Rating: 
Summary: A manual for converts
Review: Few voices are as forceful or as eloquent as that of the convert. This account of personal awe in the face of Nature is a passionate example. From the centre of Christian America, Goodenough explains why ideas of divine forces driving Nature must be replaced. Her replacement, trying to mediate between "cold" science and misleading traditional dogma, is called "natural religion". Astonished by the wonders of cosmology and life, Goodenough became a scientist and shed her monotheistic background. What wasn't thrown out with the theology was her sense of wonder. Having once buried her head beneath a pillow out of despair over her inability to comprehend the cosmos, she relates how she emerged to study science. She chose biology, and it's well for us she did. Her description of protein construction is unmatched in science writing.
In this work, she opens at the beginning, explaining how physics underlies everything, including life. She relates how "life from non-life" can and does occur. She moves to a description of the origins and later development of life's processes. Cell mechanisms are portrayed. In this topic, she creates a wonderful idea - the Mozart Metaphor. We listen to a Mozart sonata with a sense of awe and veneration. Those feelings, she urges, aren't diminished by the knowledge that the music is reducible to blobs of ink on a page. Any musician can read those dots and restore the wonder by playing the music. In life, our knowledge of life's processes doesn't diminish the marvel of them. Goodenough translates that feeling into a "Mystery" which she wishes to share. If you need to understand how much of life functions, but fear abandoning "traditional" beliefs, this book is a fine first step.
A second step is one Goodenough regrettably omits. While her "natural religion" comes accompanied by a wealth of poetic, Biblical and other religious messages, the voice of science itself is silent in this book. Charles Darwin's own "grandeur of this view of life" is a serious omission in a book so descriptive of evolution. While some would resist pairing Darwin with Mozart, the evolutionist's reach extends beyond our tiny world. The same is unlikely to be the case for the composer. It's not enough to turn what science has shown us about life into a new "faith". Practitioners of science deserve hearing, especially when an author is speaking in their name. The information she uses has taken many years, much hard work and no little inspiration. Goodenough might have given that foundation a bit more ink. Some fine chapter illustrations grace the text, but the bibliography is limited. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating:
Summary: A manual for converts
Review: Few voices are as forceful or as eloquent as that of the convert. This account of personal awe in the face of Nature is a passionate example. From the centre of Christian America, Goodenough explains why ideas of divine forces driving Nature must be replaced. Her replacement, trying to mediate between "cold" science and misleading traditional dogma, is called "natural religion". Astonished by the wonders of cosmology and life, Goodenough became a scientist and shed her monotheistic background. What wasn't thrown out with the theology was her sense of wonder. Having once buried her head beneath a pillow out of despair over her inability to comprehend the cosmos, she relates how she emerged to study science. She chose biology, and it's well for us she did. Her description of protein construction is unmatched in science writing. In this work, she opens at the beginning, explaining how physics underlies everything, including life. She relates how "life from non-life" can and does occur. She moves to a description of the origins and later development of life's processes. Cell mechanisms are portrayed. In this topic, she creates a wonderful idea - the Mozart Metaphor. We listen to a Mozart sonata with a sense of awe and veneration. Those feelings, she urges, aren't diminished by the knowledge that the music is reducible to blobs of ink on a page. Any musician can read those dots and restore the wonder by playing the music. In life, our knowledge of life's processes doesn't diminish the marvel of them. Goodenough translates that feeling into a "Mystery" which she wishes to share. If you need to understand how much of life functions, but
fear abandoning "traditional" beliefs, this book is a fine first step. A second step is one Goodenough regrettably omits. While her "natural religion" comes accompanied by a wealth of poetic, Biblical and other religious messages, the voice of science itself is silent in this book. Charles Darwin's own "grandeur of this view of life" is a serious omission in a book so descriptive of evolution. While some would resist pairing Darwin with Mozart, the evolutionist's reach extends beyond our tiny world. The same is unlikely to be the case for the composer. It's not enough to turn what science has shown us about life into a new "faith". Practitioners of science deserve hearing, especially when an author is speaking in their name. The information she uses has taken many years, much hard work and no little inspiration. Goodenough might have given that foundation a bit more ink. Some fine chapter illustrations grace the text, but the bibliography is limited. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful discussion of the "ordinary miracles" around us.
Review: I enjoyed this book immensely. I like the layout, with the science first and then the religion, as it were. The science was very pleasant to read, and the reflections were thought-provoking, though in my case Ursula is preaching to the choir to a large extent. I was a little disconcerted by the use of Christianity as a point of reference in many of the discussions, but I suppose a point of reference needs to be familiar to the majority of people (at least, in some areas of the world), and since the ultimate message of the book is environmental, I can't complain about that. I especially like the final section (appendix?) on Emergent Religious Principles, as it brought together many of the themes in a nicely compact fashion, and Patterson's drawings are a nice complement to the text. (On a technical note, a couple of the longer figure captions seem to have been truncated, but this will be fixed, I'm told, in the second printing.) I'll have to read it again (and certainly intend to do so) to get the most out of it, and I'll be recommending it to people who I think will appreciate it. (My parents? Hmmm... We'll have to see.) It strikes me that the book would be a natural for a course on science and religion, particularly where religious naturalism fits into the scheme of things.
Rating: 
Summary: Religious Naturalism: A Basis for a New World Religion?
Review: I found myself saying, "Yes, this is what I feel, too." Thank you Ms. Goodenough for your gift of explanation, your kind understanding of the need for religious belief, and your uncompromising acceptance that there is probably no more reason for humanity's existence than there is for a fruitfly's. But we are AWARE of our existence and can ponder it. And for that I am as profoundly grateful to nature and evolution as Ms. Goodenough is. This is a must read for thoughtful people. Also try "Unweaving the Rainbow" by Richard Dawkins for a more unflinchingly atheistic view of existence. Excellent boo k.
Rating:
Summary: A joy for seekers of truths
Review: I found myself saying, "Yes, this is what I feel, too." Thank you Ms. Goodenough for your gift of explanation, your kind understanding of the need for religious belief, and your uncompromising acceptance that there is probably no more reason for humanity's existence than there is for a fruitfly's. But we are AWARE of our existence and can ponder it. And for that I am as profoundly grateful to nature and evolution as Ms. Goodenough is. This is a must read for thoughtful people. Also try "Unweaving the Rainbow" by Richard Dawkins for a more unflinchingly atheistic view of existence. Excellent boo k.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent For those wanting meaning in Atheism/Pantheism
Review: I found this book deeply thoughtful and greatly moving. Since reading it whenever I see a picture of the Earth from space I am filled with great awe and love. The wording is slightly advanced but if you understand what an amoebae is you will do ok. I recommend this for those who ask "What purpose do you find in life without a "God"? ". I also recommend for those that want to connect to every other life-form on this Mother Earth.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: Nature is all inspiring. As one learns more about the wonderful world of biology, one feels a kind of awe about life. For another enlightening book on the universe as well as life, see THE BIBLE ACCORDING TO EINSTEIN
Rating:
Summary: A scientist's beautiful and rigorous religious meditation
Review: This book comes closer than any other religious or philosophical meditation I have read to achieving some of art's most exalted functions -- to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable and to give voice to possibilities of response that may otherwise be only dimly perceived. How to sacralize the world, perceived and understood with rigorous intellectual honesty in light of the progressing, recondite complexities of modern science, is a matter that calls to us at the core of our humanity, at the places where rationalism quails at what is impenetrable but nevertheless, for many of us, simply will not be silenced. We must feel at home in the world; we must find motivation and meaning; we have no choice but to seek the solace, somehow, that religions have traditionally provided; but we will not -- cannot -- cashier our intellects for any end, even these. This book shows how we can respond, to our depths, with vibrant emotional intensity to the beauty of nature perceived through that most complex of our senses, our intelligence itself, and then say, yes, I affirm my place here, on this planet, at this time, a uniquely complex child of the universe in thrilling communion with what has made me. It does so by offering rigorously accurate, beautifully written, fully reductionistic accounts of the scientific story of the evolution of the the universe and life on earth, as well as life as it now works, followed by reflections that tie those accounts to the author's religious responses. Her reflections draw on traditional religious frameworks, particularly Christianity, but are not tied to those frameworks and do not require, or sponsor, standard or accepted religious beliefs as a basis for seeking or appreciating the power and depth of religion's draw. While the author, who is a respected molecular and cell biologist and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, is not a theist, she feels a deep kinship for the need of traditional believers for religious connection that is repelled by unemotional rationalism of the kind that has come to be associated (perhaps unfairly) with classic humanism and "mechanistic" science. She does not insult such believers, does not say that there is something wrong with their heart's desire, and beautifully respects their traditions even while honestly and clearly disagreeing with significant parts of their doctrines and opening up whole vistas of scientific understanding and exploration. In short, I believe this book will help many down the long road to understanding the true magic of their existence and the necessity of preserving that which makes it possible.
Rating:
Summary: As good as the best of Loren Eiseley.
Review: This book is a gem. Not only are the science passages an exquisite introduction to astronomy, cell biology (Goodenough's field of expertise), and evolution, but her reflections on the meaning she personally derives from such knowledge leave the reader yearning for more. Her passage on the meaning of death--indeed, a celebration of death, for the kind of life and love only it can call forth--is unsurpassed by all the outpourings of those who have ever written on this subject from the standpoint of the humanities. Most poignant are the places in which Goodenough transcends the innate human urge to find (or make) meaning--when she surrenders to the purest of all religious responses: simple assent. Taking science as far as it can go toward understanding the cosmos, life, and consciousness, she is moved by the wonder of it all to demand no more insight. She is fully, intimately, restfully at home in the universe, in her version of divinity: the sacred depths of nature. At these moments of surrender, the words she offers bring tears to this reader's eyes in their spare beauty. And then, able to draw no more from either the science or her own soul, she offers up a poem or psalm from various of the world's wisdom traditions. Some day, some day, this reader hopes--centuries from now, at best--a new wisdom tradition expressed in the time-tested artisty of poems and psalms will have emerged for those, like Goodenough, on the path of religious naturalism. But the words that will be metered will not be limited to those of Lao Tsu or the Hebrew sages. They will be drawn from the revered works of Eiseley, Leopold, and Goodenough.
Rating:
Summary: As good as the best of Loren Eiseley.
Review: This book is a gem. Not only are the science passages an exquisite introduction to astronomy, cell biology (Goodenough's field of expertise), and evolution, but her reflections on the meaning she personally derives from such knowledge leave the reader yearning for more. Her passage on the meaning of death--indeed, a celebration of death, for the kind of life and love only it can call forth--is unsurpassed by all the outpourings of those who have ever written on this subject from the standpoint of the humanities. Most poignant are the places in which Goodenough transcends the innate human urge to find (or make) meaning--when she surrenders to the purest of all religious responses: simple assent. Taking science as far as it can go toward understanding the cosmos, life, and consciousness, she is moved by the wonder of it all to demand no more insight. She is fully, intimately, restfully at home in the universe, in her version of divinity: the sacred depths of nature. At these moments of surrender, the words she offers bring tears to this reader's eyes in their spare beauty. And then, able to draw no more from either the science or her own soul, she offers up a poem or psalm from various of the world's wisdom traditions. Some day, some day, this reader hopes--centuries from now, at best--a new wisdom tradition expressed in the time-tested artisty of poems and psalms will have emerged for those, like Goodenough, on the path of religious naturalism. But the words that will be metered will not be limited to those of Lao Tsu or the Hebrew sages. They will be drawn from the revered works of Eiseley, Leopold, and Goodenough.
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