Author:  Gerald Schroeder" Ph.D
Publisher:  Harper One

How can a  non-expert respond to the voices of "expert" scientists like Richard Dawkins  who declare that science shows faith in God to be irrational or unreasonable? When the expert speaks, isn't the issue settled? Or what is to be done when Science "expert" Stephan Jay Gould stated  that religion and science were separate "magisteria" and didn't even interact? Is it confusing when one scientist says science disproves God and yet another  says science can't say anything about him? Are  scientists imbued with trustworthy theologic expertise? Can Dawkins and his ilk say anything expertly reliable about so large a subject as God? Milton Friedman once said that no single person in the world had all the knowledge needed to make the typical "simple" pencil from scratch to the level of its current inexpensive good quality as seen in everyday use. Even a pencil takes collaboration. Indeed, can any expert ever know all about his own narrow area... and also all other relevant subjects as well?

Despite the obvious answer to these rhetorical questions we emphatically should not give up the joy of proximal and imperfect epiphanies that can occur when searching more ultimate issues. Scientific expertise and other knowledges grow in a cotemporal and historic manner. Attempts at synthesis using such new knowledge can lead thoughtful audiences in communal searching to give feedback that fertilizes further fruitful growth.  Likewise, a synthesis can wilt and its roots dry up from its own internal logical or external empirical dissonances.

In the past, a materialistically bias picture or conceptual synthesis of reality using the scientific consensus and "facts"  led to certain beliefs. Belief in spontaneous generation of insects from dung as routine, an infinitely old universe, a universe best explained by randomness and purposelessness, chance resources as easily having the resources in nature to explain of the origin of life, the sun and the earth are not very special. Much of the public had previously been imbued with such ideas, and these ideas were viewed in conflict with at least some understandings of god and holy writ.  But change was on the horizon.

There has been a significant increase in the numbers of writings on science and religion during this era compared to the preceding decade. This was not an accident. The existence of Theology, belief, faith, spiritual needs are not new. Dr. Schroeder tells us findings of science in recent decades are more theologically propitious. He quotes a number of the notables that have weighed in on these issues, Sir Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, former atheist Anthony Flew, and others.

Certainly quoting expert scientists and philosophers having a newer synthesis or insight, as opposed to quoting religious authorities, is more likely to change public perceptions of the faith and science interface. Shouldn't we listen to scientists on science? Schroeder quotes science experts extensively.

He lets these other voices show the new picture emerging. The new version of science? The earth and the universe actually had a beginning, earlier science had been off by the slight value of infinity. Theological sources had been in conflict with science on that point, "believing" in a beginning for centuries. Now they were in agreement again. The fact that a fine tuning of initial conditions of the universe and of the physical constants in the universe were required for life to exist was not predicted by a materialistic only synthesis of reality using scientific knowledge. Yet such fine tuning for life is what has been found by science. If the quality of fine tuning was not predicted, the extreme quantitative fine tuning found was even less expected by non-theological conceptions. Schroeder explains some of these findings, exciting and interesting indeed.

Spontaneous generation of life? Chance origin of life as obvious and easy given the great time and resources available?Schroeder weaves the facts to show the appearance even "simple" life, much less the great variety, richness, mind boggling complexity and integration, and beauty of life, as a chance occurrence, is not good science anymore. Why did we think it was before?  Did we mention that the strong drive for meaning and purpose  within human consciousness and human moral capacity  as being best explained by mere chance is more than a slight leap of ... faith, not science? Can theological explanations really be considered inferior at this point?

Dawkins the biologist uses theology, ironically according to some observers. Dawkins uses a more fundamentalist unnuanced interpretation of scripture to paint a negative view of traditional faith. He is a creator, creating a man, a straw religious man, knocking that man down. He even creates a straw god, disparaging that God. Might a person, like Schroeder, with a Ph.D. phd in physics from M.I.T., who is also a theologian, andfluent in Hebrew, have a unique and greater ability to synthesize, however imperfectly, science and western faith traditions into a more coherent picture than some of the newer shrill atheists like Dawkins? Using his various trainings, his intellect, using cotemporal and historic communal resources, he tries a more nuanced synthesis.

Schroeder says that some of the translations and traditions of understanding the torah, the old testament, have been wrong in such a way that we have had to strain or even fail when searching for a true picture of god. A picture that squares an omnipotent creator, a good God, with a world of hurt. He says we need to be more careful, and listen to what God says about himself. If you have a Dawkinesque view of God, this book might lead you to a less negative understanding. If you are a believer, a searcher, this book  represents a thoughtful interesting place to explore.