God's Universe

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 160 pages
• Published by: Belknap Press September 30, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0674023706
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0674023703
• Book Dimensions: 7 x 4.7 x 0.5 inches
• Weighs: 4 ounces

From Scientific American
In God’s Universe, Owen Gingerich, a Harvard University astronomer and science historian, tells how in the 1980s he was part of an effort to produce a kind of anti-Cosmos, a television series called Space, Time, and God that was to counter Sagan’s "conspicuously materialist approach to the universe." The program never got off the ground, but its premise survives: that there are two ways to think about science. You can be a theist, believing that behind the veil of randomness lurks an active, loving, manipulative God, or you can be a materialist, for whom everything is matter and energy interacting within space and time. Whichever metaphysical club you belong to, the science comes out the same. In the hands of as fine a writer as Gingerich, the idea almost sounds convincing. "One can believe that some of the evolutionary pathways are so intricate and so complex as to be hopelessly improbable by the rules of random chance," he writes, "but if you do not believe in divine action, then you will simply have to say that random chance was extremely lucky, because the outcome is there to see. Either way, the scientist with theistic metaphysics will approach laboratory problems in much the same way as his atheistic colleague across the hall."

George Johnson is author of Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order and six other books. He resides on the Web at talaya.net

From Booklist
Astronomer Gingerich believes in a designed universe, although not in intelligent design (ID), the antievolution theorizing that some Evangelical Christian activists want taught in public-school science courses. His intent isn't, however, to flay ID as Michael Shermer does in Why Darwin Matters (see review on p.22); it is to explore a few topics in science that suggest design and a designer, God. He weighs the Copernican principle that intelligent life isn't exceptional in the universe against the Darwinian emphasis on the uniqueness of life on Earth. He probes the differences between atheist and religious scientists (this is where he dismisses ID along with "evolution as a materialist philosophy" as ideologies), especially over the big bang and cosmological teleology. Finally, he raises some "Questions without Answers" to point up the different, irreconcilable concerns of physics as opposed to metaphysics, science as opposed to religion. Utterly lacking scientific or religious triumphalism, demonstrating why both ways of knowing are indispensable, Gingerich's highly rereadable remarks may well outlast all the brouhaha of the ID-evolution fracas. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Reader Reviews
Gingerich, a Harvard professor emeritus of astrophysics and science history, is perhaps America's best known living astronomer. His book God's Universe will fascinate and inform anyone interested in either natural science or religious belief, but it will especially invite those interested in the interface and supposed conflict of science and religion. Gingerich's views echo those of John Polkinghorne: both a studied religious belief and the modern progression of natural science are thoughtfully embraced. The anti-science views held by many religious people are often due to ignorance of science (and religion), and these views can prove superfluous to orthodox religious belief. Similarly, the anti-religious views held by many scientifically oriented people, are also often due to a comfortable ignorance, and are likewise expendable. Like Polkinghorne (British quantum physicist and cleric), Gingerich believes the world is best explained and understood if it is something that is intelligently purposed. Given the almost unfathomable fine-tuning of the laws of physics, materialistic demands that there cannot be any such intelligent agency are contraindicated, based in personal psychologies or ideologies rather than scientific evidence (are scientifically arbitrary), venture well beyond the domain of natural science, and ultimately lead to no truly deep explanations of the world. A God-ordained world simply makes better sense than the alternative. In Gingerich's words, "a common-sense and satisfying interpretation of our world suggests the designing hand of a superintelligence." Einstein famously agreed. But Gingerich is leery of many formulations of Intelligent Design arguments and distances himself from the ID movement. However he also believes that certain intelligent design arguments are not understood by many who dismiss them due to a kind of knee-jerk conditioning, and a philosophical commitment that departs from strict science. The book is small precisely because it is efficiently presented. Repetition is virtually absent. Many writers who argue against a God-ordained universe inflate books with repetitive assertions (Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins being the obvious example). The second characteristic that distinguishes this book is Gingerich's dispassionate focus. His assertions have the flavor of straightforward observation rather than argument. The emotional belligerence that many writers have brought to the topic is completely absent.