About the Book
John D. Cressler, Gateway to the Divine: Finding Spirituality in Science, Orbis Books, 2026.
I have finished my newest book, exploring the intersection of spirituality and science.
A full description will be available soon.
Contents
Preface: Seeing with New Eyes
Part I: The Big Picture and Dramatis Personae
1. Our Technologically Bedazzling 21st Century World
Our Amazing Tools and Toys
Where Science is Lurking
Connections to the Material World
2. Our Confounding and Fraught 21st Century World
The Trojan Horse That Destroyed Our Well-Being
The Gathering Storm
The Blessing and Curse of Exponential Growth
Inviting Spirituality to the Table
Connections to the Spiritual World
3. The Things That Keep Us Up at Night
The Power of Questions
Campfires, Moonrise, and the Secrets of the Milky Way
Life's BIG Questions
4. Rethinking Religion and Science
The Axial Age and the Cartesian Bargain
Organized Religion and Its Baggage
What Is Science and How Does It Really Work?
Frosted Windows: The Limitations of Mathematics
The Curse of Religious and Secular Fundamentalism
Ineffable Mystery: God, Spirituality, and Mysticism
Cracking the Door to Constructive Dialogue
5. The New Cosmic Story
The Universe as Story
The Bounds of Plenty: Time, Space, and Matter
The Cosmic Uroboros
Emergence: Creating Novelty and Complexity in the Evolutionary Universe
Part II: Exploring Our Mysterious Universe Through the Eyes of Science
6. The Journey Outward: Our Cosmos
Seeing is Believing
Telescopes as Time Machines
The View Beyond Earth
Stardust, Exoplanets, and Black Holes
Songs of Space and Time
The Invisible Universe: Dark Matter and Dark Energy
Cosmic Fine Tuning, the Anthropic Principle, and Multiverse
Connections and Some Questions to Ponder
7. The Journey Inward: The Quantum Realm
Searching for Magic Dust: A Smartphone Dissection
Transistors as Quantum Objects
Surfing the Quantum Waves
Consequences, Implications, and Interpretations
Connections and Some Questions to Ponder
8. The Journey into Nature: Our Magical Earth and Her Majestic Trees
Our Incredible Blue Marble
Land Ho! From Algae to Forests
Nature as Community: The Search for Intelligent Life Among Us
Climate Crisis as Spiritual Mandate
Connections and Some Questions to Ponder
9. The Journey into Us: The Human Mind and Heart
DNA, the Human Genome, and Gene Editing
The Human Family Tree and the Myth of Race
The Microbiome, Our Second Brain
The Unlikely Path to Consciousness
Hearts on Fire: Love and Relationship
Connections and Some Questions to Ponder
Part III: Making Sense of Our Journeys
10. The Process Perspective: Towards a Satisfying Worldview
Our Universe as Tapestry
Wishlist for a Satisfying Worldview
Let God be God: Rethinking Our Conceptions of the Divine
The Process Perspective
Pillars, Elements, and Implications of Process Theology
Some Parting Words
Acknowledgments
For Further Reading