Religion and the Challenges of Science

Ed. William Sweet and Richard Feist
Ashgate Publishers, August 2007
 
Table of Contents
 
Introduction: Rethinking Relations between Religion and Science   
William Sweet

I. History and Contexts in Biology and Evolutionary Theory

1. The Scientists' Declaration Revisited: Youth, Religion and Science in mid-Victorian Britain 
Hannah Gay, History, Simon Fraser University and Centre for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, Imperial College, University of London.

2. Theological Insights from Charles Darwin 
Denis O. Lamoureux, Science and Religion, University of Alberta

3. A Model of Interaction Between Science and Theology from the Scientific Papers of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 
Ludovico Galleni, Science, Università di Pisa

4. Biology and a Theology of Evolution 
Arthur Peacocke, University of Oxford


II. Physics, Philosophy and Fine Tuning

5. Creation, Metaphysics, and Cosmology 
Lawrence Dewan, Philosophy, Dominican College

6. Whitehead, God, and Relativity 
 Richard Feist, Philosophy, Saint Paul University   

7. Design Inferences, Fine-Tuning, and the Prior Probability of Divine Intelligent Agency   
Kenneth Himma, Philosophy, University of Washington
 
8. Cosmological Theories and the Question of the Existence of a Creator 
John Bell, Philosophy, University of Western Ontario


III. Naturalism and the Non-Natural

9. On Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experience of God 
Jerome Gellman, Philosophy, Ben Gurion University/ Israel

10. The Human Genome Revolution, Society, and Religion 
Job Kozhamthadam, Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, India
   
11. Partner of the Sciences or Object of Study? Theology and Religion in Relation to the Natural and Social Sciences 
Willem B. Drees, Theology, Leiden University, the Netherlands

12. Beyond Naturalism: Scientific Creativity and Theological Knowledge 
Paul Allen, Theology, Concordia University


IV. Conceptual Issues

13. Can Science Provide Evidence for Metaphysics?  
Leslie Armour, Philosophy, Dominican College, Ottawa

14. Science and Religious Belief: some conceptual issues 
William Sweet, Philosophy, St Francis Xavier University


Index



Contributors
 
William Sweet (Editor) is Professor of Philosophy at St Francis Xavier University, in Nova Scotia, Canada, and author of Idealism and Rights (1997), Religious Belief: The Contemporary Debate (2003) and, with Hendrik Hart, Anti-foundationalism, Faith and Community (2003). He has edited several collections of scholarly essays, including La philosophie de la religion à la fin du vingtième siècle (1993), Religion, Modernity and Post Modernity (1997), God and Argument (1999), The Bases of Ethics (2000), Idealism, Metaphysics and Community (2001), Philosophy, Culture, and Pluralism (2002), and, most recently, Philosophical Theory and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He is author of some one hundred scholarly articles, primarily in the history of idealist social and political thought, is a co-editor of a new edition of Bernard Bosanquet's The Philosophical Theory of the State (2001, with Gerald F. Gaus), and edited the 20 volume Collected Works of Bernard Bosanquet (1999) and the 3 volume Bernard Bosanquet: Essays in Philosophy and Social Policy, (1883–1922). He is the Secretary-General of the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies, Vice President of the Istituto Internazionale Jacques Maritain (Rome), and President of the Canadian Jacques Maritain Association.
 
Richard Feist (Editor) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. He has edited Husserl and the Sciences: Selected Perspectives, and has published in Études maritainiennes, Oeculture, The Nature of Metaphysics, Dialogue, Journal of Philosophy, Protosoziologie, Science et Esprit, Synthese, De Philosophia, and other journals.
 
Paul Allen teaches in Department of Theological Studies, Concordia University, Montréal, Canada; for some years he was also the Canadian Director of the Science and Religion Course Programme, sponsored by the Centre for Theology and the Natural Sciences (Berkeley). He has published in the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion
 
Leslie Armour is Research Professor at the Dominican College, Ottawa, and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of “Infini Rien”: Pascal's Wager and the Human Paradox (1993), Being and Idea: Developments of Some Themes in Spinoza and Hegel (1992), The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community (1981), The Faces of Reason: an essay on philosophy and culture in English Canada, 1850-1950 (1981, with Elizabeth Trott), The Conceptualization of the Inner Life (1980, with Edward T. Bartlett), Logic and Reality: an Investigation into the Idea of a Dialectical System (1972), The Concept of Truth (1969), and The Rational and the Real: an Essay in Metaphysics (1962). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
 
*John Bell is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author (with D. DeVidi and G. Solomon†) of Logical Options: An Introduction to Classical and Alternative Logics (2001), The Art of the Intelligible: An Elementary Survey of Mathematics in its Conceptual Development (1999), A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis (1998), Toposes & Local Set Theories: An Introduction (1988), Boolean-Valued Models and Independence Proofs in Set Theory (1977; 3rd ed., 2005), The Continuous and the Infinitesimal in Mathematics and Philosophy,
(2005),
and (with M. Machover) A Course in Mathematical Logic (1977; 2nd printing, 1986). He has also published articles in Transcendent Philosophy, Archive for Mathematical Logic, Husserl and the Sciences, Mathematical Logic Quarterly, Axiomathes, Philosophia Mathematica, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy, Journal of Symbolic Logic, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Synthese,
Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra,
the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, and other journals.

 
*Lawrence Dewan, O.P.  is Professor of Philosophy at the Dominican College of Philosophy and Theology (Ottawa, Canada) and author of articles in Acta Philosophica, Études maritainiennes, The New Scholasticism, Laval théologique et philosophique, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Modern Schoolman, Dionysius, Dialogue (Canada), and other journals. He is a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Past President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and Past President of the Canadian Jacques Maritain Association.
 
*Willem B. Drees holds the chair of philosophy of religion and ethics at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Drees is also President of ESSSAT, the European Society for the Study of Science And Theology.  He has an advanced degree in theoretical physics, and doctorates in theology and philosophy. Drees has published and edited studies on religion and science, including Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God (Open Court, 1990), Religion, Science and Naturalism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Creation: From Nothing until Now (Routledge, 2001). He has won various prizes for his writings on religion and science, including the 'Legatum Stolpianum', offered once every five years by the University of Leiden and a Prins Bernhard Fonds Prize for the humanities, offered by the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen

Ludovico Galleni, is a lecturer at Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Chimica e Biotecnologie agrarie, and in Centro Interdipartimentale per lo Studio dei Sistemi Complessi. His work includes research on the relation of theology and science, particularly in light of the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He has published in Concilium, Aquins, Zygon, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Biology Forum, and Revue des questions scientifiques.
 
Hannah Gay is a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, Imperial College, University of London. She did her first graduate work in Chemistry at Imperial College, London, before moving to the study of History. Her recent work has been published in British Journal for the History of Science, Ambix: The Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, Annals of Science, Endeavor, History of Science, Canadian Journal of History, Dialogue, and Canadian Women Studies. Her research on the relation of science and religion, focuses on the important nineteenth century debates.
 
Yehuda (Jerome) Gellman is a Professor of Philosophy at Ben Gurion University in Israel
His general areas of research include philosophy of religion, epistemology, and Jewish thought and he is currently working on projects which address topics of religious experience, the concept of belief, Hasidic thought, and feminist theology. His work includes: Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief (1997), The Fear, The Trembling, and the Fire; (2001)  Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry; and Abraham! Abraham! Kierkegaard and the Hasidim on the Binding of Isaac.
 
Kenneth Himma, teaches Philosophy and Information Systems at the University of Washington, and holds adjunct appointments in the Comparative Religion Department and in the School of Law. He is an associate editor of the recently released Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law and has published in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion; Faith and Philosophy, Southern Journal of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and Legal Theory.
 
Job Kozhamthadam, sj, is Professor in Philosophy of Science, Science and Religion and Basic Science at Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, India. He has frequently been Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Science at Loyola University of Chicago. Fr. Kozhamthadam holds degrees in Physics from St. Xavier's College (Ranchi) and from Patna University, and in Philosophy and in Theology from Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth (Pune), Vidya Jyoti (Delhi), The University of Notre Dame, and The University of Maryland. He is the author of The Discovery of Kepler's Laws: The Interaction of Science, Philosophy, and Religion (named Outstanding Academic Book of the Year 1994 by Choice Magazine), and Editor of Interactions and Interpretation: Philosophical Reflections on Science, Religion, and Hermeneutics (1997) and Contemporary Science and Religion in Dialogue: Challenges and Opportunities (2002). He is a Member of the Indian National Commission for the History of Science, Indian National Science Academy.
 
Denis O. Lamoureux is an assistant professor of science and religion at St. Joseph's College in the University of Alberta. He is a co-author (with Phillip Johnson) of Darwinism Defeated?: The Johnson-Lamoureux Debate on Biological Origins
 
Arthur Peacocke is a priest in the Church of England and was formerly a professor of physical biochemistry, Dean of Clare College, Cambridge, and the founder-Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre at St Cross College, Oxford. Author of some 126 papers and 3 books in the area of biochemistry, he is also the author of 63 articles/papers and 9 books in the areas of theology and philosophy. Among his books are Creation and the World of Science (1979), Intimations of Reality; critical realism in science and religion (1984), God and the New Biology (1986), Theology for a Scientific Age (1990; 1993) From DNA to Dean--reflections and explorations of a Priest-scientist (1996) and God and Science: quest for Christian credibility (1996) Paths from Science towards God: the End of All Our Exploring (2001). He won the International Lecomte du Nouiy Prize in 1973, he is a member of the Order of the British Empire, and holds an honorary doctorate from Georgetown University. He was the recipient, in 2001, of the $1,000,000 dollar Templeton Prize in Science and Religion.