Science & Religion: Anthologies and Journal Articles
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Item Open Access Creation: order and chance in physics and biology(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1990-04-19) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, speaker; Dean, Charles, speaker; Crombie, Bob, speakerThe relations between physics and theology are surprisingly cordial at present; the relations between biology and theology are more difficult. A key to understanding the interrelations of all three: physics, biology, and religion lies in examining the concept of order and disorder. Astrophysics and nuclear physics are describing a universe "fine-tuned" for life, although physics has also found a universe with indeterminacy in it. Meanwhile evolutionary biology and molecular biology seem to be discovering that the history of life is a random walk with much struggle and chance, driven by selfish genes, although they have also found that in this random walk order is built up over the millennia across a negentropic upslope, attaining in Earth's natural history the most complex and highly ordered phenomena known in the universe, such as ecosystems, organisms, and, most of all, the human mind. Holmes Rolston lecture "Creation: Order and Chance in Physics and Biology" was the 15th Henry Harrell Memorial Lecture in Religion presented at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee on April 19, 1990.Item Open Access Genes, genesis and God: Holmes Rolston III: Richard J. Burke lecture in philosophy, religion and society(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2006-03-13) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, speaker; Burke, Richard J., speakerHolmes Rolston delivers the inaugurating Richard J. Burke Lecture in Philosophy, Religion and Society at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan on March 13, 2006. Professor Rolston discusses the debate about order and disorder, randomness and probability, actualities and possibilities, as these result in increasing diversity and complexity over the evolutionary epic. He features the increasing information in genes that appears in natural history, resulting in genetic coding, eucaryotes, sexuality, societies, and mind, with human capacities for culture, including science, religion and ethics. Life opens up increasingly new possibility space. In both nature and culture, life gets more promise, becomes more promising. Life is self-transforming, takes on meaning. This invites and demands deeper explanations, philosophically and theologically.Item Open Access The Good Samaritan and his genes - audio/video lecture(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2002-11-09) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, speakerThis is a lecture given by Holmes Rolston at a conference on Biology and Morality at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 9, 2002.Item Open Access We humans are the worst and the best and …(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022-03) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Wiley Periodicals LLC, publisherWe humans have extended culture amplifying our powers. Our genotypes are differentially expressed in phenotypes, increasing our preferring us over them, escalating our worst and best. Our groups are more ruthless than individuals. Our brain/minds are hyperimmense, neuroplastic in advancing our powers in collective technology. We fear reaching a tipping point, a point of no return, pending doom for humans and jeopardizing the planet forever. We humans are the best and the worst and … we have blundered into doubly compounded wickedness. We struggle to gain truth, and live with our biases, religious and secular. We are capable of the highest good, exemplified in individuals in their spiritual communities. We can also fall into enormous evil, made worse by our community allegiances. We are well into the greatest experiment ever, an Anthropocene Epoch in which the dangerous outcome cannot be undone, nor the experiment repeated.Item Open Access Environmental ethics and religion/science(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Oxford University Press, publisherWhat to make of who we are, where we are, what we ought to do? These perennial questions are familiar enough; what is recently extraordinary is how the science-religion dialogue re-frames these old questions with an on Earth dimension. What to make of Earth, the home planet? Earth is proving to be a remarkable planet and humans have deep roots in and entwined destinies with this wonderland Earth. Simultaneously, however, humans are remarkable on this remarkable planet, a wonder on wonderland Earth. The foreboding challenge is that these spectacular humans, the sole moral agents on Earth, now jeopardize both themselves and their planet. Science and religion are equally needed, and strained, to bring salvation (to use a religious term), to keep life on Earth sustainable (to use a more secular, scientific term).Item Open Access Lame science? Blind religion?(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherIn Consecrating Science, Lisa Sideris argues that an anthropocentric and science-based cosmology encourages human arrogance and diminishes a sense of wonder in human experience immersed in the natural world, found in diverse cultural and religious traditions. I agree with her that science elevated to a commanding world view, scientism, is a common and contemporary mistake, to be deplored, a lame science. But I further argue that science has introduced us to the marvels of deep nature, and vastly increased our human appreciation of nature as a wonderland at levels great and small. Sideris is right to fear consecrating science. She—and the humanists, sages, and saviors—need also to fear blindness to what science has to teach us about cosmogenesis and wonderland Earth.Item Open Access Schlick's Responsible man(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1975) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, authorA criticism of the concept of responsibility in the work of Moritz Schlick. The solution, or dissolution, of moral responsibility is not nearly so simple as Schlick has proposed. Upon analysis, his hope of retaining responsibility under ethics as an applied science collapses.Item Open Access Suffering through to something higher(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, authorThe Darwinian world of "survival of the fittest" is "survival of the better adapted." Over evolutionary time the fight for life deepens into sentience, and sentience into suffering. This forces philosophers and theologians to see what sense they can make of it. All organisms are under stress. Pain arises in those with neurons. With neuronal nets of increasing complexity, life crosses the threshold of felt experience. Natural history might be called the evolution of suffering; or, equally plausibly, the evolution of caring. Pain, both physical and social, is a prolife force; suffering produces creativity. The generating and testing of selves by conflict and resolution fills habitats with better adapted fits, better able to send life into the next generation. Biblical writers rejoice in nature; they also speak of nature laboring in travail. Regenerative suffering makes history. Tragic beauty is the law of the narrative: cruciform nature.Item Open Access Surprisingly neuroplastic human brains: reading, science, philosophy, theology(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Graduate Theological Union (CTNS Program); Taylor & Francis, publisherHuman brains, dramatically more complex than anything else in the known universe, are marvelously mutable. Recent neuroscience focuses on how humans create cumulative transmissible cultures which in turn shape mental development. When cultures become literate, cognitive powers escalate. Although until recently only a comparative few learned to read and write, this takes place with the serendipitous re-use of pattern recognizing capacities, such as those for recognizing faces. With sustained reading diligence, as required during education in science, philosophy, and theology, this results in advanced cognitive skills.Item Open Access Critical notice in science and religion(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, authorCritical notice of citations of Rolston's published materials in science and religion.Item Open Access Review of A. N. Wilson's How can we know? An essay on the Christian religion(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1986) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Princeton Theological Seminary, publisherA British novelist, critic, and controversial former editor of the Spectator is here an intense disciple of Christ. How Can We Know? is A. N. Wilson's searching Apologia Pro Vita Sua, urbane, gracefully written, and a remarkable tribute to the vitality of Christianity in what many predicted to be a post-Christian generation. Wilson is shrewd in his capacity to recontact a person behind the witness of the early church and the New Testament, a person there who becomes a Presence here.Item Open Access Review of Alister McGrath's A scientific theology: volume 1: nature(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2004) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherThis is a learned survey of historical ideas of creation and nature. McGrath is enthusiastic about the social creation of nature, yet he also seeks a "logocentric" account by which Christians have a privileged, or revealed account, appreciating what the sciences can genuinely discover, yet also needing a deeper account of how the wonderful cosmos comes into being.Item Open Access Review of John Polkinghorne's Science and theology: an introduction(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2000) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherJohn Polkinghorne is well known as a leading figure relating theology to physics. Confronted with the claim that science and theology are inevitably at odds with each other, Polkinghorne replied, and here demonstrates, that "You don't have to commit intellectual suicide to be a believer."Item Open Access Review of Kenneth Cauthen's Process ethics: a constructive system(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1986) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherThis is a process oriented theology, blending Christian ethics based on the Bible and moral philosophy based on reason and experience. He synthesizes rights-based and utilitarian ethics, agape and eros, love and justice, individual and community, Christian ethics and evolutionary processes, self-love and altruism.Item Open Access Review of Paoli Soleri's The omega seed: an eschatological hypothesis(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1983) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherSoleri believes in an Omega God. Inveighing against the Alpha God, traditional theism is misleading. Our present human challenge is to become what we are, the seed of God, and hence Soleri's title. We are the Omega Seed. Soleri's creed is: "There is no God yet, and Soleri is his prophet." This is best considered a hypothesis and we wait to see if there are any fruits.Item Open Access Review of James W. Jones' the Texture of knowledge: an essay in science and religion(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1982) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherThis is a finely and tightly woven essay about the unweaving of hard and fast claims in both science and religion. James W. Jones advocates what he calls an open texture in both fields. He analyzes three leading philosophers of science: Michael Polanyi, Stephen Toulmin, and Thomas Kuhn. He advocates a "critical relativism." This is a thoughtful essay.Item Open Access Review of K. S. Shrader-Frechette's Environmental ethics(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1982) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherShrader-Frechette has anthologized 25 selections, chosen to be good beginner's pieces. Often there are opposing articles, and the authors come from diverse fields. The selections are provocative, organized around the right themes, and easily readable. There is careful attention to the mixture of scientific and technological matters with ethical and philosophical judgments. As an introductory text in environmental ethics, this is one of the best now available.Item Open Access Review of David L. Schindler's Beyond mechanism: the universe in recent Catholic thought(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1987) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherThis worthy volume contains the responses of four Catholics and one non-Catholic to the philosophical views of the physicist David Bohm. The central concept is that of the one "implicate order" unfolded into the many "explicate order." The analyses are stimulating but not definitive.Item Open Access Review of J. Ronald Engel's Sacred sands: the struggle for community in the Indiana Dunes(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1984) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherSacred Sands is a welcome contribution to religious studies, environmental ethics, and American history. Ron Engel narrates the bitterly contested struggle to save the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan. This is a story of the people of Chicago and their landscape with moral vision for Americans and their landscapes everywhere.Item Open Access Review of John Leslie's Universes and John Leslie's Physical cosmology and philosophy(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1991) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Joint Publication Board of Zygon, publisherJohn Leslie is the philosopher who has most devoted himself to the analysis of recent claims that our universe is fine-tuned for producing life. Here we have the fruit of Leslie's work across two decades, summarized in one accessible book of manageable length, seriously argued but neither overly technical nor esoteric. In a companion book, Physical Cosmology and Philosophy, Leslie couples his systematic treatment with an anthology of the principal articles in the field. Together, the two books are excellent texts for a stimulating class on cosmology.