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''Questions of Truth'' is a book by John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale which offers their responses to 51 questions about science and religion. The foreword is contributed by Antony Hewish. The book was launched at a workshop at the 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting in Chicago,〔(AAAS Annual Meeting 2009 Workshop Program )〕 and then in the UK at a discussion at the Royal Society chaired by Onora O'Neill, in a week when it was also featured on the Today Programme.〔(Interview with ) John Polkinghorne by John Humphrys BBC Today Programme 2-Mar-09〕 ==Key themes and ideas== The book grew out of questions generated at a website organized to communicate Polkinghorne's ideas. It groups selected questions under seven topics:〔(One Scientist's Faith ) review in ''Physics World'' April-2009〕 # ''Leading Questions'' gives an overview of Polkinghorne's views on nine questions, including science and religion, the existence of God, and atheism. # ''The Concept and Existence of God'' begins with "Can God's existence be proved?" and addresses ''The God Delusion'', omniscience, predestination and the Trinity. # ''The Universe'' considers the Big Bang, the Anthropic Principle and a Theory of Everything. # ''Evolution'' starts with "Is evolution a fact or a theory?", discusses Intelligent Design, which is deemed an unfortunate use of language and a theological mistake, and explores whether the mind can be explained by evolution. # ''Evil'' suggests that "The evil that is not the result of human sin seems to be the result of the workings out of the natural laws of physics and biology" and considers the Devil, cancer and Original Sin. # ''Human Being'' suggests that Adam and Eve refer to the first spiritually conscious human beings, that the soul is something ''logically'' distinct from the body but not a separate physical entity, and that conscience is "our deepest understanding of right and wrong". # ''Religion'' begins with "Is atheism a form of faith?", suggests that "For each part of the Bible you have to ask what kind of writing it is and what God is trying to tell us through it", and considers the Resurrection and that "God will not force us to accept his love ... () will save everyone he can - no-one will be excluded because God did not want them." Each question is followed by the responses of Beale and Polkinghorne, sometimes as a single answer and sometimes by the two authors individually. Its three appendixes constitute a third of the book:〔 * ''Anthropic Fine-Tuning'' draws on Martin Rees's book ''Just Six Numbers'' to illustrate the point that if the fundamental constants of physics were slightly different then no intelligent life could exist in the Universe. It then considers Multiverse ideas and especially Lee Smolin's Cosmological natural selection, which, it suggests, has problems from physics and evolutionary dynamics. It also discusses notions of complexity and improbability. * ''Brain and Consciousness'' suggests that "pretty much everything in the universe has a physical aspect and an informational aspect, neither of which is more foundational than the other", and that informational entities like the Mass in B Minor cannot be considered as material objects. It proposes that "your body and your mind are different aspects of you", and that the inherent uncertainties of neuron firing mean that the brain is not fully deterministic. * ''Evolution'' begins by pointing out that since Augustine Christians have not taken the Genesis creation accounts "literally", and that key developers of the current theory (e.g. Gregor Mendel, Ronald Fisher, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Simon Conway-Morris and Martin Nowak) have been Christians, suggesting that there is no conflict between Christianity and evolution, that small genetic changes can have big effects, that genetic determinism is mistaken, and that there are evolutionary benefits to religion. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Questions of Truth」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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