Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. By Stephen M. Barr. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. ix + 312 pp. $30.00 (cloth).

Stephen Barr, professor of physics at the Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, presents an extensive exposition of major developments in twentieth-century physics in order to argue that its revolutionary theories and discoveries undercut the major theses of scientific materialism. The basic tenet of materialism, he asserts, "is that nothing exists except matter, and that everything in the world must be the result of the strict mathematical laws of physics and blind chance" (p. 1). Yet materialism exhibits a degree of complexity found also in religion. Barr identifies three strands in its "creed": (1) religion is a form of primitive superstition and dangerously obscurantist; (2) religious beliefs cannot be tested, and are merely forms of wishful and irrational thinking; (3) religious tenets, including belief in God and other forms of immaterial reality such as the human mind or soul, have been discredited by modern science.

Before getting to the physics, Barr offers a critique of materialism as an anti-religious mythology and challenges tenets one and two. he shows that the materialist critique of religion is based upon some fundamental misconceptions, that is, that faith is mere "mysticism" (the materialists' dirty word) and opposed to rational inquiry, and that religious dogma is based on "blind faith." Barr turns these critiques back upon the materialists and argues that their creed much better fits their own notion of irrationality because it rests upon a Rdeistic dogma that only the material universe exists.

Next, Barr discredits the third materialist tenet by taking his readers through a detailed, step-by-step exposition of the major developments in twentieth-century science, including big bang cosmology, evolution, modern arguments from design, and the so-called "antlirupic coincidences" that appear to make life and mind in the universe possible. he then argues that, contrary to the materialists' claim, the human brain is not a computer that reduces all functions of the mind to matter in action. His critique leads him into quantum theory and its positive implications for understanding the mind as immaterial reality. he closes his argument thus: "There is a circularity about the materialist position that becomes obvious whenever its logic is carefully examined... : materialism is true because materialism is true, because it must be true."

At each stage of his exposition, Barr argues, and I think successfully, that these scientific discoveries and their implications offer no evidence for the materialist position but instead support the notion that such realities as mind, intellect, and reason are best understood as immaterial. he lays out his exposition and arguments brilliantly: the unfamiliar reader will be surprised at how much he or she understands from this account that makes difficult and complex topics so accessible.

Barr s knowledge of the early church fathers and Thomas Aquinas shows him to be steeped in the Catholic intellectual tradition. I think Thomas would approve of both the rigor and the clarity of his exposition. This book is a worthy addition to the debate, not between science and religion but between a dogmatic philosophical materialism and rational theology.

ROBERT J. SCHNEIDER

Appalachian State University

Boone, North Carolina

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2004
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