Editing the Human Genome — Here is the NPR audio spot (4 min.) A new technology called CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeat) could allow scientists to alter the human genetic code for generations. That’s causing some leading biologists and bioethicists to sound an alarm. They’re calling for a worldwide moratorium on any attempts […]
Items included on this page come from a variety of sources. The perspectives conveyed may or may not express a Lutheran ethos. They can serve our instruction as discussion-starters, examples (positive and negative), and illustrations of intersections between God’s two kingdoms, intersections sometimes characterized by tension, sometimes by congruence. Inclusion does not imply endorsement.
Anglicans and Science
Anglicans and Science — The Church of England is set to invest £700,000 in a new program that aims to promote greater engagement between Christian leaders and the scientific community. The program will offer trainee priests and others access to resources on contemporary science.
How Scientists Engage the Public
How Scientists Engage the Public — American scientists believe they face a challenging political environment and the vast majority of them support the idea that participation in policy debates and engagement with citizens and journalists is necessary to further their work and careers. The AAAS finds that 87% agree with the statement, “Scientists should take […]
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harvill Secker, 2014) — “We control the world because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. If you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights. […]
What is the Future of “I”?
What is the Future of “I”? — From Kenneth Hayworth, Senior Research Scientist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, comes this 9 min. video on consciousness, identity, ethics, and being human. It may serve as a good example of current ideas in evolutionary psychology and can provoke much discussion for courses in neuroscience, religion and […]
Post-Empirical Science as Religion
Post-Empirical Science as Religion — “This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it […]
The Christian Anti-Science Wars
The Christian Anti-Science Wars — The Daily Beast has published its 2014 top ten science denial examples. World Magazine has responded with it’s own anti-science list of seven. Students can compare and contrast positions within the church including climate change, evolution, gender studies, and the multiverse.
What Scientific Idea is Ready for Retirement?
What Scientific Idea Is Ready for Retirement? — This 4 min. video collage offers several responses to this question. Possibly useful for discussion about the tentativeness of science, definitions and claims about knowledge, and the authority of paradigms.
In Search of a Science of Consciousness
In Search of a Science of Consciousness — Philosopher Alva Noe reviews Waking, Dreaming, and Being, (Columbia Univ. Press, 2014) a new book by Evan Thompson on neuroscience, the problem of consciousness, and religious meditation. Thompson continues the ongoing discussion on the phenomenological gap between what neuroscience accounts for and what we actually experience.
A Primer on the Religious Naturalist
A Primer on the Religious Naturalist — “Scientific inquiry has provisioned us with a mind-boggling new core narrative — the epic of evolution, the epic of creation, the universe story, big history, everybody’s story — where humans and human cultures are understood to be emergent from and, hence, a part of nature.” This brief piece […]
Models, Examples, and Suggestions for Instruction
True Paradox: How Christianity Make Sense of Our Complex World by David Skeel (Veritas Books IVP, 2014)
David Skeel teaches corporate law at the UofPenn Law School. This book calmly presents five chapters in 160 pages that explain the Christian account of life to a skeptical, distracted, yet still-interested society. No simple answers here to human complexities. Rather, Skeel discusses how these complexities point us toward Christ.
