Karl Giberson | |
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Born | May 13, 1957 Bath, New Brunswick, Canada |
Residence | USA |
Citizenship | Canadian |
Nationality | Canadian |
Fields | Physics, Theology |
Institutions | Eastern Nazarene College, Gordon College (Massachusetts) |
Alma mater | Eastern Nazarene College, Rice University |
Doctoral advisor | Barry Dunning |
Karl Willard Giberson is a physicist and scholar specializing in the creation-evolution debate (see Creation-evolution controversy). He has held a teaching post since 1984, written several books, and been a member of various academic and scientific organizations.
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Giberson holds two Bachelor's degrees (in Philosophy and in Physics/Math) from the Eastern Nazarene College, and both a Master's degree in Physics and a PhD in Physics from Rice University.
Giberson has been on faculty at his alma mater, the Eastern Nazarene College, since 1984, where he teaches courses on science and religion and directs the Honors Scholar Program.
Giberson is also a fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA). He served as Director of the Forum on Faith & Science at Gordon College (Massachusetts) and co-director for the Venice Summer School on Science and Religion.[1] He has lectured on science and religion at Oxford University, the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture in Sicily, and various colleges and universities in the United States. In 2006, he was invited to speak at the Vatican on "America's Ongoing Hostility to Darwinism" and at the Harvard Club of New York in 2008. In early 2009, Giberson became the Executive Vice President of The BioLogos Foundation, founded by Francis Collins.[2]
Giberson was the founding editor of Science & Theology News, the leading publication in the field until it ceased publication in 2006, and editor-in-chief of Science & Spirit from 2003-2006 for the John Templeton Foundation (JTF).[3]
Giberson has published over two hundred articles, reviews, and essays, both technical and popular. In addition to blogging regularly at the Huffington Post and BioLogos Forum, Giberson has written for Salon.com, Discover, Perspectives on Science & Faith, Books & Culture, Quarterly Review of Biology, Weekly Standard, Christianity Today, Zygon, USA Today and other journals.
He has been quoted in a variety of scholarly journals.
His essay "What's wrong with science as religion?"[4] is being used as required reading in a course taught at St. John's University.
His first book, Worlds Apart: The Unholy War between Religion and Science, published in 1993 by the Church of the Nazarene and Beacon Hill Press[5] has, despite controversy, been used at various Nazarene and other evangelical colleges to counter Christian Fundamentalist approaches to "origins".
Giberson's second book, co-authored with historian Donald A. Yerxa, was Species of Origins: America’s Search for a Creation Story,[6] which appeared in 2002 and garnered recognition as one of the most balanced treatments of the creation-evolution controversy in print. America's leading scholar of creationism, Ronald Numbers, described it as "accessible, accurate, and even-handed."[7] It is used as a textbook and has been translated into Polish for an inclusion in a contemporary philosophy series.[8]
Giberson's third book appeared in late 2006, co-authored with Spanish philosopher Mariano Artigas and published by Oxford University Press.[9] Titled The Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists Versus God and Religion, the book examines the purported "abuse of science" in the service of secularism by six scientists of this generation: Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, and Stephen Hawking. The book has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Polish.[10]
His book Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, which HarperOne released in June 2008, was recognized by the Washington Post Book World as "One of the best books of 2008."[11]
The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions, with Francis Collins, is set to be released in March 2011 by InterVarsity Press.[12]
He is currently under contract with co-author Randall Stephens for The Anointed: American Evangelical Experts, with Harvard University Press,[13] and co-author Dean Nelson for Quantum Leap: How John Polkinghorne Found God in Science and Religion, with Lion-Hudson Press.[14] His 8th and 9th books are under contract with InterVarsity Press and Paraclete Press respectively.