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committed to such a future vision of responsibility although often quite differently conceived. Peoples deepest cultural values, often nourished and embodied in religious contexts, should not be lightly cast into the dustbin of history as nothing more than outmoded nonsense. A certain humility and respectfulness by science towards the accumulated reservoir of moral wisdom contained in the worlds religious traditions may be of considerable significance for the human future. Similar concessions by religious people towards appreciating the scientific heritage are also appropriate.
So Ruses book serves an important role building bridges for people who otherwise might not be interested in exploring winwin as opposed to winlose relationships between science and religion. The argument is spry and engaging.
Ruse reasons fascinatingly that a Christian ought to find deep resonance with darwinism on major theological issues such as human fallenness, freedom, pain and the problem of evil, and the importance of ethics. One section engages the issue of design, summarizing Ruses ongoing debate over an anti-evolution movement, very popular with evangelical Christians in the United States, called Intelligent Design. Ruse argues, quite rightly in my view, that the desire to ascribe the detailed particulars of nature (including anthrax, bubonic plague and cancer) to the explicit design of a Deity is a prescription for atheism, pointing precisely away from the Christian concept of God. Debating the conclusions of a much-cited anti-evolution book by the Intelligent Design movement biochemist Michael Behe, Ruse notes, if Behes argument actually points away from the Christian God, this should be acknowledged, for then Darwinism is surely a more attractive alternative for the Christian.
Ruse also takes to task several well-known popularizers of evolution who argue that atheism is an inevitable result of darwinism. No sound argument has been mounted showing that Darwinism implies atheism. The atheism is being smuggled in, and then given an evolutionary gloss, he concludes. This topic covers some of the more significant passages in the book: these include a critique of the engagement of evolutionary history with St Augustines attempted solution to the problem of evil, and a vivid endorsement of one of the twentieth centurys most vital theological transformations from the classic view of the impassability of a transcendent being to the view of an immanent...