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2005, 2006 and 2007 by Jay B. Gaskill
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Science, Religion
and the Atheist “Surge”
I suspect that much of modern
atheism is reactionary. A couple of
years ago I coined the acronym, PEAS, to describe the situation of atheists
who suffer from the lingering effects of involuntary exposure to excessive
fundamentalism - Post Ecclesial Abuse Syndrome (PEAS). But
all theists aren’t stupid, superstitious dupes.
Few liberal arts atheists have a clue just how sophisticated and faithful
(in the sense that faith is a heuristic stance of a reasonable mind) much of
contemporary theology has become. The
Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne is a wonderful example of a brilliant believer.
Sir John Polkinghorne
Profile of a
Physicist-Priest
The Rev Dr. John Polkinghorne enjoyed a first career as a
working mathematical physicist, then as President of Queens’ College,
While a physical professor at
Polkinghorne, who was knighted in 1997, has served as Chairman of the Science, Medicine and Technology Committee of the Church of England's Board of Social Responsibility among other positions
As an “amateur” theologian, his books have explored the boundaries between religion and science from a uniquely sophisticated perspective. His writing is clear and accessible, even when dealing with highly technical subjects. As one reviewer put it, - if C. S. Lewis had been a physicist, this probably is how he would write.
I’m fond of the account from first Century Judaism about Hillel the Elder who was approached by a non-believer who offered to convert if the famous sage could state the Torah while standing on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and said “Do not do to another that which is hateful to you. All the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”
A POLKINGHORNE BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chapter Three, “Does God Act in the
Physical World?” was particularly brilliant, lucid and compact. Here are two
excerpts --
Since talk of God is inescapably
analogical, talk about God’s action has recourse, in one way of another, to the
only form of agency to which we have direct experience, namely our power to act
in the world. ….[O]
…
Thus a realist reinterpretation of the epistemological unpredictabilities of chaotic systems leads to the hypothesis of an ontological openness within which new causal principles mat be held to he operating which determine the pattern of future behaviour and which are of a holistic character. Here we see a glimmer of how it might be that we execute our willed intentions and how God exercises providential interaction with creation. As embodied beings, humans might be expected to act both energetically and informationally. As pure spirit, God might be expected to act solely through information input. One could summarize the novel aspect of this proposal by saying that it advocates the idea of a top-down causality at work through “active information.” This is a phrase that Peacocke uses also. I locate the relevant causal joint in chaotic dynamics; he appears to regard God as constituting the “boundary condition” of the universe.
[Citing his colleague, Arthur
Peacocke -- See “Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural,
Divine and Human” 1993.]
JBG