Modern Physics and Ancient Faith [Hardcover]

Stephen M Barr (Author)

Editorial Reviews

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*Starred Review* Often invoked as justification for unbelief, modern science here provides the basis for an unusual and provocative affirmation of religious faith. A physicist at the University of Delaware, Barr deploys his scientific expertise to challenge the dogmas of materialism and to assert his belief that nothing explains the order of the galaxies better than divine design. To be sure, Barr recognizes that Darwin's work has swept away the arguments of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theologians, who traced the handiwork of God in birds, flowers, and seashells. But the old argument-from-design reemerges with new sophistication after Barr presses evolutionary theory for a plausible account of the origin of what quantum physics demands--that is, a conscious observer--and comes away with nothing but skepticism about the skeptics. Barr indeed relishes the irony of a skeptical logic of random chance that forces unbelievers who balk at one unobservable God to accept, on doctrinal faith, a myriad of unobservable worlds on which the matter-motion lottery has not produced the winning ticket of conscious intelligence. The absurdity grows even more palpable among astrophysicists who avoid acknowledging the human-friendly pattern in subatomic and cosmic architecture found in the observable universe only by theorizing the existence of an infinite number of unobservable universes in which sovereign randomness has dictated other and more hostile architectures. Neither religiously sectarian nor technically daunting, this is a book that invites the widest range of readers to ponder the deepest kind of questions. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

A considerable amount of public debate and media print has been devoted to the "war between science and religion." In his accessible and eminently readable new book, Stephen M. Barr demonstrates that what is really at war with religion is not science itself, but a philosophy called scientific materialism. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith argues that the great discoveries of modern physics are more compatible with the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, the cosmos, and the human soul than with the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism.

Scientific discoveries from the time of Copernicus to the beginning of the twentieth century have led many thoughtful people to the conclusion that the universe has no cause or purpose, that the human race is an accidental by-product of blind material forces, and that the ultimate reality is matter itself. Barr contends that the revolutionary discoveries of the twentieth century run counter to this line of thought. He uses five of these discoveries—the Big Bang theory, unified field theories, anthropic coincidences, Gödel’s Theorem in mathematics, and quantum theory—to cast serious doubt on the materialist’s view of the world and to give greater credence to Judeo-Christian claims about God and the universe.

Barr’s clear and elegant writing is in the best tradition of science for the non-physicist or non-mathematician and will appeal to anyone interested in science and religion.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0268034710
• ISBN-13: 978-0268034719
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #517,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen M. Barr (born Nov. 28, 1953) is a professor of Particle Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware, and a member of its Bartol Research Institute. He does research on grand unified theories, the origin of quark and lepton masses, and the cosmology of the early universe. He has authored over 140 physics research papers and the article on Grand Unified Theories for the Encyclopedia of Physics. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the citation reading "for original contributions to grand unified theories, CP violation, and baryogenesis."

He earned his Bachelors degree from Columbia University in 1974, and Ph. D. in physics from Princeton University in 1978. He went on to do research at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and Brookhaven National Laboratory, before joining the faculty of the University of Delaware in 1987. He was elected the Director of the Bartol Research Institute of the University of Delaware in 2011.

Barr writes and lectures frequently on the relation of science and religion. Since 2000, he has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the religious intellectual journal First Things, in which many of his articles and book reviews have appeared. His writing has also appeared in National Review, The Weekly Standard, Modern Age, The Public Interest, and Commonweal. In 2007, he was awarded the Benemerenti Medal by Pope Benedict XVI. In 2010, he was elected a member of the Academy of Catholic Theology.

There are other authors with the name Stephen M. Barr who have written books on religious subjects. The physicist Stephen M. Barr is the author only of the following books: "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith"; "A Student's Guide to Natural Science"; and "Science and Religion, The Myth of Conflict".

Customer Reviews

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202 of 213 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superb Book That Fills a Great Need, May 30, 2003

By 

John Keck (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Hardcover)

Let me begin by saying that as a physicist with some philosophical training I may not be the best judge for lay readers, but I loved this book and found it straight-forward to understand.

The first chapter is introductory. The author, Stephen M. Barr, describes himself as "someone who adheres to traditional religion and who has worked in some of the subfields of modern physics that are relevant to the materialism/religion debate." Barr sees clearly that "the conflict is not between religion and science, it is between religion and materialism....a philosophical opinion that is closely connected with science. But it is not science." His purpose is to show how "new discoveries made in the last century in various fields have changed our picture of the world in fundamental ways. As a result, the balance has shifted in the debate between scientific materialism and religion.... [20th century] discoveries coming from the study of the material world itself, have given fresh reasons to disbelieve that matter is the only ultimate reality." Barr is honest about the stakes involved: "None of this is a matter of proofs.... What the debate is about, as I shall explain later, is not proof but credibility." And indeed, such simple honesty is characteristic.

In the second chapter Barr begins by restating, then demolishing, the anti-religious mythology. His paraphrase of the anti-religious mythos sounds like it was cold-pressed straight from the pronouncements of Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and other spokesmen of materialism. This chapter alone is worth half the price of the hardcover. He makes his points so clearly that it is a wonder we could all be duped by "scientific" materialism for so long. I particularly admired the tactic that he gainfully employed throughout the book: demolishing the straw-men that the materialists have raised against believers, e.g. that the Bible is unscientific. "In fact", he observes, "the Bible shows almost no interest in natural phenomena.... [The] primary concern is with God's relationship to human beings, and with human beings' relationship to each other."

Barr beautifully explains the concepts of religious mystery and dogma: "Dogmas do not shut off thought, like a wall. Rather they open the mind to vistas that are too deep and broad for our vision. A mystery is what cannot be seen, not because there is a barrier across our field of vision, but because the horizon is so far away." Masterfully he turns the tables on the materialists by observing, "Anything that stands in the way of materialism is ignored or denied [by the materialists]. The materialist lives in a very small world, intellectually speaking." Appendix A on the types of causes brings wonderful clarity to concepts that are often difficult for non-philosophers (including most scientists). It was very satisfying to see such common-sense explanations of the real positions of traditional believers, instead of the limp impostors put forward by the faithless and the lukewarm.

In chapter 3, Barr outlines the five "plot twists" that form the subject of the book:

1. Part II: "In the Beginning": The Big Bang as "a vindication of the religious view of the universe and a blow to the materialist view."
2. Part III: "Is the Universe Designed?": on the evidence that the universe was designed by an intelligence.
3. Part IV: "Man's Place in the Cosmos": on anthropic "coincidences" that make human life possible in the universe.
4. Part V: "What is Man?": is the human mind reducible to material laws?
5. Part V: "What is Man?": is there free will?

Twist 1 (Part II), that the Big Bang points to creation is of course an argument pregnant to be made. What recommends Barr's treatment is its completeness (Bible, authorities of faith, and scientific development) and the clarity of his writing.

Part III, on design, is on the whole wonderfully made. He describes the different kinds of order and how order seems to appear spontaneously but is in reality "the unfolding of an order that was already implicit in the nature of things, although often in a secret or hidden way." His examples are well chosen and brilliantly explained. However, Barr's definition of "symmetric structure" and its relationship to order seemed to my mind vague, and a field ripe for future investigation.

Part IV, on anthropic coincidences, was very authoritative and very thorough. He not only describes many of them, but also replies to the common objections to the coincidences, and answers alternative explanations of the coincidences.

Part V, on the mind, is near-perfect genius. The argumentation is simply brilliant. On the brain/mind distinction, he writes, "the existence of our own brains is an inference [a complicated series of arguments about sense data].... We experience [our minds] directly in the process of using them. We do not infer the existence *of* our minds, rather we infer he existence of everything else *with* our minds." Barr's explanation of the Lucas-Penrose argument, the technicalities of Goedel's theorem, and their implications was relatively straight-forward. I did think that Barr was a bit out on a limb in his adoption of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics to explain the immateriality of the mind. Such a tactic sadly succumbs to the Cartesian dualism that has plagued science from the beginning. Nevertheless, the widespread acceptance of Copenhagen among physicists is enough to justify Barr's use of it to support traditional belief.

Before I go, let me reiterate how much I liked the book. Even with the minor shortcomings I mentioned, I think it is *well* worth the imposing hardback price-and for a cheap-skate like me, that's saying quite a lot! It is well written, systematic, and authoritative: three rare qualities for a book that advocates anything in the neighborhood of traditional faith with regard to science-and Barr isn't just in the neighborhood, but right on the bull's eye. The book will be a powerful tool in the answering the many baffling ideologies and mind-numbing prejudices that dominate what passes for intellectual discourse these days.

71 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sound Defense, September 28, 2004

By 

M. K. P. "[e-mail]" (Wilmington, Delaware) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Hardcover)

The title of this book is straight to the point, but it does not by itself convey the whole point of the book. The first paragraph on the jacket flap does a pretty good job, though:

'A considerable amount of public debate and media print has been devoted to the "war between science and religion." In his....book, ....Barr demonstrates that what is really at war with religion is not science itself, but a philosophy called scientific materialism. [This book] argues that the great discoveries of modern physics are more compatible with the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, the cosmos, and the human soul than with the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism.'

That is the book promised and that is the book you get.

The arguments presented are, of course, in favor of one side of the debate and contrary to the opposite side. They are, also, consistently honest and fair. They are certainly not exhaustive, but then, this is pretty sparsely typed 300-page book.

Barr never pretends to be absolutely disproving all variants of scientific materialism. Instead, he picks a number of often voiced and frequently heard materialist prejudices (specifically anti-theist or anti-Biblical or anti-Christian prejudices) of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, presents them in their most basic terms, then presents scientific theories and discoveries that appear to confute them. Occasionally he points out as "irony", little points at which the data seems to uphold some separate detail of the Christian theist world-view.

Another reviewer refers disparagingly to "axes to grind." To that I reply that this book is perfectly honest in presenting itself as a substantive but incomplete answer to specific, repeated attacks and criticism from a vocal and numerous bevy of scientists for the past two hundred years. Naturally that task is going to include a good deal of refutation. I would also point out regarding one of said reviewer's preferred books, Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time - supposedly free of "axes": the preface to that book begins with a caricature of Revelation-based religion per se as the pig-headed assumption of "turtles all the way down". (See Hawking's book.) No axes to grind, indeed. It is precisely to that ugly false note, constantly recurring in the writings of many of the popularizers of science of our time, that Barr's book intelligently and adequately responds.

Finally, I will mention that, though Barr does make an effort to defend the bulk of "Jewish and Christian" belief, his own religion of choice is Catholicism, and it shows. Any reader disinclined to hear and acknowledge the cleverness of great minds like Augustine and Aquinas, or the lucidity of the teachings of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council, will find plenty to vex him in the pages of Barr's book. That said, no one who doesn't begin with an anti-Catholic prejudice will find anything that offends or disparages his own religion. Barr comes across as a fair-minded and charitable man, an excellent teacher of physics, and a competent defender in modern times of the surpassing intelligence of intelligent faith in God.

91 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars extraordinary must read, July 15, 2003

By 

R. M. Williams "just an avid reader" (tucson, arizona USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Hardcover)

First, scan down the list of reviews to: A Superb Book That Fills a Great Need, May 30, 2003 Reviewer: John W. Keck from Washington, DC his review is chapter by chapter and sets the stage for my ideas about this book.

Second, the author is an atomic physicist who has thought deeply about these issues and for our benefit has organized and explained these ideas in a very sympathetic yet comprehensive way that deserves the widest possible audience. The writing is clear, interesting and of the highest possible caliber. I only wish more scientists wrote this well, not just their works for the laymen but for professional consumption as well, it would make the role of a student far more pleasurable.

So what is the book about? What are the big issues that this author wants us to remember and to use in our intellectual life?
First is the issue of materialism as a faith. This is chapter 1 and continues to be an explicit organizing principle throughout the book.

"The fact of the matter is that there is a bitter intellectual battle going on, and it is about real issues. However, the conflict is not betwen religion and science, it is between religion and materialism. Materialism is a philosophical opinion that is closely connected with science. It grew up alongside of science, and many people have a hard time distingusihing it from science. But it is not science. It is merely a philosophical opinion. And not all scientists share it by any means. In fact, there seem to be more scientists who are religious than who are materialists." pg 1

This is what i term the "like speaks to like issue". Materialism is the idea that all is matter in motion, sufficent to explain all phenomena in the universe. As he aptly points out this is philosophic opinion, or metaphysics. Christianity competes with a rival faith materialism not with science as technic of reading the book of nature.

The second big idea is the human mind. This is the issue that materialism is unable to explain the fact that we are conscious of ourselves as free, thinking, acting beings in a material world where consciousness appears to be limited to ourselves. These are the related topics of part 4, chapters 19-25. I word the issue a little bit differently than does he, i use the term methodological naturalism to explain how science investigates the things of this universe, and further believe that the MN breaks as it encounters the human consciousness. This is what stops MN from being philosophic materialism. It is not a sufficent principle to explain everything we experience. The introduction to chpt 19 contains one of the most concise explanations of the problem of the consciousness of man that i can remember reading. If you only have time to skim this book, read chpt 1 and 19.

It is truely an important and timely work, i deeply thank the author for the time, energy, sweat and tears that so evidently went into the writing of this excellent 5 star book. The clarity of thought, the organization and structure do justice to the loftiness and sophistication of the ideas he presents.

thanks for reading this review and if you encounter other books in the field of this importance i would be grateful for a quick email so that i can obtain and read them....books like this are gems to be treasured and shared with like minded readers.