ISSR is pleased to announce its new partnership with St Mary-le-Bow church in organising and hosting the prestigious Boyle Lectures for Science and Religion. The first lecture to be held as part of this partnership will be delivered Monday 18th February 2019. This lecture will be delivered by ISSR's President, Professor Michael J. Reiss, and we are delighted to have Professor Janet Soskice as the respondent. ISSR is also pleased to present the transcript for the 2018 Boyle Lecture, which was delivered by ISSR Fellow Dr Mark Harris (University of Edinburgh), with his kind permission, as part of our ISSR blog series. The title of the lecture is: 'Apocalypses Now: Modern Science and Biblical Miracles' The lecture was videoed, and has been posted on YouTube, and on St. Mary-le-Bow's website,

The ISSR CRISPR-Cas9 session held at the AAR Boston event November 2017, organised by ISSR Vice President Ron Cole-Turner, was filmed by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. The video of the event can be viewed on the following page: http://www.nationalacademies.org/gene-editing/index.htm   Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics, and Governance calls for inclusive public discussion and debate about the potential uses of technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 to make changes to human DNA. Engaging diverse viewpoints will be particularly critical to debates about uses that would raise complex societal and ethical issues, such as the creation of heritable genetic changes (also referred to as germline genome editing). With support from NAM's Kellogg Health of the Public Fund, the National Academies were pleased to support a webcast of

ISSR would like to draw its members' attention to the following videos relating to the upcoming Diverse Intelligences project funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. ISSR is pleased to have applied for a significant portion of funding under the "Morality in the Machine Age" branch of the grant. If successful, Harris Wiseman (with ISSR President Michael J. Reiss as PI), will explore the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence in assisting various facets of moral living at the individual and social levels. Please see the links below for more details on the Diverse Intelligences project. https://futurism.com/videos/sponsored-morality-machine-age/ https://futurism.com/videos/sponsored-artificial-intelligence-beyond-turing-test/ https://futurism.com/videos/sponsored-brilliance-living-world-intelligence/

Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality provides readers with a critical overview of what psychology tells us about religion and spirituality. It is concise without being simplistic, and the first such broad overview to be published for some years. Fraser Watts recognizes that 'religion' is complex and multi-faceted, taking different forms in different people and contexts. The book presents a broad view of psychology; whatever kind of psychology you are interested in, you will find it covered here, from biological to social, and from experimental to psychoanalytic. It focuses particularly on the varied concepts that psychologists have employed to make sense of religion and subjects them to critical examination. The book is also concerned with practical applications, helping those engaged in religious ministry. It will be of interest to undergraduates

Recognizing that the start of the academic year can be a challenging time to martial major grant applications, the CCCU subsidiary in Oxford, SCIO, has extended the deadline for its funded project, Bridging the Two Cultures of Science and the Humanities.  Deadline extended to 10 October, 2017. This project, taking place over the next two years may benefit you, your faculty and students, and your broader campus!  SCIO has received two grants from Templeton Religion Trust and the Blankemeyer Foundation totalling ca. $2 million to enable a second round of our Bridging the Two Cultures of Science and the Humanities programme.  This programme combines opportunities for faculty, students, campus executives, and the broader campus community: Participating faculty spend two summer months in Oxford (July 2018 and 2019) working on science

The 2018 Conference of ESSSAT (the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology) is being organised in partnership with ISSR. http://www.esssat.eu/2018-conference/  The theme is Nature and Beyond: Transcendence and Immanence in Science and Religion, and it will be held in Lyon, France – April 17th – 22nd, 2018. ISSR members will be able to register at the same reduced rate as ESSSAT members  We hope to see a good number of ISSR members at the conference, and we strongly encourage submissions of papers, which are due by 31st October. http://www.esssat.eu/call-for-papers-2018-conference-nature-and-beyond/  Fraser Watts Exec Sec, ISSR  

Denis Alexander, Emeritus Director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, invites you to a party organised by Cambridge University Press to launch his new book ‘Genes, Determinism and God’. Date: Thursday 13th July, 6.00 p.m. Place: CUP Bookshop, 1-2 Trinity Street, Cambridge Cambridge University Press would be really grateful if you could e-mail ehunter@cambridge.org if you are able to come. To make it really easy, here is a sentence you can just copy and paste to ehunter@cambridge.org: “Thank you for your invitation to the launch party of ‘Genes, Determinism and God’ on July 13th. I am pleased to accept”. The book developed out of the Gifford Lectures which Professor Alexander gave at St. Andrews University a few years ago. A 20% discount on this title can be obtained by following this link: www.cambridge.org/ALEXANDER17