EVOLUTION: The Disguised Friend of Faith?

Assembled from material representing four decades, this volume makes a distinguished but somewhat dated contribution to the theology-and-science field. Peacocke, long recognized as a major figure in this literature, rejects the metaphor of a "bridge" between the disciplines, opting for "a joint exploration into a common reality." At his best, Peacocke gives voice to the curiosity and wonder of science: "Somehow, biology has produced a being of infinite restlessness." Yet the volume also illustrates how Peacocke's metaphysical convictions—and, for the most part, his philosophy of science—remain firmly rooted in the early 1970s. Peacocke remains committed to an almost mechanistic version of scientific naturalism, "the monist concept that all concrete particulars in the world-System are composed only of basic physical entities... with the conviction that the world-System is causally closed." The resulting picture of the world rules out not only miracles but also "any other ontologies than those emerging from the natural world." Peacocke sees little need to acknowledge controversies troubling the Darwinian consensus since the late 1980s or to engage with "post-modern science," which he dismisses as "a vacuous concept." By separating theology, "the study of the intellectual content of religious beliefs," from religion, "which is about individual and communal experiences," Peacocke blunts the personal search for meaning that is otherwise one of the more winsome themes in his work. (Dec.)