Technology, Culture, and Virtue
REGISTER HERE Open to current students and faculty. This event is in-person only. All registrants will receive copies of the selected readings via Dropbox and PDFs which should be read in advance of the class. An optional wine and cheese reception will follow. Technology is part of our everyday lives. Despite its everydayness, there remains something mysterious about it. In this master class, we will demystify technology, engaging it as a product of culture that both challenges and enhances culture. Readings: Martin Heidegger – “The Question Concerning Technology” Levis, Duganzic, and Scheirer – “Organoids are Multi-Cellular Engineered Living Systems: What…
The Human Person and Biotechnology: Artificial Intelligence and its Limitations
REGISTER HERE for IN PERSON REGISTER HERE for ONLINE Artificial intelligence is increasingly interfacing with all aspects of human life, raising particular ethical challenges in medicine and biotechnology. The ethical challenges of AI must be grounded in the limits of the discipline it is applied to. Medicine has seen amazing advances in the last few decades, but these advances also raise questions about limits, especially in living patients. We must ask: What are the limits of medicine and biotech – and how does this translate into limits on the use of AI in these fields? This public panel will serve…
Magis Lecture | Faith, Belief, and Knowledge
“Believers are also thinkers: in believing, they think and in thinking, they believe.” So said St. Augustine of Hippo, in contrast to our typical assumption that belief and knowledge are opposites, with belief associated with religious faith and knowledge with scientific thinking. In actual practice, though, there are many of instances of belief in science and many claims of knowledge in religion. In this talk Fr. Adam Hincks, S.J. (University of Toronto) will present knowledge and belief as interlocking rational activities and explore how they relate to religious faith.
Non-Credit Course | The Bible and the Big Bang
What is the relation between the Bible and the Big Bang? To many, it seems natural to connect the physical beginning of the cosmos with the Abrahamic doctrine of creation, but this association of science with philosophy and theology bears critical investigation. In this course, we will take a deep dive into both the science of the early Universe and the Biblically-rooted doctrine of creation from nothing, and explore what, if any, is the relation between them. Along the way we will engage with thinkers spanning from Philo of Alexandria in the first century to Stephen Hawking in the twenty-first century, and will explore topics such as the beginning of time, something coming from ‘nothing’, fine-tuning and design.
Non-Credit Course | Science and Religion: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives
REGISTER HERE This event is in-person only. Intended for university students, faculty, and staff. Others interested in attending please contact dstrobach@lumenchristi.org. This event is made possible through the support of ‘In Lumine: Supporting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide’ (Grant #62372) from the John Templeton Foundation. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject. It is often assumed, on the basis of contemporary controversies, that science and religion have always been in an oppositional relationship, and that conflict between them is inevitable. In this course we…
Thomas Aquinas, Scientist: How Might He Approach 21st Century Biotechnology
Despite flaws in his biology, Aquinas’ writings offer us guidance in our approach to 21st century biotechnology. Aquinas’ notion of a Just War provides us with a way for thinking about biotechnology, since both use morally ambiguous means to address evils in an imperfect world. A comparison of these two disparate issues can yield criteria for an ethics of biotechnology.
“The Grand Design: An Augustinian Reply to Stephen Hawking”
Cosponsored by The Theology Workshop Stephen Hawking has recently declared that philosophy is dead, and that science is the only reasonable method for securing knowledge. In response, Professor Cavadini will argue that philosophy is rooted in man’s wonder about the universe, and that scientific inquiry is only one aspect of true wisdom and should not be privileged over others.
A Conversation on Faith and Science, with Mark Wyman and Minyoung Wyman
This event is intended for college students. Dinner will be served. Contemporary culture is built in part on a mythology of the natural sciences. This mythology characterizes Christianity, particularly Catholicism, as a reactionary force clinging to a pre-modern worldview that brave men and women have replaced with a modern, scientific one. Two postdoctoral researchers at the University of Chicago’s theoretical cosmologist and an evolutionary biologist will explain why this myth is false. Each will give a brief account of their own experience as scientists and reflect on the compatibility of faith and modern science. Ample time for questions and discussion will…
The Modern Scientist as a Palimpsest of Three Fausts
Stephen Meredith (University of Chicago) cosponsored by the Theology & Religious Ethics Workshop A palimpsest is a manuscript or painting produced over a previous work. This lecture will treat “the modern scientist” as a palimpsest of three versions of the Faust story: The Faust Chapbook by an unknown author (1586), Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808/1832), and the late masterpiece by Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus (1947). While none of these Fausts is purely a scientist (someone who primarily knows or seeks knowledge), the same can be said for those we consider to be scientists today, who deal in various mixtures of science and…
Theology and Evolutionary Naturalism: How Much Can Biology Explain?
Thursday, February 19, 4:30pm BSLC 001, 924 East 57th Street John Haught (Georgetown University) REGISTER HERE Many scientists and philosophers claim that a Darwinian understanding of life has rendered the idea of God unnecessary. Descent, diversity, design, death, suffering, sex, intelligence, morality, and religion—features of life that had previously been understood theologically—now seem open to a purely natural explanation. This lecture will consider whether the claims of evolutionary naturalists are coherent and whether a theological understanding of life can still be reconciled with biological accounts. cosponsored by the Program on Medicine and Religion and the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop