How did life evolve on Earth? The answer to this question can help us understand our past and prepare for our future. Although evolution provides credible and reliable answers, polls show that many people turn away from science, seeking other explanations with which they are more comfortable. In the book, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a group of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine explain the fundamental methods of science, document the overwhelming evidence in support of biological evolution, and evaluate the alternative perspectives offered by advocates of various kinds of creationism, including "intelligent design." The book explores the many fascinating inquiries being pursued that put the science of evolution to work in preventing and treating human disease, developing new agricultural products, and fostering industrial innovations. The book also presents the scientific and legal reasons for not teaching creationist ideas in public school science classes. Mindful of school board battles and recent court decisions, Science, Evolution, and Creationism shows that science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other and that the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. For educators, students, teachers, community leaders, legislators, policy makers, and parents who seek to understand the basis of evolutionary science, this publication will be an essential resource.

Scott, a physical anthropologist, runs the National Center for Science Education, which defends the teaching of evolution in high schools. (She advised the parents fighting the Dover school board.) Scott could be said to be the one doing God’s work as she patiently rebuts people who make most other scientists spit gaskets like short-circuiting robots. Her book is both a straightforward history of the debate and an anthology of essays written by partisans on each side. Its main virtue is to explain the scientific method, which many invoke but few describe vividly. Scott also manages to lay out the astronomical, chemical, geological and biological bases of evolutionary theory in unusually plain English.” ~ The New York Times Book Review * At last a book that both Henry Morris, of the Institute for Creation Research, and Niles Eldredge, a prominent scientist, can agree upon! Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, is an articulate and engaging author. She has written a book suitable for a wide audience: high school and college students, teachers, and nonspecialized general readers. The book is comprehensive, treating scientific evidences for evolution, religious views, and a history of the so-called evolution-creation controversy. ~ Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith

This is the book where Popper first introduced his famous "solution" to the problem of induction. Originally publish in German in 1934, this version is Popper’s own English translation undertaken in the 1950s. It should go without saying that the book is a classic in philosophic epistemology — perhaps the most important such work to appear since Hume’s "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding." Popper argues that scientific theories can never be proven, merely tested and corroborated. Scientific inquiry is distinguished from all other types of investigation by its testability, or, as Popper put, by the falsifiability of its theories. Unfalsifiable theories are unscientific precisely because they cannot be tested. ~ Greg Nyquist at Amazon.com

TJ Walker’s Web Radio Show is currently featuring a very interesting interview with Molleen Matsumura (link expired), a member of the National Center for Science Education (an organization promoting, in particular, evolutionary education). Her disregard for the “Intelligent Design” movement is an enlightening glimpse of its continuing perception among evolutionists. Cross reference her primary contention — that Intelligent Design theories are not genuine theories because they fail to have explanatory power — with Stephen Meyer’s, “The Methodological Equivalence of Design & Descent,” on explanation, and Dembski’s “The Explanatory Filter,” on her God of the gaps concern. Since the concerns Matsumura raises have been so thoroughly discussed by the Intelligent Design movement, it is hard not to wonder why she exhibits no familiarity with their proposed solutions. David Kornreich’s, “Why Creationism is not a Science,” (link expired) seems equally oblivious to these discussions. Behe’s Empty Box, on the other hand, is a glimpse of the possible dialogue prompted by taking Intelligent Design theorists’ criticisms seriously.

A collection of essays concerning religion and art, including contributions by Barbara Novak, Leo Steinberg, Paul Tillich, Wassily Kandinsky, John Dixon Jr., David Tracy, Joshua Taylor, and Langdon B. Gilkey. Addresses themes including: "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", Leonardo’s Last Supper, the use of images in India, "Painting as Theological Thought", "Judaism and Art", "The Art of Deception", "The Religious Impulse in American Art", "An Islamic Perspective on Symbolism", "Theological Reflections" on Picasso’s Girl before a Mirror, and more.

To begin with, Christian teachings have served as presuppositions for the scientific enterprise (e.g., the conviction that nature is lawful was inferred from its creation by a rational God). Second, Christian teachings have sanctioned science (e.g., science was justifies as a means of alleviating toil and suffering). Third, Christian teachings supplied motives for pursuing science (e.g., to show the glory and wisdom of the Creator). And fourth, Christianity played a role in regulating scientific methodology (e.g., voluntarist theology was invoked to justify an empirical approach in science). Among professional historians the image of warfare between faith and science has shattered. Replacing it is a widespread recognition of Christianity’s positive contributions to modern science.

Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and control the triggering of our sensory receptors in the light of previous triggering of our sensory receptors. The triggering, first and last, is all we have to go on. In saying this I too am talking of external things, namely, people and their nerve endings. Thus what I am saying applies in particular to what I am saying, and is not meant as skeptical. There is nothing we can be more confident of than external things — some of them, anyway — other people, sticks, stones. But there remains the fact — a fact of science itself — that science is a conceptual bridge of our own making, linking sensory stimulation to sensory stimulation; there is no extrasensory perception.

What Christian films — and Christian “art” in general — have lacked is a willingness to portray evil convincingly. It was Milton’s Satan and Dante’s Inferno that made them two of the most powerful Christian artists of all time. Because they understood evil and did not shrink from it, their depictions of goodness had power. In order to be redemptive, art has to convince us there is something real from which we need redeeming. Conversely, much secular art in the last half-century illustrates confusion and pain brilliantly but provides no antidote. The screeching hell of marital discord in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives puts the viewer as close to seeing the need for God as any “Christian film” ever has, but stops there. Ditto John Updike’s anti-paeans to adultery and suburban ennui; he limns the darkness all so well, so perfectly — too perfectly — and then splits for the golf course. We get universes of darkness without light, and from Christian “artists” we get watts of light without darkness. So it seems a little chiaroscuro is generally in order. Early on in the movie, at Mclean’s funeral — which is a genuine Christian funeral rather than the papier-mâché facsimiles Hollywood usually gives us (“dearly beloved — ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and so on — Miller reminds his fellow prisoners that “there is suffering before glory, there is a cross before the crown.” That says it.

Amy has done it again. She writes a quick read based on current questions she gathers from her discussions and presentations to today’s young people. She is a battle tested question taker in the current of scholastic ideas coming from today’s students. Some questions are hostile, some are thoughtful, and some are old objections in new clothes. Her book manages to include her encounters with people and then she offers rational, thoughtful and experientially relevant answers to the posed questions. She takes on the new hardline atheism when they say God is just a disease of the mind to be expelled so its danger does not affect our culture. Her book is easy to read and not a million pages of analytical philosophy. It is very popular and relevant. I would recommend any person from the age 18 to 30 to sit with her and pose her questions. This book is the next best thing. My recommendation to Amy is to get working on her next little but substantial book and someday these will be an anthology for this generation and the next. When Ravi Zacharias’ work is over, Amy and her collegues will continue. In summary — affordable price, easy read, substantial content, and gets at current questions youth are deep down asking but don’t know who to ask. ~ Mark J. Armstrong @ Amazon.com