2016-06-30
You've seen the emblems on cars-the silver fish that tells you the driver is a Christian, the silver fish with feet and the name Darwin inside that tells you she's not, and the great big silver fish that says "Truth" gobbling up a smaller "Darwin" fish.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest whom Newsweek named as one of the country's leading preachers, says that no matter what those fish suggest, science and religion aren't irreconcilable. Scientists, she says, speak about mystery and enigma; they often draw on the awe-filled language of the Psalms. And religious folk care-or ought to, anyway-about new scientific findings.

In these essays Taylor explores the implications of chaos theory, she muses about drawing an organizational chart for a church that looks more like a zinnia than a pyramid, and, although there is very little to say about evolution that hasn't already been said several hundred times before, Taylor manages to write about Darwinism without putting readers to sleep.

Taylor's fans won't be disappointed. She offers her usual down-to-earth honesty and eloquent wordsmithing even when her subject is quarks.

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