In this issue:
Zygon Center to host symposium on the "Elements of Earthly Life"
Laws against teaching evolution still under consideration
Ecumenical Roundtable focuses on water rights
New book focuses on Transhumanism
Zygon Center to host symposium on the "Elements of Earthly Life"
In October 2011 the Zygon Center for Religion and Science will hold its fourth annual Student Symposium on Science and Spirituality with a focus on the essential elements of life on earth.
The one-day conference, titled "Sacred Soil, Living Water and Holy Air: Science, Spirituality and the Essential Elements of Life" is to provide an interdisciplinary and interfaith forum for graduate, professional and ministry students who will be able to engage in professional networking with faculty mentors as well as compete for cash prizes for the best student papers. The symposium will reflect on the meaning of elements of earthly life in offering up scientific, religious and philosophical perspectives on soil, water and air.
Broader issues that may be under consideration, according to the Zygon Center, are:
- urban land use, agricultural sustainability, and protection of forest, prairie, and wilderness ecosystems
- water quality management, watershed and aquifer sustainability, and protection of ocean, lake, river, shoreline, and wetlands ecosystems
- air quality management, climate change response, and protection of the ozone layer
Past Zygon Center student symposia themes have included: "What is our human future?" "What makes us human?," and "What is the nature of the relationship between the sacred and the world." Past papers from these symposia can be found at www.zygoncenter.org.
Laws against teaching evolution still under consideration
The latest grassroots effort to do away with "antievolution" legislation in Louisiana have not been successful, despite petition drives against an obscure 2008 law that banned teaching of evolution.
Louisiana's Senate Bill 70 would have repealed the law but failed to win a majority in the education committee last month. Meanwhile, other states have picked up similar efforts with new bills being introduced in Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas so far in 2011, according to the National Center for Science Education.
The repeal of the Louisiana law had the support of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Louisiana Science Teachers and a good number of Nobel laureate scientists. The existing law promotes "critical thinking skills, logical analysis and an open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning." Under this guise it encourages science education absent scientific theories of evolution.
The debate and support of these controversial bills has not been as heated as it was in Dover, Pennsylvania where the legal challenge against the teaching of intelligent design was successful. These bills have been called "academic freedom" bills And in the new round of legislation, most of them have failed to advance.
The bill in Texas died due to legislature adjournment before the bill could receive a hearing in committee. Tennessee's legislature has started the process of what has been dubbed "the monkey bill," but it will not be voted on in the state senate until 2012. The legislation would allow teachers to "help students understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories in the course being taught."
Ecumenical Roundtable focuses on water rights
This spring the Ecumenical Roundtable on Science, Technology and Faith focused on water as representatives from United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church of the USA, Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) gathered to refresh efforts to bring science to the fore of their denominations at "Streams in the Desert" held in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Eighth Bishop of California in the Episcopal Church Marc Andrus gave the keynote presentation on "The Theology of Water and How it Speaks to the Twenty First Century." Andrus began by illustrating his relationship with water as a boy in Tennessee growing up in the region where water was harnessed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s.
Relaying global statistics on water, Andrus pointed out that half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by those with a water-borne disease and sadly every second a child dies from drinking dirty water. More profoundly, there are places that we do not see, which allows us to make meaningless the lives of the unseen. He advocated what he calls a "hermeneutic" of identification that means seeing the world through the eyes of Jesus and coming back with a new vision of life and death.
The event included a panel discussion and presentations led by Patrick Lambert, a hydrologist with the US Geological Survey; Roberta Savage, executive director of the Rivanna Conservation Society in Charlottesville, Virginia; and Wil Howie, founder of Living Waters for the World.).
Other sessions at the Ecumenical Roundtable allowed individuals denominations to do some planning or focused on ecumenical initiatives. For example, the Ecumenical Roundtable for more than 20 years has had a presence at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. An additional exhibit at the meeting is supported by Methodists, Roman Catholics and other religion and science organizations in addition to the ELCA, Episcopal Church, Presbyterians, United Church of Christ.
Next year's roundtable meeting will be hosted by the ELCA in Chicago in April.
New book focuses on Transhumanism
The latest book from Metanexus is
H+/-Transhumanism: It's Critics and includes a number of essays edited by Gregory Hansell and William Grassie, founder of Metanexus.
Transhumanism is the idea that humans through technology are able to improve their health and abilities as well as reverse the aging process. This book looks at the growing influence of this worldview and growing criticism of it. Contributing essays to the book are experts such as Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, and Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist whose research focuses on whether regenerative medicine can thwart the aging process. 15 other thinkers contributed essays.
Contributers were encouraged to address a number of questions and ideas such as imagining a future where humans are able to reverse the aging process. Readers are asked to imagine a world free from problems such as mental disease, physical ailments and natural death; and what would life be like if through findings in genomics, robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence humanity would be able to increase intellectual capacity and control our emotional and mental states.
This is the third book to be offered by the Metanexus Institute. More information on this new book can be found at:
http://www.metanexus.net/.
Covalence, June 2011