Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Stephen M Barr

Language: English

Pages: 328

ISBN: 0268021988

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


A considerable amount of public debate and media print has been devoted to the “war between science and religion.” In his accessible and eminently readable new book, Stephen M. Barr demonstrates that what is really at war with religion is not science itself, but a philosophy called scientific materialism. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith argues that the great discoveries of modern physics are more compatible with the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, the cosmos, and the human soul than with the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism.

Scientific materialism grew out of scientific discoveries made from the time of Copernicus up to the beginning of the twentieth century. These discoveries led many thoughtful people to the conclusion that the universe has no cause or purpose, that the human race is an accidental by-product of blind material forces, and that the ultimate reality is matter itself. Barr contends that the revolutionary discoveries of the twentieth century run counter to this line of thought. He uses five of these discoveries—the Big Bang theory, unified field theories, anthropic coincidences, Gödel’s Theorem in mathematics, and quantum theory—to cast serious doubt on the materialist’s view of the world and to give greater credence to Judeo-Christian claims about God and the universe.
 
Written in clear language, Barr’s rigorous and fair text explains modern physics to general readers without oversimplification. Using the insights of modern physics, he reveals that modern scientific discoveries and religious faith are deeply consonant. Anyone with an interest in science and religion will find Modern Physics and Ancient Faith invaluable.
 
“A modern physicist who writes with extraordinary clarity and verve, and is familiar with the intellectual arguments long used by the ancient faiths, Stephen Barr gives a brilliant defense of the integrity of science in the teeth of its most powerful modern bias, by telling the exciting story of the rise, complacency, and fall of scientific materialism. As his story crackles along, and just at the point of reaching really difficult concepts, he has a knack for inventing illustrations that make one's inner light bulbs flash again and again.” —Michael Novak, Winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion
 
“Barr has produced a brilliant and authoritative defense of Biblical faith in the light of contemporary science. He perceives a serious conflict, not between modern physics and ancient faith, but between religion and materialism. I know of no other book that makes the case against materialism so lucidly, honestly, and deftly.” —Owen Gingerich, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
 
“Written from the viewpoint of an accomplished physicist, this book is an invaluable contribution to the growing interest in the relationship between science and religion. The arguments are rigorously logical and the documentation is excellent.” —Robert Scherrer, Ohio State University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

regime in which we live our daily lives. Thus, these naive intuitions about physics, rather than being illusions, correctly correspond to real features of the world around us. In most cases they are approximations to the truth that are valid if they are not extrapolated too far from the range of experience on which they are based. The same is true of some of our mathematical intuitions. For example, we feel intuitively

than a toothache can be truer or less true than another toothache. 9 10 TRUTH The intellect has not only the power of abstract understanding but also the power of judging the truth and falsehood of propositions. It has been argued by philosophers since antiquity that this power goes beyond the capacities of purely physical or mechanistic systems. There are many grounds for this conclusion; one of the most basic has to do with what might be called

although not perfectly consistent, are not so much inconsistent as fallible. A fallible but self-correcting machine would still be subject to Gödel’s results. Only a fundamentally inconsistent machine would escape. 14 Again, it must be emphasized that an inconsistent system has no way to resolve contradictions. In such a system 2 + 2 = 4 is in no way better than 2 + 2 = 17 or any other

recede—Hubble’s Law. And it is apparent that this will be true for any pairs of galaxies on the rubber sheet; none are singled out as special. Hubble’s Law has an important implication. If one traces the movements of the galaxies backward, one finds that at some point in the past all the galaxies were on top of each other. That is, the Hubble expansion suggests that all the matter in the universe is flying apart from some primeval explosion.

whether there is something special about the laws of nature themselves that makes it possible. Or would any kind of universe, governed by any kinds of laws, have the same capacity to bring forth life spontaneously? This is the question we shall examine in the next chapters. What we shall find is that our universe’s openness to biological evolution appears to be a consequence of the fact that its laws are indeed very special. A slightly

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