Publisher Description

The Measure of God, now in paperback, is a lively historical narrativeoffering the reader a sense for what has taken place in the God and science debate over the past century. Modern science came of age at the cusp of the twentieth century. It was a period marked by discovery of radio waves and x rays, use of the first skyscraper, automobile, cinema, and vaccine, and rise of the quantum theory of the atom. This was the close of the Victorian age, and the beginning of the first great wave of scientific challenges to the religious beliefs of the Christian world. Religious thinkers were having to brace themselves. Some raced to show that science did not undermine religious belief. Others tried to reconcile science and faith, and even to show that the tools of science, facts and reason, could support knowledge of God. In the English speaking world, many had espoused such a project, but one figure stands out. Before his death in 1887, the Scottish judge Adam Gifford endowed the Gifford Lectures to keep this debate going, a science haunted debate on "all questions about man's conception of God or the Infinite." The list of Gifford lecturers is a veritable Who's Who of modern scientists, philosophers and theologians: from William James to Karl Barth, Albert Schweitzer to Reinhold Niebuhr, Niels Bohr to Iris Murdoch, from John Dewey to Mary Douglas.

Author Biography

Larry Witham is the author of The Measure of God, Where Darwin Meets the Bible, and By Design: Science and the Search for God. As a journalist, he has won the Religion Communicators Council's Wilbur Award three times and has received several prizes from the Religion Newswriters Association as well as a Templeton Foundation award for his articles on science and religion.

Description for Teachers/Educators

Before his death in 1887, Scottish judge Adam Gifford endowed a lecture series to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term-in other words, the knowledge of God." Since then, this annual lecture series has featured a veritable Who's Who of modern scientists, philosophers and theologians: from William James to Karl Barth, Albert Schweitzer to Reinhold Niebuhr, Niels Bohr to Iris Murdoch, and many more. Looking back, the Gifford Lecture series encapsulates a century when the natural sciences encountered the claims of biblical religion with full force. In The Measure of God, prize-winning journalist Larry Witham examines the debates and conflicts between science and religion as reflected in the Gifford Lectures. Highlighting the major themes addressed over the past century, Witham chronicles the growing pains of a society struggling to reconcile modern technology and time-honored religious belief. Larry Alan Witham is a Washington D.C. newspaper reporter specializing in religious news and social issues. An award-winning journalist, he has filed more than 4,000 news reports, features and book reviews. His books include Where Darwin Meets the Bible (Oxford) and By Design: Science and the Search for God (Encounter Books). "An insightful and colorful narrative catching the pivotal themes of the world's best-known lecture series. A delightful mix of intellectual analysis and stimulating after-dinner conversation."- Prof. Holmes Rolston, Colorado State University

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