ONLINE: Interaction of Science and Faith in a Challenging World

Event

Views & Attitudes

Featured speakers Denis Alexander, David Lahti and Jennifer Wiseman

ONLINE: Interaction of Science and Faith in a Challenging World

04July

Date and Time:July 04, 2021 8:00 AM — to July 09, 2021 5:00 PM GMT

Location:Online

Organizer:Faraday Institute for Science and Religion

04July

BioLogos board member Jennifer Wiseman as well as advisors Denis Alexander and David Lahti will speak at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion’s summer course “Interaction of Science and Faith in a Challenging World.” This course will take place from July 4-9, 2021. Exact times are TBD.

“The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion Summer Course 2021 will feature 13 leading academics in 10 fields of study including; Behavior and Ecology, Climate Science, Genetics, History of Science, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Oceanography, Philosophy and Theology of Science, Physics and Space Exploration.

Life in this world produces an ever increasing range of challenges from Covid-19 to the climate emergency to medical ethics and finding meaning and purpose. Science and Faith both give us ways to understand and respond to these challenges, especially when they work together.

Join us online to explore this subject in some depth in the company of a group of top academics and hear them speak about their science and how it impacts their faith.

Each day will have a different theme:
Science and Faith in History and Society
Science and Faith in Origins and Evolution
Science and Faith in Shaping the Universe
Science and Faith: All in the Mind?
Science and Faith in Caring for the Environment

From Sunday 4th July to Friday 9th July we shall be hosting two or three webinars given by an array of international speakers highly qualified in their individual fields. There will also be some opportunity for on-line discussion.”

This event is hosted by the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

Featured speakers

Denis Alexander

Denis Alexander is the Emeritus Director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, where he is a Fellow. He has spent the past 40 years in the biological research community. From 1992-2012 he was editor of the journal Science & Christian Belief, and he currently serves as an Executive Committee member of the International Society for Science and Religion. In his book Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? Alexander presents his belief in both the biblical doctrine of creation and the coherence of evolutionary theory. Alexander’s other books include Rebuilding the Matrix – Science and Faith in the 21st Century; Science, Faith and Ethics: Grid or Gridlock? (co-authored with Robert White); and The Language of Genetics – an Introduction. Dr Alexander gave the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University in December 2012 on the theme ‘Genes, Determinism and God’ to be published by Cambridge University Press 2016/17

David Lahti

David C. Lahti is an Associate Professor of Biology at Queens College, City University of New York, where he runs a Behavior & Evolution laboratory focusing mainly on learned behavior in birds and humans. Prof. Lahti received a BS in biology and history from Gordon College. He received a PhD in moral philosophy and the philosophy of biology at the Whitefield Institute, Oxford, for a study of the contributions science can and cannot make to an understanding of the foundations of morality. He then received a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan for a study of rapid evolution in an introduced bird. He has been a Darwin Fellow at the University of Massachusetts and a Kirschstein NRSA Research Fellow with the National Institutes of Health, where he studied the development and evolution of bird song. His current research projects include rapid trait evolution following species introduction, cultural evolution in humans and animals, and the evolution of our capacity for morality and religion.

Jennifer Wiseman

Jennifer J. Wiseman is an astrophysicist, author, and speaker. She studies the formation of stars and planets in our galaxy using radio, infrared, and optical telescopes. Dr. Wiseman studied physics for her bachelor’s degree at MIT, discovering comet Wiseman-Skiff in 1987. After earning her Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University in 1995, she continued her research as a Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and as a Hubble Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Wiseman also has an interest in national science policy and has served as an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow on Capitol Hill. She is currently a senior astrophysicist with NASA, and she also directs the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Wiseman enjoys giving talks on the excitement of science and astronomy to schools, youth and church groups, and civic organizations. She is a former Councilor of the American Astronomical Society and a former President of the American Scientific Affiliation.