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Can science and religious belief co-exist? Many people- including many practicing scientists-insist that one can simultaneously follow the principles of the scientific method and believe in a particular spiritual tradition. But throughout history there have been people for whom science challenged the very validity of religious belief. Whether called atheists, agnostics, skeptics, or infidels, these individuals used the naturalism of modern science to deny the existence of any supernatural power. Science and Nonbeliefchronicles, in a balanced and accessible way, the long history of the battle between adherents of religious doctrines and the nonbelievers who adhere to the naturalism of modern science.
Science and Nonbelief provides a nontechnical introduction to the leading questions that concern science and religion today: What place does evolution hold in the arguments of nonbelievers? What does modern physics tell us about the place of humanity in the natural world? How do modern neurosciences challenge traditional beliefs about mind and matter? What can scientific research about religion tell us about the nature of belief? How do skeptics react to claims at the fringes of science, such as UFOs and psychics?
The volume also addresses the political context of debates over science and nonbelief, as well as questions about the nature of morality. It includes a selection of provocative primary source documents that illustrate the complexity and varieties of nonbelief.
List of contents
Science, Philosophy and Religious Doubt
Philosophers, Doubting and Devout
The Old Science and the Old Faith
The European Enlightenment
Non-Belief Comes of Age
Science and Non-Belief Today
Scientific Naturalism
An Accidential World
Why Physics is Hard
The Nature of Modern Physics
The Burden of Proof
God in the Cracks of Causality
Quantum Mysticism
Cosmic Harmonies
Fine-Tuning the Universe
A Moment of Creation?
Physics and Naturalism
Darwinian Creativity
Achieving Complexity
The Physics of Evolution
Evolution and Religion
Old Fashion Creationism
Intelligent Design
Creation Through Evolution
Universal Darwinism
Minds Without Souls
Mind and Matter
Cartesian Dualism
Machines Who Think
Genes and Memes
The Conscious Brain
Qualia and Subjectivity
Mind Over Matter
The God Module
Parts and Wholes
Non-Belief Adapts to Brain Science
The Fringes of Science
Ultimate Explanations
Miracles and Rejected Knowledge
Scripture as Miracle
From Spiritualism to New Age
Skiptics vs. Psychics
Mircles in the Laboratory
UFO's and Aliens
Direct Experience of the Paranormal?
Paranormal Skepticism and Non-Belief
Explaining Religion
Too Many Religions
Religious Studies
Rational Chioce Theory
The Secularization Thesis
Religion and Group Selection
A Virus of the Mind
The Religious Mind
Explaining Theology and Non-Belief
Morality and Politics
More Than the Facts
The State of Science
The State of Non-Belief
A Morality of Reason
The Science of Morality
Separate Spheres
An Uneasy Alliance
About the author
TANER EDIS is associate professor of Physics at Truman State University. While primarily a theoretical physicist, he has also written numerous articles on the secularist tradition in science. He is the author of The Ghost In the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science (2002) and co-editor of Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism (2004).
