RELG 340 - Science and Religion
Course Notes for Module 9
The Language of God : Introduction, chapters 1 & 2
- p.2 - The Human Genome Project
- At the time the Human Genome Project was proposed I was working as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg. I was also doing some sequence work on viruses (RNA rather than DNA) and had worked with Fred Sanger at the MRC in Cambridge. I remember thinking "They'll never do it." - "It will take a thousand monkeys a thousand years" - At the time it looked like an impossible amount of work.
- p.2 - Craig Venter
- Craig Venter's intimate account of the work of his research team, and his relations with other scientists in the field, is given in "A Life Decoded", in the ENMU Golden Library. The DNA used first was a mixture from about half-a-dozen human beings. It was soon apparent that the sequence of a "mixed DNA" was less useful than that for DNA from one human being would be. The first personal human DNAs to be decoded were those of Craig Venter and James Watson.
- p.16 - Einstein's belief in God
- Atheists tend to claim that Einstein was an atheist, and theists tend to claim that Einstein did indeed believe in God. The position seems to be that Einstein rejected the orthodox Jewish belief in "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob", but did relate to God as Creator of the universe. For instance, his saying "God does not play dice with the universe."
- p.19-21 - Evangelism
- A popular view of evangelism is that one person leads another person to faith in Christ, either with a sermon and an Altar Call, or by presenting "Four Spiritual Laws", or the sequence of Scriptures known as "The Roman Road", or the five points of Evangelism Explosion. However, notice that in Dr. Collins' case, there was a sequence of encounters involving many Christians - the patients in hospital whose faith gave them peace, the lady who had shared her Christian beliefs and then cared enough to ask him what he believed, the minister who took time to listen to him and then gave him a book which addressed his questions, and the author of the book, C. S. Lewis, who wrote Mere Christianity
- p.29 - deist and theist
- The words are derived from "deus", the Latin word for God, and "theos", the Greek word for God.
A deist believes in the existence of God, on rational grounds, but does not believe in any revelation, religion, or sacred text. Deists accept that the universe was created by God, merely because it exists and therefore must have had a creator. Deists do not think that God cares about, or relates to, the universe. This idea is often referred to as the "clockwork universe" or the "watchmaker God" - He made the universe, wound it up, and then went off somewhere else to do something else.
A theist believes in the existence of a god or gods (usually just one God), and believes in God as the creator and ruler of the universe. Theists accept that God may reveal himself to his creation (through prophets and sacred scripture). - p.33 - Paul Tillich
- Paul Tillich (pronounced till-ish) 1886 - 1965, was a German theologian and philosopher (later resident in the USA) who popularized the idea of God as "the Ground of our Being". He was heavily influenced by existentialism. See the Biography Page for more information
- p.48 - the angel Jibril
- Jibril is the Arabic form of the name Gabriel (Hebrew name meaning "God's might" or "God's mighty one")
- p.49 - the example of Baye's Theorem
- In the example given - there are 52 different cards in a normal deck of cards. Hence the chance of drawing one particular card from a normal deck is 1 in 52, or 1/52. To do this twice in a row increases the odds as Dr. Collins illustrates. However, the odds of drawing an ace of spades from a pack containing 52 aces of spades is 52 in 52, or 100%
Copyright © 1999 Shirley J. Rollinson, all Rights Reserved
