The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion

Rating:
Summary: From Science to Religion and Back...
Review: After hearing Prof Taylor's sermons and lectures, I needed to wade thru her Essays on Science and Religion. Especially true, when I read three widely divergent reviews ... It seemed that any review title using the Metaphor of "Like a Black Hole," was a bit too outlandish for anything our knowledgeable Prof. Taylor could conjure up to print!

In my first encounters with references to Albert Einstein, then Robert John Russell and James McCord before noting Sir John Templeton on the same page... she then uses humorist Will Rogers' quote, "We're all ignorant, just on different subjects." She introduces Richard Feynman, one of our century's charismatic physicists, plus one of my generation who is familar to any native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee! She then proceeds to move thru the shortest chapter "The Evolution of Praise" heavy with the writers of Science.

My favorite, most heavily under-lined Chapter is, "The Physics of Communion." After her statements from Albert Einstein, Galileo, Copernicus and Newton, she touches upon Niels Bohr, George Johnson, Fred Burnham, John Polkinghorne, even Alan Watts, Bennett Sims and Paul Tillich. How's that for a multi-colored team of biologists, mathematicians, physicists, philosophers, theologians and scientists? When Professor Taylor does her homework there is no such metaphor as that Black Hole!

For me it is her 'Way-Out-of-the-Box' book worth 5 golden stars!

Rating:
Summary: About as enlightening as a black hole...
Review: Looking to further your faith? Do NOT read this book! Looking to further your understanding of string theory, quantum physics or chaos theory? Do NOT read this book! As a Christian with an avid interest in the great science of the past century, this book was trite and terribly unrewarding - either scientifically or spiritually. I think she could have saved a lot of words and just wrote: "Gee, I don't understand it, but isn't it neat?" This book will not reward you with strong arguments to further your conviction that there is a God. And, it oversimplifies the body of science it discusses to the point of inaccuracy. If you're searching for "proof" of God, you'd be far better off to read "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis, for a philosophical perspective. If you want "proof" scientifically, you're better off with Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe," in which the quest to find a unifying theory is clearly explained - and allows you to marvel at the intricate and elegant design of our physical world. At that point, it truly is a leap of faith: you either believe God has to be the designer who came up with the "theory of everything" in the first place, or you choose to believe that there is a random or singular physical cause that triggered the creation of the universe. Neither can be proven, so faith and science do meet after all.

Rating:
Summary: Science and Relgion can coexist
Review: One of the most lucid and reasoned disussions of science and religion that you'll find. I've read a number of the new science books, but by the end she had me. Not just a reasoned approach but a personal and moving account as well.