Inventing the Universe
Why we can't stop talking about science, faith and God
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
We just can't stop talking about the big questions around science and faith. They haven't gone away, as some predicted they might; in fact, we seem to talk about them more than ever. Far from being a spent force, religion continues to grow around the world. Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists argue that religion is at war with science - and that we have to choose between them.
It's time to consider a different way of looking at these two great cultural forces. What if science and faith might enrich each other? What if they can together give us a deep and satisfying understanding of life?
Alister McGrath, one of the world's leading authorities on science and religion, engages with the big questions that Dawkins and others have raised - including origins, the burden of proof, the meaning of life, the existence of God and our place in the universe. Informed by the best and latest scholarship, Inventing the Universe is a groundbreaking new primer for the complex yet fascinating relationship between science and faith.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oxford professor McGrath (Science and Religion) brings the personal and practical together in a book combining memoir with a critical exploration of the modern relationship between science and religion. McGrath, a crackling storyteller, chronicles his childhood fascination with science and his university study of chemistry. During his university days of reading around in other disciplines, he realizes that scientific knowledge does not provide the only authentic knowledge and that nature can be interpreted in many ways. His professor, Charles A. Coulson, points out to McGrath the coherence between science and faith, and in this book McGrath ranges over the many ways that science and religion diverge and intersect. For example, he explores the conflicts between faith and science over Darwin's theory of evolution: Christians oppose Darwin's ideas because, in their view, these ideas posit a materialist understanding of human nature, eliminate God from the world, and challenge traditional interpretations of Genesis. McGrath points out that both science and religion involve the search for meaning, and that "interweaving the narratives" of science and religion can help us to understand the richness and complexity of the universe and human nature.
