that have simplicity and beauty.

Ferguson briefly mentions some other ideas that bring the idea that scientific findings are especially objective, and unassailable, into question. One of them is that mathematics, on which the physical sciences depend, is a construct that has to be assumed -- it can't be shown, by mathematics, to be complete. Another idea is the importance of important scientists -- they can influence what is studied, or what is believed, even when they are wrong. Science is also influenced by the culture that surrounds it:
We're all to a certain extent prisoners of the mind-set of our culture and time in ways so inherently part of us that none of us can discern exactly how we and our science are influenced. It's easier to see biases in other cultures and historical eras than our own, but we can't look thoughtfully at human history and come away believing that our own culture is for some reason the exception -- free of biases that affect our perception of the world. (p. 73)

The author's third chapter is too complex to be summarized in a single quotation, but this one comes close:
The old, pre-Darwin 'natural theology' was a search for evidence of God in the works of his creation. Because science has found other explanations for the origin of so much that used to be considered explainable only as the work of God, there seems little basis for faith left in natural theology. We can no longer declare that nature points irresistibly beyond itself. However, the philosophical questions raised by science do irresistibly point beyond science. (p. 86) Here's the Wikipedia article on Natural Theology.

Thanks for reading. I hope to continue posting about this book soon.

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A subsequent post deals with comments on this one.

Science & the Search for God, part 1

In a previous post, I indicated that The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion & the Search for God,* (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994) by Kitty Ferguson, is the best book on science and religion that I have ever read. Why is that so? Well, I like books for the same sort of reasons as other people. I like to be entertained. (That's not the strength of Fire, although it's written well.) I like to learn something. That is a strength of Fire. I like to read things that reinforce my own prejudices. (Well, don't you?) My relevant prejudices are set forth here.

I wish to summarize and discuss the book, in several parts.

Ferguson's aim is to examine how science is done, and, especially, to show that science cannot disprove Christianity, and that science and Christianity are compatible.

I normally don't discuss the acknowledgements -- that's the way that the book spells it -- section of a book, but, in her acknowledgements, Ferguson indicates that a number of people read all or part of the manuscript, and answered her questions. These individuals include a few world-class scientists, namely Richard Dawkins, Alan Guth, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg. Dawkins was formerly a professor at Oxford. He is a recognized scientist, but better known for his popular writing on scientific subjects -- see here -- and, in particular, his outspoken atheism. Guth is a professor at MIT, and the champion of the multi-universe idea. Hawking was a professor at Cambridge, occupying the professorial chair once held by Isaac Newton. He is best known for his thinking on the origin of the universe, and does not believe that any God was involved in that. Weinberg is a Nobel laureate in Physics, and an agnostic, or perhaps an atheist.

There were other people, more sympathetic to Ferguson's aims. The most prominent of those is John Polkinghorne, who was a physics professor at Cambridge, until he resigned to study for the Anglican priesthood. Polkinghorne has written over 25 books on the relationship between science and Christianity. They are relatively short, and readable. His main argument is that science and Christianity are compatible -- both are valid.

Apparently, all of these people, and more, read and commented on some or all of Ferguson's book. Their willingness to do so, and her willingness to want them to, speak well of Ferguson, and them. Another reason this book appealed to me is that I don't see how it would be possible to legitimately argue that she has put forth claims that are not supported by mainstream science, or that she has ignored evidence that might indicate that there was no Divine Creator. She hasn't made any claims that cannot be supported.

The first chapter is about how we experience things, such as a particular chair that Ferguson got from an ancestor. That may not seem important, but it is a fundamental question. How do we know, for example, that our senses are not deceiving us?

Ferguson says that scientists, knowingly or not, made the following assumptions about the universe, in, say, the seventeenth century:
1) It is rational. That is, it has patterns and predictability.
2) It is accessible. It is possible to learn about it.
3) It is contingent. It could have come to exist with different properties, but either chance, or purpose, caused it to be as we know it.
4) It has objective reality. Truths about the universe may be discovered, independent of the seekers' knowledge or biases.
5) It is a unity. The laws of physics are the same throughout the universe. (paraphrased from pages 8-9.)
Furthermore, those same assumptions were shared by theologians.

She correctly points out that all five of these assumptions have been challenged by modern science. Perhaps the most obvious evidence for that is quantum physics, which claims that, at the sub-atomic level, we cannot measure or predict both the position and the momentum of a particle accurately. And, furthermore, this is true in principle. (See here, for the Wikipedia article on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.) Unless there is a profound change in our understanding of how physics works, more expensive, better designed instruments cannot remedy this unpredictability. Another thing that modern physics says: "According to quantum mechanics, the vacuum state is not truly empty but instead contains fleeting electromagnetic waves and particles that pop into and out of existence." (from the Wikipedia article on Vacuum state, accessed June 29, 2010.) These fleeting entities are also unpredictable in principle.

So, at least at the sub-atomic level, the universe is not rational. But, I hasten to add, and Ferguson agrees, we still act as if the universe was rational, and as if it possessed the other four properties, and we should, so long as we are aware of the exceptions. There may, of course, be exceptions that we don't know about.

Ferguson concludes her second chapter** by saying:
It may be an act of faith alone, a flying in the face of some contrary evidence, but few of us would succumb to complete pessimism or abandon the scientific quest. Few of us would say that the human race and individuals among the human race can't know anything meaningful about the universe. Some of us do go on doing science, and others search for God, and still others do both, or keep their options open, or merely cope on a day-to-day basis -- continuing to assume that the universe is rational, contingent, open to our scrutiny, has underlying unity, and that there is such a thing as objective truth. (p. 34)

*I chose to use an abbreviated form of the subtitle for the title of this blog post, as it is more likely to mean something to others than the book's main title.

**The first chapter is introductory, and only four pages long.

Thanks for reading. I hope to continue this series soon. It's worth it for me, if no one else ever reads it.

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See here for the next post in this series.

Books on science and religion

I have been blogging here since December, 2004, and I've tried to cover a lot of ground.

One topic that continually interests me, whether it interests any of my readers or not, is the topic of science and religion, in particular, science and Christian faith. I have been reading books on this subject since I was in graduate school, nearly a half a century ago. I was never assigned any such books for a class assignment. I assigned a few such books to myself, and my students, as textbooks, and I read many more because I thought I should. I would guess that I have read at least 75 such books, by many authors, from many viewpoints. Some people, when they see the title of this post, would suppose that "science and religion" has to do with origins, or, if you prefer, evolution. That is a legitimate subset of such books, but the "science and religion" also includes other, more fundamental topics, such as the historical relationship between science and Christianity, the assumptions necessary to do science, and whether or not scientific study is compatible with religious belief at all.

I'd like to do two things in this post. One of them is to post links, for my own benefit, to reviews and discussions of such books that have been published on this blog. More on this below.

The second thing I want to accomplish is to tell you that I have recently finished the best book on science and religion (mainly Christianity, although the author touches on Islam and Judaism somewhat) that I have ever read. That's saying a lot -- I've read some good ones. I wish that I had read Ferguson earlier, and that I had assigned it to some of my classes. That book is The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion and the Search for God, by Kitty Ferguson. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) I expect to be posting about that book in the near future, God willing. I had heard of it, and ordered it for the Southern Wesleyan University library, but I had never read it. Shame on me.

Ferguson has a brief article in the Wikipedia, and there is an unofficial Kitty Ferguson web site. (For some reason, it classifies The Fire in the Equations as a "novel," which it certainly is not. The Amazon web page on the book is here, and the Barnes and Noble web page is here.


Books on science and religion that I have reviewed on this blog

The books mentioned below do not include books on environmental or medical ethics, some of which are also about science and religion.

Lest there be any doubt, I do not necessarily agree with everything that each book listed said, and tried to make clear where I did not in my reviews.

I reviewed Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator. The last of four posts is here. Strobel was really presenting a "Case for Intelligent Design." Although he was well-intentioned, I do not believe that he made a good case, and, in fact, I don't think that such a case can be made. See here for my post on my problems with the Intelligent Design movement. (I have plenty of Christian company in this.)

I reviewed The Language of God, by Francis Collins, who, until recently, was director of the US Human Genome Project, and is a Christian. Collins does a good job of arguing that science and Christianity should be compatible. He also gives his personal testimony. The last post is here.

I reviewed A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke. The last post is here. Snoke is clearly a student of the Bible, and not one to do violence to scripture. He makes some strong arguments that a belief in Scripture is compatible with a belief in an earth much older than a few thousand years, although, of course, everyone is not convinced.

I devoted one post to a review of Michael Shermer's Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. Shermer, a well-known atheist, was surprisingly respectful of religion in this book.

I reviewed John F. Haught's Is Nature All There Is? here. Haught argues that it is not possible to explain purpose, or critical intelligence, without going outside of nature, which of course, means that he is arguing for the existence of God.

I reviewed The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, probably the most widely known atheist of our time. The last post is here. Dawkins does not believe that there is a God, and argues that case at considerable length. He does not claim that he has disproved God's existence. Dawkins is an excellent popularizer of science, and has solid scientific credentials.

This post, which is not a review, mentions three important authors in the field, namely Stephen Barr, Ian Barbour, and John C. Polkinghorne. Although I have read books by each of these -- several by Polkinghorne -- I read them before I started blogging, and have never reviewed one of their books.

Here is a post -- not a full review -- about Stephen Jay Gould's Rocks of Ages, wherein this important popularizer of scientist, who was a geologist at Harvard University, and apparently not a believer, indicated that he believed that religious study and belief were legitimate activity for humans.

I have also read, as I said, many other such books, including Darwin on Trial by Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe, The Genesis Flood by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, and Davis A. Young's Christianity and the Age of the Earth. I consider these books to be among the most influential volumes on Christianity and science written between 1961 and 1996. Johnson, a lawyer, argued that Darwinism was based on false logic and unsupported assumptions, and founded the Intelligent Design movement. Behe gave some scientific respectability to that movement. Morris founded the modern young-earth creationism movement, and Young's book refuted The Genesis Flood. I have not, so far, at least, reviewed these books here. (I have here documented statements showing that Young-Earth Creationism and the Intelligent Design movement are not very compatible.)

Thanks for reading.