Understanding Religion and Science: Introducing the Debate

by Michael Horace Barnes

Most texts on religion and science rightly focus on the effect of modern cosmology and biology on views about God and on the place of humankind in the universe. Many analyze current disputes about Intelligent Design. Some add useful material about notions the soul and inner freedom. A few offer thoughts about miracles. Others devote time to differences in methods in religion and science. Understanding Religion and Science covers all those topics well and clearly.

This textbook also reviews relevant historical and philosophical background, showing, for example, that some ancient Christians speculated on how God might give order to history without having to intervene, or that the very earliest Christians did not believe in a naturally immortal soul.
Finally, the text asks why people differ in their basic commitments, some giving priority to a religiously meaningful life, others willing to face even the most uncomfortable conclusions. The author suggests this may be a divide not easily bridged..

This book will appeal to students of Religion and of Science and Religion Studies.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 25, 2010

About the author

Michael Barnes holds the Alumni Chair in the Humanities and is a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton. He is the author of In the Presence of Mystery: An Introduction to the Story of Human Religiousness (XXIII, 1990) and Stages of Thought: the Co-Evolution of Religious Thought and Science (Oxford, 2000).