The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion, and the Search for God

by Kitty Ferguson

Overview

“ In this beautifully and intelligently written book, Ferguson not only reports on some of the intellectual tremors jolting the world of thinking women and men, but also considers the basic questions with penetrating analysis, yet at a very readable level. . . . An excellent book.” —Choice

Heralded for its readability and scholarship, The Fire in the Equations offers a fascinating discussion of scientific discoveries and their impact on our beliefs. The book’s title is derived from Dr. Stephen Hawking’s pondering, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?”

Originally published in the U.S. in 1995, it provides an excursion through new theories of quantum physics and cosmology, ranging from the nature of time, the big bang, the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics, laws of nature and their possible relation to God, chaos theory, black holes, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, particle physics, Darwin's theory of evolution, and the role of God in all these equations. It even raises such questions as “how God might answer prayers” from the point of view of physics.

While she gives no absolute answers, Kitty Ferguson takes the reader through a world of paradoxes and improbabilities, explaining how it is possible to believe both in a pre-determined universe and in free will as a theory of human behavior. She concludes that what we know about science doesn't necessarily make God inevitable, but does not rule God out either.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781932031676
Publisher:	Templeton Press
Publication date:	04/28/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kitty Ferguson, a former professional musician with a life long interest in science, is an independent scholar and lecturer who lives in Cambridge, England, and South Carolina. She has also written the best-selling books Black Holes in Space Time and Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
	A Word about Inclusive Language	xiv
	Acknowledgements	xv
1	'They Buried Him in Westminster Abbey'	1
2	Seeing Things	4
	Is the rational universe an illusion?	12
	'In Nature's infinite book of mysteries ...' can we read very much at all?	19
	Is objective reality a mirage?	25
	Are we really free agents?	30
	Is the universe a uni-verse?	33
3	Almost Objective	35
	Where is fancy bred?	37
	The spectacles-behind-the-eyes	44
	The muse of science: Is truth beautiful?	59
	Does truth surpass proof?	63
	The elite of science	66
	The spirit of the times	69
	The essential Godlessness of science	73
	At the limits of scientific truth	78
	First steps beyond the mind's-eye view	80
	Is there anything else?	81
	The insidiousness of God	86
	The morality of science: Is truth good?	87
4	Romancing the Creation	89
	The uncomfortable concept of a beginning	90
	The Gordian knot of singularity	102
	The magic of imaginary time	108
	The pulsing universe and the arrow of entropy	117
	The mysterious wobbling of nothingness	123
	'Reality (whatever that may be)'	126
	Reality in the absence of apples	129
	What place for a creator?	134
	The third candidate	137
	The mother of all chicken-and-egg stories	139
5	The Elusive Mind of God	143
	God as the embodiment of the laws of physics	145
	A presence behind the process	146
	The leap to purpose: The God who wishes to drink tea	147
	The watchmaker	149
	The universe as a 'put-up job'	163
	Second Gordian knot: The anthropic principle	164
	Hacking at the second Gordian knot	166
	The inflationary universe	167
	Baby universes to the rescue!	171
	Not the ether again!	173
	The longing of Johannes Kepler	178
	The fiddler on the roof	184
6	The God of Abraham and Jesus	185
	The law-breaker	189
	The hard edge of legalism	191
	The soft underbelly of legalism	195
	The death of the God of the Gaps	204
	Chaos meets Control	205
	'Top-down' determinism?	221
	'IAM'	225
	When truths collide	228
	The ultimate self-confirming hypothesis	231
	The masterful use of parallel perfect fifths	234
	Who is the 'I' in 'IAM'?	239
7	Inadmissible Evidence	241
	Public vs. private knowledge	242
	Admissible evidence?	245
	The spectacles-behind-the-eyes, revisited	246
	The cloud of witnesses	247
	A game of 'I Doubt It'	251
	The Lucy problem	253
	'I should not believe such a story were it told me by Cato!'	254
	'The Invincible Ignorance of Science'	259
	'For the Bible tells me so'--the evidence of scripture	260
	Is there proof in the pudding? The evidence of results	263
	Armchair truth: The argument from reason	266
	The argument from explanatory power	270
	The argument from nature	274
	The argument from availability	277
8	Theory of Everything ... Mind of God	279
	Notes	284
	Bibliography	293
	Index	301