Works of Love
agendathemesSpeakersPaper PresentersSponsorsAdvisory BoardPress

Conference Themes

Faith Active in Love: Lives of Compassionate Love
Scientific and theological interpretations of remarkable lives exemplifying love for all humanity.

Unlimited Love and Human Nature: The Problem of Inter-Group Conflict
To what extent is the substrate of human nature receptive to the ideal of love for all humanity? Drawing on evolutionary biology, how does human nature resist this ideal?

The Healing Power of Love: Healthful Compassion
To what extent does the giving of compassionate love and generous service impact the agent with regard to morbidity and mortality? How does this impact the recipient health and therapeutic efficacy?

The Biology of Compassionate Love: Evolutionary, Physiological, and Neurological Correlates
How can compassionate love be understood in the light of neurology, endocrinology, genetics, and immunology?

The Psychology of Compassionate Love
What psychology models help to explain the experience of compassionate love and help to explain its key features?

The Sociological Study of Faith-Based Communities and their Activities in Relation to the Spiritual Ideal of Unlimited Love
Are volunteerism, social capital, and civility enhanced by faith in divine love? Are faith-based organizations more effective than secular ones in enhancing and sustaining "works of love"?

The Emergence and Impact of Helping Behavior in Young People
How does generosity and service emerge in the lives of young people? How does such experience shape the long-term aspects of their lives?

The Science and Spirituality of Family Care-giving
There are hundreds of millions of family caregivers across the globe, tending to loved ones with cognitive, physical, and other disabilities. How do spirituality and the ideal of love help to sustain such caregivers, and those they care for?

Compassionate Love, the Analogical Imagination, and the Science of Creative Genius
Creative geniuses have often attempted to express the ineffable reality of Unlimited Love in music, art, poetry, and prose (including theology). How can we better understand this human desire to express the ideal of pure love?

Spiritual Transformation: Love and the Fruits of the Spirit
What is the relationship between positive spiritual transformation and Unlimited Love? How is the perception of such love captured in the experience of spiritual transformation?

Science, Religion, and the Metaphysics of Love
People of all great religious traditions view Unlimited Love as a core aspect of the divine. Is there a scientific basis for this perennial assumption? Can it be clarified in the light of the sciences?


Sponsored by Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science
and the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love

[Metanexus Institute Logo]