In this issue:
Harvard adds professor of science and religion
Vatican and space agency join forces
Brother Guy talks about Pluto and the cosmos
Theology and science coursework gets a boost from Francisco Ayala
Harvard adds professor of science and religion
Ahmed Ragab has been named the Richard T. Watson Assistant Professor of Science and Religion at Harvard Divinity. A physician, historian and scholar of the medieval and modern Middle East, he will take on the new role in July.
Ragab was a visiting lecturer for the 2009 fall semester at Harvard and he has been a postdoctoral fellow then lecturer in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard since 2008. He holds a medical degree from Cairo University and a doctorate in the history of science from the Ecole Pratiques des Hautes Etudes in Paris.
His work has included the history and development of medieval Islamic sciences, the relationship between science and religion in the medieval and modern Middle East, the history of medieval Islamic hospitals, and the intellectual and cultural history of women in the region.
“Before we undertook the Watson search, a group of faculty spent a year reflecting on current debates about science and religion,” said Mark Jordan, chair of the search committee and Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. “We wanted to compare the state of the field to our curriculum for preparing students, but we also wanted to see how HDS might help to advance some of those debates.”
Jordan added that the search was focused on finding a candidate that would bring cross-cultural fluency, a commitment to religious comparison and historical depth. The professorship is funded by Richard Watson, who is a managing partner at a Cleveland-based law firm and a graduate from Harvard Law School. The professorship was set up in 2006 and is intended to advance research and thinking on the interrelations of science and religion via multidisciplinary and cross-faculty initiatives.
Vatican and space agency join forcesLooking for ways to engage the public in both religion and science, the Vatican and the Italian Space Agency have put together a website that offers a new view of science and philosophy.
On the Universal Portal of Cosmology, the Italian Space Agency will deal with the science, while the Pontifical Council for Culture will handle the religious and philosophical sections. Professor Piero Benvenuti, member of the space agency’s board of directors and professor of astrophysics at the University of Padua, will head up the effort. The aim is to spread “space culture” by garnering attention of the greater public and educating them on the purpose of the various scientific space missions that have lead to a real revolution in the awareness of the universe.
According to the Italian Space Agency, the philosophical and theological themes will be the responsibility of the STOQ (Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest) Project at the Pontifical Lateran University, under the direction of Melchor Sanchez de Toca, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The STOQ Project was founded as the collaboration of six Pontifical Roman Universities: Lateran; Gregorian; Regina Apostolorum; St. Thomas; Salesian and Holy Cross. According to its website,
www.stoqnet.org, the project is aimed at developing the dialogue between science, philosophy and theology and is directed at students, scientists, philosophers, theologians and all those interested in deepening the rational basis of the Christian faith.
In December there was a lecture entitled, “The Origin of the Universe. What Modern Cosmology Tells Us About Our Place in the Universe.” Professor John Barrow, winner of the 1996 Templeton Prize, was the speaker and the Padre Jose Funes S.J., director of the Vatican Observatory.
Brother Guy talks about Pluto and the cosmosOn a U.S. speaking tour, Vatican Observatory planetary astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J., focused on the controversy of Pluto’s status as a planet and discussed the connections between science and religion.
At Winona State University, he addressed the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decision to demote Pluto and recent discoveries of other “trans-Neptunian Objects,” which is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune.
Back in February, Brother Guy also discussed the intersections of science and religion and explored how one proceeds from an emotional appreciation of the beauty of the stars and planets to a deeper understanding that satisfies both reason and emotion. According to the local media outlets, he joked with Winona State students that a common question he receives is whether or not he would baptize an extraterrestrial.
In his blog (
www.cosmicdiary.org), Brother Guy writes that the 2006 decision about Pluto was purely administrative in nature. While many have cheered for Pluto to be determined a full-fledged planet, the implication that such a decision is made by popular vote is false. The petitions for Pluto as a planet also imply that somehow others have the right to tell astronomers how to sort their data based not on practical needs, but on emotional desires. “And they put way too much authority on the shoulders of the IAU, treating us as if we were some sort of College of Cardinals,” writes Brother Guy. “It really bothers me when people want to turn being a scientist into a kind of “priesthood” with an authority that we neither have nor desire to have.”
His take that such an approach falsifies what it means to be a priest and what it means to be a scientist.
Consolmagno also recently spoke on science and religion at the University of California at Merced. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate from the University of Arizona. He entered into the Jesuit order in 1989 and was assigned to the Vatican Observatory in 1993. Since then, he has co-authored five books and serves as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection, which is one of the largest in the world.
Theology and science coursework gets a boost from Francisco Ayala
The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) accepted a gift of $100,000 from Francisco Ayala to support the Ian G. Barbour Chair in Theology and Science.
The gift to CTNS not only boosts the Barbour Fund, but also is eligible to be matched by a challenge grant from the John Templeton Foundation, which means the center will receive an additional $100,000 in funds to support the Center’s work, journal, website and newsletter.
Barbour is a former professor at Carleton College in Minnesota and is well known for his pioneering of the field of religion and science and in particular his development of various models of interaction between theology and science. Barbour recently spoke at Carleton about the recent movement to promote intelligent design, and whether or not evolutionary theory is compatible with a religious worldview.
Ayala, an evolutionary biologist and 2010 winner of the Templeton Prize, recently published a book on the relationship between evolution and God entitled
Am I Monkey? Six Big Questions about Evolution. He is a professor of both the biological sciences and philosophy at the University of California at Irvine and has been the President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, a member of the Council of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Advisory Council for the Human Genome Project and in 1981 served as an expert witness in the Arkansas trial on the teaching of evolution.
The focus of the Ian G. Barbour Chair in Theology and Science is the offering of seminary, masters and doctoral courses and seminars in science and theology to students of the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, which is affiliated with CTNS.
The Graduate Theological Union will be offering two courses this spring. Bob Russell, together with Ph.D. doctoral teaching assistant Adam Pryor, will offer an introductory course on the field of science and religion called “Christian Theology and Contemporary Science.” Pryor was recipient of CTNS’ 2010 Charles H. Townes Graduate Student Fellowship. The course will examine topics such as philosophy of science, cosmology, physics, evolution, molecular biology, God, reason and revelation, theological anthropology, sin and natural evil, Christology and eschatology (the theological ideas concerning the final days of history or the ultimate destiny of humankind).
The second spring advanced course is on “Theology, Person and Neuroscience.” Taught by Dr. Mark Graves, the seminar focuses on understanding the relationship between theological anthropology, cognitive science and neuroscience. Topics examined in the course may include: cognitive, affective and social neuroscience; religious experience, theological anthropology, neuroethics, and imago Dei; narrative and contemplative psychology; philosophy of mind and pragmatism; artificial intelligence and systems modeling; concepts and metaphor in language; and consciousness and emergence.