ATOMS AND EDEN
Conversations on Religion and Science
By Steve Paulson. Oxford University Press. 312 pages. £10.99
ISBN 978 0 199 743 162
Steve Paulson is a journalist specialising in the science and religion debate. In this book he interviews 21 intellectuals, including Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, Sam Harris, Francis Collins, Daniel Dennett, Paul Davies and Steve Weinberg. They range from atheists and agnostics to Christians, Buddhists, Jews and a Muslim.
As you’d expect from such a variety of interviewees, the conversations cover a broad spectrum from the Big Bang, the nature of consciousness and evolution to the definition of God and religious history. The atheist arguments are mainly predictable, although I was interested to find that some of the so-called ‘new atheists’ admit to ‘mystical’ experiences (not Dawkins!).
