Great Intro to Faith and Science Conversation
10/31/2018Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God. Author: Melissa Cain Travis. Bottom line: Terrific introduction to a hot topic.
Around my 15th birthday, I told my non-believing parents that I had become a Christian. My dad grimaced and shook his head in disapproval. Then he said, “I could easily argue you out of it and destroy your faith, but I won’t.” He continued, “I had a friend who tried to convince me Christianity was true, but I demolished his arguments and his faith. Later, I felt bad that he looked so downcast, so I won’t do that to you.”
Right then and there, I decided that I needed to study the evidences for Christianity’s truth. Then I’d be ready when he—or anyone else—sought to destroy my faith. At first, I sought answers from the Bible. But when I started dating Clay, he suggested we read Evidence that Demands a Verdict together. Thus began my journey into Christian apologetics: the study of reasons for belief in the truth of Christianity. It prepared me not only to stand firm in my faith, but also to share the gospel with others better. After all, many have heard objections to Christianity.
My guess is that you probably want to be able to do the same. That’s why I’m excited to tell you about a new book on faith and science. It presents scientific and philosophical arguments for the existence of a Creator in a clear and understandable way. It’s Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God
Faith and Science
Author Melissa Cain Travis has that rare gift of being able to break complex material into understandable parts. While I’ve read quite a few books about faith and science, this is one of the clearest and most readable. That’s because some books on the subject are too complex for the average reader. Or, they are general apologetics books that don’t have the space to adequately address this complex subject. But Travis expertly divides the material into digestible chunks that the average reader can manage.
In each chapter, Travis puts forth her hypothesis, examines atheist objections, and presents evidence for a Creator (the Maker Thesis). Throughout, she carefully separates science and philosophy: “It has been said that the business of science is taking things apart to see how they work, while the business of philosophy and theology is putting things together to see what the mean.”
She offers plenty of definitions to keep readers from getting lost. There are fascinating details about scientists whose faith spurred them on to discover scientific truths as a form of worship. There are lots of fun sidebars. And every chapter ends with a bullet list summary.
Faith and Science in Our Comprehensible Mathematical World
Travis’s chapter, “A Meeting of the Minds: Our Comprehensible Mathematical Universe,” is a gem. She presents plenty of evidence contending that the mathematical qualities of the physical world are discovered, not invented. She also argues that the human mind’s ability to perform convoluted calculations could not have evolved through Darwinian evolution. That’s because complex calculations don’t increase a person’s ability to survive. Indeed, mathematicians have worked out mathematical constructs with no apparent use, only to have physicists much later discover they describe some part of the universe’s physical traits.
Materialists say that “everything in the cosmos is, or can be reduced to, matter and energy governed by the laws of nature.” But mathematical truths are immaterial. Materialists thus have “difficulty explaining the objectivity of mathematical truth, how beautifully mathematics applies to physical reality, and mankind’s corresponding intellectual capacities.”
Not so those who contend that a Creator better fits what we see. “If the cosmos is the creation of a rational Mind in whose image we are made, a Maker who desires our awareness of him, this deep interconnection makes perfect sense.”
This short summary doesn’t do the chapter justice. So, if this topic intrigues you, get the book.
The Just-Right World Spurs Faith and Science Talk
I was delighted to discover that Travis examined evidences about which I’d not read before. For example, “Habitable and Discoverable: A World Just Right for Scientists” had many examples new to me. Here’s an excerpt:
The fact that life is balanced on a razor’s edge, that our universe is fine-tuned for our existence, is incredible in its own right, but it’s not the end of the story—not by far. A diversity of features of the universe, our solar system, the moon, and planet Earth constitute an amazingly beneficial set of conditions that make both intelligent life and scientific discovery possible. It turns out that the set of circumstances needed for a scientifically advanced civilization such as ours is actually narrower than those needed for our biological existence.3 In other words, there are other possible scenarios that would have allowed for intelligent observers (us), but would have been terribly unconducive to the practice of the natural sciences. In those cases, we would have been stuck in a perpetually primitive existence of hunting and gathering, with no clue about the deeper wonders of the world around us.
Melissa Cain Travis, Science and the Mind of the Maker
My Recommendation
I highly recommend this book for those seeking the scientific evidences for the existence of a Maker. It will help you join the faith and science conversation.
Thank you for the information about this book Jean, it looks interesting. I’ll share this with our church librarian. ~ Abby