Science Archives - International Society for Science & Religion (ISSR)

May 2026 Blog

May 2026 Blog

The Boyle Lectures and the Brain: Concerns about ISSR’s Public Sphere Claims about Human Minds and Intelligence Michael Spezio, Ph.D., M.Div. Associate Professor, Psychology, Data Science, Neuroscience, Scripps College, Claremont, CA USA Minister of Word and Sacrament, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Presbytery of San Gabriel, Temple City, CA USA The public sphere of pluralistic liberal democracy is in danger of collapse due to sustained attacks on sound, coherent, evidence-based discourse, thinking, and the corrigibility of claims. Anti-vaccine campaigns are reshaping public health. Anti-evolution advocacy is reshaping science education. Climate denial is reshaping energy policy. The institutions themselves are now being directed by commitments that contradict the scientific consensus they were built to apply. None of this is incidental to the work of science and religion. Our field exists, in

By Anthony K Nairn|2026-05-15T23:00:46+01:00May 15th, 2026|Categories: Blog|Tags: AI, boyle, brain, evolution, lecture, McGilchrist, psychology, religion, Science, The Master and his Emissary, theology, theory|

Conference Call for Papers – 4S Toronto

Conference Call for Papers – 4S Toronto

PANEL: Whose Future? Religious and Technoscientific Imaginaries in Contest Call for Submissions open until 25 April, 2026 Notification of Acceptance no later than May 15, 2026 4S 2026 Conference: October 7-10, 2026 Visions of the future are never neutral. They encode assumptions about what is desirable, who is authorized to imagine, and which forms of knowledge are deemed capable of producing credible futures. This panel examines the competing, and sometimes converging, imaginaries through which religious, spiritual, secular, and technoscientific traditions project possible and preferable futures, and asks how power operates through these acts of future-making. The 4S 2026 conference theme, “TechnoPower,” highlights how technoscientific capitalism concentrates power to define the future among a narrow set of actors and institutions. Yet it remains to be determined how technoscientific

By Anthony K Nairn|2026-03-21T15:49:51+00:00March 21st, 2026|Categories: Science & Religion News|Tags: 4S2026, AIethics, CallForPapers, ClimateDiscourse, FutureStudies, Humanities, IndigenousTemporalities, religion, ReligiousImaginaries, Science, scienceandreligion, SocialSciences, STS, TechnoPower, TechnoscientificFutures, TechnoUtopianism, Transhumanism|

March 2026 Blog

March 2026 Blog

Evolution and Eternity Rupert Sheldrake The twentieth-century revolution in cosmology threw science into a slow-moving crisis that is still unfolding. Before the Big Bang theory became orthodox after 1966, physicists used to think that they were studying an eternal universe, governed by timeless mathematical laws, consisting of a fixed amount of matter and energy that was preserved forever according to the principles of conservation of matter and energy. These fundamental realities of physics were not altered by anything that actually happened. The evolution of life on earth made no difference to them, nor would the extinction of all life on our planet. The laws of nature and the total amount of matter and energy would always be the same. The idea that the universe was born

By Rupert Sheldrake|2026-03-15T19:17:47+00:00March 15th, 2026|Categories: Blog|Tags: Big Bang, biology, Change, Charles Darwin, Cosmic Pessimism, Cosmology, Creation Story, Entropy, Eternity, evolution, Evolutionary Cosmology, Existential Anguish, Fixed Laws, Heat Death, Laws of Nature, metaphysics, Modern Synthesis, Neo-Darwinian Theory, philosophy, physics, Primal Unity, Rupert Sheldrake, Science, Spiritualisation of Matter, Teilhard de Chardin, theology|

February 2026 Blog

February 2026 Blog

India in the Science–Religion Conversation: Plurality, Tension, Promise Augustine Pamplany Director of the Institute of Science and Religion, Kochi, and Research Dean at the Xavier–Loyola Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, Trivandrum, Kerala, India. Email: apamplany@iaiss.com In 2006, Elon University (USA) and the Interdisciplinary University of Paris collaborated on a project titled Global Perspectives on Science and Spirituality (GPSS), supported by the John Templeton Foundation. The initiative arose from a recognition that science–religion dialogue had been largely shaped by Euro-American questions and frameworks. Its aim was to broaden this conversation by bringing in intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual resources from other cultural worlds, especially South Asia. A few scholars from India participated in this project to examine how the Indian tradition conceptualises nature, mind, and ultimate reality, and how these

By Augustine Pamplany|2026-02-15T22:14:51+00:00February 15th, 2026|Categories: Blog|Tags: Aryabhata, Ayurveda, Contemporary Science-Religion Dialogue, Epistemic Frameworks, Global Perspectives on Science and Spirituality, GPSS, Hindu Buddhist Jain Sikh Islamic Traditions, India, Indian Cosmology, Indian Intellectual Heritage, Indian Philosophical Traditions, Ontological Unity, religion, Science, Science and Meaning, Science and Religion in India, Science and Spirituality, Spirituality, The Tao of Physics, Yogic Consciousness|

January 2026 Blog

January 2026 Blog

From Astrobiology to Astrotheology and Back Ted Peters Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences ▓ “Cosmology is a voyage of the human spirit.” That’s what Harvard astronomer Owen Gingerich tells readers in the scientific journal, Nature (Gingerich 2009, 29). The space sciences, whether they do it voluntarily or not, captain us on a voyage of the human spirit. More. The divine spirit as well. On the one hand, the astrotheologian reflects on what the astrobiologist learns about the cosmos. The science of astrobiology, as NASA defines it, is the study of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe. SETI astrobiologist Margaret Race specifies two divisions: the search for microbial life within our solar system and the search for intelligent life on exoplanets

By Ted Peters|2026-01-15T15:41:38+00:00January 15th, 2026|Categories: Blog|Tags: Anthropocentrism, Astroanthropology, Astrobiology, Astrotheology, Copernican Principle, CRISPR, ETI, ETI Myth, Extraterrestrial Life, imago dei, Mars Colonization, Posthuman, Religious Crisis, Robert John Russell, Science, Space Settlements, ted peters, theology, UAP, UFO|

Job Opportunity: Postdoctoral Researcher (Quantum Worldviews Project)

Job Opportunity: Postdoctoral Researcher (Quantum Worldviews Project)

University of Oxford, Faculty of Theology and Religion The Faculty of Theology and Religion is hiring a postdoctoral researcher for the Quantum Worldviews Project, to conduct research on the entanglements between quantum mechanics and religion in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. The appointee will work across several of the Project’s strands of research, focusing on historical and theological analysis of the emergence and evolution of quantum religion, but also contributing to social-scientific studies of contemporary quantum religion, and to constructive theological analysis of realist quantum interpretations. The role will also involve public engagement activities, especially in documentary and podcast work. It is expected that the appointee will author their own publications from research undertaken within the Project, contribute to some of the Project’s multi-authored outputs, attend and

By Anthony K Nairn|2025-12-02T21:50:36+00:00December 2nd, 2025|Categories: Science & Religion News|Tags: job, Oxford, postdoc, quantum, Science, theology|

April 2025 Blog

April 2025 Blog

International Symposium on Developments in Artificial Intelligence & Humanoid Technology by Job Kozhamthadam Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), accompanied by humanoid technology, are arguably the greatest achievement of human ingenuity to date. Thanks to these breath-taking breakthroughs, the claim is made that it is only a matter of time when human scientific prowess will have produced in its laboratory not only living beings, including humans, but also superhumans or posthumans. Recent amazing achievements like the humanoid Sophia, which was awarded Saudi citizenship in 2017, the humanoid Ameca, the world’s most advanced robot so far, the Chinese humanoid SEO1 with its ability to have a natural, human-like gait, and many others – each with its own specialties – seem to assure us that contemporary science’s claim is

By Job Kozhamthadam SJ|2025-04-16T23:12:48+01:00April 15th, 2025|Categories: Blog|Tags: AI, artificial intelligence, India, religion, Science, technology|

Holmes Rolston III: In Memoriam Ted Peters Planet Earth will miss its renowned paladin, Holmes Rolston III (1932-2025). He died on February 12 this year. Holmes was an academic champion of environmental ethics and public policy who influenced philosophers, theologians, scientists, and the wider public. A New Environmental Ethics Like a biblical prophet, Holmes announces the coming of a day of judgment. “The worry for the next century is that humans may destroy their planet and themselves with it,” writes Holmes in the second edition of his A New Environmental Ethics (Rolston III, A New Environmental Ethics 2nd ed, 2020, 245). This is Holmes’ prophetic judgment: we Homo sapiens on Planet Earth are risking the destruction of our home. Unless, of course, we repent.

By Ted Peters|2025-03-16T05:02:25+00:00March 16th, 2025|Categories: Blog|Tags: Holmes Rolston III, religion, Science, science and religion, ted peters|

February 2025 Blog

February 2025 Blog

Science and Judaism: Where has the dialogue got to? Daniel Langton One’s imagination goes off in all sorts of directions when one thinks of Science and Judaism. There is the phenomenon of the contribution of Jewish scientists to modern science and its understanding, such as those of Freud, Franklin, Einstein, Bohr, Feynman, Sagan, and Gould. There is the fascinating question of how an ancient religio-legal system, the halakhah, has been applied to science, from medical ethics to technological solutions for work prohibitions on Shabbat. There is the spooky realm of kabbalah and quantum mysticism, and the spookier story still of the precursor of the morality tale of Frankenstein, the monstrous golem. There is the tragic history of the murderous application of race science during the Nazi genocide.

By Daniel Langton|2025-02-15T18:49:36+00:00February 15th, 2025|Categories: Blog|Tags: cantor, daniel langton, evolution, jewish, judaism, mysticism, religion, Science, spinoza|

January 2025 Blog

January 2025 Blog

Who is Working on Science and Religion? Changes in the Last 20 Years Fraser Watts The field of science and religion looks very different now from how it looked when ISSR was founded in 2002. For one thing, there is less interest in harmonising science and religion, or in defending religious convictions against scientific objections. Instead, there is increasing interest in the converging contributions of science and religion to challenges in human flourishing, such as ecology and the environmental crisis, about which ISSR is holding a conference in the summer. This shift is also flagged up in the title of this year’s Boyle Lecture, to be given by Antje Jackelén, “Science, Technology, Theology and Spirituality – A Necessary Partnership”? Many of us have become more sceptical about

By Anthony K Nairn|2025-01-15T23:18:31+00:00January 15th, 2025|Categories: Blog|Tags: Andrew Davison, Antje Jackelén, environment, Iain McGilchrist, Mark Harris, Oxford, Philip Clayton, religion, Royal Society, Science, Templeton, theology|