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Book Review of The God of Hope and the End of the World

The God of Hope and the End of the World
reviewed on


As a particle physicist cum Anglican priest, Polkinghorne's primary concern is how to reconcile science and religion. This book is sort of an overview primer to his ideas, and outlines how science and religion are on the one hand separate and distinct, and try to answer different sorts of questions, but on the other hand can also complement and inform each other. He critisizes both scientists for dismissing religion as unscientific,and therefore untrue (there are other kinds of truth), and relgionists, creationists and the like, who try to make science conform to religion. Though often highly speculative, Polkinghorne points out how God might exist and and function in our our physical universe, and sees God in the beauty and elegance scientists have found in trying to plumb the depths of the mystery that is the creation in which we find outselves.