Ebook
Science and Religion: Perspectives Across Disciplines interweaves science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields with the arts, humanities, theology, and psychology to cultivate discussion on science and religion alongside biblical interpretation. This anthology is paradoxically ecumenical, for it embraces unifying and disparate positions without being prescriptive or exclusive. It is both synergistic and disruptive. Building on this premise, the Advent and Easter stories are examined through praxes from STEM, theology, and psychology. Taken together, this anthology allows for connection between disciplines by creating community in the midst of differing approaches to the study of science and religion.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Pervading Intricacy of the World’s Detail: Science and Religion Across Diverse Perspectives, Claudia May and Channon Visscher
Chapter One: Bridging the Disciplines: Reflections on Interdisciplinarity and the Unity of Knowledge, Alister E. McGrath
Chapter Two: The Beginnings of Science in the Western World, John Hedley Brooke
Chapter Three: On Leibniz’s Objection against Substantivalism, Omar Fakhri
Chapter Four: Science as Storytelling: Making the Moon, Channon Visscher
Chapter Five: Heaven and Earth in Earnest: Annie Dillard’s Natural Theology, Barrett Fisher
Chapter Six: Finite Ear, Infinite God: The Living Art and Science Heard in God’s Creation, Marcus Simmons
Chapter Seven: Art, Imago, and Human Dignity, Wayne L. Roosa
Chapter Eight: The Science of Propriety in Florence Nightingale’s Bible, Bernon Lee
Chapter Nine: Inference to the Best Explanation: Potential Gateways to the Relationship Between Science and Religion and Multidisciplinary Interpretations of Biblical Stories, Claudia May
Chapter Ten: Advent and Easter in the Gospel Narratives, Mike Holmes
Chapter Eleven: The Face of Christmas, Sherryse L. Corrow
Chapter Twelve: Eternal Evolution in the New Creation: A Proposal, Cara M. Wall-Scheffler
Chapter Thirteen: Paradoxical Presence: God with us In Time and Space, Julie Hogan
Chapter Fourteen: Do We Need a Nano-Theology? Christian Engagement at the Cutting Edge, Nathan Lindquist
Chapter Fifteen: Psychological Views of the Resurrection: The Integral Role of Paradox, Angela
M. Sabates
Chapter Sixteen: Easter as Divine Summons: A Theological Reflection, Victor I. Ezigbo
Chapter Seventeen:Faith, Fundamentalism, and the Guild: The Challenge of Our Discrepant
Gospels, Juan Hernández Jr.
Conclusion: Science and Religion: Furthering Multidisciplinary Entanglements, Claudia May
About the Contributors
This tour de force of an edited volume brings together the best experts from across the disciplines to understand the science and faith interface. It is innovative, readable, and even practical. Editors May and Visscher alongside their chapter authors reveal the importance of ontological unity and epistemological plurality for bridging the disciplinary divide towards the deepest understanding of the science and faith interface.
‘This is an engaging and timely book from both well-established scholars in science and religion and from new and impressive voices as well. It highlights the diversity of approaches required to address some of the most pressing issues facing us today and that drawing on many different disciplines across the sciences and humanities is needed to unify our increasingly fragmented world.’
Insisting on the importance of building intellectual communities across the dividing lines that so often separate scholars from one another, Science and Religion: Perspectives Across Disciplines admirably performs the disciplinary diversity and epistemological pluralism for which its editors and contributors call. The resulting eclectic collection of essays promises to feed both the academic study of science and religion, and the human imagination, in vitally important ways.
Claudia May is program director and professor of reconciliation studies, and the executive director of the Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) at Bethel University.
Channon Visscher is professor of chemistry and planetary sciences at Dordt University and a research scientist with the Space Science Institute.