Real Scientists Real Faith

Twenty of the world's leading scientists explain how their science enhances their faith and their faith undergirds their science. Atheistic campaigners continue to claim that science and faith are incompatible. The contributors to this book show the utter falseness of this claim. They come from a range of Christian backgrounds and all are orthodox believers, but significantly, they are all also distinguished scientists, from a variety of disciplines. Each of them gives their own account of how their science and faith intersect and interact in their personal life and thought. The contributors include: - Francis Collins, Human Genome Scientist - R.S (Bob) White, Professor of Geophysics, University of Cambridge - Alister McGrath, Professor of Science and Religion, Oxford True Scientists, True Faith combines selected essays from two preceding volumes, Real Science, Real Faith and Real Scientists, Real Faith, with new contributions from another five eminent scientists.

The science / faith debate rages on. Yet many leading scientists have an active Christian faith. Here 17 scientists, all esteemed by their peers, tackle two questions: What difference their faith makes to their scientific practice; and What difference their science makes to their understanding of their faith. Contributors include: Francis Collins, Director, Human Genome Project Joan Centrella, Chief of the Gravitational Astrophysics Laboratory, NASA Bob White, Professor of Geophysics, University of Cambridge Alister McGrath, Professor of Theology, King's College London, and molecular biologist Wilson Poon, Professor of Physics, University of Edinburgh

Twenty of the world's leading scientists explain how their science enhances their faith and their faith undergirds their science. Atheistic campaigners continue to claim that science and faith are incompatible. The contributors to this book show the utter falseness of this claim. They come from a range of Christian backgrounds and all are orthodox believers, but significantly, they are all also distinguished scientists, from a variety of disciplines. Each of them gives their own account of how their science and faith intersect and interact in their personal life and thought. The contributors include: Francis Collins, Human Genome Scientist, R.S (Bob) White, Professor of Geophysics, University of Cambridge, Alister McGrath, Professor of Science and Religion, Oxford. True Scientists, True Faith combines selected essays from two preceding volumes, Real Science, Real Faith and Real Scientists, Real Faith, with new contributions from another five eminent scientists.

This is a book about science, religion, and the world in between. I was born into a Christian family, but fell out of religion and in love with the scientific method. I had little need of faith, I thought, when science could tell me so much more about the world, and ask so little of me in return. But as I aged into young adulthood, a new chapter of my story began. Did I really know why I believed what I believed? How could I be so certain of my convictions when I hadn't even honestly considered the evidence? This book traces my journey through the furthest reaches of thought, a journey that took me through the realms of psychology, biology, physics, and belief. Could I find a place for faith in the modern world? Or was I right to cast it off as I did?

Scientists today working on controversial issues from climate change to drought to COVID-19 are finding themselves more often in the middle of deeply traumatizing or polarized conflicts they feel unprepared to referee. It is no longer enough for scientists to communicate a scientific topic clearly. They must now be experts not only in their fields of study, but also in navigating the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of members of the public they engage with, and with each other. And the conversations are growing more fraught. In Getting to the Heart of Science Communication, Faith Kearns has penned a succinct guide for navigating the human relationships critical to the success of practice-based science. This meticulously researched volume takes science communication to the next level, helping scientists to see the value of listening as well as talking, understanding power dynamics in relationships, and addressing the roles of trauma, loss, grief, and healing.

The Faith of Scientists is an anthology of writings by twenty-one legendary scientists, from the dawn of the Scientific Revolution to the frontiers of science today, about their faith, their views about God, and the place religion holds--or doesn't--in their lives in light of their commitment to science. This is the first book to bring together so many world-renowned figures of Western science and present them in their own words, offering an intimate window into their private and public reflections on science and faith. Leading religion scholar Nancy Frankenberry draws from diaries, personal letters, speeches, essays, and interviews, and reveals that the faith of scientists can take many different forms, whether religious or secular, supernatural or naturalistic, conventional or unorthodox. These eloquent writings reflect a spectrum of views from diverse areas of scientific inquiry. Represented here are some of the most influential and colossal personalities in the history of science, from the founders of science such as Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein, to modern-day scientists like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Jane Goodall, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, Edward O. Wilson, and Ursula Goodenough. Frankenberry provides a general introduction as well as concise introductions to each chapter that place these writings in context and suggest further reading from the latest scholarship. As surprising as it is illuminating and inspiring, The Faith of Scientists is indispensable for students, scholars, and anyone seeking to immerse themselves in important questions about God, the universe, and science.

The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.