Private Doubt, Public Dilemma
Religion and Science since Jefferson and Darwin
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Each age has its own crisis—our modern experience of science-religion conflict is not so very different from that experienced by our forebears, Keith Thomson proposes in this thoughtful book. He considers the ideas and writings of Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, two men who struggled mightily to reconcile their religion and their science, then looks to more recent times when scientific challenges to religion (evolutionary theory, for example) have given rise to powerful political responses from religious believers.
Today as in the eighteenth century, there are pressing reasons for members on each side of the religion-science debates to find common ground, Thomson contends. No precedent exists for shaping a response to issues like cloning or stem cell research, unheard of fifty years ago, and thus the opportunity arises for all sides to cooperate in creating a new ethics for the common good.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thomson, emeritus professor of Natural History at the University of Oxford, explores the well-trod ground of the conflict between religion and science, and does so in a way that is both informative and engaging. Rather than focusing on specific aspects of both fields that may be in conflict, Thomson examines broad patterns. He asserts that "the celebrated conflict between religion and science is really part of a much broader phenomenon occurring whenever there is change in our knowledge either or both in what we know and the context in which we know it." He supports his argument with a close look at the lives and work of Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, two individuals who grappled with the relationship between religion and science throughout their lives. Thomson maintains that an important trait shared by both is an appreciation of doubt, a "fundamental ingredient of progress." Humility follows doubt, he argues, opening up opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. Seeing a glimmer of hope in areas such as environmentalism where the two fields have joint "ownership," Thomson believes it is possible for collaboration to occur between theologians, scientists, and the public for the greater good of society.
