BioLogos founder Francis Collins and President Deb Haarsma will be speaking at the The Faraday Institute Summer Course 2022.

Francis Collins will present ‘With All Your Mind’ at 5pm GMT on Sunday, July 3, and ‘Truth in Crisis: an Appeal to the Better Angels of People of Faith’ 11:30am GMT on Monday, July 4.

‘With All Your Mind’:  Our current secularized and technological culture leads many to conclude that a faith perspective is no longer relevant.  But a rational approach to understanding the complexity and beauty of nature, as well as the intrinsic longings of the human heart, can be seen as signposts to a holy Creator God who seeks fellowship with each of us.  The life, teaching, death on the cross, and resurrection of Jesus brings this all together as an indescribably joyful synthesis of God’s creative majesty, love, and grace.  For me, those realizations have made science a form of worship, and the laboratory a kind of cathedral.

‘Truth in Crisis: an Appeal to the Better Angels of People of Faith’: It is natural for scientists to assume with Descartes that humans are wired to be rational actors.  But David Hume’s alternative view “Reason is a slave of the passions” turns out to be particularly at work in the present era of intense political passions, where misinformation and disinformation on critical areas such as the COVID pandemic or climate change seem capable of overriding objective truth.  In fact, truth itself seems often to be under attack in an era of “alternative facts”.  People of faith know Jesus’ words that the truth will set you free (John 8:32) and so ought to be in a particularly strong position to resist politically driven lies and conspiracies, but the opposite seems to be true.  In our polarized society where distrust of scientific expertise is growing, how can we recover a shared sense of values that include truth and goodness?

Deb Haarsma will present ‘Life beyond earth and the place of humans in the cosmos’ at 10am GMT on Tuesday, July 5.
Astronomical discoveries fill us with amazement at the wonders of the universe. The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will reveal even more, including properties of planets around other stars. If these planets contain living things, JWST may see signs of it in the altered atmospheres of the planets. What would it mean for humanity to discover intelligent life beyond earth? Would it change our view of God or our view of what it means to be human? Could consideration of modern astronomical findings alongside ancient Christian theology bring us to a deeper understanding of God, the universe, and ourselves?

This event is hosted by The Faraday Institute.