Good Faith: Beliefs Have Consequences
Ebook
Beliefs have consequences. Our beliefs about life's "big questions"--Who am I? How should I act? What's my purpose for living?--impact our lives and the lives of people around us. Our answers should take into account scientific explanations of our world and our species, but answers to existential questions are matters of values, not empirical facts. Our answers are the lenses through which we observe and make sense of ourselves and our experiences, lenses developed from attitudes and assumptions absorbed from parents, friends, and cultures, and also from religions and secular ideologies. We have choices, and the lenses we choose to wear shape our day-to-day decisions and interactions. Good Faith examines the choices--various answers with their embedded assumptions and values--and assesses the likely results if people lived according to those answers. Flourishing is the criterion. Do our answers enhance or diminish well-being, for ourselves, our communities, and all humanity?
“In this season of cultural fragmentation, the choice to live a life of faith might seem divisive. Roger Adams’s Good Faith not only provides a different perspective on the nature of choice in the life of faith, but actual criteria through which a person could query those choices. This book will be of great use to thoughtful people who wonder what role religion might play in their inner lives, their moral decision-making, and their participation in this complicated yet amazing world.”
—Sarah B. Drummond, Andover Newton Seminary
“Roger Adams demonstrates what makes for ‘good faith!’ His book—based on his broad knowledge of science, Christian history and theology, psychology, sociology, and economics—is an excellent guide for all who seek to create religious communities dedicated to helping people care for the planet and people in poverty, find meaning and value in life, cope when ‘bad things happen,’ and face death, make moral decisions, and advocate for just public policies and social structures.”
—David J. Lull, Wartburg Theological Seminary, emeritus
“In Good Faith, Roger argues that a healthy and compatible relationship between science and religion is not only possible but worth pursuing. With meticulous research in disciplines ranging from cosmology, physics, and evolution to epistemology and moral philosophy, Adams guides us fairly, logically, gently, and intelligently toward the discovery of criteria for a ‘good faith’ in our twenty-first-century world of science and technology.”
—James T. Bradley, Auburn University, emeritus
“With an accessible but comprehensive background of scientific, religious, and ethical knowledge, Adams charts how religious meaning and moral integrity can and must be compatible with science—and how human lives and community can be enriched when they are. The heartbeat of this timely book is Adams’s patient and thorough insistence that good faith and good reasoning should be helpful and not harmful to individual, collective, and global flourishing.”
—Kristine A. Culp, University of Chicago Divinity School
“In this book Adams has successfully conveyed academic discourses in science, philosophy, and theology for a lay audience to address life’s big questions. Topics discussed range from quantum mechanics to the prisoner’s dilemma. There are many books in science and religion that are highly technical and specialized, but Adams reminds us once again that a big-picture view is fundamentally important for the flourishing of all of creation.”
—Arvin Gouw, Cambridge University
- Title: Good Faith: Beliefs Have Consequences
- Author: Roger R. Adams
- Publisher: Resource Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666749045, 9781666749021, 1666749028, 9781666749038, 1666749036, 1666749044
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666749045
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-03-19T11:24:29Z
Roger R. Adams is a clinical psychologist also trained in ministry. His writings have explored issues of science, morality, and faith.