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The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion
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Average Rating:  out of 11 Reviews
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Price: $13.16
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Sale: $9.67
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Manufacturer: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780802863591
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Hans Kung
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Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
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Dewey Decimal Number: 291
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Publication Date: 2008-06-06
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Reading Level: 220
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Description: In an age when faith and science seem constantly to clash, can theologians and scientists come to a meeting of minds? Yes, maintains the intrepid Hans Küng, as he brilliantly argues here that religion and science are not mutually exclusive but complementary. Focusing on beginnings -- beginnings of time, of the world, of man, of human will -- Küng deals with an array of scientific precepts and teachings. From a unified field theory to quantum physics to the Big Bang to the theory of relativity -- even superstring and chaos theories -- he examines all of the theories regarding the beginning of the univererse and life (of all kinds) in that universe. Küng seeks to reconcile theology with the latest scientific insights, holding that "a confrontational model for the relationship between science and theology is out of date, whether put forward by fundamentalist believers and theologians or by rationalistic scientists and philosophers." While accepting evolution as scientists generally describe it, he still maintains a role for God in founding the laws of nature by which life evolved and in facilitating the adventure of creation. Exhibiting little patience for scientists who do not see beyond the limits of their discipline or for believers who try to tell experts how things must have been, Küng challenges readers to think more deeply about the beginnings in order to facilitate a new beginning in dialogue and understanding.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Kung's Summation |
Date: 2008-01-26 |
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Details: Hans Kung has been a formidable intellect in theology for many years having written over 50 books. His writing is characterized by breadth of learning. His book Infallible? An Enquiry (1978) led to loss of his license to teach theology in Roman Catholic schools but did not discourage him from pushing the theological envelope. For those who regard it as important, Kung's views were never found to be heretical. Now retired from his professorship at Tubingen University, Kung turns his attention in this volume to the question whether science and religion can coexist. His answer is that they do more than coexist; they are complimentary. Kung defines complementarity as a state "between science and religion in which the distinctive spheres are preserved, all illegitimate transitions are avoided and all absolutizations are rejected, but in which in mutual questioning and enrichment people attempt to do justice to reality in all its dimensions."
Kung immediately engages the skeptic's question whether he argues for an unenlightened biblical belief in a being that created the world in six days. Kung replies: "Certainly not! I want to take the Bible seriously, but that doesn't mean I want to take it literally."
Kung begins with an engaging and clear tour through cosmology. He leaves nothing out from Copernicus to Newton, Einstein, Big Bang theory, Heisenberg's indeterminacy and Godel's incompleteness. Kung's point is, not surprisingly, that science cannot account for everything. Kung draws us back to the fundamental questions about the origin of the first structures in the universe. Science may be able to explain the fine tuning of the first structures but the question remains: where did the minimal structure that already existed at the Big Bang come from? Why isn't there nothing? Kung offers God as a reasonable hypothesis that can provide intellectual answers to the questions of the beginning.
In succeeding chapters Kung takes up the debate between creationism and evolution, life in the universe and the development of human beings. He includes discussion of the brain and the mind, the limits of brain research and the beginning of human ethics. Having started with the beginning of all things, his epilogue deals with the end of all things - hypotheses of the end of the universe and apocalyptic visions of the end.
Kung does not set out new theories of science or religion and does not insist on one or the other as the final arbiter of reality (his term). Discussion today, like so much else, tends to polarize between those who view God as irrelevant versus the creationists and the left-behinders. Kung proposes to raise the level of discussion by invoking serious scientists and philosophers. The Beginning of All Things is a good starting point for clear and dispassionate descriptions of the interplay between serious science and serious philosophy/theology about the most intriguing and still unsolved mysteries of the universe and humanity. |
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Review Summary: major theologian on science controversy |
Date: 2007-12-27 |
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Details: Kung is one of the clearest theologians thinkers writing today. There are a glut of books out there promising to weigh in on some pressing issue that concerns the science/ religion controversy. I personally believe that it is a bogus issue largely fed by the publishing industry. That said, I think Kung's book is one of the few on the subject worth reading. I have read Dawkins and Hitchens and am generally sympathetic with their views. But Kung points out that while science (and history) may have much to say about human beings and perhaps what drives religious movements, it has absolutely nothing to say about God. Kung reminds us of the often forgotten distinction between religious experience and religious organizations. This book lays out the fundamental issue more clearly than any I have encountered. |
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Review Summary: A Scientifically Literate Theologian |
Date: 2008-03-10 |
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Details: In this book Kung uses his broad familiarity with modern science to consider how recent findings and theories relate to the question of faith in God. He is particularly good in the area of physics, where he provides a wealth of excerpts from the writings of some of the great physicists of the 20th century as they consider fundamental questions raised by their discoveries. He clearly points out the difference between scientific and religious thinking, not hesitating to reproach religious as well as scientific thinkers for not recognizing the validity of the other's methods and points of view.
Along the way he never hesitates to reproach Church authorities for the methods they have used and unfortunately continue to use in their attempts to maintain orthodoxy. As a Catholic scientist I find his tone somewhat harsh in this regard, but I support his steadfast refusal to accept their disciplinary procedures in his uphill attempts at making the faith comprehensible to modern men and women. He is definitely ahead of the curve and this makes for controversy.
It is important to point out that in spite of his left-of-center theological opinions he remains a priest in good standing and is held in respect by his former colleague and friend from Tübingen, the current pope, Benedict XVI. In fact in the fall of 2005 he had a friendly dinner and extended conversation with the pope, on which occasion he presented him with a copy of this book and received the pope's appreciation for his efforts in promoting dialog between science and religion.
Some of the questions covered in the book are: what is the nature of reality; what came before the big bang; what does religion mean by creation; is there a role for empirical science in the question of God; how did life originate; how did humans come to be; what is the relationship between the brain and consciousness; and many other flash points in the contemporary exchanges between science and religion.
He concludes his book with a magnificent description of the end of life as not dying into nothingness, as many in modern science would have it, but rather as dying into the ultimate reality we call God. To quote him: "dying is a farewell inward, an entry and homecoming into the ground and origin of the world...dying into the light."
A beautiful book!
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Review Summary: Conflicts of Science and Religion? |
Date: 2007-12-01 |
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Details: Hans Kung happens to be my favorite theologian. He writes very readable books, epitomizes a huge amount of scholarship, and offers brief and perceptive summaries of points of view hostile to his own. I think this is one of his best books. For all who labor in the vinyards of the conflicts between science and religion, this will be not only a very helpful book, but a very enjoyable one to read. |
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Review Summary: Scientists not seeing beyond the limits of their discipline |
Date: 2008-11-05 |
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Details: "Now one of Catholicism's leading liberals, theologian Hans Küng, has come out with a book that accepts evolution as scientists generally describe it but still maintains a role for God... Küng has little patience either for scientists who do not see beyond the limits of their discipline or for believers who try to tell the experts how things must have been." Tom Heneghan
Common Grounds of Science & Theology:
At no time, for almost fifteen centuries, has the opportunity for genuine theology been greater, since the ground has been cleared in the remarkable way of the old dualist and atomistic modes of thought that have plagued theology for centuries. It is, therefore, up to theologians like hans Kung and Thomas Torrance to develop theology on its own proper ground in this scientific context, because this is the kind of life and culture, and theology that can support the true message of the Gospel to mankind. Being in touch with the advances of natural science, theology comes close to an enlightened conception of the creation as an act of inspired 'Intelligent Design'.
Beginnings of time, Cosmos & Man:
Focusing on beginnings, beginnings of time, of the world, of man, of human will, Kung deals with an array of scientific precepts and teachings. From a unified field theory to quantum physics to the Big Bang to the theory of relativity, even superstring and chaos theories, he examines all of the theories regarding the beginning of the universe and life (of all kinds) in that universe. Kung seeks to reconcile theology with the latest scientific insights, holding that "a confrontational model for the relationship between science and theology is out of date, whether put forward by fundamentalist believers and theologians or by rationalistic scientists and philosophers." While accepting evolution as scientists generally describe it, he still maintains a role for God in founding the laws of nature by which life evolved and in facilitating the adventure of creation.
Kung Theology & Kuhn's Paradigms:
Kuhn's paradigm theory is widely known and used. Its origins are in the history and philosophy of science, but its more recent applications have been in numerous fields including theology. The view that there are multiple realities, viewpoints, or paradigms, has been a dominant one since the demise of empiricism. The paradigms view asserts that theories are comprehensive interpretative frameworks that structure human experience and understanding of self and world. Like a language, each theory is said to provide a framework, incommensurable to others, through which its adherents interpret experience.
"If normal science is rigid and uncritical, then revolutionary science is even more so, although for different reasons. Kuhn describes the debate during crises as being at best "partial" and at "cross purposes," for in a world of incommensurable paradigm contenders persuasion and a subsequent 'gestalt switch' or conversion are the only means of deciding for or against a paradigm candidate ... In adopting Thomas Kuhn's paradigm theory, Hans Kung also engages its wider implications. Yet, these produce some uncomfortable dilemmas for his theology and at times even conflict with his wider thought. ... to identify some of the controversies and explores some of the issues that arise, in particular those associated with the conflict presented between the educational theory advocated by Kuhn and that contained in Kung's wider thinking. The dilemma cannot be easily resolved, and paradigm theory does not offer an appropriate solution. Indeed, it presents some major ironies for Kung that he must somehow resolve." Erich von Dietze
Book Review:
Kung, whose intellect could only be compared to Barth and Hans von Balthasar, never referred to the Anglican master of this book domain, Thomas Torrance, par excellence the dean of the school of scientific Theology. Great Kung has thus missed the one who initiated such genius approach, John Philoponus, seventh century dean of the Alexandrine academy, and the Emperor's arbiter, who dismantled Aristotelian physics, was guide to Galileo and Thomas Aquinas, who studied his philosophical commentaries and used his notes!
Eminent Hans Küng:
A prolific author, now 78, was out of favor for decades with Roman Curia. The Swiss-born priest, was stripped of his license to teach Catholic theology in 1979 since he challenged the doctrine of papal infallibility. But when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Küng's former colleague in Tübingen University theology faculty in Germany, was elected Pope Benedict XVI the mood changed, even if slightly, due partly to this Kung's Gem.
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