According to the reigning competition-driven model of evolution, selfish behaviors that maximize an organism's reproductive potential offer a fitness advantage over self-sacrificing behaviors-rendering unselfish behavior for the sake of others a mystery that requires extra explanation. Evolution, Games, and God addresses this conundrum by exploring how cooperation, working alongside mutation and natural selection, plays a critical role in populations from microbes to human societies. Inheriting a tendency to cooperate, argue the contributors to this book, may be as beneficial as the self-preserving instincts usually thought to be decisive in evolutionary dynamics. Assembling experts in mathematical biology, history of science, psychology, philosophy, and theology, Martin Nowak and Sarah Coakley take an interdisciplinary approach to the terms "cooperation" and "altruism." Using game theory, the authors elucidate mechanisms by which cooperation-a form of working together in which one individual benefits at the cost of another-arises through natural selection. They then examine altruism-cooperation which includes the sometimes conscious choice to act sacrificially for the collective good-as a key concept in scientific attempts to explain the origins of morality. Discoveries in cooperation go beyond the spread of genes in a population to include the spread of cultural transformations such as languages, ethics, and religious systems of meaning. The authors resist the presumption that theology and evolutionary theory are inevitably at odds. Rather, in rationally presenting a number of theological interpretations of the phenomena of cooperation and altruism, they find evolutionary explanation and theology to be strongly compatible.

This book, first published in the U.K. by T&T Clark, expands on the authors' prestigious Glasgow Gifford Lectures of 1995-6. Brooke and Cantor herein examine the many different ways in which the relationship between science and religion has been presented throughout history. They contend that, in fact, neither science nor religion is reducible to some timeless "essence"--and they deftly criticize the various master-narratives that have been put forward in support of such "essentialist" theses. Along the way, they repeatedly demolish the cliches so typical of popular histories of the science and religion debate, demonstrating the impossibility of reducing these debates to a single narrative, or of narrowing this relationship to a paradigm of conflict.

The past quarter-century has seen an explosion of interest in the history of science and religion. But all too often the scholars writing it have focused their attention almost exclusively on the Christian experience, with only passing reference to other traditions of both science and faith. At a time when religious ignorance and misunderstanding have lethal consequences, such provincialism must be avoided and, in this pioneering effort to explore the historical relations of what we now call "science" and "religion," the authors go beyond the Abrahamic traditions to examine the way nature has been understood and manipulated in regions as diverse as ancient China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa. Science and Religion around the World also provides authoritative discussions of science in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- as well as an exploration of the relationship between science and the loss of religious beliefs. The narratives included in this book demonstrate the value of plural perspectives and of the importance of location for the construction and perception of science-religion relations.

John Hedley Brooke offers an introduction and critical guide to one of the most fascinating and enduring issues in the development of the modern world: the relationship between scientific thought and religious belief. It is common knowledge that in western societies there have been periods of crisis when new science has threatened established authority. The trial of Galileo in 1633 and the uproar caused by Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) are two of the most famous examples. Taking account of recent scholarship in the history of science, Brooke takes a fresh look at these and similar episodes, showing that science and religion have been mutually relevant in so rich a variety of ways that no simple generalizations are possible.

The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology is the first collection to consider the full breadth of natural theology from both historical and contemporary perspectives and to bring together leading scholars to offer accessible high-level accounts of the major themes. The volume embodies and develops the recent revival of interest in natural theology as a topic of serious critical engagement. Frequently misunderstood or polemicized, natural theology is an under-studied yet persistent and pervasive presence throughout the history of thought about ultimate reality - from the classical Greek theology of the philosophers to twenty-first century debates in science and religion. Of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this authoritative handbook draws on the very best of contemporary scholarship to present a critical overview of the subject area. Thirty eight new essays trace the transformations of natural theology in different historical and religious contexts, the place of natural theology in different philosophical traditions and diverse scientific disciplines, and the various cultural and aesthetic approaches to natural theology to reveal a rich seam of multi-faceted theological reflection rooted in human nature and the environments within which we find ourselves.

It is a widely shared assumption that science and religion are fundamentally opposed to each other. Yet, recent historiography has shown that religious belief needs to be added to the social, economic, political, and other cultural factors that went into the making of modern science. This new collection shows religious ideas not only motivated scientific effort but also shaped the actual content of major scientific theories. The fourteen studies contained in this volume concentrate on such topics as the theological facets of modern astronomy in the works of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton; the retention of teleology in the natural philosophy of Boyle; and the theistic and teleological associations of the modern theory of evolution authored by Darwin and Wallace. While the majority of the contributions focus on the Christian traditions, the collection also contains case-studies of Judaic and Islamic influences.
Reflecting the fecundity of contemporary scholarship, the current volume should be of extraordinary interest to historians of science, scientists, as well as anyone intrigued by the many ways in which relations between religion and science have been constructed.
Contributors include:
Peter Barker,
John Hedley Brooke,
Geoffrey Cantor,
Margaret G. Cook,
Michael J. Crowe,
Thomas Dixon,
Noah J. Efron,
Richard England,
Martin Fichman,
Maurice A. Finocchiaro,
Menachem Fish,
Bernard R. Goldstein,
Bernard Lightman,
Margaret J. Osler
F. Jamil Ragep,
Phillip R. Sloan,
Stephen Snobelen,
Jitse M. van der Meer,
Stephen J. Wykstra,