Exploring the Intersection of Science and Religion: A Journey Toward Finding Meaning in Life

Amalilly: We are a group using The Great Partnership as the basis of this year's Spirituality and Philosophy discussion/book club.

I wish I could articulate the impact, the value and the insight I gained from reading about Rabbi Sacks' journey to 'finding G/god', perhaps another reviewer will be more effective.

While this can initially be a difficult read, as you adjust to Sacks' style and his sweeping / all-encompassing statements which seem to have no supporting information... he properly addresses each one of them as you move through the book.

I found profound definitions for God, faith, community, religion and many other concepts which rise above contemporary secularism.

I have so marked up my first copy with underlining, notes and asterisks that I've chosen to buy it again, just to have a clean copy.

There are times we, as a group had to remind ourselves that some of the book is about Sacks' own journey and other parts are shared, supported and incredibly insight-filled.

Full of history, interpretation and a peek into the relational approach of the Jewish tradition. I highly recommend this book especially if you are able to share the experience...

Canada on Mar 27, 2019

Perry Marshall: Rabbi Sacks has a razor sharp gift for summary that rivals CS Lewis. Kindle shows 210 highlights (!) which is a record for me. Some of the gems:

The second is the oldest and hardest of them all: the problem of unjust suffering, ‘when bad things happen to good people’. I will argue that only a religion of protest – of ‘sacred discontent’ – is adequate to the challenge. Atheism gives us no reason to think the world could be otherwise.

Science is about explanation. Religion is about meaning. Science analyses, religion integrates. Science breaks things down to their component parts. Religion binds people together in relationships of trust. Science tells us what is. Religion tells us what ought to be. Science describes. Religion beckons, summons, calls. Science sees objects. Religion speaks to us as subjects. Science practises detachment. Religion is the art of attachment, self to self, soul to soul. Science sees the underlying order of the physical world. Religion hears the music beneath the noise. Science is the conquest of ignorance. Religion is the redemption of solitude.

If neo-Darwinism is true and reproductive success a measure of inclusive...

United States on Dec 24, 2015

Michael Turner: This book is about science and religion and how people can misunderstand their relationship. The key information is that rather than being contradictory or in competition, people who want to use either science or religion have to be ready to pay attention to religion or science. Rabbi Sack’s point is that real religion requires an attitude that is also supportive of science.

Some people regard religion as an important element in their lives (necessary for determining the meaning of life) and others do not. Religion is just one way to reach out to the rest of existence (i.e. to a sense of meaning). People who do not use religion that way usually seem to have found one or more of the other ways to look beyond themselves, here and now, to other people, other things, other places and environments, and other times, past or future. Religion does not dictate behavior so much as categorize the questions one asks of life.

The meaning of something, whether, a rock, a person, or the universe, must be determined by something external to the entity whose meaning or significance is being sought. (The possible exception to this is God, who could be defined as the ultimate Source...

United States on Dec 29, 2013

Dr. Peter Davies: This is an excellent book. It takes two great themes namely science and religion and shows how their insights complement one another. It does in a gentle, kind, tolerant and learned manner reflecting Rabbi Sacks's many years of thought and study on these topics. As I grow older I am noticing that those who know most often show the greatest plasticity of thought and the greatest ability to understand and respect a student's or an opponent's views. Rabbi Sacks demonstartes this ability very well, making his case strongly, whilst acknowledging well and fairly other significant thinkers and their work.

The case he is amking is basically summarised as being that religion and science are in partenrship, not oppposition to one another. Many people, taking their lead from Richard Dawkins and his books such as  The God Delusion will reject this idea, but Sacks shows well why their occupation of one pole of the partnership is only a partial understanding of the world. In this he is echoing Nagel's thoughts in  The View From Nowhere  and  Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False

The basic ideas can be...

United Kingdom on Jul 31, 2013

Jonathan Green: Recently, one of the top listed books taken to summer recess by MPs was "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. I've read it, and it is challenging, but not particularly insightful in the way we should live!

From Proverbs 18:17 "In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right,
until someone comes forward and cross-examines."

The Great Partnership is a wonderful cross-examination of the `New Atheists' tirade. It is arguably one of the best presented so far from a religious perspective. I hope it reaches the reading lists of all, including MPs this coming summer. It deserves wide hearing and respect.

I'm a Christian, but have a high level of respect for the genuine integrity of the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. Although I differ in many of his arguments, I believe that this book will go down as one of the strongest advocacies of `Abrahamic' religions ever produced in recent times.

Every thinking Christian should read it, sit up, and take notice. But more than that - respond with open arms of embrace, despite on-going disagreements or differences.

As the book is `one long argument' it would be perhaps unwise to extract a single paragraph to illustrate...

United Kingdom on Oct 31, 2011

yossi ben shnaor: As a big fan of the Chief Rabbi I eagerly anticipated this book and I was not disappointed. Rabbi Sacks shows clearly that science and religion need not be opposed to each other and that doing so harms both. As Einstein said "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind". Sacks lays out his arguement at the beginning and follows it through clearly. he shows that the two ways of looking at the world complement, rather than contradict each other, science being a product of the left hemisphere of the brain while religion comes from the right.

The conflict between them arises when religious texts are read out of context and without the necessary commentries. Science examines the world as it is. Religion looks at the world as it ought to be. Sacks illustrates his points with a breathtakingly wide range of quotations from religious and secular sources. Naturally he uses many Jewish sources, but you don't have to be Jewish to understand or gain much from this book. Indeed much of this could easily have been written in the week following the riots across the country. Indeed, I found the chapter on Morality very appropriate in the light of the riots. If you...

United Kingdom on Sep 05, 2011

Donald Laming: Jonathan Sacks, the author, is Chief Rabbi, the head of the United Synagogue, which is the umbrella association of Orthodox Jewish communities in this country. He is possessed of deep and sincerely held beliefs that manifest themselves throughout this book.

In the chapter on Morality, for example, he would like to say that "religion is important to morality, even vitally so." (p. 145) But, in truth, people living in such close proximity as we do have to have a morality for social life to be possible. Even colonies of chimpanzees and troupes of baboons have moralities. Moreover, morality is different in different societies and it evolves. So, much of this chapter consists of regrets at the way contemporary morality in our society has evolved from that with which the author grew up. Religious philosophers like to suppose that it is "The fear of God" that "holds societies together as moral communities." (p. 146) In fact, it is the ultimate threat of extrusion -- the Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren speak of someone being `withdrawn from' -- and it is a very powerful sanction.

The trigger for this book was an advertisement in January 2009 paid for by the British Humanist...

United Kingdom on Jul 31, 2011