The Fact/Faith Debate: Why Science Hasn’t Killed Religion by Jack Gage is an interesting and thought-provoking book.

The author did a great job in the Introduction telling us a bit about himself. And knowing a bit about him is important to understanding the book and why he wrote it.

Then Jack Gage goes into why there is a Fact/Faith debate in his first chapter. In this chapter he introduces the most unusual and an interesting aspect of this book. Rather than basing the book on just his beliefs, a panel of 6 jurors of various faiths or lack of faith get to vote on questions related to the issues presented in each chapter. This small group is somewhat like a jury in a legal trial.

Of course, 6 is a very small sample but it is a start in addressing the question of how intelligent and often highly educated people can examine the same set of “facts” (or scientific evidence) and come to very different conclusions, especially when these facts conflict with their faith-based beliefs.

I wish the sample size was larger and various jurors were able to discuss why they believe what they believe often in conflict with the evidence but that would be another book or maybe several books.

The middle (and much) of the book is a presentation of scientific evidence on various issues and then the faith-based view followed by a jury vote. I thought this was interesting at first but after 15 or so of these I just got a bit tired of it.

In many of these middle chapters the faith-based view was represented by fairly extreme positions such as Creationism or groups that interpret the Bible literally. But the beginning and end of the book discuss a variety of religious faiths so I do not think the book focuses too much on fundamentalist Christianity.

It also seems appropriate to examine these views since many Americans share many of these beliefs to some extent. For a relatively extreme example, here is a quote from Georgia Republican Representative Paul Broun of the US House of Representatives Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that, All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.

I thought the last few chapters were very good in reaching some conclusions on how and why people reconcile their religious faith with the scientific evidence.

It was a good book and I’m glad I read it.