Not new and a little outdated but “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson. Reading an interesting and well written book titled A Short History of Nearly Everything, in which the author tracks the progress if science fron ancient Greece to the modern day. What is evident, and the author admits, is that when it comes to settled science nothing is settled and much can hardly be called science. What we have, he says, is a mountain of theories built on a molehill of evidence, and even some of the evidence is questionable. What is amusing, and amazing, is how scientists of every stripe resist so vigorously anything that upsets their orthodox apple carts. The theory that a meteor strike killed the dinosaurs was dismissed by geologists, mostly, it seems, because it was proposed by people who were not geologists. Luis Alvarez, a Nobel-winning physicist who helped formulate the theory, joked, “We were caught practicing geology without a license.” Even today about a third of geologists continue to dismiss the theory. Settled science, it seems, is abhorrent to scientists who, nonetheless, continue to assure we peons that their lofty pronouncements are the final word on matters. Two things surprise me in A Short History of Everything. First, all of our scientific braggadocio aside, we are abysmally ignorant in everything from geology to physics. Second, an astounding amount of the scientific progress we have made was done by Christian clergymen. I can think of several reasons for this. Clergymen in the past were better educated than others and had the leisure time to investigate what they could see around them. It is axiomatic that all human progress depends on having free time to think without having to worry where your next meal is coming from. Beyond that the Bible encourages people to probe and pry. God demands that we ask questions and seek understanding. The Bible is not a textbook but when it spoke to questions of science it was hundreds of years ahead of its time. For instance, before the invention of the telescope astronomers thought there were about 10,000 stars. The Bible said the stars were beyond numbering. (We now estimate there are one septillion [1 followed by 24 zeros]).