Show Me God: What the Message from Space Is Telling Us About God (Wonders, 1)

Rating:
Summary: scientifically informative - theologically weak
Review: The book is excellent in showing that the impetus of modern science, to disprove God, has actually verified His existence. Science is limited by its methods of experience and observation. By themselves, these methods will never undermine God because they are incapable of reaching to and understanding the first cause of the cosmos; nor will they ever. But even Aquinas knew that. The main point of the book is that modern scientific revelation of God is consistent with His revelation in scripture, and their combined victory over the falsities of tradition. The book fails, however, when it assumes that since ultimate reality is unknowable beyond revelation that, therefore, the author's view of reality by default (sola scriptura/fundamentalism) is the only reality left to be known. Just because the Bible exists does not, in itself, constitute proof that it is true. Clearly, the truth of anything can only be determined by an appeal to something outside the thing itself. "The Christian should believe the Bible because it is true..." but scientific method alone is not enough to vindicate the entire Bible. One needs something else. Faith yes, but how deep is the faith of a believer if it would succumb to unverified myth? The author sites the Reformation as a victory of scientific method over tradition, but, in making experience the litmus test for truth, the Reformation also opened the flood gates for the 'modern'. Unencumbered by tradition, the 'modern' can rationalize any reality he wants to experience. The Bible is not unlike any other historic document in the sense that, if it is true, it lives by virtue of a tradition deriving from an actual event. The veracity of any document is only as good as the strength of the tradition of the observations that produced the document. Undermining that tradition doesn't help make it true. The Bible was derived out of tradition and it is with respect for that tradition, which this book has little use for, that it can only be known and verified as true.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating reading!
Review: This book makes contemporary cosmology accessible to all of us. From Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time) to Robert Jastrow (director of Mt. Wilson Observatory) and from Alan Guth (father of the inflationary Big Bang Theory) to Nobel Prize winners Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, you will hear the ideas of some of the leading scientists of our time about God and the Cosmos and how they seem to be related to one another, providing what for some of those same scientists are the most compelling evidences for the existence of God. Finding common ground between Science and Theology book author Fred Heeren interviews today's best known cosmologists, to provide proof that sometime in the past, everything came out of nothing or, according to his line of thought, from God Himself. The book also deals with wisdom with one of the most intriguing aspects of modern science, extraterrestrial intelligence, analyzing the "messages from space" and exploring the oldest and most difficult questions about our creation and evolution in the context of a cosmic grand scheme that as Heeren himself believes, shows the Hand of God. A fascinating book!

Rating:
Summary: Does what it's intended to do but no more than that........
Review: This is an interesting book. A fun read. It is also filled with alot of quote mining, logical fallacies, and arguments from authority. He also throws in a straw man argument or two.

If you want to feel good about your belief in God in the face of modern science and by some weak arguments the book is good.

If you are looking for evidence of a creator, it is simply absent. All of the evidence presented does not point to a creator. That is wishful thinking. The book does provide enough information to stimulate thought however.

The best part of his book is the rejection of tradition as a means of interpreting scripture. Tradition has many old, tired, and burdensome adages that are neither biblically sound or morally sound. A personal relationship may be possible and if it is should be sought out. Relying on tradition makes one little more than a Pharisee.

In my view the book is readable. Anyone not familiar with modern science will feel it enables them. The book does an exceedingly poor job in making the case that the Christian God is the only God.

Exceedingly weak, the reason is their is simply no good evidence that is the case. Any person in the majority of believers on this planet who are not Christian would find his assertions laughable.

He uses a simple default position, If God exists it must be my God. Enstein was a deist, Hawking is a deist at best. Most scientists have a healthy skeptism of religion and if they didn't it would prove nothing anyway. Being in the majority doesn't make you correct. Evidence does. And this book provides spotty and inconclusive evidence, although at times thought provoking.

One of the worst blundersis when the author states, 'now we have no evidence but have the making of a good argument from authority'. As the late great Carl Sagan says.......arguments from authority are worthless. Just give us conclusive evidence.

As stated the book does what it is supposed to do and no more. I like the theology for the most part. Tradition in the churches is a dead end, a personal loving God makes more sense IMHO. After all a tradition is just another argument from authority.