Tyson, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, explores the role of science as the "first truth discourse" in "secular academic modernity." He suggests that science has replaced theology as a first truth discourse. However, this is not always the case - there is a distrust of theology but also a distrust of science - even though during the Covid pandemic we were told: “we are following the science”. Yet there is a distrust not only of scientists but also experts.
Tyson in this book attempts to understand science theologically. He “seeks to presuppose Christian theology as a first truth discourse when thinking about science; it seeks to recover and reimagine the theology of science.”

We might well as the question: Why a theology of science? Why not a philosophy of science? Isn’t theology just as much an academic discipline as science?

The book is written in an academic style as so won’t be accessible to the “layperson in the pew”. It presupposes some knowledge at least of philosophy.

There is much in this book that is good - for example, he shows how “modern science is the love child of Christian theology and a devotion to the Creator by means of understanding the wonders of creation.” He shows the false presuppositions that underlie much of the science and religion debate which sees them in conflict. He exposes the reliance of modern science on “three foundational philosophical and methodologically applied commitments: empiricism, rationalism, and physical reductionism”. And the absence of focus on specific scientific results or ideas is the book's most notable flaw. Instead, the book deals with how science affects our thinking. His development of a Christian theological epistemology is to be applauded.

There is a helpful glossary of key terms and a 9-page bibliography.

It's been a while since I was in college but this book definitely isn't for regular science lovers. Maybe more philosophical types would enjoy this. His reasonings for his arguments just didn't click for me from a theological stance or a scientific one.

*I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I am an Engineer (aka Man of Science). I am also a practicing Christian (aka Man of Faith) … so I was intensely interested in this ambitious attempt to integrate the two (where I have traditionally see the two in nearly completely domains of knowledge). Unfortunately … I am NOT a Philosopher (aka I eschew sesquipedalianism) … and that makes this book a struggle. The nearly complete lack of simple and/or common language in the treatment of this topic makes it primarily accessible to academics (and probably a small subset of those). This alone makes it difficult to recommend the book.

But wait … there is more. Unless I have totally missed the principle argument here, the author is basically complaining that our society places more emphasis on science to understand our work instead of theology/philosophy … without coming straight out as a fundamentalists fanatic that denies the advantages provided by science. Any time there is a confirmed advantage to a scientific approach, the author is compelled to call out how dangerous this is as well … without ANY specific examples of how or why. It just is ‘cause. And that is not likely to convince anybody of anything. Even outside of the prodigious use of fancy allegories, I found no clear answers to any of the questions posed … especially the big one asking if science and theology are even compatible.

In fact … the author specifically condemns my personal approach that limits the application of science to those questions that lend themselves to the scientific method (aka reductionism and patterns) and theology to those questions that deal with existential meaning and “first order truths” (truth is another term thrown around so much that I started hearing the meme from A Few Good Man saying “You can’t handle the Truth”). Obviously science has no purview in adjudicating the ultimate meaning of life or even one-off miracles that have few analogs in the natural world. Asking it to do so and then claiming science is somehow flawed is simple sophistry.

I was given this free advance review copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#AChristianTheologyOfScience #NetGalley.

As a Christian who is also a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in Genetics and Molecular Biology, I am always interested in books that purport to examine the intersection between Christianity and science. This book by Dr. Paul Tyson is seeks to walk the reader through the philosophical underpinnings of science and Christianity.

Tyson makes the argument that pre-Victorian times theology was seen as the foundation for science and post-Victorian times led to a shift to science as the foundation and theology was relegated to a private and personal matter. He argued this point very well and highlighted that a lot of conversations about science and Christianity focus on individual issues (creation/evolution, ethics, genetic engineering) without acknowledging the shift that happened in the 1900s.

Towards the end of the book, Tyson asserts that Christians need to hold to theology as their foundation and not hold to science 'too seriously' since many scientific 'truths' morph and shift over time and that 'scientific knowledge is not theologically and ethically neutral knowledge'. This quote sums up his position pretty well: "Science is not a natural object in the world that can be defined; rather, it is an ever-changing, historically situated, and culturally, philosophically, linguistically, and politically embedded human activity.'

I appreciated many of the points made in this book and was encouraged by the emphasis to embrace the tension that comes with being both a Christian and a scientist. This book is different from any other I've read on the topic and it acknowledges more of the grey elements of harmonizing Christianity and science.

It is clear that this book is written by an academic and it was hard to wade through some sections - especially because I was not as well versed on philosophical terms. Tyson's favorite word is 'tacit' and I did become tired of seeing it multiple times in every chapter.