Rating: 
Summary: "Never" is a very long time.
Review: A correction for the reviewer of this past March, who wrote, apparently in haste: "However, science has never demonstrated that organic molecules could come from inorganic molecules" This needs to read as follows, to be accurate and objective: "Scientists have not yet demonstrated that the particular organic molecules necessary for life as we see it today could have been produced initially by entirely inorganic processes. We don't know yet whether any will succeed in doing so." There is a big difference between these two statements, and only the second one is supportable.
Rating:
Summary: Liberal Christians can be Darwinians
Review: Asked in reverse order, "Can a Christian be a Darwinian?", Ruse's answer is really two-fold. If you are taking a very conservative or fundamentalist view of Christianity, then you probably are not, nor do you wish to be a Darwinian. For the liberal, and mainstream-secularized Christian, however, there isn't much incompatibility between Christianity and Darwinism. Because, however, both Christianity and Darwinism compass a wide range of views (as Ruse points out), some point of agreement and intersection is inevitable, as is some range of polar conflict. Ruse has written an engaging and entertaining book, and while many may disagree or challenge his conclusions, for those who value both the Christian tradition and Darwinian science this is an important book.
Rating:
Summary: Liberal Christians can be Darwinians
Review: Asked in reverse order, "Can a Christian be a Darwinian?", Ruse's answer is really two-fold. If you are taking a very conservative or fundamentalist view of Christianity, then you probably are not, nor do you wish to be a Darwinian. For the liberal, and mainstream-secularized Christian, however, there isn't much incompatibility between Christianity and Darwinism. Because, however, both Christianity and Darwinism compass a wide range of views (as Ruse points out), some point of agreement and intersection is inevitable, as is some range of polar conflict. Ruse has written an engaging and entertaining book, and while many may disagree or challenge his conclusions, for those who value both the Christian tradition and Darwinian science this is an important book.
Rating:
Summary: Liberal Christians can be Darwinians
Review: Asked in reverse order, "Can a Christian be a Darwinian?", Ruse's answer is really two-fold. If you are taking a very conservative or fundamentalist view of Christianity, then you probably are not, nor do you wish to be a Darwinian. For the liberal, and mainstream-secularized Christian, however, there isn't much incompatibility between Christianity and Darwinism. Because, however, both Christianity and Darwinism compass a wide range of views (as Ruse points out), some point of agreement and intersection is inevitable, as is some range of polar conflict. Ruse has written an engaging and entertaining book, and while many may disagree or challenge his conclusions, for those who value both the Christian tradition and Darwinian science this is an important book.
Rating: 
Summary: Why shoud a Christian be a Darwinist?
Review: Christians shouldn't compromise their faith with the "wisdom" of this world. Christians who compromised their faith with platonism, neo-platonism, aristotelism, kantianism, marxism, freudianism and darwinism, all realized that they made a big mistake. With its "toothless fossil record", its just-so stories about the origins of the universe, its wild probabilities when dealing with DNA and RNA, its wishful thinking about the pre-biotic soup, its blind faith in the power or mutations and natural selection, with its explaining away irreducible complexity and complex specified information, its tautological arguments about common descent, embriologic similaries, etc. etc., Darwinism shouldn't waste the time of any believer in the devine Logos made flesh. This Logos is the absolute foundation who makes science possible, intelligible and certain. Thinking God's thoughts after God himself (Newton, Kepler) should be the research program of wise scientists.
Rating: 
Summary: Darwinism and Christianity
Review: Darwinism and Christianity will be forever incompatible for this reason: With evolution, you have death, pain and struggle going on millions and billions of years before Adam's sin. In diametric opposition to this idea, the Bible clearly states that death, pain and struggle came AS A RESULT (i.e., only after) Adam's sin. The two worldviews cannot be reconciled. How could Jesus Christ have died to conquer death caused by sin if death had already been around for 'millions of years' before Adam and Eve? Don't waste your time reading this one. Powerful books I would strongly recommend reading instead: "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!" by Duane Gish, "In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation" by John Aston, "Bones of Contention" by Marvin Lubenow, "Refuting Evolution" by Jonathan Sarfati, "Darwin on Trial" by Phillip Johnson, "Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics" by Duane Gish, and "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe. These books have truly opened the eyes of many intellectually honest people. Truly mind-blowing information there.. I also recommend checking out the ICR (Institute for Creation Research - once there, click on the "publications" section) and answersingenesis (once there, click on the Q&A button) websites for much more information.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended.
Review: Despite what our Creation Scientist friends might say, Ruse's book is an excellent discussion of an _open_ question, i.e., whether or not Christianity and Darwinism are compatible. Of course, Darwinism _is_ incompatible with _Creationism_. (So much the worse for Creationism, since the evidence definitively proves the Creationist creation story false.) But, as Ruse clearly and even-handedly describes, there are lots of other versions of Christianity that admit a metaphorical reading of Genesis. The trick then is to try to reconcile the scientific facts about evolution with the key doctrines of Christianty, e.g., Original Sin and its transmission, doctrines which are required in order for a Saviour to be needed in the first place. Ruse takes his task seriously, clearly distinguishing true conflicts from merely apparent ones and sincerely attempting to come up with a consistent Darwinian Christianity. I'm not sure he completely succeeds. Even some moderate Christians will not recognize the resulting positions as Christian, and some non-Christians will no doubt see the sometimes-extreme contortions required as further evidence of the unreasonableness of Christian belief. Nevertheless, this is an important book that ought to be read by anyone interested in its particular focus or the general question of the relationship between science and religion. It is, moreover, clearly and engagingly written, and its honesty and forthrightness should serve as a model for this sort of debate.
Rating: 
Summary: not persuasive
Review: Generally when one is asked whether one has read such-and-such a book, the implication is that the interlocutor has read the book and was persuaded by its arguments, so the challenge really is:
"are you persuaded by the arguments that persuaded me?"
And it may be very irritating to discover that others are not as persuaded as we are.
For example, I'm not persuaded that a consensus among experts necessarily reflects the truth - as far as I'm concerned it merely indicates agreement. Neither am I persuaded that, because there are many different speculations attempting to show spontaneous generation of life, this proves that life did generate spontaneously. It just shows me that people are imaginative.
Nor do I consider faith a proposition which must not court any risk of rebuttal, a kind of pull-your-head-in and count prudence as the better part of testimony: when we have prudently waited for all the proofs, and seen for ourselves the fulfilment of some proposition, there is no room left for faith - only acquiescence if we are not to appear stupid.
I certainly do not accept Ruse's statement on page 66 that "nothing terribly important rests on this scientific matter, either way." If that were so, Michael Ruse would not have gone to the trouble of writing this book.
To those who genuinely seek reconciliation between science and religion, this book will be a disappointment. The oft tried ruse of redefining the terms to be reconciled may satisfy a shallow desire to hold onto a philosophical investment in the face of conflict, but it only fools those who already have made their committment and who have no intention of changing their mind.
Rating:
Summary: Well-intentioned, but...
Review: I appreciate Ruse's attempts to find common ground between religion and science, and I agree with him that evolution (of a type) more than likely is God's creating mechanism. I don't think Darwin gave a very good description of how evolution works (the evidence is plainly piling up against the idea that random mutation and natural selection are the main drivers of evolution), and I give this book a poor rating for blithely assuming that Darwin's highly theoretical (and no crumbling) theory is fact.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting....
Review: I didn't read the book, but the author came to give a talk at my college while he was writing the book. He had some very interesting and thought-provoking ideas, but they didn't seem to convince me (or anyone else). His ideas reinforce Christians in their faith if they are wavering due to scientific issues involved in the Darwinian evolutionary theory, but if you are looking for some one to convince you that there really is a God out there, this book can't do that for you. No book can.
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