Kirjahaku

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.

In Marketplace of the Gods, award-winning journalist Larry Witham tells the inside story of the ground-breaking--and controversial--"economic approach" to religion, a story rich with history, contemporary thought, and the colorful people who are using economic ideas to solve the puzzles of our religious beliefs and behaviors. Written with an investigative flare and a lively writing style, this fascinating book presents a wide-ranging account of how the economic approach to religion can be applied to different faiths, activities, and times in history. Drawing upon cutting edge ideas from the behavioral sciences, and a deep knowledge of religious history, this new approach reveals how the choices individuals make regarding religion can shape households, groups, movements, and the entire "religious economies" of nations. For many, this new economic approach seems an uncomfortable mixture of sacred and profane, turning our good angels into grubby consumers. But as Witham concludes, the economic approach to religion has insights for everyone, believers and skeptics, offering an exciting exchange of ideas between economics, sociology, psychology, history, and theology.

The God Biographers presents a sweeping narrative of the Western image of God since antiquity, following the theme of how the "old" biography of God has been challenged by a "new" biography in the twenty-first century. The new biography has made its case in free will theism, process thought, evolutionary doctrines, relational theology, and "open theism"—a story of people, ideas, and events that is brought up to the present in this engaging narrative. Readers will meet the God biographers in the old and new camps. On the one side are Job, Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, and Calvin. On the other side is a group that includes the early Unitarian and Wesleyan thinkers, the process thinkers Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Charles Hartshorne, and finally a new breed of evangelical philosophers. This story looks closely at the cultural and scientific context of each age and how these shaped the images of God. In the twenty-first century, that image is being shaped by new human experiences and the findings of science. Today, the debate between the old biographers and the new is playing out in the forums of modern theology, courtrooms, and social movements. Larry Witham tells that panoramic story in an engaging narrative for specialists and general readers alike.

The triumphal Darwinian Centennial in 1959 seemed once and for all to end the argument between science and religion that had been raging since Thomas Huxley took up the cause of evolution in the Victorian era. As far as science was concerned, God was dead--case closed. But in the past two decades, as prize winning science writer Larry Witham shows in By Design, the case has been reopened. Advances in science suggest that the materialist "laws" may be incapable of comprehending the subtleties of evolution. Independent scientists and those involved with organizations such as the New Discovery Institute are now using the cutting edge tools of physics, biochemistry, genetics, information theory, and neuroscience to reconsider whether "intentional" fine-tuning was required for life to be possible. At the heart of "By Design" are two inter-related movements. One is the "science and religion dialogue," which stretches from the laboratories of Nobelists to inner sancta of the Vatican. This dialogue attempts to build bridges between two worlds formerly thought to be implacably hostile and incompatible. The other is the intelligent design movement, which by reviving a natural theology of design in nature has challenged the Darwinian strongholds in science and public education. Larry Witham introduces some of the most colorful characters in these movements, and summarizes the scientific developments that have made this dramatic new dialogue possible. After reading "By Design" we understand how what was once a battleground between God and science is now becoming a meeting ground.

In the fateful year of 1913, events in New York and Paris launched a great public rivalry between the two most consequential artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. The New York Armory Show art exhibition unveiled Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, a "sensation of sensations" that prompted Americans to declare Duchamp the leader of cubism, the voice of modern art. In Paris, however, the cubist revolution was reaching its peak around Picasso. In retrospect, these events form a crossroads in art history, a moment when two young bohemians adopted entirely opposite views of the artist, giving birth to the two opposing agendas that would shape all of modern art. Today, the museum-going public views Pablo Picasso as the greatest figure in modern art. Over his long lifetime, Picasso pioneered several new styles as the last great painter in the Western tradition. In the rarefied world of artists, critics, and collectors, however, the most influential artist of the last century was not Picasso, but Marcel Duchamp: chess player, prankster, and a forefather of idea-driven dada, surrealism, and pop art. Picasso and the Chess Player is the story of how Picasso and Duchamp came to define the epochal debate between modern and conceptual art-a drama that features a who's who of twentieth-century art and culture, including Henri Matisse, Gertrude Stein, AndréBreton, Salvador Dalí, and Andy Warhol. In telling the story, Larry Witham weaves two great art biographies into one tumultuous century.

On a beautiful June day, the famous performance artist Magnifica is set to jump from a helicopter and parachute down through the Red Rock Pinnacle monuments of Sedona, Arizona. What the large and excited crowd sees instead is the massive explosion and collapse of Devil's Finger, a thousand-foot Red Rock pinnacle. Art sleuth Julian Peale is on the case, looking where the authorities are not-into the mysterious artworld ties to Magnifica. There's a New York art patron, the Wall Street gambler, a cyberpunk hack, a Russian art dealer with mob ties, two rival tech millionaires, and a wealthy hippy still living in the Age of Aquarius. The artist Magnifica-Mary Saville by birth-has retreated into the shadows with her copter pilot with plans to bolster her fame. She may be heir to a fortune gathered up by her ailing mother, the once-famous artist Sopia Saville. In search for answers, Peale moves through the LA art scene, the tech world of the San Francisco, the gamers conventions in Las Vegas, the underworld of art betting and Russian organized crime, and finally to the famed counter-cultural festival in the desert of Nevada, the Oracle of Fire-where Magnifica has audacious plans to crash the party. As the dust settles in a Chicago courtroom, all the motives in this art world menagerie are revealed-especially, who blew up Devil's Finger?

The death of Sam Mason, a young painter, shakes a small New England town. Police say suicide. But his sister can't believe he would do such a thing. She enlists the help of Castelli and Associates, which specializes in art crime, and Julian Peale is on the case. With Sam gone, his paintings-seemingly lost, hidden, or even a mirage-now stir a race to find out what happened, if not to cash in on his legacy. Art dealers see Sam as a "late, great artist" in the making. They're all after whatever of Sam's mysterious works they can find. Delving into the artist's past, Peale traces the threads of Sam's life across middle America, from Pittsburgh and Savannah to St. Louis and Atlanta. As a struggling artist, it seems Sam had fallen into bad company, beginning with a shady art dealer and then a small-time duo of Albanian crooks. Sam had also been dabbling in the dark arts. Peale's investigation takes him to art schools, urban scenes, the high-end art market, and a migrant community trying to do good-except for a few gone bad. The missing paintings remain a puzzle until the end, a time when bigger mysteries-and darker forces-unfold when least expected.