Informed by Science-involved by Christ: How Science Can Update, Enrich and Empower the Christian Faith

For millions of our contemporaries informed by modern science the Christian faith makes no sense any more. For many others it has become a private preoccupation they dare not display in public. Have we lost the credibility and power of our faith? Did we get stuck in obsolete worldviews and superstitions? Taking valid scientific insight on board, and repackaging our priceless message in the worldview of our times, we can be scientists and believers with integrity and restore the credibility and relevance of our conviction. Klaus Nürnberger is Professor emeritus and Senior Research Associate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Meet him at www.klaus-nurnberger.com. SOME CRITICAL VOICES: How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant' . . . A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnifi cence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths (Carl Sagan, quoted by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion 2006, 12). Press 2006, page 12. (T)he characteristically obscurantist fl avour of theology . . . has not moved on in eighteen centuries . . . the religious assert minute details for which they neither have, nor could have, any evidence (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion 2006, 34-35). In all these millions of weekly religious ceremonies, so essential to the health and spirituality of humanity as a whole, . . . only rarely one will fi nd serious contemplation of these primal human questions within the context of the actual universe, a universe of stars, topsoil, amphibians, and wetlands . . . (We) ponder the deep questions of meaning in the universe . . . in a context fi xed in time when the classical scriptures achieved their written form (Brian Swimme, The hidden he