You might recommend www.reasons.org website to your nephew. Be Thinking. org is another interesting site which tries to balance sceince and faith issues.
They are available for only about $9 plus shipping on Amazon.com.
This is the information age. How in the world did chance add information and order to DNA and the structure of "evolving" life? And here we are trying to instill artificial intelligence into computers/robots.
The first law of thermodynamics (energy/matter cannot be created) has application in the field of Information Theory.
Easy to read and understand. Presented at a good pace. Compelling and persuasive.
Try “Fundamentals of the Faith” by Peter Kreeft. This is a good beginner’s introduction to Aquinas, with many apologetics as well.
[[ We of Western heritage have trouble with paradoxical perspectives. On the one hand, life we live with the human senses and our abilities to manipulate our environment and make servant machines to do for us, we think that this is the pinnacle of what it means to be alive, to be freed from effort. Paradoxically, we are living in a well of spacetime, which is a 'limits factory' rather than a freeing experience. Limits make for variation in theme and expression.
The laws of Physics define our reality but they also function as limits to how much we can know of ’it all’. By ’all’ we refer to the total package, body, soul, and spirit, and our interaction with the universe of realms in which these aspects of our being have reality. But without those limits imposed from the start, a range of expression that yields a Stephen Hawking and a Mozart but also an average guy ‘me’ or you would not be possible.
In a very practical sense, the big bang of creation has had several stages of emergent phenomena, reaching a point of Stephen Hawking emerging from the background states. The complexity of Hawking’s mind in contemplating the universe is far more than the sum of the chemical reactions occurring in the organ filling his skull. Hawking’s mind is a soulish quality far beyond the physical organ of his brain, yet utilizing his physical brain.
Spirit LIFE is less restricted than our spacetime senses, yet we have so little tangible evidence of this level of reality. By our modern standards reality is of course derived from our manipulations of spacetime.
We have the biblical stories of One who came to this limits well and lived and died and rose again from the dead, to occupy a physical body capable of 'beyondness' to these limits. He appeared inside a locked room thus it would appear by some means passing invisibly through solid walls then to suddenly appear. In the Old Testament we have the scene of a hand appearing, to write upon a wall, while the remainder of the being to which the hand was attached remained in a state of reality outside the sensing of the people in the room. It is Catholic belief that Jesus was conceived and born by some means which allowed Mary to remain a virgin. The resurrection story indicates that when the seal on the tomb was broken and the stone rolled back, the tomb was empty except for grave clothes still in the fashion as if wrapped around a body, but collapsed ... Christ left the grave clothes without unwrapping them and left the chamber through solid rock; the stone was subsequently rolled away to show the women seeking his body --to anoint it with oils and spices-- that the tomb was empty!
It is a seeming mystery that God is greater than the creation yet can inhabit the creation and move freely in and out of the limits well. And even more paradoxical, this Creator actually tells us He desires to commune with us, with we created beings! I have wondered how many scientists actually consider that God ‘thought’ of occupying a human body even prior to space and time and matter being expressed, then the whole of the creation went through a billions-of-years evolutionary process drawn toward the goal God had in bringing it all into being? Not many I would suspect. Christians ought not shy away from considering such a thing.
When we think of power, we conceive of the authority to order others about, or we think of the ability to plug into sources to do work our animal self cannot achieve as quickly without mechanical assistance. But there is a power which seems to wisp about as if mere breeze, a thing that seems as tenuous as a thought. Yet this power is greater than all the forces of the limits well we inhabit. This book will explore some of the weird scenes in the Bible ... weird from a science-only mindset. We will seek to stretch our minds to encompass occurrences having no easy scientific explanation but which may be about to have such a means to explain them, as the cutting edges of Physics and cosmology extend our comprehension of the universe. In the end we will connect a story in Daniel to the empty tomb in Jerusalem on resurrection morning.
One quick note on the Bible of Judeo-Christian heritage which we will be holding up as our standard for veracity, our source of material related from witnesses:
The Hebrew Bible, in particular the Torah (The Five Books of Moses), has done more to civilize the world than any other book or idea in history. It is the Hebrew Bible that gave humanity such ideas as a universal, moral, loving God; ethical obligations to this God; the need for history to move forward to moral and spiritual redemption; the belief that history has meaning; and the notion that human freedom and social justice are the divinely desired states for all people. It gave the world the Ten Commandments, ethical monotheism, and the concept of holiness (the goal of raising human beings from the animal-like to the God-like). Therefore, when this Bible makes strong moral proclamations, I listen with great respect. … The Bible speaks in such clear and direct language that one does not have to be a religious fundamentalist in order to be influenced by its views. All that is necessary is to consider oneself a serious Jew or Christian. [Dennis Praeger]
"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
God has His ways of turning a man around.
I’d recommend three books, two of which have already been recommended by previous posters:
1. Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. Start here. This book is so engaging and sensible, it is irresistible to all but the most cynical minds. It’s bound to make him hungry to learn more. Lewis wasn’t a Catholic, but Catholics (even young ones) can read it without danger to their Faith.
2. The Handbook of Catholic Apologetics, by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli (both Catholics). This book is an exhaustive set of arguments for logical and reasonable arguments for the existence of God and for the Catholic Christian Faith.
3. How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas E. Wood (mentioned above). This is a very readable and comprehensive book that, if he loves history, he’s bound to enjoy.
Hope that helps.
My mind has just been completely blown by the concept of agnostic apologetics. Agnosticism means without knowledge, and apologia is an argument in favor of something. So here I am trying to figure out how you argue for that of which you have no knowledge.
I believe Strobel’s Case for books, The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith are both excellent books which are available in student editions. The Case for a Creator is also good.
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Faith-Student-Lee-Strobel/dp/031024188X
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Christ-Student-Lee-Strobel/dp/0310246083/ref=sid_dp_dp
All these books were intellectually instrumental to me on my own search for faith, but they only walk you to the door. Mental ascent to the deity of Christ is not saving faith (James 2:19), as our Lord told Nicodemus (John 3), “you must be born again” Catholics often recoil at the born again thing, but hearing and responding to the Gospel is essential. The clearest gospel I know of can be found here. Listen to “Hell’s Best Kept Secret” and “True and False Conversion” Also many good creation/evolution materials too.
Will pray for you and your nephew. God bless you for your loving care for him.
I believe Strobel’s Case for books, The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith are both excellent books which are available in student editions. The Case for a Creator is also good.
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Faith-Student-Lee-Strobel/dp/031024188X
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Christ-Student-Lee-Strobel/dp/0310246083/ref=sid_dp_dp
All these books were intellectually instrumental to me on my own search for faith, but they only walk you to the door. Mental ascent to the deity of Christ is not saving faith (James 2:19), as our Lord told Nicodemus (John 3), “you must be born again” Catholics often recoil at the born again thing, but hearing and responding to the Gospel is essential. The clearest gospel I know of can be found here. Listen to “Hell’s Best Kept Secret” and “True and False Conversion” Also many good creation/evolution materials too.
Will pray for you and your nephew. God bless you for your loving care for him.
How about Matthew Kelly’s book, Discovering Catholicism? It covers many subject — science among them.
Many who are scientists, when they start digging, become Catholic. True Catholic. This may happen!
Have him read about the miracle of Our Lady of Guadalupe — a lot of scientists have studied it.
Also Eucharistic miracles like Lanciano. The scientists who study these miracles come up with no explanation about why all the Eucharistic miracles have the same heart tissue and the same blood type present in them. Really fascinating.
The Urantia Book. It will really challenge his thinking. Save the money and look for it in any well stocked library.
Written by Joseph Ratzinger shortly before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures looks at the growing conflict of cultures evident in the Western world.
The West faces a deadly contradiction of its own making, he contends. Terrorism is on the rise. Technological advances of the West, employed by people who have cut themselves off from the moral wisdom of the past, threaten to abolish man (as C.S. Lewis put it)—whether through genetic manipulation or physical annihilation.
In short, the West is at war—with itself. Its scientific outlook has brought material progress. The Enlightenment’s appeal to reason has achieved a measure of freedom. But contrary to what many people suppose, both of these accomplishments depend on Judeo-Christian foundations, including the moral worldview that created Western culture.
More than anything else, argues Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, the important contributions of the West are threatened today by an exaggerated scientific outlook and by moral relativism—what Benedict XVI calls "the dictatorship of relativism"—in the name of freedom.
Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures is no mere tirade against the moral decline of the West. Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI challenges the West to return to its roots by finding a place for God in modern culture. He argues that both Christian culture and the Enlightenment formed the West, and that both hold the keys to human life and freedom as well as to domination and destruction.
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI challenges non-believer and believer alike. "Both parties," he writes, "must reflect on their own selves and be ready to accept correction." He challenges secularized, unbelieving people to open themselves to God as the ground of true rationality and freedom. He calls on believers to "make God credible in this world by means of the enlightened faith they live."
Topics include:
• Reflections on the Cultures in Conflict Today
• The Significance and Limits of Today’s Rationalistic Culture
• The Permanent Significance of the Christian Faith
• Why We Must Not Give Up the Fight
• The Law of the Jungle, the Rule of Law
• We Must Use Our Eyes!
• Faith and Everyday Life
• Can Agnosticism Be a Solution?
• The Natural Knowledge of God
• "Supernatural" Faith and Its Origins
Is truth knowable? If we know the truth, must we hide it in the name of tolerance? Cardinal Ratzinger engages the problem of truth, tolerance, religion and culture in the modern world. Describing the vast array of world religions, Ratzinger embraces the difficult challenge of meeting diverse understandings of spiritual truth while defending the Catholic teaching of salvation through Jesus Christ. "But what if it is true?" is the question that he poses to cultures that decry the Christian position on man's redemption. Upholding the notion of religious truth while asserting the right of religious freedom, Cardinal Ratzinger outlines the timeless teaching of the Magisterium in language that resonates with our embattled culture. A work of extreme sensitivity, understanding, and spiritual maturity, this book is an invaluable asset to those who struggle to hear the voice of truth in the modern religious world.
Ratzinger's writings are very succinct and are deep. Both of the above are no exception to this.
Also, another book that came to mind was Thomas Dubay's, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet
While everyone is delighted by beauty, and the more alive among us are positively fascinated by it, few are explicitly aware that we can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. Dubay explores the reasons why all of the most eminent physicists of the twentieth century agree that beauty is the primary standard for scientific truth. Likewise, the best of contemporary theologians are also exploring with renewed vigor the aesthetic dimensions of divine revelation. Honest searchers after truth can hardly fail to be impressed that these two disciplines, science and theology, so different in methods, approaches and aims, are yet meeting in this and other surprising and gratifying ways.
This book relates these developments to nature, music, academe and our unquenchable human thirst for unending beauty, truth and ecstasy, a thirst quenched only at the summit of contemplative prayer here below, and in the consummation of the beatific vision hereafter.
"This is as complete a theology of beauty in one simple volume as I know, uniting Christian theology, modern science, and daily experience—a sort of von Balthasar for the masses. It vastly expands our understanding beyond 'aesthetics', and shows us how nearly right Keats was in saying 'Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.'"
The point of all three of the above recommendations is to illustrate that there is no inherent conflict between authentic science and an authentic belief in God.
As far as apparent "inconsistencies" in the Scriptures, one thing to keep in mind (and would be valuable to point out) is that the Bible is not a book that somebody decided to pen and publish. It is a compilation of writings by different authors, all of whom were writing by inspiration by the Holy Spirit, to different audiences, in a period of over 1,000 years. What your nephew is actually reading is not the direct writings of those holy men (unless he is reading very ancient fragments written in Hebrew, Chaldean, Aramaic, and Koine Greek). He is actually reading translations of manuscripts assembled from hand-written transcriptions (multiple generations of transcriptions). To illustrate this, if you ever take a look at a good critical manuscript in Greek, you will note that there are footnotes that point out textual variations in different ancient codexes in several places. The Old Testament has an even more convoluted history.
The point is that his discovery of apparent inconsistencies is likely due to a lack of a comprehensive understanding. In the small number of inconsistencies that might remain, it is possible that the inconsistency exists due to an error at some point in the transcription process (remember, all of these transcriptions were done centuries before Gutenberg invented his printing press)
So how should he approach the Scriptures? Are you approaching it with an attitude of wanting to find guidance for how to live? You will do so. Are you trying to find a reason to not believe...well, you can do that as well. After all, you can find the phrase "there is no God" in the Scriptures (Psalm 14:1, Psalm 53:1). Of course, never mind the words before that phrase ("the fool hath said in his heart").
“A New Look at an Old Earth” by Don Stoner
I really, really, REALLY recommend this book. It’s only 200 pages (plus LOTS of references) and it was this book that convinced me that the Bible was the divine word of G-d and ended ALL conflict (in my heart and mind) between science and Torah.
You must understand, I have always thought as a scientist first, but I’ve always had faith in the existence of G-d. I thought all religion was BS and was nothing more than Man’s pitiful effort to understand something that could never really be understood. Because of the apparent conflicts between Genesis and science, I rejected the Bible in it’s entirety. I did see goodness and wisdom there, but didn’t take any of it literally.
Then I read, “A New Look at an Old Earth.” Stoner breaks down the creation of the Universe from the perspective of a photon of light. He does it scientifically and in a way that I could never deny. He’s NOT an evolutionist and only accepts a literal interpretation of the Bible - but looks at it from a different perspective. He gets into the Hebrew translations from the original text and looks at the physics from a beautiful angle.
For me, this book was the lynch-pin. I couldn’t deny that there was a G-d, He did create the Universe and the Bible is His divinely inspired Word. The concepts this book opened my eyes too were so profound that it changed my perspective of G-d, science, the world and the Bible forever. It showed me that the insights contained in Genesis could only have been conceived of by the Creator of the Universe and can only now be understood by Man.
I’m actually really grateful that you asked this question. I haven’t read this book in 11 years and I think that it’s time for me to give it another go-through. (The first time, I sucked it down in less than three hours. The second time I spent a good week breaking it down and fact-checking his statements.)
You have no idea what a hard heart I had and what it took to get through to me. (It’s actually a minor, personal miracle that I even found and read this book.) Please buy three copies of this book. One for you, one for your nephew and one to share with others as the need arises.
I can’t promise you that you’ll agree with everything in this book (I don’t know what your fundamental beliefs are); but, if there’s any book that can bring a scientific mind back to the Bible, this is it.
There are lots of great suggestions in this thread so I won’t attempt to add any, but I’ll say this...
From what you wrote this seems to be the root issue: “He feels that there are too many inconsistencies in scripture for it to be accurate.”
Where is he getting this idea? Frankly, the scriptures are so consistent and accurate that it’s hard not to believe. It seems like I cross paths with someone about twice a year who says they can’t believe because of all the “errors” in the Bible. When asked to point out these “errors” they either can’t or they’ve accepted an explanation for something that claims an error when it’s fairly easy to show that it isn’t.
There are different kinds of apologetics. If you know how he thinks, then point in that direction. For example, if he is all about facts and history, then he must deal with tthe real historical Jesus. If he’s philosophical thinking, then poit him that direction.
Now that I think about it, I would suggest one essay by C.S. Lewis called “Man or Rabbit.”
JW