A while back I posted some thoughts on Keith Ward’s What the Bible Really Teaches, which was a rejoinder of sorts to Christian fundamentalism. His newest book, Pascal’s Fire, might be seen as a rejoinder to scientific fundamentalism. Ward’s goal in this brief book is to rebut the notion that the advance of science has made belief in God obsolete.

The book is divided into three parts. Part one canvasses the major scientific revolutions of the last five hundred years or so and examines how they impact belief in God. Part two discusses the limitations of science’s ability to give an exhaustive account of reality. And part three attempts to bridge the gap between the concept of God suggested by scientific understanding and philosophical reflection and the personal God of religion, or between the “God of the philosophers” and the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” as Pascal would’ve put it.

For our purposes I’m going to break things up by dedicating one or more posts to each part of the book.