“A sparkling gem lying in a vast field of books of science and religion. Reading it is a religious experience in itself.”...more
Jesse J. Thomas
Author of The
Youniverse
Prof. em. San Diego
State University, USA
“Benz, an eminent scientist, describes brilliantly the wonders revealed by modern astronomy about the origin and structure of galaxies, stars and planets. But he also demonstrates with great clarity how other levels of reality lying in a different plane or dimension are an equally important part of human experience and a search for meaning.”
Eric R. Priest FRSE FRS
Prof. em. Astrophysics,
Univ. St Andrews, UK
“Scientific inquiry alone cannot answer theological questions. But it can pose them, and may even force them upon us. Arnold Benz is a scientist at the cutting edge of developments in astrophysics and astronomy in Europe and the United States. In this beautiful and at times deeply moving reflection he affirms the human quest for meaning, a quest that can never be satisfied solely within the boundaries of science, but requires our engagement and our awe in the presence of an amazing reality of which we are a part, and to which we belong.”
Christopher Bryan
Prof. for NT, Univ. of
the South,Sewanee, USA
I do recommend this book to ESSSAT members, even while it is aimed at a popular audience. It makes a stimulating read in a length that is perfect to enjoy on a relatively short journey.
Christopher Corbally S.J.
Astronomer, Ph.D.
Vatican Observatory and
University of Arizona
Astrophysics and Creation
Perceiving the Universe
Through Science and Participation
by Arnold Benz
Has appeared at Crossroad Publishing, New York
on January 13, 2017
Second edition (paperback) appeared in June 2019
201 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-8245-2213-1
Price: $19.95 (CA $23.95)/cloth
What has astrophysics to do with our vital questions in life and how does it go together with faith in a Creator? Why to continue speaking of Creation if God cannot be demonstrated by modern science? Because we have other evidence!
Arnold Benz, a renowned astrophysicist and Christian, insists that human perception reaches further than science and demonstrates this in various examples, personal, biblical and literary. Cosmic fine-tuning and other coincidences are no proof of God, but are amazing, astounding and will never be fully explained. Amazement is an appropriate emotional perception of reality allowing us to sense transcendence. “Like beauty, creation is […] experienced on a plane different from that of science.”
Whatever your current understanding of the universe, after reading the inspiring book of Arnold Benz, you cannot look anymore at the sky in the same way…