Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science - Hardcover

Ruse, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521755948 ISBN 13: 9780521755948

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

In Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science, Michael Ruse offers a new analysis of the often troubled relationship between science and religion. Arguing against both extremes – in one corner, the New Atheists; in the other, the Creationists and their offspring the Intelligent Designers – he asserts that science is undoubtedly the highest and most fruitful source of human inquiry. Yet, by its very nature and its deep reliance on metaphor, science restricts itself and is unable to answer basic, significant, and potent questions about the meaning of the universe and humankind’s place within it: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the ultimate source and foundation of morality? What is the nature of consciousness? What is the meaning of it all? Ruse shows that one can legitimately be a skeptic about all of these questions, and yet why it is open for a Christian, or member of any faith, to offer answers. Scientists, he concludes, should be proud of their achievements but modest about their scope. Christians should be confident of their mission but respectful of the successes of science.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Ruse is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University. Author and editor of numerous books, most recently Darwinism and its Discontents and The Cambridge Companion to the 'Origin of Species' (with Robert Richards), he has been a Herbert Spencer Lecturer at Oxford University, a Gifford Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and Reynolds Lecturer at Baylor University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of three honorary degrees.

Reviews

From the title, this appears to be an invitation to integrate knowledge with faith. Ruse, a professor at Florida State Univ. is a skeptic who believes that the "central core claims of Christianity by their very nature go beyond the reach of science." He takes the reader through a thorough labyrinth of philosophers from Plato, John Henry Newman, and Reinhold Niebuhr in an attempt to show humans as a product of the environment. The world is a machine and Ruse, an expert on Darwinian evolution, sees humans as machines who learn to adapt through evolution and experiences. Where science and spirituality share common bonds is in human morality. Ruse's view of Christianity makes it easy to dismiss miracles, life after death, mysteries of faith and even the theory of the soul by using science. He makes room for spirituality but is dismissive of faith. With its long block quotations and diagrams, this book is more suited for the college classroom than a general reader.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521755948
• ISBN 13: 9780521755948
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272