Real talk: I just got back from an excellent, busy weekend at the American Scientific Affiliation annual meeting, and I’m off to a few days beyond the reaches of the Internet. So this seems like a perfect time for the science edition of reader feedback posts we’re currently working through here at ESN. We want to make sure we’re meeting your needs. And I’d particularly love to hear if any of the experiments I’ve been attempting are working. Please consider responding to any or all of the following questions in the comment section below, or you can e-mail ESN if you prefer private communication.
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science reader question
Is God Relevant in an Age of Science? (STEAM Grant Series November Question)
This academic year, ESN is creating a Faith/Science curriculum for young adult small groups. We’re partnering with InterVarsity graduate student discussion groups to identify faith/science questions that are important to emerging scholars, and then commissioning thoughtful Christians in science or theology/philosophy to explore those questions in a series at the ESN blog. We will publish these posts as a  booklet curriculum for campus groups. You can find previous posts in the series and related posts here.Â
This project was made possible through the support of an award from the Science and Theology for Emerging Adult Ministries project at Fuller Theological Seminary. The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Fuller or the STEAM project.
To start off the ESN STEAM grant blog series last month, we asked a current graduate student to write about his own faith/science questions. This month, we begin exploring the questions we received from InterVarsity grad discussion groups in response. We plan to engage with questions about perceived conflicts between science and faith later on, but this month we think through a scenario which may be even more familiar to some science students who are Christians: how to respond if someone is not hostile to faith, but simply sees it as completely irrelevant to science. ESN’s regular science columnist addresses the student question below.Â
How do we confront the narrative of irrelevance, as opposed to conflict or integration? (That faith is irrelevant in a modern secular age, and therefore politely tolerated).
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Science Reader Question: So you want to read more about evolutionary biology and theology
I’ve written a lot over the past two months on the topics of evolutionary biology and theology, perhaps more than some of you required. And yet I’ve also only scratched the surface of the relevant issues. Rather than continue ad nauseum, I thought I’d conclude this series with some suggestions for further reading. This won’t be an exhaustive bibliography; if you want something more comprehensive, you might try the relevant sections of the American Scientific Affiliation’s categorized resources or this reading list from the Jesus Creed blog. What I’ve collected here is some of the writing that has influenced my thinking and resources that I and my collaborators and commenters think are interesting and helpful. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments!
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Science Reader Question: Putting the Biology in Evolutionary Biology
We’ve been taking a look at what an evolutionary natural history implies about God’s nature, human nature, and other theological topics. Last week I addressed some of the benefits of an evolutionary perspective. I think affirming evolution doesn’t mean settling for an otherwise undesirable position out of obligation to science; I believe looking at the world through an evolutionary lens is actually consistent with the narrative of scripture. At the same time, I am a biologist and this is a science column, so I’d like to wrap up by talking a little science.
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Science Reader Question: Life on the Edge
Throughout this ongoing series on evolution, inspired by some reader questions, we’ve looked at a lot of the challenges an evolutionary natural history presents for traditional Christian theology. Accounting for the modern biological understanding of life’s origin and diversity is usually framed as a series of conundrums requiring either substantial effort to resolve, or an ultimate rejection of either science or scripture. If evolutionary natural history is so problematic, why bother? If there’s any uncertainty, why give the benefit of the doubt to science? Do we even want to believe in a God who creates via evolution; wouldn’t we prefer a God who can do better?
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