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Davies, Paul God And The New Physics ISBN 13: 9780140225501

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9780140225501: God And The New Physics
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In God and the New Physics, Paul Davies explains how science has come of age, and can now offer a surer path to divinity than religion. Science is now on the verge of answering our most profound questions about the nature of existence. Here Paul Davies explains how the far-reaching discoveries of recent physics are revolutionizing our world and, in particular, throwing light on many of the questions formerly posed by religion, such as:
  • Why is there a universe?
  • Where did we come from?
  • What is life?
  • How is the world organized?
Examining subjects from the creation to the soul, free will to time, black holes to miracles, he travels through science and religion to show us that there is more to the world than meets the eye. 'Excellent ... explains with fluent simplicity some of the profoundest questions of cosmology'
  Daily Telegraph 'One of the finest science writers of this generation'
  Independent 'Paul Davies is our best guide to this strange new world'
  Observer 'A list of topics to which he refers would constitute an outline for a dictionary of contemporary scientific excitement. His style is clear, interesting, chatty'
  The Times Higher Education Supplement Paul Davies is Director of the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, and co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative, both at Arizona State University. An internationally-acclaimed physicist, writer and broadcaster, Davies is the author of some twenty award-winning books, including The Eerie Silence: Searching for Ourselves in the Universe, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? and The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning.

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About the Author:
Paul Davies is an internationally acclaimed physicist, writer and broadcaster, now based in South Australia. He is the author of some twenty award-winning books, including About Time and The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Chapter 1

Science and religion in a changing world

'The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science.'

J.B.S. Haldane

'But because I have been enjoined, by this Holy Office, altogether to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre and immovable, and forbidden to hold, defend, or teach, the said false doctrine in any manner...I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect contrary to the said Holy Church...'

Galileo Galilei

Science and religion represent two great systems of human thought. For the majority of people on our planet, religion is the predominant influence over the conduct of their affairs. When science impinges on their lives, it does so not at the intellectual level, but practically, through technology.

In spite of the power of religious thought in the daily lives of the general public, most of our institutions are organized pragmatically, with religion, insomuch as it is included at all, relegated to a stylized role. Such is the constitutional position of the Church of England for example. There are exceptions: Ireland and Israel remain religious states in the legal sense, while the revival of militant Islam is, if anything, increasing the influence of religion in political and social decision making.

In the industrialized world, where the impact and success of science is most conspicuous, there has been a sharp decline in affiliation to the major traditional religious institutions. In Britain, only a tiny percentage of the population now attend church regularly. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that declining church attendance can be directly attributed to the raised profile of science and technology. In their personal lives many people still hold deep beliefs about the world that could be classed as religious, even though they may have rejected, or at least ignored, the traditional Christian doctrines. And any scientist will verify that, if religion has been displaced from people's consciousness, it has certainly not been replaced by rational scientific thought. For science, despite its great impact on all our lives at the practical level, is as elusive and inaccessible to the general public as any exclusive religion.

More relevant to the decline of religion is the fact that science, through technology, has altered our lives so radically that the traditional religions may appear to lack the immediacy necessary to provide any real assistance in coping with contemporary personal and social problems. If the Church is largely ignored today it is not because science has finally won its age-old battle with religion, but because it has so radically reoriented our society that the biblical perspective of the world now seems largely irrelevant. As one television cynic recently remarked, few of our neighbours possess an ox or an ass for us to covet.

The world's major religions, founded on received wisdom and dogma, are rooted in the past and do not cope easily with changing times. Hastily discovered flexibility has enabled Christianity to incorporate some new features of modern thought, to the extent that today's Church leaders might well have appeared heretical to a Victorian; yet any comprehensive philosophy based on ancient concepts faces a hard task in adapting to the space age. As a result, many disillusioned believers have turned to 'fringe' religions that seem more in tune with the era of Star Wars and microchips. The huge rise in popularity of cults associated with UFOs, ESP, spirit contacts, scientology, transcendental meditation and other technology-based beliefs testifies to the continued persuasiveness of faith and dogma in a superficially rational and scientific society. For although these eccentric ideas have a scientific veneer, they are unashamedly irrational 'cults of unreason', to use Christopher Evans's phrase from his book of the same title (Panther 1974). People turn to them not for intellectual enlightenment but for spiritual comfort in a harsh and uncertain world.

Science, then, has invaded our lives, our language and our religions, but not at the intellectual level. The vast majority of people do not understand scientific principles, nor are they interested. Science remains a sort of witchcraft, its practitioners regarded with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Browse through any bookshop. Books on science are usually catalogued under 'The Occult', and modern astronomy textbooks jostle The Bermuda Triangle and Chariots of the Gods for space on the shelves. Lip service may be paid to the importance of science and rational thought for ordering our society, but at the personal level most people still find religious doctrine more persuasive than scientific arguments.

We live in a world that, in spite of appearances, is still fundamentally religious. Ranging from countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, where Islam remains the dominant social force, to the industrialized West, where religion has fragmented and diversified, occasionally into vague pseudo-scientific superstition, the search for a deeper meaning to life continues. Nor should that search be derided. Scientists also are searching for a meaning: by finding out more about the way the universe is put together and how it works, about the nature of life and consciousness, they can supply the raw material from which religious beliefs may be fashioned. To argue whether the date of the Creation was 4004 B.C. or 10,000 B.C. is irrelevant if scientific measurements reveal a 4 1/2 billion-year-old Earth. No religion that bases its beliefs on demonstrably incorrect assumptions can expect to survive very long.

In this book we shall be looking at some of the very latest discoveries in fundamental science, and exploring their implications for religion. In many cases the old religious ideas are not so much disproved as transcended by modern science. By looking at the world from a different angle, scientists can provide fresh insights and new perspectives of Man and his place in the universe.

Both science and religion have two faces: the intellectual and the social. In both cases the social effects leave a lot to be desired. Science may have alleviated the miseries of disease and drudgery and provided an array of gadgetry for our entertainment and convenience, but it has also spawned horrific weapons of mass destruction and seriously degraded the quality of life. The impact of science on industrial society has been a mixed blessing.

On the other hand, organized religion comes off, if anything, even worse. Nobody denies the many individual cases of selfless devotion by religious community workers all over the world, but religion long ago became institutionalized, often concerning itself more with power and politics than with good and evil. Religious zeal has all too frequently been channelled into violent conflict, perverting man's normal tolerance and unleashing barbaric cruelty. Christian genocide of the South American native populations in the Middle Ages is one of the more dreadful examples, but the history of Europe generally is littered with the corpses of those slain because of minor doctrinal differences. Even in this so-called enlightened age, religious hatred and conflict fester all over the world. It is ironical that although most religions extol the virtues of love, peace and humility, it is all too often hatred, war and arrogance that characterize the history of the world's great religious organizations.

Many scientists are critical of organized religions, not because of their personal spiritual content, but for their perverting influence on otherwise decent human behaviour, especially when they involve themselves in power politics. The physicist Hermann Bondi is a harsh critic of religion, which he regards as a 'serious and habit-forming evil'. He cites as an example the excesses of the European witch-craze:

In much of Christian Europe the godfearing used to burn old women suspected of being witches, an arduous duty they felt had been clearly put upon them by the Bible. The facts on witch burning are clear enough: First, faith made otherwise decent people commit acts of unspeakable horror, showing how ordinary and everyday feelings of human kindness and revulsion at cruelty can be and have been overruled by religious belief. Secondly, it exposes as utterly hollow the claim that religion sets an absolute and unchanging foundation for morality.

Bondi claims that the ruthless power wielded by the Church and other religious institutions over the centuries leaves these organizations morally bankrupt.

Few would deny that religion remains, for all its pretentions, one of the most divisive forces in society. Whatever the good intentions of the faithful, the bloodstained history of religious conflict provides little evidence for universal standards of human morality among the major organized religions. Nor is there any reason to believe that love and consideration are lacking in those who do not belong to such organizations, or are even committed aetheists.

Of course, not all religious people are fanatical zealots. The vast majority of Christians today share a revulsion of religious conflict and deplore the Church's past involvement with torture, murder and suppression. But the outbreaks of spectacular violence and brutality in the name of God which still plague society today are not the only manifestations of the antisocial face of religion. Segregation in education and even habitation continues in supposedly civilized countries like Northern Ireland and Cyprus. Even within their own ranks, religious organizations often sanction prejudice, whether against women, racial minorities, homosexuals or whoever their leaders decree to be inferior. The status of women in Catholicism and Islam, or blacks in the South African Church, I find particularly offensive. Although many people would be appalled that their own religion might be described as vicious or intolerant, they will readil...

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  • PublisherPenguin UK
  • Publication date1984
  • ISBN 10 0140225501
  • ISBN 13 9780140225501
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages265
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