Christian Theology and Scientific Culture

Christian Theology and Scientific Culture PDF Author: Thomas F. Torrance
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1579101305
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
How do we react to the claim that physics must now be regarded as one of the liberal arts, for in its description of the universe it sets the stage for the drama of human life? If modern science has now become the dominant culture, how does Christianity look within it? What difference does the Christian idea of the contingence of nature make to science today? What difference does it make for Christian thought and culture to move away from the old idea of the world as a closed mechanical system of cause and effect into the new idea of the world as an open dynamic system configured by the behavior of light, the fastest messenger in the universe? These are some of the questions discussed in the light of James Clerk Maxwell's discoveries of the mathematical properties of light, and of Albert Einstein's generalization of the new understanding of light for a radically new and exciting view of nature that has made space travel possible and enabled us to trace the expansion of the universe back to conditions near its beginning. This is not a defensive book about science and religion in the usual vein. It is concerned rather with the deep mutual relation and respect of Christian and scientific thought for each other, and shows how this relationship throws new light upon basic Christian doctrines. This volume also warns against the dangers of a reactionary retreat from the rigors of scientific thought into fuzzy mythological interpretations of the incarnation, and calls for a deeper appreciation of the Nicene Creed upon which all Christendom rests.

Science and Theology

Science and Theology PDF Author: J. C. Polkinghorne
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451411515
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
In this short masterpiece, eminent scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne offers an accessible, yet authoritative, introduction to the stimulating field of science and theology. After surveying their volatile historical relationship, he leads the reader through the whole array of questions at the nexus of the scientific and religious quests. A lucid and lively writer, Polkinghorne provides a marvelously clear overview of the major elements of current science (including quantum theory, chaos theory, time, and cosmology). He then offers a concise outline of the character of religion and shows the joint potential of science of religion to illumine some of the thorniest issues in theology today: creation, the nature of knowledge, human and divine identity and agency. Polkinghorne aptly demonstrates that a sturdy faith has nothing to fear and much to gain from an intellectually honest appraisal of the new horizons of contemporary science.

Theology and the Scientific Imagination

Theology and the Scientific Imagination PDF Author: Amos Funkenstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691184267
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Theology and the Scientific Imagination is a pioneering work of intellectual history that transformed our understanding of the relationship between Christian theology and the development of science. Distinguished scholar Amos Funkenstein explores the metaphysical foundations of modern science and shows how, by the 1600s, theological and scientific thinking had become almost one. Major figures like Descartes, Leibniz, Newton, and others developed an unprecedented secular theology whose debt to medieval and scholastic thought shaped the trajectory of the scientific revolution. The book ends with Funkenstein’s influential analysis of the seventeenth century’s “unprecedented fusion” of scientific and religious language. Featuring a new foreword, Theology and the Scientific Imagination is a pathbreaking and classic work that remains a fundamental resource for historians and philosophers of science.

Science and Religion

Science and Religion PDF Author: John Hedley Brooke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139952986
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
John Hedley Brooke offers an introduction and critical guide to one of the most fascinating and enduring issues in the development of the modern world: the relationship between scientific thought and religious belief. It is common knowledge that in western societies there have been periods of crisis when new science has threatened established authority. The trial of Galileo in 1633 and the uproar caused by Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) are two of the most famous examples. Taking account of recent scholarship in the history of science, Brooke takes a fresh look at these and similar episodes, showing that science and religion have been mutually relevant in so rich a variety of ways that no simple generalizations are possible.

Religion and Science: The Basics

Religion and Science: The Basics PDF Author: Philip Clayton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136640673
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Intelligent Design vs. the New Atheists.

Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles?

Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles? PDF Author: Ian Hutchinson
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830873953
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Plasma physicist Ian Hutchinson has been asked hundreds of questions about faith and science: What is faith and what is science? Are they compatible? Are there realities science cannot explain? Is God's existence a scientific question? Is the Bible consistent with the modern scientific understanding of the universe? Are there scientific reasons to believe in God? In this comprehensive volume, Hutchinson answers a full range of inquiries with sound scientific insights and measured Christian perspective. Without minimizing challenging questions, he explores how science and Christianity are mutually supportive and intellectually consistent. Both God and science truthfully address our curiosity and destiny. Find answers to your deepest questions.

Science and Religion

Science and Religion PDF Author: Yves Gingras
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509518967
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Today we hear renewed calls for a dialogue between science and religion: why has the old question of the relations between science and religion now returned to the public domain and what is at stake in this debate? To answer these questions, historian and sociologist of science Yves Gingras retraces the long history of the troubled relationship between science and religion, from the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633 until his rehabilitation by John Paul II in 1992. He reconstructs the process of the gradual separation of science from theology and religion, showing how God and natural theology became marginalized in the scientific field in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast to the dominant trend among historians of science, Gingras argues that science and religion are social institutions that give rise to incompatible ways of knowing, rooted in different methodologies and forms of knowledge, and that there never was, and cannot be, a genuine dialogue between them. Wide-ranging and authoritative, this new book on one of the fundamental questions of Western thought will be of great interest to students and scholars of the history of science and of religion as well as to general readers who are intrigued by the new and much-publicized conversations about the alleged links between science and religion.

Religion and Science: An Introduction

Religion and Science: An Introduction PDF Author: Brendan Sweetman
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847060153
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
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Faith, Science, and Reason

Faith, Science, and Reason PDF Author: Christopher T. Baglow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781936045259
Category : Religion and science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description


Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition

Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition PDF Author: James C. Ungureanu
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 9780822945819
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The story of the “conflict thesis” between science and religion—the notion of perennial conflict or warfare between the two—is part of our modern self-understanding. As the story goes, John William Draper (1811–1882) and Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) constructed dramatic narratives in the nineteenth century that cast religion as the relentless enemy of scientific progress. And yet, despite its resilience in popular culture, historians today have largely debunked the conflict thesis. Unravelling its origins, James Ungureanu argues that Draper and White actually hoped their narratives would preserve religious belief. For them, science was ultimately a scapegoat for a much larger and more important argument dating back to the Protestant Reformation, where one theological tradition was pitted against another—a more progressive, liberal, and diffusive Christianity against a more traditional, conservative, and orthodox Christianity. By the mid-nineteenth century, narratives of conflict between “science and religion” were largely deployed between contending theological schools of thought. However, these narratives were later appropriated by secularists, freethinkers, and atheists as weapons against all religion. By revisiting its origins, development, and popularization, Ungureanu ultimately reveals that the “conflict thesis” was just one of the many unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation.

Science Vs. Religion

Science Vs. Religion PDF Author: Tad S. Clements
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Are scientific and religious ways of knowing compatible or forever at loggerheads? Can the cognitive claims of both religion and science be held simultaneously, or are they mutually exclusive? And what criteria ought we to use to form a judgment? These are the central questions posed by the author who strips away the long-held idea that science and religion can be safely relegated to their own separate spheres -- science to the empirical, religion to the spiritual -- by illustrating the many ways in which religion encroaches upon the domain of science by claiming to have unassailable, revealed knowledge about the universe and human nature. The clashes between these powerful worldviews have steadily increased in number and intensity as more and more people have turned to science for answers to life's mysteries. But are science's ways of knowing to be preferred to those of the world's religions? The author shows that the professed aims of science -- logical compatibility and clarity of explanation based upon observable data and experience -- are the more congenial to human thought and reasoning, unlike religion with its reliance on tradition, mystery, parable and revelation -- none of which can be emprically demonstrated.