Review: A Christian Theology of Science: Reimagining a Theological Vision of Natural Knowledge

A Christian Theology of Science: Reimagining a Theological Vision of Natural Knowledge by Paul Tyson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I am an Engineer (aka Man of Science). I am also a practicing Christian (aka Man of Faith) … so I was intensely interested in this ambitious attempt to integrate the two (where I have traditionally seen the two in completely different domains of knowledge). Unfortunately … I am NOT a Philosopher (ergo I eschew sesquipedalianism) … and that makes this book a struggle. The nearly complete lack of simple and/or common language in the treatment of this topic makes it primarily accessible to academics (and probably a small subset of those). This alone makes it difficult to recommend the book.

But wait … there's more. Unless I have totally missed the principle argument here, the author is basically complaining that our society places more emphasis on science to understand our world than theology/philosophy … without coming straight out as a fundamentalist fanatic that denies the benefits and efficacy of science. Any time there is a confirmed advantage to a scientific approach, the author seems compelled to call out just how dangerous this is as well … without ANY specific examples of how or why that would be true.  It just is ‘cause.  And that is not likely to convince anybody of anything. Even outside of the prodigious use of fancy allegories, I found no clear answers to any of the questions posed … especially the big one asking if science and theology are even compatible.

In fact … the author specifically condemns my own approach that limits the application of science to those questions that lend themselves to the scientific method (aka reductionism and patterns) and theology to those questions that deal with existential meaning and “first order truths” (truth is another term thrown around so much that I started hearing the meme from A Few Good Man in my head saying “You can’t handle the Truth”). Obviously science has no purview in adjudicating the ultimate meaning of life or even one-off miracles that have few analogs in the natural world. Asking it to do so and then claiming science is somehow flawed is simply sophistry.

Introduction

1. Starting Definitions of Christian Theology
1.1 What is Christian Theology?
1.2 What is Science?
1.3 Prescriptive Theology and Science
1.4 Christian Theology and Science?

2. Viewing Christian Theology through the Truth Lens of Science
2.1 Empiricism and Christian Theology
2.2 Rationalism and Christian Theology
2.3 Physical Reductionism and Christian Theology
2.4 Are Modern Science and Christian Theology Incompatible?

3. Christian Theology as a First Truth Discourse
3.1 Secularization and Interpretation
3.2 The Primary Interpretive Commitments of Christian Theology
3.2.1 God
3.2.1 God as the Source of All Created Essence and Existence
3.3 Theocentric Foundations versus Egocentric Foundations

4. Viewing Science through the Truth Lens of Christian Theology
4.1 Christian Theology and Empiricism
4.2 Christian Theology and Rationalism
4.3 Christian Theology and Physical Reductionism
4.3.1 Nominalism and Physical Reductionism
4.3.2 Voluntarism and Physical Reductionism
4.3.3 Pure Matter and Physical Reductionism
4.4 Physical Reductionism Is a Useful and Dangerous Abstraction

5. The Remarkable Reversal - Revisiting History
5.1 Modern Scientific Historiography and Christian Theology
5.2 The Social Sciences and Christian Theology
5.3 “Science and Religion” and Christian Theology after the 1870s
5.3.1 Functional Demarcation
5.3.2 Autonomous Overlap
5.3.3 Integration
5.4 The Unremarkable Remarkable Reversal

6. Thinking “After” Science but Not “After” Christian Theology
6.1 “After” Science
6..2 No “After” Christian Theology

7. Rediscovering Christian Theological Epistemology
7.1 The Fall, the Foundations of Science, and Two Theological Anthropology Trajectories
7.2 In Nature Knowable?
7.3 Can Fallen Humanity Know Nature?
7.4 Complexity Issues regarding Natural Light and Divine Light
7.6 An Integrative Zone for “Science and Religion” Today?
7.7 Ockham’s Pincer
7.8 Christian Theologian Epistemology and Post-Victorian Science

8. Myth and History - the Fall and Science
8.1 Myth and History in Christian Theology
8.2 Eternity and Time
8.3 Myth Defines Norms
8.4 The Myth of Secular Progress Falters
8.5 Ricoeur on the Four Basic Mythic Archetypes
8.5.1 The Mythos of Original Violence
8.5.2 The Fall Mythos
8.5.3 The Tragic Mythos
8.5.4 The Mythos of Exile
8.6 Ricoeur on Myth, Time, and Power
8.7 What Stands and Falls with the Edenic Fall?
8.8. On Finding What You Are Looking for - the “Myth” of Epistemic Neutrality
8.9 Eden and the Shibboleth Dynamic
8.10 Myth and History - Adam and the Fall
8.11 Myth and Christian Theological Epistemology

9. Recovering an Integrative Zone
9.1 The “Myth” of the Autonomy of Science from Theology
9.2 Obstacles to Recovering the Integration of Knowledge and Understanding
9.3 Christian Theology’s Need for an Integrative Zone for Knowledge and Understanding
9.4 Rejecting the Sublimation of Understanding into Knowledge
9.5 Obstacles to Integrating Christian Theological Understanding with Scientific Knowledge
9.6 What a Working Integrative Zone for Christian Theology and Modern Science Might Look Like
9.7 A Confident and Uncomfortable Stance

Epilogue

I was given this free advance review copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#AChristianTheologyOfScience #NetGalley.

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Review: The Immortality Thief

The Immortality Thief by Taran Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The “back cover blurb” sets up the story nicely. Three (3) factions converge on an ancient, disabled ship recently rediscovered and thought to have the secret to immortality. Unfortunately, each needs this information in order to survive … and there can be only one … and they already hate each other … and the long dead author of this information doesn’t want this "evil" to get back out into the wild.

What follows is basically a story of redemption between these groups along the lines of an “Enemy Mine” type story where some members of each must temporarily call a truce to team up against the horrors between them and the ultimate goal. It was a well told story, with the only critique I had being the tendency of every encountered being a similar “We are going to die” style combat that gets a tad old over the 600+ pages … on the upside, that was not enough for me to put the book down very often (as I read through in only two sittings). That is actually a strong endorsement of the book (high recommended).

I was given this free advance review copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: ILLBORN

ILLBORN by Daniel T. Jackson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The concept here was pretty interesting and the back-cover blurb was good enough to hook me. For a debut novel, it was not too bad … but it was not very good either. The opening scene starts with an encounter between a priest/witch hunter and a child with mysterious abilities that apparently are something of a threat to the established church (which is a dead ringer for the Catholic Church with a mashup of inquisition and crusades). What this threat is remains a mystery for the entire story (why are they hunted as heretics) … in fact … I can’t really identify what the main plot conflict actually is, other than 4 POV just trying to survive the world trying to kill them (and we never find out why; although they are apparently linked by a recurring dream that the author felt needed to be repeated nearly word for word ad nauseam). Without an identifiable plot conflict, you can’t really expect any resolution at the end right … which is what you get; a story that just sort of ends with just as many questions as it started with … except all the pieces have been moved on the board a little.

I had a tough time connecting to any of the four (4) main characters … they, just like the supporting characters, seemed pretty one dimensional and interactions too mechanical to make them natural or realistic. In fact, the only one to which I had any interest in was the priestess … just barely. The powers themselves were interesting, but they were revealed rather awkwardly with very little nuance or finesse (and they started to overlap toward the end … which for some reason didn’t seem right). There is potential for a great story in the guts of this story, it just hasn’t been fleshed out very well yet.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Strangers and Scapegoats: Extending God's Welcome to Those on the Margins

Strangers and Scapegoats: Extending God's Welcome to Those on the Margins by Matthew S Vos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Book is divided into two (2) parts, with the first part focused on identifying the stranger in terms of in groups and out groups (were I typically use the terms self and other). A lot of effort goes into explaining how the poor treatment of out groups is a mechanism for preserving group boundaries; however, the analysis was not convincing at times; his anecdotal evidence just didn’t match my anecdotal experience (which tended to be a lot more nuanced and less an argument of absolutes). For example … in discussing a lynching of a black man in TN, the author makes this curious statement: “ Of course, their actions showed little concern for the traumatized African Americans among them.” My own conclusion is the exact opposite … the whole reason the mob lynched the man was because of the impact they believed that would have on the “African Americans among them.” The author is looking at the desired effect for the “in-group” where I see a desired effect on the “out-group” … while the net may be the same (preserving group boundaries), the difference in motivational assignment (group cohesion vs power security) makes it difficult to fully accept the author’s over all point.

Unfortunately this is not an isolated example … making the book a more difficult read than I had hoped because of the generated dissonance with my own [admittedly amateur] understanding of social interactions … and while I may not be professional educated in the subject, I have enough personal experience and self-directed study in the field to have pre-existing and well formed opinions on just about everything the book covered. Before too long, I kept hearing Inigo Montoya’s voice in my head saying “I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Ultimately I do understand the message the author is trying to convey (and which I generally agree with), I just had to work harder at it than I was hoping for. As with many discussions/arguments, it is such easier to see where we disagree than where we agree (since we only critically examine the former). That is not to say that I could not find a few hidden gems here … such as the rather poignant observation that “in American culture we accept violence as legitimate, exciting, and necessary.”

Major props for taking a stab at unpacking how our society creates and treats strangers with respect to social ills; however, there were too many points that just didn’t seem to work in my head and there wasn’t much there to change my mind on most of those. Unfortunately, the book diverged even further from my own perspectives when it turned to the criminal justice system with a claim that “crime” is actually necessary for group boundary definitions … I am fairly sure that is completely backwards … crime exists because of group boundaries (and studies have indicated social limits to group sizes, so boundaries will always exist). Again … I have a fair amount of direct experience from multiple perspectives with the US Justice System here … In the end, I just didn’t get what I was looking for here. I had hoped to get more specifics on the psychology of how and why we demonize others … and while I got the how … the why was mostly missing. This understanding is key in countering our human nature here … instead the book appears to rely on simply showing how terrible this activity is and relying heavily on [biblical inspired] guilt to promote change (which I believe is not a viable solution to this particular problem). Still … given my own belief that this is a very important topic and the fact that the author has bravely introduced much needed talking points on the subject … I am rounding up to 4*

Introduction: Strangers Among Us

Part 1: Strangers and Scapegoats in Sociological Perspective
1. Constructing Identity: The Self, the Social, and the Stranger
2. A Stranger World: In-groups, Out-group, and the Space Between
3. No More Scapegoats: A Stranger Theology

Part 2: Strangers in the Margins
4. Strangers in the Pew: Girls and Symbolic Exclusion
5. From Stranger to Neighbor: Intersex Persons and the Church
6. Strangers at the Borders: Immigrants and the Heart of the Gospel Message
7. Strangers Behind Bars: Examining the System of Mass Incarceration
8. Competing in Cedar: Nike, Superstar Athletes, and the Unseen Strangers Who Make Our Shoes

Part 3: Inviting Strangers
9. Challenging the Normal: The Strange(r) Reality of the Gospel
10. Pursuing the Common Good: Three Stories of the Neighbor

I was given this free advance review copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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