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Love and Quasars: An Astrophysicist Reconciles Faith and Science
Like many Americans, Paul Wallace grew up as a church-going Christian. Also like many, he lost his faith when he started taking science classes in college. He just didn't see how the rigorous method demanded by science could coexist with the belief in things unseen required by Christianity. But, as a working astrophysicist, he started to wonder if he'd gotten something wrong. Slowly and deliberately, he investigated the claims of Christianity, while also acknowledging that science, too, has limits. Ultimately, he came back to Christianity.In Love and Quasars, Wallace shows how faith and science are pitted against one another, and he explains how the standard ways of reconciling them don't work. He then proposes a reasonable, thoughtful approach that will appeal to Christians and students of science alike. Readable and wise, Love and Quasars is an indispensable resource for people who wonder if faith and science can coexist.
147 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 1, 2019
7 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
Paul Wallace
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 9, 2020
Summary: An astrophysicist recounts both his journey away from faith as he saw it in conflict with science, and his return to a faith enlarged by his pursuit of science.
There are many books that contend that science and faith might be reconciled. What makes this book stand apart is not merely the reasoned argument, but more deeply the wonder and love for both God and the cosmos that brings science and faith together for the author.
It wasn't always so for Paul Wallace. Like many children, Paul started out with an implicit faith in God and saw God's glory in the world (the subject of a family joke). Beginning in second grade, he began to see contradictions between what he read in the Bible and what he was learning about the world from science. The religious adults he discussed this with seemed uneasy, the scientists were in love with their work. As he went along, he gradually came to believe that opposing faith to science was kind of like "chessboxing" the mixing of two very different things that each address different aspects of our existence. Faith shouldn't exclude scientific explanations of origins, and science shouldn't pretend to answer the questions of what kind of people we ought to be and ultimate questions of meaning.
He argues for the cooperation of friends, indeed lovers, as the model for the relationship of faith and science, both approaching the universe with wonder and love without imposing what each sees on the other, but mutually appreciating and learning from each other, sometimes coming to a seamless union, as in marriage. He speaks about how science may enlarge faith, even while some choose to believe there is nothing more while others grow in faith. He proposes this rewrite to a materialist vision of the universe:
You have a heavenly father. You're an amazing product of his ongoing creation project. We've discovered a lot about that project, which has been going on for billions of years. We are human beings, the descendants of apes, who were drawn from earlier, smaller primates. Our lineage also includes reptiles and amphibians and fish and worms and even single-celled organisms. Like a flower that grows from the dirt yet is not itself dirt, we have been gradually assembled out of chaotic and disorganized elements. You were formed from the dust of the ground, given the breath of life, and carry the image of a loving and creative Father who is crazy about you.
He proposes that this view of science and faith opens us to a larger and stranger God, one who made a vastly more immense universe than anyone before Copernicus imagined, and even stranger than the universe delineated by Newton. He thinks this leads to a larger understanding of the Bible revealing God's loving relationship to the world he has made rather than strained interpretations that tend to harmonize a literal reading of Genesis with the findings of science. Science reveals a universe "red in tooth and claw" and faith reveals a Christ who enters into violence and suffering and transforms it. He suggests that our problem with miracles may be that we look at such events from a human point of view whereas from God's perspective, there are no miracles but only possible things.
One of the most helpful chapters is one in which he re-examines the popular view of the church versus Galileo, suggesting that the real history is more complicated and that much of the purported warfare between science and Christianity has been cooked up and is an oversimplification of history. He describes his own journey back to faith as he recognized the limits of science to address life's big questions of why we are here and our sense of wonder at the beauty we behold in the world. Most of all, faith, and not science revealed that we are creatures of love, a love that embraces people, God and the cosmos that scientists study.
What I appreciate is that Wallace does not try to argue a concordist explanation between the Bible and science. He doesn't try to argue God from irreducible complexity or fine tuning. He traces his own recognition of the inadequacy of materialist science to answer the deepest longings and intuitions of his life. He recognizes the connection between the wonder and love of the believer and the scientific researcher. He does all this in a manner that is at times disarmingly offhand and at others is caught up in the wonder of the world he studies, inviting us, "do you see it too?" Just as the woman who eventually became his wife didn't make him an evangelistic "project" but simply entered into a relationship of wonder and love that was instrumental in his return to faith, so he treats the reader. One feels we are not projects but fellow seekers, trying to make sense of our own wonder and love and a longing for making some sense of the world, even as we listen to his personal journey of discovery.
________________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
There are many books that contend that science and faith might be reconciled. What makes this book stand apart is not merely the reasoned argument, but more deeply the wonder and love for both God and the cosmos that brings science and faith together for the author.
It wasn't always so for Paul Wallace. Like many children, Paul started out with an implicit faith in God and saw God's glory in the world (the subject of a family joke). Beginning in second grade, he began to see contradictions between what he read in the Bible and what he was learning about the world from science. The religious adults he discussed this with seemed uneasy, the scientists were in love with their work. As he went along, he gradually came to believe that opposing faith to science was kind of like "chessboxing" the mixing of two very different things that each address different aspects of our existence. Faith shouldn't exclude scientific explanations of origins, and science shouldn't pretend to answer the questions of what kind of people we ought to be and ultimate questions of meaning.
He argues for the cooperation of friends, indeed lovers, as the model for the relationship of faith and science, both approaching the universe with wonder and love without imposing what each sees on the other, but mutually appreciating and learning from each other, sometimes coming to a seamless union, as in marriage. He speaks about how science may enlarge faith, even while some choose to believe there is nothing more while others grow in faith. He proposes this rewrite to a materialist vision of the universe:
You have a heavenly father. You're an amazing product of his ongoing creation project. We've discovered a lot about that project, which has been going on for billions of years. We are human beings, the descendants of apes, who were drawn from earlier, smaller primates. Our lineage also includes reptiles and amphibians and fish and worms and even single-celled organisms. Like a flower that grows from the dirt yet is not itself dirt, we have been gradually assembled out of chaotic and disorganized elements. You were formed from the dust of the ground, given the breath of life, and carry the image of a loving and creative Father who is crazy about you.
He proposes that this view of science and faith opens us to a larger and stranger God, one who made a vastly more immense universe than anyone before Copernicus imagined, and even stranger than the universe delineated by Newton. He thinks this leads to a larger understanding of the Bible revealing God's loving relationship to the world he has made rather than strained interpretations that tend to harmonize a literal reading of Genesis with the findings of science. Science reveals a universe "red in tooth and claw" and faith reveals a Christ who enters into violence and suffering and transforms it. He suggests that our problem with miracles may be that we look at such events from a human point of view whereas from God's perspective, there are no miracles but only possible things.
One of the most helpful chapters is one in which he re-examines the popular view of the church versus Galileo, suggesting that the real history is more complicated and that much of the purported warfare between science and Christianity has been cooked up and is an oversimplification of history. He describes his own journey back to faith as he recognized the limits of science to address life's big questions of why we are here and our sense of wonder at the beauty we behold in the world. Most of all, faith, and not science revealed that we are creatures of love, a love that embraces people, God and the cosmos that scientists study.
What I appreciate is that Wallace does not try to argue a concordist explanation between the Bible and science. He doesn't try to argue God from irreducible complexity or fine tuning. He traces his own recognition of the inadequacy of materialist science to answer the deepest longings and intuitions of his life. He recognizes the connection between the wonder and love of the believer and the scientific researcher. He does all this in a manner that is at times disarmingly offhand and at others is caught up in the wonder of the world he studies, inviting us, "do you see it too?" Just as the woman who eventually became his wife didn't make him an evangelistic "project" but simply entered into a relationship of wonder and love that was instrumental in his return to faith, so he treats the reader. One feels we are not projects but fellow seekers, trying to make sense of our own wonder and love and a longing for making some sense of the world, even as we listen to his personal journey of discovery.
________________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
November 5, 2019
This is a brief and beautiful and insightful read. I recommend it to open-minded people of virtually every religious orientation. Wallace moves the reader beyond the stale binary science vs. faith intellectual battle that characterized so much of the 20th century and that was briefly amplified a few years ago with the rise of the New Atheists. He suggests that while both science and faith are unique responses to the world, they both emerge from wonder and curiosity. Faith neither proves nor disproves science; neither does science prove nor disprove faith.
Wallace does a fine job of explaining in plain language how the warrants for his faith tradition do not turn on consistency between a literal reading of scripture and the claims of science. Each activity has its own warrant and its own methodology, so to speak, though obviously both also share common concerns as well--concerns that Wallace focuses on in the book.
But where Wallace shines as no other writer with whom I am familiar, is in his lyrical, near poetic, description of the wondrous and exquisite complexities of nature itself. Wallace reminds the reader that in his faith tradition (Christianity) the devout are assured that they can know something vital of the Creator by His creation--and it is in Wallace's description of nature that his writing is at its most luminous and inspired. I should note, however, that he does not present nature as simply beautiful and lovely (and loving); it is those things but it is very far from merely these things. Wallace explores the theological implications of a nature that is wonderfully fecund AND terrifying in its entropic indifference to human aspirations.
Wallace holds that any faith that demands that we look away from the complexity of reality is not worthy of our devotion. At the same time, he holds that any approach to knowledge that dismisses or reduces to the mathematically measurable our lived and felt experiences -- including our commitment to meaning, love, beauty, and morality--is incomplete--that is, intellectually and empirically incomplete. The empirical reality of the human condition capaciously allows for and flourishes from careful attentiveness to both faith and science. Both science and, especially, faith is deepened and complicated and made more human by attentiveness to the other.
For Wallace neither faith nor science is magic, nor is it wishful thinking. Science is not competent to reject faith. But the scientific study of science IS competent to reject as false a number of literal interpretations of passages of Scripture that regrettably some Christians hold as fundamental and as a litmus tests of faith itself. In the end, then, Wallace holds a view toward truth that requires individual responsibility and a modesty that allows for openness and changes of mind. One must be willing to reshape one's claims in those areas that science speaks within its competencies. But fortunately for the devout, science's reach is not infinite. Wallace's God is not a God of the gaps; it is a God that in fact is not easily reduced to .... any single account. His is a God that inspires human modesty, and it is a God that aligns with our natural bent toward curiosity and wonder, a bent that finds satisfaction in faith and science alike.
Who will not care for this book? Regrettably, those who could most benefit from reading it. I suspect that the truly and narrowly dogmatic among us--of both the theistic and atheistic varieties--will find it a frustrating and maddening read. Pity for them.
Wallace does a fine job of explaining in plain language how the warrants for his faith tradition do not turn on consistency between a literal reading of scripture and the claims of science. Each activity has its own warrant and its own methodology, so to speak, though obviously both also share common concerns as well--concerns that Wallace focuses on in the book.
But where Wallace shines as no other writer with whom I am familiar, is in his lyrical, near poetic, description of the wondrous and exquisite complexities of nature itself. Wallace reminds the reader that in his faith tradition (Christianity) the devout are assured that they can know something vital of the Creator by His creation--and it is in Wallace's description of nature that his writing is at its most luminous and inspired. I should note, however, that he does not present nature as simply beautiful and lovely (and loving); it is those things but it is very far from merely these things. Wallace explores the theological implications of a nature that is wonderfully fecund AND terrifying in its entropic indifference to human aspirations.
Wallace holds that any faith that demands that we look away from the complexity of reality is not worthy of our devotion. At the same time, he holds that any approach to knowledge that dismisses or reduces to the mathematically measurable our lived and felt experiences -- including our commitment to meaning, love, beauty, and morality--is incomplete--that is, intellectually and empirically incomplete. The empirical reality of the human condition capaciously allows for and flourishes from careful attentiveness to both faith and science. Both science and, especially, faith is deepened and complicated and made more human by attentiveness to the other.
For Wallace neither faith nor science is magic, nor is it wishful thinking. Science is not competent to reject faith. But the scientific study of science IS competent to reject as false a number of literal interpretations of passages of Scripture that regrettably some Christians hold as fundamental and as a litmus tests of faith itself. In the end, then, Wallace holds a view toward truth that requires individual responsibility and a modesty that allows for openness and changes of mind. One must be willing to reshape one's claims in those areas that science speaks within its competencies. But fortunately for the devout, science's reach is not infinite. Wallace's God is not a God of the gaps; it is a God that in fact is not easily reduced to .... any single account. His is a God that inspires human modesty, and it is a God that aligns with our natural bent toward curiosity and wonder, a bent that finds satisfaction in faith and science alike.
Who will not care for this book? Regrettably, those who could most benefit from reading it. I suspect that the truly and narrowly dogmatic among us--of both the theistic and atheistic varieties--will find it a frustrating and maddening read. Pity for them.
December 25, 2019
Great short book about reconciling faith and science. Written by an astrophysicist who also has his DMin in theology. He makes a great case for a non-concordist understanding of the bible. He explains how in a quantum physics world miracles are part of the natural world. He shows how science has enlarged his faith and view of God. A Great short read.
January 24, 2020
A captivating and comforting read for anyone who has struggled with reconciling faith with science. Wallace’s writing style is engaging, accessible, and even funny at times, with plenty of quirky stories sprinkled throughout.
December 11, 2020
Excellent introduction to a discussion between scientific worldview and Christian faith defined by perfect love. A “science +” worldview that opens up the imminent frame (Charles Taylor).
June 4, 2020
Well Written but Preaching to the Choir
This is a wonderfully well written and very personal book. I share with the author a love of science and nature and a deep appreciation of human love and compassion. I was hopeful that this book would help me to see how faith and science can coexist. It succeeds in a sense, I suppose. But the facts that the universe is incredible and mysterious, and that love and consciousness are incredible and mysterious, do not naturally lead me to conclude that Christianity is therefore true or that there is a God and he loves us. It leads me to believe that one can, I suppose, with great effort (and probably some cognitive dissonance or willful ignorance), appreciate science and hold on to one's childhood faith in spite of the fact that nature is amoral and violent and terrible in addition to being beautiful and mysterious. I suppose that is what the author aimed to achieve with this book. Without the childhood seed of faith having been planted in my life, I just cannot see how one can reconcile what we know about the natural world with the existence of a loving creator god. I was hoping to be convinced otherwise by this book but was not. Still, it is deeply reflective and honest and insightful regarding nature and astronomy so I give it four stars.
This is a wonderfully well written and very personal book. I share with the author a love of science and nature and a deep appreciation of human love and compassion. I was hopeful that this book would help me to see how faith and science can coexist. It succeeds in a sense, I suppose. But the facts that the universe is incredible and mysterious, and that love and consciousness are incredible and mysterious, do not naturally lead me to conclude that Christianity is therefore true or that there is a God and he loves us. It leads me to believe that one can, I suppose, with great effort (and probably some cognitive dissonance or willful ignorance), appreciate science and hold on to one's childhood faith in spite of the fact that nature is amoral and violent and terrible in addition to being beautiful and mysterious. I suppose that is what the author aimed to achieve with this book. Without the childhood seed of faith having been planted in my life, I just cannot see how one can reconcile what we know about the natural world with the existence of a loving creator god. I was hoping to be convinced otherwise by this book but was not. Still, it is deeply reflective and honest and insightful regarding nature and astronomy so I give it four stars.
June 4, 2024
I enjoyed reading Love and Quasars more than any other book I've read this year. I'm still unpacking the specifics of my enjoyment of it, but Paul's book struck me as funny, probing, knowledgable, all written with an approachable, pleasing voice. Books about such deep topics can often dull your day in heavy tedium, but I lost myself in this book, often saying "Okay, just one more chapter."
Thank you, Paul, for this book.
Thank you, Paul, for this book.
November 23, 2019
Faith and Science are Dating
If you’re reading this you’ve likely read a dozen or more book’s reconciling faith and Science, like an estranged couple trying to make a tenuous relationship work. Paul might be the first author to truly put faith and science in an actual relationship. One in which God rightly encompasses science, not circumvents it. And vice versa.
If you’re reading this you’ve likely read a dozen or more book’s reconciling faith and Science, like an estranged couple trying to make a tenuous relationship work. Paul might be the first author to truly put faith and science in an actual relationship. One in which God rightly encompasses science, not circumvents it. And vice versa.
December 22, 2020
One of the best books I’ve read. It really comforts me to know faith and science can enhance each other instead of always being at odds.
January 16, 2022
Excellent short book exploring the compatibility of faith and science in a warm and personal manner.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews