A Catholic Scientist Harmonizes Science and Faith


Book Description

Modernity, academia, and the media perceive and relentlessly advance a dichotomous, contradictory relationship between faith and science. However, from the time of Aristotle, it has been demonstrated that man is a rational being who reasons intellectually in a way that animals and technology cannot. Man is also a religious being, correlating himself to what is above and seeking answers to the ultimate questions of transcendence. In this definitive book on the subject, Dr. Gerard Verschuuren draws from the reflections of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. John Paul II, Dr. Perer Kreeft, and such scientists as Albert Einstein and Gregor Mendel to reveal the essential connection between reason and religion. Dr. Verschuuren confirms the necessity of reasoning in scientific theory. Relying on true stories from scientific developments in medicine, astronomy, and physics, he asserts that the scientific method alone can't explain the origins of the universe. By the same token, he decries blind faith and shows how science doesn't threaten the Church. On the contrary: it confirms those truths that Christians have always believed- which is why the Father of Lies has always sought to pit faith against reason and science against revelation. Clarifying the assumptions upon which science and religion are based, this cogent book reflects on how: Authentic reasoning inevitably leads us closer to God and belief in His attributes, Christianity helped produce modern scientific advancements, The New Atheism, including the views of Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, is erroneous, Faith needs science to avoid fideism, and science requires belief Book jacket.




Catholic Scientist Proves God Exists


Book Description

Challenging today's accepted “wisdom,” Catholic scientist Gerard Verschuuren, Ph.D., here demonstrates that the question of whether God exists is not one science can answer. Indeed, that would be like expecting a microscope to reveal the square root of sixteen! Verschuuren begins by explaining the five famous medieval proofs for the existence of God — based on reason alone — that have survived despite nearly a thousand years of efforts to refute them. With his wise help, you'll come to see that just as reason gives us access to the existence of numbers, so it is reason that gives us access to the existence of God. In fact, when we use our reason to investigate the existence of God, we encounter proofs that are more powerful, by far, than any that science could ever provide. Yes, Verschuuren is a Catholic; but he's also a long-standing scientist, schooled in using reason alone to draw forth from evidence the proofs to which it nec




How Science Points to God


Book Description

We are told that science and religion are wholly incompatible and that those of us who profess faith in God are unwilling to bend our wills to the truth. In this highly gratifying book, scientist Dr. Gerard Verschuuren flips this assertion around, showing time and time again how it is not the Christians, but rather the scientists, who are unwilling to incline their wills to the truth when it presents itself. Dr. Verschuuren helps us to recognize science's limited scope, how it is restricted to what can be dissected, measured, and counted. It is not the only pathway to knowledge. Science operates within the realm of nature. It cannot, therefore, make aesthetic judgments or moral judgments or draw conclusions about the supernatural, which is, by definition, beyond the realm of nature. Science is likewise ill-equipped to explore ethereal concepts such as beauty and love. It explores only the how, never the why. But science can, and does, point us in the direction of the Creator. With clear, well-documented explanations, Dr. Verschuuren carefully guides you through the fields of science, identifying the many “hints” and “signs” of God's existence in genetics, neuroscience, behavioral science, semantics, logic, and math. Taken together, these hints provide an overwhelming case for the existence of God that is practically impossible to deny. How Science Points to God teaches you to approach scientific processes and discoveries with a mind of faith, bringing you to a far deeper understanding of who we are and how we came to be. In this way, science is moving us toward ultimately proving the existence of God, while inspiring and intensifying our faith along the way.




Particles of Faith


Book Description

What is the origin of life? Hasn't the Catholic Church always been hostile to science? Can a Christian accept the scientific theory of evolution? How can you, as a Catholic, explain what the Church teaches about the relationship between science and faith? Scientist, writer, and scholar Stacy Trasancos gives us ways we can talk about how science and our Catholic faith work together to reveal the truth of Christ through the beauty of his creation. As a scientist who was led to Catholicism through her work, Stacy Trasancos has confronted some of the basic questions we all face. In Particles of Faith, she teaches us how to explain the symbiotic beauty between our curiosity expressed through science and our love of Christ and his Church. Trasancos uses her own story, as well as encyclicals such as Pope Francis's Lumen Fidei, the deep reflections of theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas, and the exacting work of Catholic scientists like Rev. Georges Lemaître (who proposed the game-changing Big Bang theory), to show how science and faith are interwoven and meant to guide us on the path to truth. By the time you finish reading Particles of Faith, you'll be able to answer questions about, generate discussion on, and explain why science helps deepen your faith.




The Genealogical Adam and Eve


Book Description

What if the biblical creation account is true, with the origins of Adam and Eve taking place alongside evolution? Building on well-established but overlooked science, S. Joshua Swamidass explains how it's possible for Adam and Eve to be rightly identified as the ancestors of everyone, opening up new possibilities for understanding Adam and Eve consistent both with current scientific consensus and with traditional readings of Scripture.




Redeeming Science


Book Description

Many people think science is antagonistic to Christian belief. Science, it is said, shows that the universe is billions of years old, while the Bible says it is only thousands of years old. And some claim that science shows supernatural miracles are impossible. These and other points of contention cause some Christians to view science as a threat to their beliefs. Redeeming Science attempts to kindle our appreciation for science as it ought to be-science that could serve as a path for praising God and serving fellow human beings. Through examining the wonderfully complex and immutable laws of nature, author Vern Poythress explains, we ought to recognize the wisdom, care, and beauty of God. A Christian worldview restores a true response to science, where we praise the God who created nature and cares for it.




The Varieties of Religious Experience


Book Description

Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature explores the nature of religion and, in James' observation, its divorce from science when studied academically. After publication in 1902 it quickly became a canonical text of philosophy and psychology, remaining in print through the entire century. "Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the Methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind."




Christianity and Evolution


Book Description

The author of The Phenomenon of Man reconciles passionate faith with the rigor of scientific thinking. With his unique background as a geologist, paleontologist, and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a powerful exponent of the view that scientific theories could comfortably coexist with religious faith. To this day, his ideas provoke passionate debates in communities that view science and faith as necessarily separate ideologies. In this collection of nineteen essays, Teilhard seeks to illuminate a middle ground between science and religion that he felt both disciplines could accept. He explores the Fall and original sin, the possibility of life on other planets, and the role that God may have played in the process of human evolution, successfully challenging contemporary theologians to rethink their views of the universe and its creation. “Like other great visionary poets—Blake, Hopkins, Yeats—Teilhard engages the reader both intellectually and sensually.” —The Washington Post Book World “An excellent blend of theological speculation with practical or ascetical application.” —Catholic Telegraph




No Sense of Obligation


Book Description

Some of the Praise for No Sense of Obligation . . . fascinating analysis of religious belief -- Steve Allen, author, composer, entertainer [A] tour de force of science and religion, reason and faith, denoting in clear and unmistakable language and rhetoric what science really reveals about the cosmos, the world, and ourselves. Michael Shermer, Publisher, Skeptic Magazine; Author, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science About the Book Rejecting belief without evidence, a scientist searches the scientific, theological, and philosophical literature for a sign from God--and finds him to be an allegory. This remarkable book, written in the laypersons language, leaves no room for unproven ideas and instead seeks hard evidence for the existence of God. The author, a sympathetic critic and observer of religion, finds instead a physical universe that exists reasonlessly. He attributes good and evil to biology, not to God. In place of theism, the author gives us the knowledge that the universe is intelligible and that we are grownups, responsible for ourselves. He finds salvation in the here and now, and no ultimate purpose in life, except as we define it.




Excel Simulations


Book Description

Covering a variety of Excel simulations, from gambling to genetics, this introduction is for people interested in modeling future events, without the cost of an expensive textbook. The simulations covered offer a fun alternative to the usual Excel topics and include situations such as roulette, password cracking, sex determination, population growth, and traffic patterns, among many others.