Customer Reviews

Cosmos and Creator

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This work, published in 1980, is perhaps the best introduction and summary of Stanley Jaki's ideas on the relationship between science, cosmology, and religion. It is considerably less dense than some of his other works and, as he tells us, was written specifically as a concise treatment of his views.

Each chapter provides a good overview of the topic at hand. For example, the chapter entitled "The Dogma of Creation" is particularly thorough. It is common to assert that the dogma of creatio ex nihilo is not found in the Old Testament but came about as a result of the influence of Greek thought. But as Jaki shows, the concept is at least implied in the opening chapter of Genesis. He provides a discussion of supposed similarities between Genesis and the Sumerian creation story Enumah Elish. He then surveys the New Testament and Gnostic literature and presents a fascinating discussion of the claim that creatio ex nihilo is a Greek idea. He quotes from Plato and Aristotle statements in which they unambiguously reject the concept. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Medieval, Jewish, Moslem and modern thought on the subject. Particularly fascinating is Jaki's discussion of the question of whether the doctrine may properly be called "Judeo-Christian" in light of certain strands in Jewish thought.

Cosmos and Creator, a best all-time favorite of mine, relates--among a multitude of wondrous ideas about existence--the theory that science progressed only under the aegis of Christian belief--whereas it halted under other cultures.

The history of science (Jaki's field) is therefore no stranger to religion, though both are distinctly separate disciplines. Nowhere else that I know will you find a distinguished physicist discusing science, and at the same time, philosophy and religion in rigorous loyalty to each.