Tim Hames in The Telegraph:
A brilliant series of 13 short essays published by the John Templeton Foundation (at www.templeton.org/belief) offers different responses to the question: “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” The appeal of this slender volume is threefold.
The first part of its charm is the unexpected nature of many of the answers. Although about half of the contributors are in the “Yesish” camp, only one (Professor Victor Stenger) is willing to state unambiguously that: “Science has not only made belief in God obsolete. It has made it incoherent.”
Some of those whose opinions might have been considered predictable turn out not to be. Professor Robert Sapolsky is an outright “No”, because: “Despite the fact that I am an atheist, I recognise that belief offers something that science does not.”
Yet Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, answers both “No, and Yes”, because although he contends that the knowledge acquired by science makes belief in God “more reasonable than ever”, a reductive “scientific mentality” has, he says, “helped push the concept of God into the hazy twilight of agnosticism”. This is a brave concession from him.
The second element of the book’s appeal is the data that comes with some of the responses. Thanks to Christopher Hitchens (his answer was “No, but it should”)…
More here. Original debate here. [Thanks to Bilal Siddiqi.]