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ANNOUNCING THE 69TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INSTITUTE ON RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-11-01
Habitability for Your Cosmic Future: Astro Anthropology Meets AstroEthics June 23.30, 2024 on Star Island, NH Astrobiology, astronomy, and planetary science—investigating Earth and local planets as well as planets orbiting other stars—invite us to consider life in cosmic context. This conference will weave together diverse interdisciplinary threads from the natural and social sciences and the humanities
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THE QURʾĀN AND SCIENCE, PART III: MAKERS OF THE SCIENTIFIC MIRACULOUSNESS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Majid Daneshgar
The last article of this three-part series on the Qurʾān and science discusses the creation and development of the scientific miraculousness of the Qurʾān, which claims that the Qurʾān contains scientific findings and has particular scientific features, such as harmonious numerical analogies and formulae, that confirm the divine origin of the text. It became a political-theological tool used by Muslim
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THE QURʾĀN AND SCIENCE, PART I: THE PREMODERN ERA Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-10-16 Majid Daneshgar
As the first installment in a three-part series on the Qurʾān and science, this article begins with the author's personal and scholarly experiences to demonstrate the importance of the twin trends of Qurʾānic scientific interpretation and Qurʾānic scientific miraculousness, including how both serve as Muslims theological tools. It then touches upon the close relationship between theology and scientific
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THE QURʾĀN AND ZYGON Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-10-16 Arthur C. Petersen
This issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, the last one published with Wiley, contains three thematic sections: on “The Qur’ān and Science” (see below), on “AI Relationality and Personhood,” and on this year's Boyle Lecture. For background articles pertaining to the latter two sections, I refer the reader to the articles written by Fraser Watts and Marius Dorobantu (AI Relationality and
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ATTENDING TO ATTENTION Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Rowan Williams
Attention has often been seen as a selective process in which the mind chooses which already-formed objects to focus on. However, as Merleau-Ponty and others have pointed out, this ignores the complexity and ambiguity of sensory information and imposes on it a set of already-formed objects in the world. Rather, attention is a process by which objects in the world are constituted by the perceiving subject
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WILL WE KNOW THEM WHEN WE MEET THEM? HUMAN CYBORG AND NONHUMAN PERSONHOOD Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Léon Turner
In this article, I assess (1) whether some cyborgs and AI robots can theoretically be considered persons; and (2) how we will know if/when they have attained personhood. Since our discourses of personhood are inherently pluralistic and our concepts of both humanness and personhood are inherently nebulous, both some cyborgs, and some AI robots, I conclude, could theoretically be considered persons depending
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JOINT ATTENTION AND THE IMAGO TRINITATIS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Robert Elliot
This article incorporates into Christian theological anthropology some recent findings of a school of scientific researchers in the fields of comparative and developmental psychology. These researchers—namely, Michael Tomasello, Malinda Carpenter, and others affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology—have advanced a theologically significant hypothesis about a basic difference
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A BROADER PERSPECTIVE ON “HUMANS”: ANALYSIS OF INSĀN IN TWELVER SHĪʿĪ PHILOSOPHY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ASTROTHEOLOGY Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Abdullah Ansar, Shahbaz Haider
This article explores the essence of the human (insān) as it is understood in Twelver Shīʿī philosophy and mysticism. It presents a Shīʿī philosophical elucidation regarding the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligent lifeforms and what their relationship with “humanhood” might be. This line of reasoning is presented with a general sketch of how, in Shīʿī Islamic thought, a “human being”
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THE RELATIONAL TURN IN UNDERSTANDING PERSONHOOD: PSYCHOLOGICAL, THEOLOGICAL, AND COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVES Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Fraser Watts, Marius Dorobantu
From the middle of the twentieth-century onwards, there has been a growing emphasis on the importance of relationality in what it means to be human, which we call a “relational turn.” This is found in various domains, including philosophical psychology, psychoanalysis, and theological anthropology. Many have seen a close connection between relationality and personhood. In the second half of the article
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GUIDELINES FOR COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF FRIENDSHIP Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-04 William F. Clocksin
Humans participate in an immense variety of relationships with other persons and other entities: human and nonhuman, living and nonliving, tangible and intangible, real and imagined. Participation in relationships is considered a key benchmark of personhood. Some of these relationships, particularly friendships, involve close emotional attachments, and some friendships have been described since antiquity
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IS IT POSSIBLE THAT ROBOTS WILL NOT ONE DAY BECOME PERSONS? Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Michael J. Reiss
That robots might become persons is increasingly explored in popular fiction and films and is receiving growing academic analysis. Here, I ask what would be necessary for robots not to become persons at some point. After examining the meanings of “robots” and “persons,” I discuss whether robots might not become persons from a range of perspectives: evolution (which has led over time from species that
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RESHAPING THE HEART-MIND: A RESPONSE TO ROWAN WILLIAMS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-03 John D. Teasdale
This article suggests that themes in Williams’ (2023) analysis of attention and contemplation resonate powerfully with current thinking in cognitive science. By changing how we pay attention, we can change the shape, or underlying configuration, of the heart-mind. This is the core process in mindfulness and contemplation. The Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) analysis suggests this involves a
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ROWAN WILLIAMS ON ATTENTION AND MEMORY IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-09-03 Fraser Watts
In a series of recent articles, including his Boyle Lecture, Rowan Williams has developed a theology of the role of intelligence and attention in spiritual life. There is a sense in which all intelligence is spiritual activity. Current approaches to intelligence are often mechanistic, but intelligence in spiritual life needs to be understood in a more embodied and organic way. Attention is often thought
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AND THE WORDS BECOME FLESH: EXPLORING A BIOLOGICAL METAPHOR FOR THE BODY OF CHRIST Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Deborah J. G. Mackay
Although every cell in a human body contains the same DNA, every cell uses its DNA differently, in unique interaction with its environment. Human bodies live and thrive because their cells and tissues are sustained in a whole whose life emerges from, but cannot be reduced to, its parts. Living creatures are organized systems of processes that maintain their identity not despite change but because of
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INFORMATION AND REALITY Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Arthur C. Petersen
This issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science contains a thematic section on “Information and Reality,” with contributions from the Science and Religion Forum held in Birmingham in May 2022. For an introduction to this section, I refer the reader to the introduction that has been written by guest editor Finley Lawson.
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Announcements Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-08-09
IRAS The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science Purpose—IRAS (www.iras.org) is an independent society of scientists, philosophers, religion scholars, theologians, and others who want to understand the role of religion in our dynamic scientific world. Activities—Each year IRAS organizes a week-long conference. Topics are selected to be relevant to current scientific thinking and to fundamental religious
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ANNOUNCING THE 69TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INSTITUTE ON RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-08-09
Habitability for Your Cosmic Future: AstroAnthropology Meets AstroEthics June 23.30, 2024 on Star Island, NH Astrobiology, astronomy, and planetary science—investigating Earth and local planets as well as planets orbiting other stars—invite us to consider life in cosmic context. This conference will weave together diverse interdisciplinary threads from the natural and social sciences and the humanities
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RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, AND MENTAL HEALTH AMONG SCIENTISTS DURING THE PANDEMIC: A FOUR-COUNTRY STUDY Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Di Di, Stephen Cranney, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Caitlin Anne Fitzgerald
A vast body of research shows largely positive associations between religiosity/spirituality (R/S) and positive well-being outcomes. Such research has examined religious communities and general populations, but little is known about the relationship between R/S and well-being among scientists, who typically tend to be less religious than the general public. Drawing on nationally representative survey
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THE GENERAL RESURRECTION AND EARLY MODERN NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS: A PRELIMINARY SURVEY Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-07-09 John Henry
Noting that the doctrine of the general resurrection attracted renewed attention after the Reformation, and after the atomist revival led to the displacement of traditional hylomorphism by alternative matter theories, this article surveys the ways in which the resurrection was discussed by leading natural philosophers in seventeenth-century England. These include discussion of how bodily resurrection
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EMBODIED EXPERIENCE IN SOCIALLY PARTICIPATORY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-26 Mark Graves
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes progressively more engaged with society, its shift from technical tool to participating in society raises questions about AI personhood. Drawing upon developmental psychology and systems theory, a mediating structure for AI proto-personhood is defined analogous to an early stage of human development. The proposed AI bridges technical, psychological, and theological
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HUMAN UNIQUENESS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-24 Arthur C. Petersen
This issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science contains a Symposium on “human uniqueness” that derives from a symposium hosted by the Department of Zoology at Harvard University of Harvard initially in March 2020 and subsequently in April 2022, under the title “Just How Special Are Humans Really? Insights from Science, Philosophy, and Theology on the Mystery of Human Uniqueness.” For an introduction
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Announcements Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-24
IRAS The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science Purpose—IRAS (www.iras.org) is an independent society of scientists, philosophers, religion scholars, theologians, and others who want to understand the role of religion in our dynamic scientific world. Activities—Each year IRAS organizes a week-long conference. Topics are selected to be relevant to current scientific thinking and to fundamental religious
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THE WIZARDS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: HOW CAN TECHNOLOGY SERVE HOPE AND JUSTICE? Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-24
68th Summer Conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science Star Island, NH, USA, Sunday June 25 to Sunday July 2, 2023 Technological wizardry has been pitched against prophecies of environmental catastrophe since at least the mid-twentieth century. Innovate! Create! Only then can everyone win!—Simplify! Change your ways! Or all will be lost! The scientists on the U.N. Intergovernmental
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THE CUMULATIVE QUALITY OF CULTURE EXPLAINS HUMAN UNIQUENESS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-12 Cristine Legare
What explains the unique features of human culture? Culture is not uniquely human, but human culture is uniquely cumulative. Cumulative culture is a product of our collective intelligence and is supported by cognitive processes and learning strategies that enable people to acquire, transform, and transmit information and technologies within and across generations. Technological and social innovations
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TRACING DISTINCTIVE HUMAN MORAL EMOTIONS? THE CONTRIBUTION OF A THEOLOGY OF GRATITUDE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-10 Celia Deane-Drummond
Darwin thought that the moral sense was among the most challenging aspects of human life to account for through evolutionary explanations. This article seeks to probe the question about human uniqueness primarily from a theological perspective by focusing in depth on one distinctive moral sentiment, gratitude, particularly in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. It uses that example as a case study about
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HOW CULTURE MADE US UNIQUELY HUMAN Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-10 Joseph Henrich
This article argues that understanding human uniqueness requires recognizing that we are a cultural species whose evolution has been driven by the interaction among genes and culture for over a million years. Here, I review the basic argument, incorporate recent findings, and highlight ongoing efforts to apply this approach to more deeply understand both the universal aspects of our cognition as well
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INTRODUCTION TO SYMPOSIUM ON “JUST HOW SPECIAL ARE HUMANS?” Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-10 Eric Priest, Joseph Henrich, Celia Deane-Drummond, Mary Ann Meyers
We here introduce the Zygon Symposium on “Just How Special Are Humans?” This collection is based on a symposium at Harvard University in 2020 that brought together world leaders on the study of human nature from science, theology, and philosophy. They shared their research and perceptive insights on this key topic of great contemporary interest from quite different disciplines and viewpoints. The present
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HUMAN UNIQUENESS: DEBATES IN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Eric Priest
In both science and theology, there has been a revolution in our understanding of the nature of human uniqueness. As a background to this Symposium on the subject, a summary is here given of the history of Homo sapiens that is being revealed by fossil, archaeological, and genetic evidence. This is followed by a description of some of the distinctive characteristics of humans that have been proposed
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DISTINCTIVELY HUMAN? MEANING-MAKING AND WORLD SHAPING AS CORE PROCESSES OF THE HUMAN NICHE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Agustín Fuentes
Part of the task in studying human evolution is developing a deep understanding of what we share, and do not share, with other life, as a mammal, a primate, a hominin, and as members of the genus Homo. A key aspect of this last facet is gained via the examination of the genus Homo across the Pleistocene. By at least the later Pleistocene members of the genus Homo began to habitually insert shared meaning
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RESPONSIBLE AGENCY: A HUMAN DISTINCTIVE? Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Jennifer A. Herdt
While agent responsibility appears to be one of the clearest examples of a human distinctive, practices of holding responsible are bound up with social expectations and emotional reactions, many of which are shared with other social animals. This essay attends to the ways in which what Peter Strawson first identified as the reactive emotions, including notably anger, resentment, and indignation, are
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THE AIMS OF TYPOLOGIES AND A TYPOLOGY OF METHODS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Adam J. Chin
Typologies like Ian Barbour's have been widely used—and critiqued—in religion-and-science. Several alternatives have been proposed by, for example, John Haught, Willem Drees, Mikael Stenmark, and Shoaib Ahmed Malik. However, there has been a surprising deficit in discussion of what we wish typologies to do in religion and science in the first place. In this article, I provide a general analysis of
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HUMAN UNIQUENESS FROM A BIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 David Reich
This article seeks to provide some genetic perspectives on the question “Just How Special Are Humans—Really?” It begins with an introduction to how genetic variation can provide information about the past. It continues by discussing two ways in which genetic analyses has, on multiple occasions, shown that humans are less unique than we thought we are. We have a cognitive bias to toward thinking we
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EXPERIENCING THE WORLD AS THE EVOLVED IMAGE OF GOD: RELIGION IN THE CONTEXT OF SCIENCE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-01 Jan-Olav Henriksen
Religion must be seen as the result of the learning processes of humanity, as they manifest themselves in human interaction with and experience of reality. Such interaction depends on knowledge that provides the basis for practices of orientation and transformation. Religion as part of human culture provides resources for identifying lasting significance of experience in light of what appears to be
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NATURE MAKES AN ASCENT FROM THE LOWER TO THE HIGHER: GREGORY OF NYSSA ON HUMAN DISTINCTIVENESS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-05-01 John Behr
This essay explores the way in which early Christian writers held an eschatological understanding of what it is to be human, something that is to be attained, through the transformation of death and resurrection, and something that requires our assent. In this context, the article offers a new reading of the late fourth-century work entitled On the Human Image of God (otherwise known in English as
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“THE MYSTERY OF HUMAN UNIQUENESS”: COMMON SENSE, SCIENCE, AND JUDAISM Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Alan Mittleman
Uniqueness implies singularity, incomparability. Nonetheless, as applied to everything within the human lifeworld, including ourselves, uniqueness is relativized. This becomes clear in the tension between “commonsensical” and “scientific” perspectives on the human. Our commonsense approach posits that human beings are unique among animals—unique because of our properties, most especially our consciousness
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FROM ANGELS TO ALIENS: HUMANKIND'S ONGOING ENCOUNTERS WITH, AND EVOLVING INTERPRETATIONS OF, THE GENUINE CELESTIAL UNKNOWN Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Tim Lomas, Brendan Case
Throughout history, people have observed aerial events that appeared extraordinary and anomalous. In earlier eras, these were often interpreted through a lens that invoked special classes of divine beings, such as angels (who, compared with gods, are regarded as more likely to interact with humans). Today, in our ostensibly secular scientific age, there is a tendency to assume such observers were mistaken
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ECOLOGICAL SAINTS: ADOPTING A GREEN GAZE OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SAINT MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-04-09 Libby Osgood
During this time of ecological crisis, spiritual guides are needed to provide inspiration and impel action. In the Roman Catholic tradition, saints act as role models and are associated with particular causes, locations, or professions. Who, then, are the ecological saints, whose witness can inspire hope and action in support of the environment? This article explores that question in two ways. First
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SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE: PROCESSING DIFFERENT INFORMATION OR PROCESSING INFORMATION DIFFERENTLY? Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-04-05 Marius Dorobantu, Fraser Watts
This article introduces the concept of spiritual intelligence in terms of a natural human ability to take a different perspective on reality rather than an extraordinary ability to engage with a different/supernatural reality. From a cognitive perspective, spiritual intelligence entails a re-balancing of the two main modes of human cognition, with a prioritization of the holistic-intuitive mind over
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“THE GOD WITH CLAY”: THE IDEA OF DEEP INCARNATION AND THE INFORMATIONAL UNIVERSE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Niels Henrik Gregersen
This article explores the relations between the idea of deep incarnation and scientific ideas of an informational universe, in which mass, energy, and information belong together. It is argued that the cosmic Christologies developed in the vein of Cappadocian theology (fourth century) and the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure (thirteenth century) can be interpreted as precursors of an informational
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A CO-LIBERATORY FRAMEWORK FOR BIG DATA Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-04-02 Matthew Kuan Johnson, Rachel Siow Robertson
This article provides an account of the ethical issues that arise when digital technologies and online spaces are structured by Big Data algorithms. We show that although the uses of Big Data may be new, traditional theological and ethical categories are still applicable, including “the sins of the fathers” from hamartiology and the scholastic concept of haecceity. Using these resources, we map the
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RESPONSIVE BODIES: ROBOTS, AI, AND THE QUESTION OF HUMAN DISTINCTIVENESS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-04-01 Simon Balle, Ulrik Nissen
In this article, we argue two points in relation to the challenge to human distinctiveness emerging as artificial intelligence systems and humanlike robots simulate various human capabilities. First, that, in the context of theological anthropology, it is advisable to respond to this challenge by turning toward the human body. Second, following this point, we propose the responsive body hypothesis
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DIGITAL THEOLOGY AND A POTENTIAL THEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO A METAPHYSICS OF INFORMATION Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-04-01 Peter M. Phillips
In this article, I offer a background to digital theology and its methodology, exploring especially aspects of transhumanism and metaphysical enquiry. The article moves on to engage with several articles given at the Science and Religion Forum at Birmingham in 2022, especially the Gowland Lecture given by Professor Niels Gregersen and the Peacocke Lecture by Andrew Jackson. Both offer a metaphysical
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QUANTUM THEOLOGY AND “‘WE’ AND ‘THEY’” Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Arthur C. Petersen
Quantum Theology beyond Copenhagen This issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science offers a podium for deep reflection on the state-of-play in “quantum theology”: theological reflection that is related to the physical theory of quantum mechanics. The thematic section has been guest edited by Mark Harris. His opening article—which in its introductory section also refers to all the other articles
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COMPLEX IDENTITY: GENES TO GOD Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Carolyn J. Love
Unraveling the complex notion of “self” and “other” necessitates a layered approach that explores biology, namely genetics; philosophy, namely event phenomenology; and culture, namely religion. This essay examines (1) the latest paradigm shift occurring in the genetic sciences due to the increased knowledge of epigenetic effects on gene expression and how our DNA functions in concert with the cellular
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Announcements Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-03-30
IRAS The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science Purpose—IRAS (www.iras.org) is an independent society of scientists, philosophers, religion scholars, theologians, and others who want to understand the role of religion in our dynamic scientific world. Activities—Each year IRAS organizes a week-long conference. Topics are selected to be relevant to current scientific thinking and to fundamental religious
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THE SCIENCE AND RELIGION FORUM DISCUSS INFORMATION AND REALITY: QUESTIONS FOR RELIGIONS AND SCIENCE Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Finley I. Lawson
The Science and Religion Forum (SRF) promotes discussion on issues at the interface of science and religion. The forum membership is diverse and it holds an annual conference to encourage exploration of issues that arise at the interface of science and religion. This article provides an overview of the hybrid conference that took place at the Woodbrooke Centre in Birmingham in May 2022. The conference
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PEACOCKE PRIZE ESSAY—TOWARDS AN EASTERN ORTHODOX CONTEMPLATION OF EVOLUTION: MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR'S VISION OF THE PHYLOGENETIC LOGOI Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Andrew Jackson
In recent years, several scholars have hinted at a resemblance between Maximus the Confessor's logoi cosmology and evolutionary biology. In this article, I develop these suggestions further and claim that the logoi (divine ideas or wills) do indeed behave in an evolutionary fashion, diverging hierarchically and interactively from the Logos. However, there the similarity ends, for the logoi are also
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THE MACHINE IN THE GHOST: TRANSHUMANISM AND THE ONTOLOGY OF INFORMATION Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Michael Burdett, King-Ho Leung
An ontology of information belies our common intuitions about reality today and animates and governs both explicit scholarly study in philosophy and the sciences as well as the ideologies that are growing out of them. Transhumanism is one such technoscientific ideology that holds to a very specific ontology of information which need not be the only one on offer. This article argues that the transhumanist
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RESCUE AND RECOVERY AS A THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE, AND A KEY TO MORALITY IN EXTRATERRESTRIAL SPECIES Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Margaret Boone Rappaport, Christopher J. Corbally, Riccardo Campa
New theological understanding can emerge with the advancement of scientific knowledge and the use of new concepts, or older concepts in new ways. Here, the authors present a proposal to extend the concept of “rescue and recovery” found in the United Nations Law of the High Seas, off-world and within a broader purview of other intelligent and self-aware species that humans may someday encounter. The
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THE WIZARDS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: HOW CAN TECHNOLOGY SERVE HOPE AND JUSTICE? Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-23
68th Summer Conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science Star Island, NH, USA, Sunday June 25 to Sunday July 2, 2023 Technological wizardry has been pitched against prophecies of environmental catastrophe since at least the mid-twentieth century. Innovate! Create! Only then can everyone win!—Simplify! Change your ways! Or all will be lost! The scientists on the U.N. Intergovernmental
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IDENTITY AND THE BRAIN: THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF OUR SELF Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Andrew B. Newberg
This article reviews the neuroscientific understanding of the self and personal identity, focusing on various elements of inclusivity and exclusivity as well as engaging religious and spiritual perspectives. We will also consider how the identity is comprised of biological, social, and ideological or spiritual aspects, and how they are interconnected. We will consider how the brain helps us to construct
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WHAT MAKES A QUANTUM PHYSICS BELIEF BELIEVABLE? MANY-WORLDS AMONG SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS BEFORE BREAKFAST Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-21 Shaun C. Henson
An extraordinary, if circumscribed, positive shift has occurred since the mid-twentieth century in the perceived status of Hugh Everett III's 1956 theory of the universal wave function of quantum mechanics, now widely called the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI). Everett's starkly new interpretation denied the existence of a separate classical realm, contending that the experimental data can be seen
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THE ENTANGLED TRINITY, QUANTUM BIOLOGY, AND DEEP INCARNATION Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Ernest L. Simmons
By utilizing the concept of quantum decoherence, augmented by the novel theory of quantum Darwinism, to understand the transition from the quantum to the classical worlds, the scaling up of the concept of quantum entanglement2018 to the biological level offers a fascinating metaphor for the presence of the creative spirit in nature and the “flesh” of Incarnation. This in turn provides helpful theological
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THE MANY WORRIES OF MANY WORLDS Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Emily Qureshi-Hurst
Theological engagement with quantum mechanics has been dominated by the Copenhagen interpretation, failing to reflect the fact that philosophers and physicists alike are increasingly moving away from the Copenhagen interpretation in favor of other approaches. One such approach, Hugh Everett's so-called Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI), is being taken increasingly seriously. As the MWI's credibility
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QUANTUM THEOLOGY BEYOND COPENHAGEN: TAKING FUNDAMENTALISM LITERALLY Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Mark Harris
Theological engagement with quantum physics has, to this day, been dominated by the Copenhagen interpretation. However, philosophers and physicists working in the “quantum foundations” field have largely abandoned the Copenhagen view on account of what is widely seen as its troublesome antirealism. Other metaphysical approaches have come to the fore instead, which often take a strongly realist flavor
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IS THERE A DISTINCTIVE QUANTUM THEOLOGY? Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Wilson C. K. Poon, Tom C. B. McLeish
Quantum mechanics (QM) is a favorite area of physics to feature in “science and religion” discussions. We argue that this is at least partly because the arcane results of QM can be deployed to make big theological claims by the linguistic sleight of hand of “register switching”—sliding imperceptibly from technical into everyday language using the same vocabulary. We clarify the discussion by deploying
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INTERPRETATION NEUTRALITY FOR QUANTUM THEOLOGY Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Elise Crull
Within contemporary scientific and science-adjacent communities, it is generally accepted that quantum physics is our best theory. For this reason, it is understandable—and laudable—that scholars interested in questions at the intersection of science and theology wish to meaningfully engage with this physics. Recent work in foundations of physics has, however, importantly altered the landscape of quantum
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NATURALISM AND THE CATEGORIES “SCIENCE” AND “RELIGION”: A RESPONSE TO JOSH REEVES Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-02-02 Peter Harrison
This article is a response to Josh Reeve's “A Defense of Science and Religion.” I begin with the disclaimer that this was not solely my project but a joint enterprise. A common commitment of participants was to make the disciplines of history and theology central to the discussion and explore what new possibilities follows for the field of science and religion. I then address Reeves's two central concerns:
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OBJECT-ORIENTED ONTOLOGY AND THE OTHER OF WE IN ANTHROPOCENTRIC POSTHUMANISM Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2023-01-04 Yogi Hale Hendlin
The object-oriented ontology group of philosophies, and certain strands of posthumanism, overlook important ethical and biological differences, which make a difference. These allied intellectual movements, which have at times found broad popular appeal, attempt to weird life as a rebellion to the forced melting of lifeforms through the artefacts of capitalist realism. They truck, however, in a recursive
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A DEFENSE OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: REFLECTIONS ON PETER HARRISON'S “AFTER SCIENCE AND RELIGION” PROJECT Zygon (IF 0.484) Pub Date : 2022-12-21 Josh A. Reeves
Recent scholars have called into question the categories “science” and “religion” because they bring metaphysical and theological assumptions that theologians should find problematic. The critique of the categories “science” and “religion” has above all been associated with Peter Harrison and his influential argument in The Territories of Science and Religion (2015). This article evaluates the philosophical