Required Reading: Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
For a quick preview of the book, see John Wilson’s interview with Plantinga in Christianity Today.
In this interview, Plantinga’s quiet insistence on the compatibility of Biblical Christianity with human evolution raises once more the old question: Do the LOUDEST people insist on the fact that evolution and biblical religion are incompatible, while the SMARTEST people find lots of room for the two to agree?
As Plantinga puts it:
There’s no real conflict, [between religion and evolution] even though conflict has been alleged by people on the Right as well as on the Left. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and a host of others claim that there is outright conflict between evolutionary theory and belief in such a person as God, who has created and designed the living world. At the other end, there are Christian thinkers, too—like Phillip Johnson—who think there is irreconcilable conflict between the scientific theory of evolution and Christian belief.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Richard Dawkins and Phillip Johnson are both smart people and terrific polemicists. But in his other works, Plantinga’s brand of careful consideration and his thorough, quiet, deliberative method have resonated with me in a much more profound way. When in doubt, it seems to be a fairly reliable guide that the person with the greatest certainty is usually not the most careful, most dispassionate seeker of truth.
As Plantinga says in this interview, “to argue for it [the relationship between evolution and naturalism] properly is quite complicated; it’s hard to do in a brief compass.” So maybe the best thing for all of us to do is to quit talking so much about it, and start with a more careful reading of books like Plantinga’s new one.
I Love You but You're Going to Hell 
Ron Krumpos
/ January 1, 2012To a great extent, science depends on observation and religion relies on scripture. Science can now study only 5% of this Universe, since dark matter is 25% and dark energy about 70% of its critical density. Religion? According to which scriptures: the Torah, New Testament, Qur’an, Vedas, Buddhist sutras, …? Many quantum physicists contend that observation is dependent on the observer; many mystics say that relying on scripture is less significant than direct experience.
In my free ebook on comparative mysticism, “the greatest achievement in life,” is a quote by Albert Einstein: “…most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is the center of all religion.”
E=mc², Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, is probably the best known scientific equation. I revised it to help better understand the relationship between divine Essence (Love, Grace, Spirit), matter (mass/energy: visible/dark) and consciousness (f(x) raised to its greatest power). Unlike the speed of light, which is a constant, there are no exact measurements for consciousness. In this hypothetical formula, basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics, when they intuit the divine essence in perceived matter. This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula.