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    God's Planet
    God's Planet
    God's Planet
    Ebook138 pages1 hour

    God's Planet

    By Owen Gingerich

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    An “eminent scholar . . . shows how religious perspectives have played significant roles in major scientific discoveries and frameworks. . . . fascinating.” (Choice)

    Today, science and religion are the two major cultural entities on our planet that seek a coherent explanation for the structure, origins, and fate of the universe, and of humanity’s place within it, though their interpretation of evidence differs dramatically. Many scientists look at the known universe and conclude we are here by chance. The renowned astronomer and historian of science Owen Gingerich looks at the same evidence?along with the fact that the universe is comprehensible to our minds?and sees it as proof for the planning and intentions of a Creator-God. God’s Planet exposes the fallacy in thinking that science and religion can be kept apart.

    Gingerich frames his argument around three questions: Was Copernicus right, in dethroning Earth from its place at the center of the universe? Was Darwin right, in placing humans securely in an evolving animal kingdom? And was Hoyle right, in identifying physical constants in nature that seem singularly tuned to allow the existence of intelligent life on planet Earth? Using these episodes from the history of science, Gingerich demonstrates that cultural attitudes, including religious or antireligious beliefs, play a significant role in what passes as scientific understanding. The more rigorous science becomes over time, the more clearly God’s handiwork can be comprehended.

    “Owen Gingerich provides new facts and deeper understanding of [Copernicus, Darwin, Hoyle].” —Freeman Dyson, author of The Scientist as Rebel

    “[A] short, punchy, accessible, and thought-provoking book.” —Christian Century

    “A rich volume you’ll want to keep in your library.” —Forbes.com
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 22, 2014
    ISBN9780674745018
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    • 5/5
      Published by the Harvard Faculty and Fellows, as a tribute both to the writer and his stunning accomplish- ment of joining two traditionally conceived as strictly unconnected fields, science and religion, GODʻSʻ PLANET is a Harvard Astro-physicistʻs exposition of "intelligent life," in scientific terms and how it is endowed by human consciousness reflecting upon itself, as such, by faith, another form of the intelligent lifeʻs self. The writerʻs deeply abiding Mennonite rich faith carries an integrity of his scientific faith and knowing to a stunninngly SIMPLE, ERUDITE, ELEGANT, LUCID, and COMPREHENSIVE UNDERSTANDING OF E=MC square. Gingerich does not engage Christian faith, but the concept and act of faith itself, which he claims is a part of the intelligent life in E=Mc square. Rarely does one see a book published by the Harvard Faculty and Fellows, as though both are making personal statements of its excellence of scholarship and literary facility -- the tone never rises to a plea, never descends to an argument, for it is a rational exposition throughout. Outstanding is the simplicity both of the scientific and religious expositions by reason so that even the faith of the equation is not naked in spirit from its body. Gingrich, we learn, was born in a place called Goshen, a Mennonite town in Iowa, went to school in Indiana, and graduated from Harvard, retained by Harvard for teaching and retired from Harvard, at which time he was asked to deliver an address on the formidable double ranging subject as one to a little known group, consisting of Christians testifying as Scientists and Scientists testifying as Christians in little known Gordon College, Mass., deep in the New England woods along weedy byways perhaps. Everything about the groupʻs enterprise is small, simple, direct, and integrity laden, like a school of scientific scholars who carry their reasoning by questions from the smallest particles to the evolving future ascribed, because the product is intelligent and living, to an Intelligence that the mathematician Roger Penrose phrases as a question "Is the Universe Conscious" in THE EMPEROR HAS A NEW MIND. The tenor of the writing of this astoundingly lucid, choicely worded, simple accountis like that of the better known Amish and Quakers -- profoundly quiet. Gingerich is a retired Professor of Astrophysics and the History of Science. In this book, he is a man of abiding faith in the search for public knowledge in science and the recognition, by home rule that is the personal spirit of life, in faith in what Gingerich calls GOD and many others call Spirit. This book is a modern version of John Bunyanʻs Pilgrimʻs Progress; but it is not an allegory. It is a genuine scientific discourse, in writing, on the Spirit part of the Body that is, with the quarks and atoms of natural bodies that visibly and less than visibly but knowably whirl in space/time, a veritable body that does the same out of the Consciousness that Roger Penrosesuggests out of his displays, in his calculations and by cubes, the mathematical reason and beyond reason parts of the Existing Intelligent Life equation that Gingerich expounds in simple sentences..This book is a Classic. It is iconoclastic. Yet you would never hear a pin drop. It is profound.

    Book preview

    God's Planet - Owen Gingerich

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