Companion Sightings

I've been on blogging hiatus for several weeks as the new school year settles into a rhythm.  I'm not sure that I'm quite there yet, but I thought it might be good to try squeezing some blogging into the schedule before the rhythm becomes a rut.  I ease back into things with a quick one in the shameless self-promotion department.

I've seen my Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity mentioned a few places lately.  It is kind of fun to see a stuffy academic work to make it into some popular media.

In the Christian Century, September 5th edition, there was a blurb from the Teilhard de Chardin chapter in their "Century Marks" feature.

On September 12, there was a blog entry on Prosblogion, perhaps the leading philosophy of religion blog.  It discussed the chapter by atheist cosmologist Sean Carroll.  That may have been what led to a discussion of Carroll's position more generally (though still mentioning his chapter in my book) on the website Livescience on Sept. 17 here.  And then Yahoo News picked up that story on its science page today here.  Hopefully all this discussion of Carroll's article (which I think is very good, but ultimately misguided) will lead some people to read the other articles in the book about cosmology by Christians.

For completeness's sake, I'll re-mention the two blog posts on Jesus Creed that discussed the psychology chapters by atheist Dylan Evans and theist Justin Barrett here and here.

If you happen to see it mentioned anywhere else, I'd appreciate hearing about it.  It is sort of like getting news about one of your kids that is out doing things without you.  (Perhaps more on that topic another time.)

Blackwell Companion on Jesus Creed

One of the regular contributors to Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight's blog, has started writing about the articles in my new Companion to Science and Christianity (see post about that here)  That's kind of fun.  The blogger goes (mostly) anonymously by the initials RJS, but I have learned that she is a scientist at the University of Michigan.

One of the things we tried to do in the book was to broaden the conversation from the typical (and still marquee topics) of cosmology and evolution.  She has highlighted this feature by starting off talking about a couple of the articles from the Human Sciences sections of the book.  These have to do with psychology and cognitive science--one by a believer, one by an atheist.  You can find the individual posts here  and here.

RJS does a nice job summarizing and pulling out the salient points of the articles.  She also asks perceptive questions.  The comments to the posting are more uneven in their quality, but there are a few threads worth perusing.

Books I've been Reading this Week

I've been working on a paper I'm calling "Natural Theology after Modernism" this week that will go into the Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, which I'm editing with Alan Padgett (more on that later).  Almost all of the 55 contributors have submitted their papers, so the editors figured they better get theirs done (I had such good intentions of finishing earlier).  Anyway, in writing it the paper, I've been reading the sections on natural theology in these books:

Michael Buckley, SJ, At the Origins of Modern Atheism.  This is one of my all time favorite books.

Brian Hebblethwaite, Philosophical Theology and Christian Doctrine


John Clayton, Religions, Reasons and Gods


James Sennett and Douglas Groothuis (eds), In Defense of Natural Theology.

Then for fun, I've been reading a couple of novels.  Wendell Berry's Memory of Old Jack is for Robby Prenkert's summer reading group.  First meeting is tonight, and unfortunately I'm going to miss it because I'm participating in the Living Waters 5k at Oxbow County Park in Elkhart.

And then one evening I started rereading Alexander McCall Smith's first Dalhousie novel, The Sunday Philosophy Club.  Every time I read one of those books it makes me think, "Why don't I write one of these?"  Perhaps one day...