Astrophysicist J. Richard Gott has predicted the longevity of everything from the Berlin Wall to Broadway musicals. I asked Gott to apply his mathematical formula to religion—both the great world religions, and some newer offshoots.
Metaviews 103. 2000.12.28. Approximately 3440 words. Below is another installment from the book Many Worlds: The NewUniverse, Extraterrestrial Life & the Theological Implicationsedited by Steven Dick. This installment, titled Life andIntelligence Far from Earth: Formulating Theological Issues iswritten by Ernan McMullin. The OπHara Professor of Philosophy, now emeritus, at the Universityof Notre Dame, Ernan McMullin…
A Theology of and for Evolution I urge that far from the epic of evolution being a threat to Christian theology, it is a stimulus to and a basis for a more encompassing and enriched understanding of the interrelations of God, humanity, and nature. An argument for the existence of God in Anglo-Saxon “physico-theology” (an…
Excerpt from an essay by Paul C.W. Davies, “Biological Determinism, Information Theory, and the Origin of Life,” which appears in Many Worlds, edited by Steven Dick, Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000. Philosophical and Theological Implications The philosophical and theological implications of the competing scenarios for the origin of life are starkly different and bear strongly…
Metaviews 095. 2000.11.01. Approximately 1773 words. Below is another installment from the Many Worlds book (see Metaviews 092). The chapter excerpt below is from Christian de Duve, who shared the1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for pioneering work oncell structure and function. De Duve has devoted his career tostudying the biochemistry of life. A…
Several recent thought-provoking papers from the Future Visions group have inspired me to offer some thoughts from a "female perspective". As an observational astronomer and a Christian, I found myself in consonance with many views expressed in Bernard Haisch’s contribution "Freeing the Scientific Imagination from Fundamentalist Scientism" (although I disagree that strident debunking is exclusively…
As in a Dream As in a dream, this simple magic Of space and time, of here and there. What is this here, what is this there, What is this magic of location? This ocean of presence, these waves of arising, The wonder of anything happening at all? Time…
As we enter a new century likely to dominated by sweeping scientific and technological developments, the need for spiritual guidance will be stronger than ever. Science alone cannot adequately cater for our spiritual needs, but any religion that refuses to embrace scientific discovery is unlikely to survive to the 22nd century. Religion faces extraordinary challenges…
If you were shrewd enough to invest $15,000 in Microsoft ten years ago you’d be a millionaire by now. The engine of growth that has driven the computer industry, and looks set to make Bill Gates the world’s first trillionaire, is no lucky fluke. Underpinning it have been sweeping advances in fundamental electronics. The first…
He constructs a cosmology nucleated on big-bang cosmology.