One World The interaction of science and theology by John C Polkinghorne

I’ve been meaning to get around to his books for a while now: he’s a high energy physicist who became an Anglican priest.

My impression is that scientists are as likely to be religious believers as any other section of the community. Nevertheless, there is a feeling abroad that somehow science and religion are opposed to each other. Someone like myself, who is an Anglican priest and a (now honorary) Professor of Theoretical Physics, is sometimes regarded either with the amazement appropriate to the strange mixture of the centaur or with the wariness appropriate to the sleight-of-hand artist. Neither image is, I think, just. In fact, science and theology seem to me to have in common that they are both exploring aspects of reality.

He goes on in this short book to explore what about science and theology are similar (both searching for reality, iterative, dealing with things outside everyday experience, ultimately both rely on experience of one form or another, etc).

He’s not very enthused by the “proofs of God’s existence” as proofs. Anselm’s “proof” (the greatest imaginable thing must have existence as one of its properties) never struck me as convincing either. However, he finds them useful as sources of insight into the way the world works—a fruitful way of looking at them.

He is fair: describing the various interpretations of quantum mechanics and explaining why he is a “realist.” He is also lucid.

Many of his examples I had already contemplated, and in fact written about myself, but I think he does it better.

Go read it.