THINK GOD, THINK SCIENCE
Conversations on Life, the Universe, and Faith
By Michael Pfundner and Ernest Lucas. Paternoster. 112 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978-1-84227-609-9
I found this an extremely frustrating book.
It takes the form of a dialogue between Michael Pfundner of the Bible Society and Ernest Lucas of Bristol Baptist College, focusing upon three broad areas in which science interacts with the Christian faith: our understanding of the physical universe, the origin and development of life, and the historical reliability of the gospels. The big bang, neo-Darwinian evolution, and a vast age for the earth are all taken for granted, and science is defined as a way of looking at the world ‘without invoking the existence or action of God’ (p.3). The authors see their task as demonstrating that Christianity is compatible with these ideas.
The authors make some good points. They helpfully emphasise the importance of the Christian worldview generally, and the Protestant Reformation specifically, in the rise of modern science (pp.4ff); they correct popular misunderstandings about the Galileo affair (pp.10ff); they discuss the evidence for the bodily resurrection of Christ (pp.101ff); and they establish the biblical view of heaven as a renewed creation rather than a disembodied spiritual existence somewhere ‘out there’ (p.104ff).
