Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

by Stephen M. Barr

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268021986
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	03/31/2006
Edition description:	1
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 10.28(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

Stephen M. Barr is professor of physics and director of the Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
Part I	The Conflict between Religion and Materialism
1	The Materialist Creed	1
2	Materialism as an Anti-Religious Mythology	4
3	Scientific Materialism and Nature	19
	The Scientific Materialistis View of Nature	19
	Five Plot Twists	22
	A New Story and a New Moral	28
Part II	In the Beginning
4	The Expectations	33
5	How Things Looked One Hundred Years Ago	36
6	The Big Bang	38
	The Discovery of the Big Bang	38
	Attempts to Avoid the Big Bang	44
	The Big Bang Confirmed	45
7	Was the Big Bang Really the Beginning?	47
	The Universe in the Standard Big Bang Model	48
	The Bouncing Universe Scenario	52
	The Baby Universes Scenario	54
	The Eternal Inflation Scenario	54
8	What If the Big Bang Was Not the Beginning?	58
Part III	Is the Universe Designed?
9	The Argument from Design	65
	The Cosmic Design	65
	Two Kinds of Design	69
10	The Attack on the Argument from Design	71
	Pure Chance	71
	The Laws of Nature	72
	Natural Selection	72
11	The Design Argument and the Laws of Nature	76
	Two Ways to Think about Laws of Nature	76
	In Science, Order Comes from Order	79
	In Science, Order Comes from Greater Order	80
	An Example Taken from Nature: The Growth of Crystals	85
	The Order in the Heavens	87
12	Symmetry and Beauty in the Laws of Nature	93
13	"What Immortal Hand or Eye?"	105
	The Issue	105
	Can Chance Explain It?	107
	Is Natural Selection Enough?	109
	Does Darwin Give "Design without Design"?	111
Part IV	Man's Place in the Cosmos
14	The Expectations	115
15	The Anthropic Coincidences	118
16	Objections to the Idea of Anthropic Coincidences	138
	The Objections	140
	Answers to the Objections	143
17	Alternative Explanations of the Anthropic Coincidences	149
	The Weak Anthropic Principle: Many Domains	151
	The Weak Anthropic Principle: Many Universes	152
	The Weakness of the Weak Anthropic Principle	153
	The Problem with Too Many Universes	154
18	Why Is the Universe So Big?	158
	How Old Must a Universe Be?	160
	How Big Must a Universe Be?	160
	Are We Really So Small?	161
Part V	What Is Man?
19	The Issue	167
	The Religious View	168
	The Materialist View	169
	Clearing Up Some Confusions	172
20	Determinism and Free Will	175
	The Overthrow of Determinism	175
	Quantum Theory and Free Will	178
	Is Free Will Real?	184
21	Can Matter "Understand"?	190
	Abstract Understanding	191
	What are Abstract Ideas?	193
	Truth	197
	If Not the Brain, Then What and How?	204
22	Is the Human Mind Just a Computer?	207
	What a Computer Does	207
	What Godel Showed	211
	The Arguments of Lucas and Penrose	213
	Avenues of Escape	215
23	What Does the Human Mind Have That Computers Lack?	220
	Can One Have a Simple Idea?	223
	Is the Materialist View of the Mind Scientific?	225
24	Quantum Theory and the Mind	227
	The London-Bauer Argument in Brief	229
	Going into More Detail	232
	Is the Traditional Interpretation Absurd?	242
25	Alternatives to Traditional Quantum Theory	245
	Modifying Quantum Theory	246
	Reinterpreting Quantum Theory: The "Many-Worlds" Idea	248
26	Is a Pattern Emerging?	253
	Appendices	257
A.	God, Time, and Creation	257
B.	Attempts to Explain the Beginning Scientifically	268
C.	Godel's Theorem	279
	Notes	289
	Index	307

Editorial Reviews

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.”

"Physicist Barr deploys his scientific expertise to challenge the dogmas of materialism and to assert his belief that nothing explains the order of the galaxies better than divine design."—Booklist

"Stephen M. Barr's book energizes the reader, since its philosophical positions are well argued, its writing is clear and accessible, and its religious affirmations are provocative for believers and nonbelievers alike...His responses to the cruder materialist arguments are deftly executed and highly convincing, drawing upon history, clarifying often misunderstood theological concepts and discussing the relationship of faith and reason in traditional Catholicism and Protestantism."—Christian Century

"Stephen Barr does heroic service with his book Modern Physics and Ancient Faith as a revolutionary insurgent within the intellectual hegemony of modern scientific materialism...Barr's strong and well-written arguments...open up the debate for more fundamental critiques that must necessarily come from outside the paradigm."—Crisis Magazine

"Barr's background in theology, apparent in his discussions of Thomas Aquinas, serves him well as he shows that the argument is not between religion and science per se but between religion and scientific materialism, the philosophy that sees as real only what can be measured and observed. Writing in a popular style, Barr makes both modern physics and theology understandable to the lay reader."—Library Journal

From the Publisher

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

Barr (physics, Univ. of Delaware) provides a well-written and logically argued presentation on the relationship between religion and science, particularly modern physics. Barr's background in theology, apparent in his discussions of Thomas Aquinas, serves him well as he shows that the argument is not between religion and science per se but between religion and scientific materialism, the philosophy that sees as real only what can be measured and observed. Writing in a popular style, Barr makes both modern physics and theology understandable to the lay reader. He believes that a person can accept the Big Bang and other discoveries of modern physics and still believe in a creator God, further arguing that recent discoveries in physics would seem to support Judeo-Christian teachings and not materialism. While not everyone will be convinced by Barr's arguments, he offers a cogent discussion of a very popular topic. A much more scholarly work than Frank J. Tipler's The Physics of Immortality, this is a worthy successor to P.C.W. Davies's God and the New Physics and John D. Barrow and Tipler's The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Highly recommended for all collections.-Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal