Atheists assert that the natural world has no meaning or purpose. Dr Denis Alexander, Emeritus Director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St. Edmunds College, Cambridge, draws a different conclusion.
Not only do recent evolutionary biological data appear inconsistent with the claim that the world is purposeless, but the Christian doctrine of creation has provided and continues to provide both context and stimulus for the study of the natural world. Christians started biology!
However, is a belief in an omnipotent, benign Creator consistent with a world of pain and suffering? From a lifetime’s study in the biological sciences, Denis Alexander believes that whilst the cost of existence is extremely high, it can nonetheless be squared with the idea of a God of love whose ultimate purposes for humankind render that cost more comprehensible.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Contents
Figures 10
Preface 11
Introduction 12
1 The Historical Roots of Purpose in Biology 18
2 Biology’s Grand Narrative 58
3 Biology’s Molecular Constraints 104
4 Biology, Randomness, Chance, and Purpose 140
5 The Christian Matrix Within Which Biology 179
Flourishes
6 Death, Pain, Suffering, and the God of Love 218
Postscript 248
Notes 250
Bibliography 257
Index 271
Über den Autor
Denis Alexander is the Emeritus Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, where he is a Fellow. Dr Alexander was previously Chairman of the Molecular Immunology Programme and Head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge. Prior to that he was at the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories in London (now Cancer Research UK), and spent 15 years developing university departments and laboratories overseas, latterly as Associate Professor of Biochemistry in the Medical Faculty of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. There he helped to establish the National Unit of Human Genetics. He was initially an Open Scholar at Oxford reading Biochemistry, before obtaining a Ph D in Neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. Dr Alexander writes, lectures and broadcasts widely in the field of science and religion. His Monarch titles include: Creation or Evolution and Is There Purpose in Biology?.