Customer Reviews

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

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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.

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.

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.

Barr is a theoretical particle physicist who does research on grand unified theories and Big Bang cosmology. MODERN PHYSICS AND ANCIENT FAITH is an incisive, balanced, and powerful critique of scientific materialism. Barr brings his impressive knowledge and scientific expertise to bear on such issues as the distinction between science and materialist philosophy, the findings of physics, the nature of the Big Bang, anthropic coincidences, divergent views on Man's place in the cosmos and an extensive consideration of what the human mind is and does.
Without dumbing down the data or the insights, he expounds a vigorous intellectual assault on the myth that science somehow renders religion null and void. Modest and nuanced, this book nonetheless possesses clarity and a scope which is literally and metaphorically cosmic. Barr's book is a "must-read" for everyone interested in the complex and creative interplay between physics and faith; it is even more essential for non-scientists (like myself) who want to be informed by a professional scientist and researcher like Stephen Barr about questions pertinent to all of us in our humanity.

Dr. Barr's book lays the key points of traditional debates between theists and materialists' on how discoveries in physics relate to or actively disprove religious beliefs.

His greatest achievement is how he stays balanced and grounded. He shows how religion is compatible with science, but does not get bogged down trying to show how a given set of scientific discoveries *proves* a particular item of religious doctrine. Many Christians have gotten into trouble for this since if they rest their religious belief on a certain piece of scientific evidence, they will be grave trouble when further scientific progress may render that evidence they used obsolete.

While at least one reviewer has accused Barr of making straw men out of the materialist philosophers, I found him fair. At one point in the beginning of the book he wrote summarization of a materialistic case against religion. The wording was rather sweeping, and the footnote said that while this denunciation was written by Barr himself, it summarizes many anti-religion arguments. He does not directly cite any of the sources that he had in mind, which is unfortunate, especially in the light of his otherwise excellent documentation. However, when Barr goes into individual arguments, he documents everything well, and takes the materialists seriously.

The key value of the book is that it helps clarify what many of the science v. religion debates are really arguing about, and the hefty endnotes will help the reader continue on his own explorations. It makes a reliable starting point. Too frequently I have gotten into debates with people of differing religious beliefs (or lack thereof) where we wind up talking past each other.This book helps cure that. When asked what he would do to help his country, Confucius said that he would first have everyone agree on their definitions.

This book helps us agree on our definitions, or at the very least, know how they differ and understand what the other side is saying.

The author combines his expertise in physics (he is a theoretical particle physicist) with an ability to write well and an extensive knowledge of theology and philosophy, both ancient and modern. Peter van Inwagen, a well-known philosopher is quoted on the back cover of the book as saying, "The book is well written, clear, and its philosophical positions well defended." I totally concur. A previous reviewer faults the book for ignoring the position called "compatibilism", i.e. that free will is compatible with determinism. It doesn't. That issue is dealt with in several pages of very lucid discussion. The same reviewer criticizes the book for its discussions of biology, in particular of the "origin of life" question. However, Barr makes it clear that he is deliberately staying away from biological controversies in his book, which (as its title says) is about physics. He hardly mentions the origin of life problem at all, in fact, and his position on it is that one cannot use it to prove any theological conclusions.

I have read many science and religion books, but this is the best of the lot. As Prof. Owen Gingerich, a Harvard astrophysicist says on the back cover, "I know of no other book that makes the case against materialism so lucidly, honestly and deftly."

Stephen Barr has an exceptionally clear style and a gift for illustrating complex ideas and making them understandable. More significantly, here is a free mind joyfully relating the physics he loves to the faith that sustains him, unconcerned about the reaction of the "professionals."

Note: The review of Barr's book by Booklist, is not quite accurate on one point. Barr does not say that Darwin's work has swept away all versions of the Design Argument based on biology. He only says that Darwin somewhat complicated the issue. In fact, while Barr is strongly convinced that evolution happened, he says that he regards it as an "open question" whether natural selection alone can explain the evolution of life, and he attacks the "dogmatism" of many Darwinists on this issue. Moreover, he cites with approval Michael Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box. However, Barr, being a physicist, stays away from biological arguments, except in a few passages, and sticks with his own field, as the title of his book attests.

When I finished this book, I went back and began reading it again, something I haven't done in many years. The writing is exceptionally clear and the arguments well stated. I'm not sure of the reason for the casual dismissal of the philosophical arguments in another review; the author mentions that Peter van Inwagen went through them with him, and van Inwagen is no shrinking violet.

He discusses, for example, the anthropic principle, Godel's proof and implications of quantum mechanics vis-a-vis the human mind, and concludes that, given our present state of knowledge, theism and an immaterial mind best account for the data. Always cautions in his conclusions, he never claims that any issue is settled, always reminding us that future discoveries may supersede what we presently believe about the physical world.

Some of his arguments were completely new to me, despite the fact that I have read extensively on these issues. This is not a rehash of, for example, Penrose. It presents new material in a fresh and interesting way.

He doesn't say that science proves the existence of God, or even that in some way it gives evidence for it, rather, he says that the discoveries of the last 70 years or so are consistent with theism and free will, whereas with classical physics one could only hope that some way out could be found. One has been found.

Written by Stephen M. Barr (Professor of Physics, Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware), Modern Physics And Ancient Faith offers the fascinating postulate that the great discoveries of modern science are closer to the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, than is the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism. Using five great discoveries ranging from the Big Bang Theory to Godel's Theorem to cast doubt on the materialist view and emphasize faith in the Judeo-Christian perception of God, Modern Physics And Ancient Faith is a thoughtful and thought-provoking read which is especially recommended for the philosophically inclined who are struggling with Faith/Science issues.

"Modern Physics and Ancient Faith" is a wonderfully readable, interesting, informative, and intellectually stimulating book on an essential topic. Mr. Barr does an unexpectedly good job of presenting some of the key principles and findings of modern physics and their implications on the battle between materialism and theism. One doesn't need to be a technical wiz to understand the issues and facts- they are presented in a way that is very easy to grasp. (This introduction into some of the principles of modern physics is one of the side benefits of reading this book!) And the arguements on both sides of the issue are presented well, with Mr. Barr clearly stating his position (i.e. that theism provides a much better explanation for the findings of modern physics than materialism) while acknowledging that there is not enough evidence to conclusively prove one side over the other. The presentation does make a strong case for theism, and it does so with solid facts and reasoning.

Overall, this is an interesting, informative, stimulating, and intellectually honest take on a topic that is important and likely to be more important as time goes on. It provides good intellectual fodder for anyone interested in these fields or this debate.