Science and Religion_A Very Short Introduction

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Science and Religion_A Very Short Introduction Page 14

by Thomas Dixon


  Chapter 2

  Documents relating to Galileo’s trial and condemnation can be found at FT. ♦Francis Bacon, The New Organon, or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature (1620), Aphorism III; Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (1603), Chapter 1. Both these works are available in modern editions, and also online at the University of Adelaide: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/ ♦ Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794), in Thomas Paine: Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge, 1989), Chapter 2; available online at TP. ♦ Joshua 10:12–14. ♦ Council of Trent declaration: Richard Blackwell, ‘Could There Be Another Galileo Case?’, in The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, ed. Peter Machamer (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 348–66, quotation at p. 353. ♦ Romans 1:20.

  Chapter 3

  Milk miracle: ‘Right-Wing Hindus Milk India’s “Miracle”’, The Independent (London), 25 September 1995, p. 11. ♦ Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, ed. Richard Crouter (Cambridge, 1996), Second Speech, quotation at p. 49; first published in German in 1799; available online at CCEL. ♦ Henry Drummond, The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man (1894), Chapter 10; available online at CCEL. ♦ G. W. Leibniz, ‘Mr Leibnitz’s First Paper’ in Samuel Clarke, A Collection of Papers, Which passed between the late Learned Mr. Leibnitz, and Dr. Clarke, In the Years 1715 and 1716 (1717); available online at NP. ♦ Laplace and Napoleon: Roger Hahn, ‘Laplace and the Mechanistic Universe’, in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, ed. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 256–76, quotation at p. 256. ♦ Descartes to Mersenne: quoted in Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco, 1983), p. 205. ♦ Nancy Cartwright uses the phrase ‘dappled world’ to echo Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem ‘Pied Beauty’, which starts with the line, ‘Glory be to God for dappled things’; Nancy Cartwright, The Dappled World:

  A Study of the Boundaries of Science (Cambridge, 1999), Part I, quotation from Hopkins at p. 19. ♦ Einstein made comments about God not playing dice on several occasions, including in a letter to the physicist Max Born in 1926; Abraham Pais, Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, new edition (Oxford, 2005), Chapter 25. ♦ Fred Hoyle, ‘The Universe: Past and Present Reflections’, Engineering and Science (November 1981), pp. 8–12; quoted in Rodney D. Holder, God, the Multiverse, and Everything: Modern Cosmology and the Argument from Design (Aldershot, 2004), p. 34. ♦ David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), Part II; available in several modern editions, and online at PG. ♦ John 20:24–30. ♦ Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794), in Thomas Paine: Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge, 1989), Chapter 3; available online at TP. ♦ Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, new edition (Oxford, 1989), p. 330. ♦ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, translated with an introduction by David Magarshack (London, 1982), Book 5, Chapter 4, ‘Rebellion’, pp. 276–88; first published in Russian in 1880; available online at CCEL.

  Chapter 4

  Charles Lyell used the phrase ‘go the whole orang’ in a letter to Darwin in March 1863. Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith (eds), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 11: 1863 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 230–3; this letter is available online at DCP. ♦ Quotations from Darwin’s Beagle notebooks: Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (London, 1991), pp. 122, 176. ♦ Darwin’s comments on the ‘damnable doctrine’ of damnation, and on preferring the label ‘Agnostic’, are made in the section of his autobiography concerning religious belief, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed. Nora Barlow (London, 1958), pp. 85–96, quotations at pp. 87, 94; available online at CWCD. ♦ Darwin’s exclamation ‘What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write’ was in a letter to Joseph Hooker in July 1856, Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith (eds), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 6: 1856–1857 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 178–80; this letter is available online at DCP. ♦ The letter about the afterlife from Emma to Charles, and his additional note on it, are quoted in Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (London, 1991), pp. 280–1, 651. ♦ Darwin’s comments about Lyell’s impact on his view of the natural world were made in a letter to Leonard Horner in August 1844, Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith (eds), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 3: 1844–1846 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 54–5; this letter is available online at DCP. ♦ Tortoise soup: Charles Darwin, ‘Galapagos. Otaheite Lima’, Beagle field notebook EH1.17, 12 October 1835, p. 36b; available online at CWCD. ♦ On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) is available in many modern editions, and online at CWCD, where changes between editions can also be compared, such as the insertion of ‘by the Creator’ at the end of the 1860 second edition, at p. 490. ♦ Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies (1863), Chapter 7, p. 315; available online at PG. ♦ Samuel Wilberforce’s review of On the Origin of Species first appeared in the Quarterly Review 108 (1860), pp. 225–64, quotations at pp. 231, 259–60; available online at CWCD. ♦ Huxley’s and others’ recollections of the 1860 Oxford debate are discussed in Frank James, ‘An “Open Clash between Science and the Church”? Wilberforce, Huxley and Hooker on Darwin at the British Association, Oxford, 1860’, in Science and Beliefs: From Natural Philosophy to Natural Science, 1700–1900, ed. D. Knight and M. Eddy (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 171–93, quotation from Huxley at p. 185. See also Leonard Huxley, The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 2 vols (London, 1900); selections available online through the ‘20th Century Commentary’ section of HF. ♦ The text of Pope Benedict XVI’s homily on the occasion of his inaugural Mass on Sunday, 24 April 2005 is available in the online ‘Papal Archive’ at ‘Vatican: The Holy See’: http://www.vatican.va/

  Chapter 5

  The American Association for the Advancement of Science statement on ‘Intelligent Design’ was approved by its Board of Directors in October 2002. The text is available online through their website via an archived news release dated 6 November 2002; a related AAAS news release and statement on ‘Anti-Evolution Laws’ is dated 19 February 2006: http://www.aaas.org/news/ ♦ The full text of Judge John E. Jones III’s ruling in the Dover case in 2005 is available on the website of the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania: http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf ♦ George Coyne’s comments: ‘Intelligent Design belittles God, Vatican director says’ by Mark Lombard, Catholic Online, 30 January 2006; http://www.catholic.org/ ♦ Tennessee’s 1925 anti-evolution statute is quoted in Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA, 1997), p. 50. The text of the statute is available online at FT. ♦ Bryan’s comments on ‘the little circle entitled “Mammals”’ come from the speech he intended to deliver to the jury as the closing argument for the prosecution in the Scopes trial. Darrow’s decision to submit the case to the jury without argument prevented Bryan from delivering the speech, which is included as an Appendix to William Jennings Bryan and Mary Baird Bryan, The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (Philadelphia, 1925), quotation at p. 535. ♦ Genesis 1:26. ♦ Extracts from the transcript of the Scopes trial, including the cross-examination of Bryan by Darrow, are available online at FT. ♦ Thomas Jefferson’s famous words, ‘a wall of separation between Church and state’, were used by him in a letter of 1 January 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association. The text of the letter and an article about its restoration are available online at the Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danbury.html ♦ US Supreme Court opinions on Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) and Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) are available online at Cornell University Law School’s ‘Supreme Court Collection’: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/index.html ♦ Bryan’s comments on school board elections were made in a statement entitled ‘Who shall control?’, written in 1925 and included as an Appendix to William Jennings Bryan and Mary Baird Bryan, The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (Philadelp
hia, 1925), pp. 526–8. ♦ District Judge William R. Overton’s ruling in McLean v. Arkansas (1982) is included as an Appendix to Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock (Charlottesville, 1998), quotation at p. 295. Overton’s judgment is available online at ‘TalkOrigins Archive. Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy’: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-varkansas.html ♦ Percival W. Davis, Dean H. Kenyon, and Charles B. Thaxton, Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins, 2nd edition (Dallas, 1993).

  Chapter 6

  On Persinger’s ‘God helmet’: David Biello, ‘Searching for God in the Brain’, Scientific American Mind, October 2007; available online at: http://www.sciam.com/ ♦ Mario Beauregard and Vincent Paquette, ‘Neural Correlates of a Mystical Experience in Carmelite Nuns’, Neuroscience Letters, vol. 405, issue 3, 25 September 2006, pp. 186–90; reported in The Daily Telegraph (London), 30 August 2006, p. 12, as ‘Nuns Prove God Is Not Figment of the Mind’; available online via http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ ♦ Genesis 3:19; Ecclesiastes 3:19–20; 1 Corinthians 15. ♦ On the creeds: Peter van Inwagen, ‘Dualism and Materialism: Athens and Jerusalem?’, in Christian Philosophy and the Mind-Body Problem: Faith and Philosophy, ed. W. Hasker, vol. 12, no. 4 (1995), pp. 475–88, quotations at p. 478. ♦ George Eliot, Middlemarch, edited with an introduction and notes by Rosemary Ashton (London, 1994), p. 838; originally published in 1871–2; available online at the University of Virginia Library’s ‘Electronic Text Center’: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/ ♦ Eric Lax, Woody Allen: A Biography (New York, 1992), p. 183. ♦ Isaac Watts, Divine and Moral Songs for Children (New York, 1866), pp. 47–8; first published as Divine Songs (1715); available online at CCEL. ♦ ‘Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die’ is a biblical phrase: 1 Corinthians 15:32; see also Ecclesiastes 8:15, Isaiah 22:13, Luke 12:19–20. ♦ Francis Collins on altruism: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York, 2006), pp. 21–31. ♦ Richard Dawkins on altruism: The Selfish Gene, new edition (Oxford, 1989), quotations at pp. 3, 200–1; The God Delusion (London, 2006), pp. 214–22. ♦ Sodom and Gomorrah: Genesis 18:16–19:29. ♦ Onan: Genesis 38:1–10. ♦ Rich young man: Mark 10:17–31.

  Further reading

  General

  Reference works

  Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (Oxford and New York, 2006).

  Gary B. Ferngren (ed.), The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia (New York and London, 2000).

  J. Wentzel van Huyssteen (ed.), Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, 2 vols (New York, 2003).

  Historical studies

  John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991).

  John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (Edinburgh, 1998).

  Gary B. Ferngren (ed.), Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction (Baltimore, 2002).

  Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge, 1998).

  David Knight and Matthew Eddy (eds), Science and Beliefs: From Natural Philosophy to Natural Science (Aldershot, 2005).

  David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (eds), God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (Berkeley, 1986), and When Science and Christianity Meet (Chicago and London, 2003).

  Don O’Leary, Roman Catholicism and Modern Science: A History (New York, 2006).

  Overviews from Christian perspectives

  Ian Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (San Francisco, 1997).

  Alister E. McGrath, Science and Religion: An Introduction (Oxford, 1998).

  Arthur Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science: The Reshaping of Belief, revised edition (Oxford and New York, 2004).

  John Polkinghorne, Theology and Science: An Introduction (London, 1998).

  Islam and Islamic science

  Karen Armstrong, Islam: A Short History (London, 2001).

  Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000).

  Muzaffar Iqbal, Islam and Science (Aldershot, 2002), and Science and Islam (Westport, 2007).

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilisation in Islam, 2nd edition (Cambridge, 1987).

  Malise Ruthven, Islam: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1997).

  George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, 2007).

  Judaism and science

  Geoffrey Cantor, Quakers, Jews, and Science: Religious Responses to Modernity and the Sciences in Britain, 1650–1900 (Oxford and New York, 2005).

  Geoffrey Cantor and Marc Swelitz (eds), Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism (Chicago, 2006).

  Noah J. Efron, Judaism and Science: A Historical Introduction (Westport, 2007).

  International perspectives

  Fraser Watts and Kevin Dutton (eds), Why the Science and Religion Dialogue Matters: Voices from the International Society for Science and Religion (Philadelphia and London, 2006).

  Websites

  American Assocation for the Advancement of Science: http://www.aaas.org/

  Center for Islam and Science: http://www.cis-ca.org/

  Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences: http://www.ctns.org/

  International Society for Science and Religion: http://www.issr.org.uk/

  John Templeton Foundation: http://www.templeton.org/

  Metanexus Institute on Religion, Science, and the Humanities: http://www.metanexus.net/

  National Center for Science Education: http://www.natcenscied.org/

  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/

  TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Evolution/Creation Controversy: http://www.talkorigins.org/

  Chapter 1

  Religious belief and the birth of modern science

  Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500–1700 (Basingstoke, 2001).

  Rob Iliffe, Newton: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007).

  Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1996).

  Books by religious scientists

  Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York, 2006).

  Guy Consolmagno, God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion (San Francisco, 2007).

  Owen Gingerich, God’s Universe (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

  John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven, 1998).

  Thomas Paine

  Thomas Paine, Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge, 1989); Paine’s major works are available online at TP.

  Gregory Claeys, Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (Boston and London, 1989).

  John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (London, 1996).

  Science and atheism

  Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, revised edition (London, 1991), and The God Delusion (London, 2006).

  Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion (London, 2007).

  Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist (Amherst, 2007).

  Natural theology

  John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (Edinburgh, 1998).

  William Paley, Natural Theology, or Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, edited with an introduction and notes by Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight (Oxford and New York, 2006); first published 1802.

  Chapter 2

  Philosophy of science

  A. F. Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science?, 3rd edition (Buckingham, 1999).

  Peter Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, 2003).

  Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford,
2002).

  Philosophy of science in theological perspective

  Philip Clayton, Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion (New Haven, 1989).

  Christopher Knight, Wrestling with the Divine: Religion, Science, and Revelation (Minneapolis, 2001).

  Galileo and the Church

  John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (Edinburgh, 1998), Chapter 4.

  David C. Lindberg, ‘Galileo, the Church, and the Cosmos’, in When Science and Christianity Meet, ed. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (Chicago and London, 2003), pp. 33–60.

 

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