Arieti J.A., Wilson P.A. The Scientific and the Divine: Conflict and Reconciliation from Ancient Greece to the Present

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003. — 351 p.There have been many-too many-attempts over the centuries to bring science and religion into harmony. James A. Arieti and Patrick A. Wilson survey and assess these various efforts, from Plato to Aquinas to present-day philosophers and theologians. The Scientific & The Divine examines the perennial issues that keep science and religion at arm's length, clarify those issues, and fit them into an historical framework. This book is ideal for use as a textbook in any course that discusses the interplay between science and faith. Arieti and Wilson do not push an agenda-they take a critical, analytical look at the theories that started when the ancient Greeks realized the religious implications of scientific discovery. The Scientific & The Divine shows the historical continuity of both the central issues and the many potential solutions, and demonstrates which of these theories comes closest to saving the marriage between science and religion.Preface
Science and Religion
The Problem
Some Preliminary Examples
Sophocles
Aristotle
Augustine
Nehemiah
Is Human Reason Able to Explain the World?
Reason and Human Nature
The Nature of Reason
All Men Desire to Know
Knowledge as Universal
Degrees of Certainty
Knowledge as a Good
The Rationality of Desiring Knowledge
Human Nature and Human Questions
Bad Answers and Socratic Ignorance
Religion's Answers
God as Explanatory Principle: The Positive
God as Explanatory Principle: The Negative
Science's Answers
Scientific Explanations: The Positive
Scientific Explanations: The Negative
What Is Science?
The Ancient View
The Problem
Plato's Solution
Aristotle's Conception of Science
Problems Concerning Religion and Science in the Light of Aristotle
Modern Views of Science
Faith and Scientific Knowledge
The Origin of Scientific Attempts to Explain the World
The Origin of Science in Miletus
Thales and Monism
The Problem of Change: Parmenides and Heraclitus
Empedocles
Democritus
Conclusion
The God of Ancient Philosophers
Xenophanes' God
Plato's God
Aristotle's God
Cicero's God
Neoplatonism
How God Affects the World
Human Access to the Divine
The God of Philosophy
Part II: Reconciling Science and Religion
General Considerations Concerning the Reconciliation of Science and Religion
God's Invisibility
Evil in the World
God's Omniscience and Human Free Will
Human Corporeality
Plato
Philo of Alexandria
Reconciling Science and Religion in Medieval Islam
Preliminary Comments
Al Farabi
Avicenna
Al Ghazali
Averroes
Reconciling Science and Religion in Medieval Judaism
Saadia Gaon
Abraham ibn Daud
Maimonides
Reconciling Science and Religion in the Christian Middle Ages
Bonaventure
Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas's Relation to Aristotle
Aquinas's First Two Proofs of the Existence of God
The Immutability of God and the Mutability of Creation
Aquinas's Difference with Maimonides on the Immutability of God and Creation
Aquinas's Final Three Proofs for the Existence of God
The Degree to Which Science Can Explain God
Conclusion
Reconciling Science and Religion from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment
The Scientific Revolution
Francis Bacon
Galileo
Johannes Kepler
René Descartes
Baruch de Spinoza
Isaac Newton
Gottfried Leibniz
Final Thoughts on the Seventeenth Century
The Enlightenment
David Hume
Immanuel Kant
Conclusion
Science and Religion in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
A Few Pre-Darwinian Views
Charles Darwin
A Few Prominent Physicists of the Twentieth Century
Albert Einstein
Max Planck
Erwin Schrodinger
Werner Heisenberg
Conclusion
Science and Religion at the End of the Twentieth Century
The Intelligent Design Research Program
Dembski's Explanatory Filter
Refinement of the Explanatory Filter
God of the Gaps
Explanatory Power
Religious Status
Scientific Status
Suboptimal Design
Anthropic Selection Effect
Applicability of Mathematics
Hume's Objections
Transcendent Designers
Conclusion on the Intelligent Design Research Program
Keith Ward
Arthur Peacocke
John Polkinghorne
Gould versus Dawkins: Non-Overlapping Magisteria?
Conclusion
Conclusion
Unsuccessful Attempts at Reconciling Science and Religion
General Comments
Types of "Reconciliation" That are Possible
Denial of God
Denial of Science
Redefining the Key Term-God
Separating the Spheres of Religion and Science
Declaring God and His Operations Unknowable
Problems
A Proposal
Conclusions about God and Humankind
Works Cited
Index