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Wolfgang Achtner, studied theology in Mainz, Göttingen and Heidelberg and mathematics by correspondence at the FernUniversitaet Hagen. He spent a year in FEST in Heidelberg (1986), a think tank of the Protestant Church in Germany His doctoral dissertation (University of Heidelberg, 1991) was about a reframed natural theology in the work of T.F. Torrance. Together with Stefan Kunz (theologian) and Thomas Walter (physicist, IT) he wrote an interdisciplinary book on time (WBG 1998, Dimensions of Time Eerdmanns/USA 2002) In 1999-2000 he spent a sabbatical at the Princeton Theological Seminary, exploring the history of the concept of “law of nature” and its role in the science theology dialogue. His recent second thesis (Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 2006) explores the shifts in theology, philosophy, epistemology and anthropology in late medieval time that paved the way to the emergence of modern science (during research sabbatical 2003-2006 at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University). He has published numerous articles about the science-theology dialogue and founded five working groups on science-religion in Germany. Since 2000 he is campus minister at the University of Giessen and instructor (Privatdozent, PD) at this University and at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt on science-theology and lectures about ethics in economics at the University of Applied Sciences in Giessen-Friedberg. He is the author of numerous articles and the recipient of awards, the most recent being for a research project entitled “Towards Techno-Sapiens: The Human Person and Modern Technology.” His current research includes the impact of modern AI research, neuroscience, mind-machine interface, implants and robotics on traditional theological views of the human person; time in science, philosophy, theology; infinity in mathematics, philosophy and theology; St. Augustine; the concept of the “free will” in theology, philosophy and neuroscience; and the evolutionary theory of religion.
Musa Akrami is head of the department of philosophy of science at Islamic Azad University in Iran. He undertook undergraduate and graduate studies in physics, before completing a doctorate in philosophy. Akrami served as editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Physics and is vice-chancellor of the Great Persian Encyclopedia Foundation. His research interests include metaphysics, philosophical foundations of physics and cosmology, Islamic philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, ethics, political philosophy, and the history of science. Akrami has written or translated some 400 articles and books on a variety of topics. He has written the Dictionary of Cosmology and has contributed to Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, Robert Goodin and Philip Pettit, editors, and to Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward Craig, general editor. He has also helped in the translation of a number of reference books including the Encyclopedia of Democracy (S. Lipset) and History of Art (Frederick Hart).
Nancy Ellen Abrams received her B.A. in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Chicago, her J.D. from the University of Michigan, and a diploma in international law from the Escuela Libre de Derecho in Mexico City. She was a Fulbright Scholar and a Woodrow Wilson Designate. She is a writer whose work has appeared in journals, newspapers, and magazines, such as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Environment, California Lawyer, and Science and Global Security. She has a long-term interest in the role of science in shaping a new politics and has worked in this area for a European environmental think tank in Rome, the Ford Foundation, and the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, where she co-invented (with R. Stephen Berry of the National Academy of Sciences) a novel procedure called “Scientific Mediation.” This procedure permits government agencies to make intelligent policy decisions in areas where the relevant science is crucial yet controversial. Scientific Mediation aims not to resolve scientific disputes, which can only be done by scientific research, but to make the essence of the disputed issue transparent to the non-scientists making the actual policy decision. She has consulted on its use for the state governments of California and Wisconsin, private corporations and organizations, and the government of Sweden, where Scientific Mediation has become standard procedure in the Ministry of Industry. With Joel R. Primack, she has co-authored a numerous articles on science policy, space policy, and the possible cultural implications of modern cosmology. Abrams is also a songwriter who has performed at conferences, concerts, and events in eighteen countries, released three albums, and been featured on National Public Radio, television and in books by Dennis Overbye and Paul Wellstone. Abrams has been intrigued by science’s border with myth since studying with Mircea Eliade at the University of Chicago. She works as a scholar to put the discoveries of modern cosmology into a cultural context and as a writer and artist to communicate their possible meanings at a deeper level. “Cosmology and Culture,” the course she and Primack developed and have co-taught since 1996 at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has received awards from both the Templeton Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. Abrams and Primack’s co-written articles have appeared in books and magazines including Science, Astronomy Now, Philosophy in Science, Science & Spirit, Spirituality and Health, and Tikkun. Over the past ten years, they have given many invited talks on themes from The View from the Center of the Universe not only at universities but also at planetariums, cultural centers, conferences, churches, and temples including the State of the World Forum, the Senate Chamber of France, North American Montessori Teachers Association, and the Cornelia Street Café in New York.
Ian G Barbour is Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor Emeritus of Science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. His seminal work Issues in Science and Religion has been credited with creating the contemporary field of science and religion. He is the author of a number of other books including Myths, Models, and Paradigms (nominated for a National Book Award); When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners?; and Nature, Human Nature, and God. His two books based on his 1989-1991 Gifford Lectures Religion in an Age of Science and Ethics in an Age of Technology were recognized with the AAR Annual Book Award. Dr. Barbour was awarded the 1999 Templeton Prize.
Stephen Barr received his undergraduate degree from Columbia and his graduate degrees from Princeton. After post-doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, he became a research assistant professor at the University of Washington (1980-85) and associate physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory (1985-87). He joined the Bartol Research Institute of the University of Delaware in 1987. His research has spanned many areas of theoretical particle physics, but with special emphasis on grand unified theories, theories of CP violation, the problem of the origin of quark and lepton masses, theories with extra space-time dimensions (such as Kaluza-Klein and superstring theories), and the interface between particle physics and cosmology. He has made significant contributions in all these areas, perhaps the most notable being the development of classes of models that solve the important "strong CP problem" (the problem of why the strong interactions unlike the weak are symmetric under CP), the development of the idea that the pattern of quark and lepton masses is due to effects at the unification scale, the co-discovery of the important "flipped SU(5)" grand unification scheme, work on theories of baryogenesis (the origin of matter at the time of the big bang), the discovery of large contributions to the electric and magnetic dipole moments of elementary particles in theories with an extended Higgs structure, contributions to the development of realistic SO(10) grand unified models, and a mechanism for explaining the large mixing observed in atmospheric data between muon and tau neutrinos. He is the author of many papers and is on the editorial board of FIRST THINGS.
Dennis Cheek is Vice President for Education at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, MO. His work focuses on science, mathematics, technology and engineering education among the 34 school districts and 20 colleges and universities of the Kansas City Metro area. The foundation also works nationally in the area of entrepreneurship research and education. Dennis has a diverse background including serving as a classroom teacher of science and social studies at middle school and high school levels, science department chair, district curriculum developer, superintendent of schools, and senior administrator in the state education departments of NY and RI. He has also served as a pastor, prison chaplain, and auxiliary chaplain for the U.S. Air Force. Dennis is a former Vice President of the John Templeton Foundation and has served as a senior consultant to Science Applications International Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation, and other large corporations. He has served as an adjunct faculty member at seven college and universities, most recently in the graduate programs in science education at Pennsylvania State University and in the graduate program in theology at Continental Theological Seminary in Belgium. Dr. Cheek is Editor of the Journal of Technology Studies and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal for Technology and Design Education and Odyssey, a science magazine for young adolescents. He has authored, edited, or contributed to over 600 publications and is a founding member of the Steering Group of the international Campbell Collaboration which produces and maintains systematic reviews of the effects of interventions in education, crime and justice, and social welfare. He was a member of the 2004 Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award and has served on numerous review and advisory boards for federal and state agencies, international organizations, foundations, and nonprofits. He has bachelor degrees in history and biology, a master’s degree in history, Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction/science education from Pennsylvania State University and is preparing final revisions to his Ph.D. thesis in theology at the University of Durham, England.
Roy Clouser is professor of philosophy and religion (Emeritus) at the College of New Jersey. He holds an BA from Gordon College, a B.D. from Reformed Episcopal Seminary, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Along the way to the Ph.D. he studied with Paul Tillich at Harvard Graduate School and with Herman Dooyeweerd at the Free University of Amsterdam. In 1997 he won one of the Templeton Awards for his course in science and religion. He is the author of The Myth of Religious Neutrality (University of Notre Dame Press, revised 2005), Knowing with the Heart (IVP, 1999), and numerous articles.
Eamonn Conway heads the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and is Joint Director, Centre for Culture, Technology and Values at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. A native of Galway, is a priest of the Tuam diocese. Rev. Dr. Conway has a BA in philosophy and sociology (NUI Maynooth) and has studied theology at Maynooth Pontifical University and at Eberhard-Karls University in Tubingen, Germany. He taught at All Hallows' College in Dublin for seven years, and is Visiting Professor at the Graduate Theological Foundation, Indiana (USA).
George F. R. Ellisis professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town. After completing his Ph.D. at Cambridge University with Dennis Sciama as supervisor, he lectured at Cambridge and has been visiting Professor at Texas University, the University of Chicago, Hamburg University, Boston University, the University of Alberta, and Queen Mary College (London University). He has written many papers on relativity theory and cosmology, among them The Large Scale Structure of Space Time co-authored with Stephen Hawking (Cambridge University Press, 1973); Before the Beginning: Cosmology Explained (Merion Boyars, 1993); Is the Universe Open or Closed? The Density of Matter in the Universe with Peter Coles (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Dynamical Systems in Cosmology with John Wainwright. He has also written on science policy and developmental issues, science education, and science and religion issues. He is co-author with Nancey Murphy of On the Moral Nature of the Universe (Fortress Press, 1996) and editor of The Far-flung Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective (Templeton Foundation Press, 2002). He is past president of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation and of the Royal Society of South Africa and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. Among the prizes and honorary degrees he has received are the Claude Harris Leon Foundation Achievement Award, the Gold Medal of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Star of South Africa Medal, which was presented to him in 1999 by President Nelson Mandela. He received the 2004 Templeton Prize.
Warren M. Eshbach, a native of Pottstown, PA, received degrees from Gettysburg College (B.S.), Lutheran Theological Seminary Gettysburg (M. Div.) and McCormick Theological Seminary (D. Min.). An ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren, he served as District Executive of the Southern Pennsylvania District, pastored congregations in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and was the Director of Pastoral Care at The Brethren Home Community in New Oxford, PA. Most recently, Dr. Eshbach has served as Dean of the Susquehanna Valley Ministry Center and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Lutheran Theological Seminary Gettysburg, teaching in the area of congregational studies. He and his wife, Theresa, reside in the Dover Area School District and are charter members of Dover CARES, a citizens’ group monitoring educational strategies in the community.
Ursula Goodenough is a leading cell biologist and professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis. She was educated at Radcliffe and Barnard Colleges (B.A. Zoology, 1963), Columbia University (M.A. Zoology, 1965) and Harvard University (Ph.D. Biology, 1969), did 2 years of postdoctoral at Harvard, and was assistant and associate professor of biology at Harvard from 1971-1978 before moving to Washington University. Her research has focused on the cell biology and (molecular) genetics of the sexual phase of the life cycle of the unicellular eukaryotic green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and, more recently, on the evolution of the genes governing mating-related traits. She is the author numerous papers and two books including her widely adopted textbook Genetics, in its third edition, and has served in numerous capacities in international biomedical arenas. Since 1989, Goodenough has worked with the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) serving continually on its Council and as its president for four years. She has presented papers and seminars on science and religion to numerous audiences, co-chaired four IRAS conferences on Star Island, and serves on the editorial board of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. Her best-selling book The Sacred Depths of Nature (Oxford University Press: 2000, second edition) has resulted in her taking this concern to dozens of college campuses in this country, participating in television productions including PBS, as well as NPR radio broadcasting.
William Grassie is founder and executive director,Metanexus Institute. Grassie also serves as executive editor of the Institute's online magazine and discussion forum with over 40,000 weekly page views and over 6000 regular subscribers in 57 different countries. He has taught in a variety of positions at Temple University, Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania. Grassie received his doctorate in religion from Temple University in 1994 and his BA from Middlebury College in 1979. Prior to graduate school, Grassie worked for ten years in religiously-based social service and advocacy organizations in Washington, D.C; Jerusalem, Israel; Berlin, Germany; and Philadelphia, PA. He is the recipient of a number of academic awards and grants from the American Friends Service Committee, the Roothbert Fellowship, and the John Templeton Foundation. Grassie is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
Brenda G. Hackett is the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operations Officer of Metanexus Institute. She is responsible for 1) financial management: setting policy and implementing procedures for efficient and optimal use of organizational resources; budgeting and reporting; 2) human resource management: implementing and maintaining processes for employee retention and development; 3) oversight of operations, including facilities. Before joining Metanexus, Ms. Hackett spent over 20 years in financial and human resource management, primarily in the non-profit sector, with a focus on training, education, and arts organizations. Ms. Hackett’s BBA in Accounting was earned at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She has been actively involved in church and community activities, serving in leadership roles in civic, business, sports and church organizations. With her husband, Paul, she has four children and nine grandchildren.
John F. Haught is Thomas Healey Professor of Theology at Georgetown University. His area of specialization is systematic theology, witha particular interest in issues pertaining to science, cosmology, ecology, and religion. He is the author of Deeper Than Darwin: Evolution and the Question of God (Westview, 2003); Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution (Paulist Press, 2001); God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview Press, 2000); Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (Paulist Press, 1995); The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose (Paulist Press, 1993); Mystery and Promise: A Theology of Revelation (Liturgical Press, 1993); What Is Religion? (Paulist Press, 1990); The Revelation of God in History (Michael Glazier Press, 1988); What Is God? (Paulist Press, 1986); The Cosmic Adventure (Paulist Press, 1984); Nature and Purpose (University Press of America, 1980); Religion and Self-Acceptance (Paulist Press, 1976); and editor of Science and Religion in Search of Cosmic Purpose (Georgetown University Press, 2000) as well as numerous articles and reviews. He lectures often on topics related to religion and science, cosmology, theology, and ecology.
Dr. Sriya Iyer is an Official Fellow, Lecturer and Director of Studies in Economics at St. Catharine’s College at the University of Cambridge, England. She researches and teaches development economics and applied microeconomics. Her main research interests are in microeconomics, economic demography, applied econometrics, and the role of religion and social norms in economic development. She has conducted research on the economics of less developed countries such as India, Brazil and Kenya, and her publications include a book published on Demography and Religion in India (Oxford University Press, 2002). After completing her doctorate in economics at Cambridge University, Dr. Iyer took up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship to research religion, inequality, and demographic behaviour in India. Her recent book is an interdisciplinary work that examines the influence of religion on demographic outcomes integrating microeconomics, econometrics, anthropology, and the study of religions. Since then, Dr. Iyer has published in scholarly journals primarily on the interactions between religion and economic circumstances as they influence education, gender, and labour market outcomes in South Asia. Her most recent work incorporates econometrically the social interactions methodology into empirical studies of ethnicity and economic demography; and her recent theoretical work has encompassed both applied game theory, and the application of portfolio and real options theory to study demography and development issues. Her current work is diverse and ranges from economic theory to the microeconomics of development, religion and social economics. Dr. Iyer’s research aims to encapsulate the richness of interdisciplinary study by incorporating the subtlety of sociological perspectives with the rigour of contemporary economics tools to address real world problems that concern the interactions between religion, social norms, and economic development.
Timur Kuran is Professor of Economics and Law, and King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California. His teaching and research draw on multiple disciplines, including economics, political science, history, and legal studies.
William E. Lesher is President Emeritus of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Currently he chairs the Board of Trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, an international interfaith organization that build harmony and understanding among religious and spiritual communities.
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Roosevelt Group, a leading strategic management and thought leadership company that Malloch co-founded (1994), and has since directed the CEO Learning PartnershipSM for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. He has been a senior fellow of The Aspen Institute, where he previously directed all of its national seminars. He was also president of the World Economic Development Congress sponsored by CNN that focused on “Building the Integrated Global Economy” and has served on the executive board of the World Economic Forum. He held an ambassadorial level position in the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (1989-91); he headed consulting at Wharton-Chase Econometrics; has worked in international capital markets at the investment bank, Salomon Brothers, Inc.; and has served in senior policy positions at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and in the U.S. State Department. He has written five books—the latest are Trade and Development Policy (Praeger, 1989); along with Don Norris, Unleashing the Power of Perpetual Learning, 1998; and The Global Century, 2001 — and numerous journal articles and corporate reports. He has appeared frequently on television. Malloch earned his Ph.D. in International Political Economy from the University of Toronto, where he held the Hart House Open University Fellowship.
Nancey Murphy, Ph.D., Th.D. is professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary. She joined the Fuller faculty in 1989. She is highly sought as a speaker at international conferences on the relationship between theology and science. Murphy also serves on the boards of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at Berkeley, and is a member of the Planning Committee for conferences on science and theology, sponsored by the Vatican Observatory. Also a prolific writer, her book, written with Warren Brown and Newt Malony, Whatever Happened to the Soul? was awarded the 1999 Prize for Outstanding Books in Theology and the Natural Sciences from the Templeton Foundation. Her 1990 book Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning received awards from the Templeton Foundation and the American Academy of Religion. Murphy also serves as a corresponding editor for Christianity Today and is an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren. Her areas of interest and research are theology and science, Anglo-American postmodern philosophy, and divine action.
Meera Nanda is a philosopher of science with a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is the author of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodernism, Science and Hindu Nationalism (Rutgers University Press, 2004), Postmodernism and Religious Fundamentalism: A Scientific Rebuttal to Hindu Science (Navayana, 2003) and Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays (Three Essays, 2002). Last year she received a major fellowship from the John Templeton Foundation to support her research on defining, debating and teaching science in India.
Andrew Newberg, MD is an assistant professor in the Department of Radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania with secondary appointments in the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Religious Studies. Upon graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1993, Dr. Newberg trained in Internal Medicine at the Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia serving as Chief Resident in his final year and subsequently completed a Fellowship in Nuclear Medicine in the Division of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology, at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Board-certified in Internal Medicine, Nuclear Medicine, and Nuclear Cardiology.
Ronald L. Numbers is Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine and a member of the department of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught for three decades. He has written or edited more than two dozen books, including, most recently, Darwinism Comes to America (Harvard University Press, 1998), Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 1999), coedited with John Stenhouse, and When Science and Christianity Meet (University of Chicago Press, 2003), coedited with David Lindberg. For five years (1989-1993) he edited Isis, the flagship journal of the history of science. He is writing a history of science in America (for Basic Books), editing a series of monographs on the history of medicine, science, and religion for the Johns Hopkins University Press, and coediting, with David Lindberg, the eight-volume Cambridge History of Science. A former Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the International Academy of the History of Science. He is a past president of both the History of Science Society and the American Society of Church History. In 2005 he was elected to a four-year term as president of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science/Division of History of Science and Technology.
Nan-Sook Park is Associate Professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. in clinical psychology from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, and her Ph.D. in school psychology from the University of South Carolina-Columbia. Using cross-cultural and developmental perspectives, she is investigating the structures, correlates, and consequences of positive experiences, life satisfaction, and character strengths, and especially their role in promoting positive development and resiliency among youth. Her recent work with subjective well-being with children and adolescents has been recognized by several honors including the 1999 APA Dissertation Research Award. She is currently developing and validating measures of character strengths for youth.
Fr. Rafael Pascual is director of the Science and Faith Diploma Program Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum, Rome. A native of Spain, he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Gregorian University in Rome. His areas of specialization are philosophy of science, philosophy of nature, science and religion, Thomistic studies, metaphysics and epistemology. He is the author of numerous articles on science and religion. He organized the international congress Evolution: a Crossroads of Science, Philosophy and Theology (Rome, April 23-24, 2002). With Fr. Pedro Barrajón, he was a winner of a Science and Religion Course Award from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.
Christopher Peterson is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, where he formerly was the Director of Clinical Training and holds an appointment as the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in honor of his contributions to undergraduate teaching. He received his Ph.D. in social/personality psychology from the University of Colorado-Boulder and completed post-doctoral respecialization in clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a long-standing interest in personality and adaptation and is among the 250 researchers included on the ISI list of the world’s most highly-cited psychologists and psychiatrists over the past 20 years. His most recent project is a consensual classification of the character strengths and virtues that make possible the psychological good life.
Roberto Poli (born in Trento, Italy, 1955) is adjunct professor at the University of Trento. He received his B.A. in sociology at the University of Trento in 1980 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Utrecht in 2001. Poli was visiting scholar at the Departmet of Philosophy of Indiana University, Bloomington (1987); at Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für Österreichische Philosophie, Graz (1988); at the Department of Logic of the Jagiellonian University, Cracow (1990), and at the Department of Mathematics, McGill University, Montréal (1999). He is editor-in-chief of Axiomathes (Springer), a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the study of ontology and cognitive systems, editor of Categories, member of the editorial boards of Dialogikon, Process Thought, Meinong Studies and Western Philosophy Series. Poli is co-founder and member of the board of directors of the Mitteleuropa Foundation (Bolzano), a recently established research centre in ontology and cognitive analysis. His research interests include ontology in both its traditional philosophical understanding and the new, computer-oriented understanding, the theory of values and the so-called Central-European Philosophy – interpreted as a repository of conceptual tools for the advancement of contemporary science. Poli has published four books, edited or co-edited more than 20 special issues of books or journals and has published more than 100 scientific papers. During the past few years, Poli has regularly given courses in general philosophy, applied ethics, and the philosophy of language.
Robert Pollack is professor of biological sciences, lecturer in psychiatry at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion at Columbia University, and adjunct professor of science and religion at Union Theological Seminary. He received the Alexander Hamilton Medal from Columbia University and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship. His Signs of Life: the Language and Meanings of DNA received the Lionel Trilling Award; his second book, The Missing Moment: How the Unconscious Shapes Modern Science, was released by Houghton Mifflin (1999); and The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith: Order, Meaning and Free Will in Modern Science was published by Columbia University Press (2000) as the inaugural volume of a new series on science and religion. He is a member of the Century Association.
Margaret M. Poloma has written extensively about the Pentecostal charismatic movement, with her most recent work focusing on the role charismatic spiritual experiences play in empowering “unlimited love.” The larger worldview of Pentecostal/Charismatic (P/C) Christians and the challenges it faces from modernism has been an underlying theoretical theme of her research endeavors, including studies on the Assemblies of God, the P/C revivals of the 1990s, divine healing, and P/C inner city ministry. A generous research grant from the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love made possible an in-depth study of Blood-n-Fire in Atlanta to explore the relationship between the P/C worldview, use of the P/C “gifts of the Spirit,” empowerment and unlimited love in a faith-based inner-city ministry. Now a professor emerita of sociology at The University of Akron, she taught at the Ohio institution for twenty-five years. She is a graduate of Notre Dame College of Ohio and earned her Ph.D. in sociology at Case Western Reserve University in 1970. Since her retirement, she has served as a visiting professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, Ashland Theological Seminary, Oberlin College, and Vanguard University of Southern California. Poloma has recently received research funding from the Louisville Institute to extend her earlier research on the Assemblies of God and from the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love to study charismatic empowerment. A member of the steering committee of the Christian Sociological Society (CSS) and of the advisory board of the Lewis Wilson Institute for Pentecostal Studies, Dr. Poloma formerly served as newsletter editor of the CSS, a member of the council and secretary of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, a director of the Religious Research Association, and on the executive council of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. She has been the guest editor of a special issue, as well as co-editor of Sociological Focus, an associate editor of the Review of Religious Research, Sociological Analysis, Sociological Inquiry, and the Review of Religious Research, and an advising editor of Spirituality & Health. She is currently an associate editor of Pneuma: The Journal for the Society of Pentecostal Studies and a contributing editor of the Journal of Psychology and Theology. The author of more than sixty articles in scholarly journals and chapters in volumes of edited works, she has authored three books and co-authored or co-edited six others. Presently she is involved as a co-author of a textbook on altruism, a book on a P/C inner-city ministry, and an extensive revision of her earlier work on the Assemblies of God.
Stephen G. Post is Professor in the Department of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine and Senior Research Scholar in the Becket Institute at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University. Dr. Post is the President of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, founded in 2001. He received his Ph.D. in ethics from the University of Chicago Divinity School where he was an elected university fellow, a member of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion, and a preceptor in the Pritzker School of Medicine. Dr. Post is editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 3rd edition (Macmillan Reference, 2004). He is the author of more than 140 articles in peer-reviewed journals representing the sciences, religion, and humanities. These include Science, The International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, The Hasting Center Report, Annals of Internal Medicine, The Journal of Religion, The American Journal of Psychiatry, The Journal of Value Inquiry, The Journal of American Academy of Religion, The Journal of Religious Ethics, and Lancet, among others.
Joel Primack is professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1973 and was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 1970-73. Dr. Primack’s research has mainly been in relativistic quantum field theory and in cosmology and particle astrophysics, a field that he has helped to create. In collaboration with UCSC astronomers George Blumenthal and Sandra Faber and others, he developed the ``Cold Dark Matter'' (CDM) theory, which has helped to set the agenda for theoretical and observational cosmology for two decades. More recently, he has been using the largest supercomputers as well as analytic and semi-analytic techniques to investigate the implications of various hypotheses regarding the identity of the dark matter for the formation and distribution of galaxies. He also works on science and technology policy and on the cultural implications of the ongoing revolution in cosmology. He has developed computer games for teaching relativity and quantum mechanics, and cosmological computer visualizations. Primack was director of the 1986 Theoretical Advanced Study Institute at UCSC, and co-director of the 1995 Enrico Fermi School on Dark Matter at Varenna, Italy. He is P.I. of grants from NSF and NASA, and he and others at UCSC raised funds from NSF in 1997 create the UCSC Scientific Visualization Laboratory and in 2001 to create the UCSC UpsAnd Beowulf Computer Laboratory. In the 1970s, Primack helped to create what is now called the Standard Model of particle physics; for example, in 1972, with Ben Lee and Sam Trieman he did the first calculation of the mass of the charmed quark using renormalizable electroweak theory. Primack's recent research has concentrated on the nature of the dark matter that comprises most of the mass in the universe. He and Heinz Pagels were the first to suggest that the dark matter might be the lightest supersymmetric partner particle. He also investigated the possibility that some of the dark matter might be light neutrinos (hot dark matter). He and his students and other collaborators have analyzed many variants of CDM - especially CDM with less than a critical density of matter and a compensating cosmological constant (CDM) - and confronted the predictions of these models with a wide range of observational data. With his former graduate student Rachel Somerville (now at Space Telescope Science Institute), Primack developed new techniques for semianalytic modeling of galaxy formation. He and his former graduate student Ari Maller (now a postdoc at the University of Massachusetts) are investigating implications of gas clouds at high redshift. Primack, his students, and his former graduate students James Bullock (Hubble Fellow at Harvard 2002-04, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine) and Risa Wechsler (Hubble Fellow at the University of Chicago) have been investigating high-redshift galaxies using the high-resolution simulations of Anatoly Klypin (New Mexico State University) and Andrey Kravtsov (University of Chicago). Another project with Bullock and Somerville involves working out the absorption of high-energy gamma rays as a probe of galaxy formation. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Award in 1999.
Colin Purrington is associate professor of evolutionary biology at Swarthmore College. His research interests are the evolution of resistance to parasitic plants, the use of transgenic manipulation to explore adaptation, and the use of gametophytic selection of mutation purging. He received his B.A. from Reed College and his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Brown University. He has taught at Brown University, Washington University, and the University of Chicago. He has been at Swarthmore since 1997. He is the author of many papers and the recipient of a number of grants and awards.
Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the British Academy, and past president of the American Political Science Association. Raised in a small town in the Midwest and educated at Swarthmore, Oxford, and Yale, he has served as Dean of the Kennedy School of Government. He has written a dozen books, translated into seventeen languages, including the best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and more recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community, a study of promising new forms of social connectedness. He has worked on these themes with both the Clinton and Bush White House and with other political leaders around the world. He founded the Saguaro Seminar, bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners to develop actionable ideas for civic renewal. He is now studying the challenges of building community in an increasingly diverse society.
Varadaraja V. Raman is Metanexus Senior Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Physics and Humanities at Rochester Institute of Technology. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Calcutta before doing his doctoral work on the foundations of quantum mechanics at the University of Paris where he worked under Louis de Broglie. He has taught in a number of institutions, including the Saha Institute for Nuclear Physics in Calcutta, the Université d'Alger in Algiers and the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, He was associated with the UNESCO as an educational expert. Dr. Raman has also devoted several years to the study and elucidation of Hindu culture and religion. He is an associate editor in the eighteen volume Encyclopedia of Hinduism Project. Dr. Raman has authored scores of papers on the historical, social, and philosophical aspects of physics/science, as well as on India's heritage, and has authored eight books including Scientific Perspectives, Glimpses of Ancient Science and Scientists, Nuggets from the Gita, and Varieties of Science History. Dr. Raman serves on the board of the Metanexus Institute and is a regular contributor to its online magazine.
Antonio Russo is full professor and Dean of Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, at the University of Trieste. He holds advanced degrees in both theology and philosophy, and has been awarded numerous research grants at leading universities in Italy and Germany. Since 1989, he has been a member of the scientific board of the Foundation Ugo Spirito, and has organized several international academic conferences. Russo is also author or editor of 10 books and more then 180 essays, including Positivismo e idealismo in Ugo Spirito (Foreword by A. Rigobello e C. Fabro: Roma, Fondazione U. Spirito, 1990); Henri de Lubac: Teologia e dogma nella storia. L'influsso di Blondel (Foreword by W. Kasper; Roma, Ed. Studium, 1990); Henri de Lubac (Milano, Edizioni S. Paolo, 1994; French translation: Editions Brepols, Paris, 1997); Ugo Spirito: dal positivismo all'antiscienza (Milano, Guerini e Associati, 1999); and La Scuola cattolica di Franz Brentano: Heinrich Suso Denifle, (Trieste, EUT 2003, with unpublished correspondence of F. Brentano and H. Denifle).
Norbert M. Samuelson is the Harold and Jean Grossman Chair of Jewish Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. He is an internationally renowned scholar of Jewish philosophy, who is the author of over 200 articles, and the co-editor of three collected volumes of essays. He is the founder and secretary of the Academy of Jewish Philosophy and the secretary of the American Theological Society. Prior to assuming the newly-established Chair of Jewish Studies, Prof. Samuelson was a Professor of Religion for twenty three years at Temple University and for two years at the University of Virginia. He launched his academic career after serving as a Hillel Rabbi in Indiana University and Princeton University. Prof. Samuelson holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Indiana University (1970), Rabbinic Ordination from the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (1962), and a B.A. from Northwestern University (1957). Prof. Samuelson's scholarship focuses on Jewish philosophy and theology. He has written six books: Gersonides on God's Knowledge (1977), a critical edition and exposition of Abraham ibn Daud's Exalted Faith (1986) An Introduction to Modern Jewish Philosophy (1989), The First Seven Days: A Philosophical Commentary on the Creation of Genesis (1992) and Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation (1994); A Users' Guide to Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption (1999). Prof. Samuelson has been active in the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Jewish Studies, the American Theological Society, and the American Philosophical Association.
Melchor Sánchez de Toca Alameda is undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture. He is also in charge of questions concerning the dialogue between Science and Faith. Father Melchor is a Catholic Priest of the Archdiocese of Toledo, Spain (1993). He is a graduate in philosophy (MA, Complutense University of Madrid, 1989) and in theology (MA, Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome 1996), he obtained his doctorate in theology with a dissertation on the relations between culture and religion in the Catholic Church in the twentieth century. He has specialized in the pastoral and cultural implications of science and has also studied the history and sociology of sciences.
Kimon Sargeant is Vice President of Human Sciences at the John Templeton Foundation. His responsibilities include developing new research initiatives in the areas of religion and spirituality in the human sciences, character education, and the role of free enterprise solutions to alleviating poverty. In addition, Dr. Sargeant is responsible for overseeing the Foundation’s proposal review process in the Human Sciences. He serves as Executive Editor of In Character: A Journal of Everyday Virtues. Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. Sargeant was Director for Research and Programs in the Human Sciences at the Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science, where his responsibilities included conceiving and launching interdisciplinary social science research programs for the John Templeton Foundation. He developed the Spiritual Capital Research Program, a nearly $4 million request-for-proposals competition to spur new research on the economic and social consequences of religion. In addition, he helped launch in partnership with the Atlantic Philanthropies a new $9 million purpose in retirement prize program that will promote a new vision for giving back in retirement. Dr. Sargeant also served as a program officer at The Pew Charitable Trusts, where he was responsible for a $20 million portfolio in the area of Religion and Public Life. He initiated new research programs on religion’s role in the incorporation of new immigrants in major gateway cities and on the role of faith-based organizations in social welfare provision. Dr. Sargeant received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Virginia and his B.A. in history from Yale University. He is the author of Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way, published by Rutgers University Press in 2000. Married with four children, including a recently adopted daughter from China, he enjoys coaching little league and youth soccer.
Jeffrey P. Schloss is a Professor of Biology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Schloss received his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Washington University, and has taught at the University of Michigan, Wheaton College, and Jaguar Creek Tropical Research Center. He has been a Danfort Fellow, an AAAS Mass-Media Fellow in Science Communication, a charter member of the International Society for Science and Religion, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Society for Itinerant Researchers of Fluid Wave Dynamics. He has served on the editorial and advisory boards of numerous journals relating science and religion, including Zygon, The Journal of Theology & Science, Science & Christian Belief, Science & Theology News and Science & Spirit. His twofold interests are in the ecophysiology of poikilohydric regulation and the implications of evolutionary theory for our understanding of ethics and human nature. Dr. Schloss's fieldwork has taken him to a variety of montane, boreal, neotropical, and Pacific Island environments. Recent collaborative projects include Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue (with Stephen Post, et al, 2002, Oxford University Press); Research on Altruism & Love (with Post, et al, 2003, Templeton Foundation Press); Evolution and Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective (with Phillip Clayton, 2004, Eerdmans), and co-directing (with Alvin Plantinga) a faculty institute on Evolutionary Naturalism & Religious Belief at Calvin College.
Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D. is Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research is on positive psychology, learned helplessness, depression, and on optimism and pessimism. His bibliography includes twenty books (translated into twenty languages) and 200 articles on motivation and personality. Among his better-known works are Learned Optimism (Knopf, 1991), What You Can Change & What You Can't (Knopf, 1993), The Optimistic Child (Houghton Mifflin, 1995), Helplessness (Freeman, 1975, 1993) and Abnormal Psychology (Norton, 1982, 1988, 1995, with David Rosenhan. His most recent book is the best-selling, Authentic Happiness (Free Press, 2002). His articles have appeared in both scholarly publications as well as the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Reader's Digest, Redbook, Parents, Fortune, Family Circle, USA Today. Dr. Seligman is the recipient of a number of distinguished awards—the Laurel Award of the American Association for Applied Psychology and Prevention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for Research in Psychopathology, American Psychological Society's William James Fellow Award (for contribution to basic science), and the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award (for the application of psychological knowledge). He holds an honorary Ph.D. from Uppsala, Sweden and Doctor of Humane Letters from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. His research and writing has been broadly supported by a number of institutions including The National Institute of Mental Health (continuously since 1969), the National Institute of Aging, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. His research on preventing depression received the MERIT Award of the National Institute of Mental Health in 1991. He is the network director of the Positive Psychology Network and Scientific Director of the Classification of Strengths and Virtues Project of the Mayerson Foundation. For 14 years, he was the Director of the Clinical Training Program of the Psychology Department of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Seligman was named a "Distinguished Practitioner" by the National Academies of Practice, and in 1995 received the Pennsylvania Psychological Association's award for "Distinguished Contributions to Science and Practice." He is a past-president of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Seligman served as the leading consultant to Consumer Reports for their pioneering article, which documented the effectiveness of long-term psychotherapy. He is scientific director of Foresight, Inc, a testing company, which predicts success in various walks of life. Since 2000 his main mission has been the promotion of the field of Positive Psychology. This discipline includes the study of positive emotion, positive character traits, and positive institutions. As the science behind these becomes more firmly grounded, Dr. Seligman is now turning his attention to training Positive Psychologists, individuals whose practice will make the world a happier place, in a way that parallels clinical psychologists having made the world a less unhappy place.
T. D. Singh is the International Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from the University of California at Irvine in 1974. Dr. Singh is a scientist and spiritualist known for his pioneering efforts in synthesizing science and religion for a deeper understanding of life and the universe. He has contributed papers in the Journal of American Chemical Society and the Journal of Organic Chemistry in the field of fast proton transfer kinetics in model biological systems using stopped flow technique and NMR spectroscopy. He also worked on gas phase reaction mechanisms using Ion Cyclotron Resonance (ICR) spectroscopy. He was trained in Vaishnava Vedanta studies from 1970 to 1977 under Srila Prabhupada and was appointed Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute in 1974. He has organized four International conferences on science and religion - First and Second World Congress for the Synthesis of Science and Religion (1986 & 1997), First International Conference on the Study of Consciousness within Science (1990), and Second International Congress on Life and Its Origin. Collectively thousands of prominent scientists and religious leaders including several Nobel Laureates participated. He has authored and edited several books including What is Matter and What is Life? (1977), Theobiology (1979), Synthesis of Science and Religion: Critical Essays and Dialogues (1987) and Thoughts on Synthesis of Science and Religion (2001).
Dr. John M. Templeton, Jr., serves as president of the John Templeton Foundation, directing all Foundation activities in pursuit of its mission to encourage progress in scientific and religious knowledge and enhancement of character development and free enterprise. He works closely with the Foundation’s staff and international board of advisors of more than 50 leading scholars, scientists, researchers and theologians to develop substantive programs in this endeavor. Dr. Templeton has been actively involved in the Foundation since its inception in 1987. In 1995, he retired from his medical practice to serve full-time as president of the Foundation. His more than 25-year career as a physician and long-held spiritual beliefs provide both the formal science training and the commitment to advance the Foundation’s work. After receiving a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, Dr. Templeton earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in Boston. He completed his internship and residency in surgery at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and subsequently trained in pediatric surgery under Dr. C. Everett Koop at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. After serving two years in the U.S. Navy, he returned to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 1977, where he served on the staff as pediatric surgeon and trauma program director. He also served as professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Templeton was board certified in pediatric surgery and surgical critical care and is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He serves as a board member of the American Trauma Society and as a president of its Pennsylvania division. He is a member of the Cradle of Liberty Council of the Boy Scouts of America, the Board of Trustees of Eastern University, the Session for Proclamation Presbyterian Church, the American Medical Association, the American Pediatric Surgical Association, the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and the Gallup Institute. He has published numerous papers in medical and professional journals, in addition to two books, A Searcher’s Life and Thrift and Generosity: The Joy of Giving.
George E. Vaillant, M.D. is professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the study of adult development. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, George Vaillant did his residency at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and completed his psychoanalytic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, alcoholism and personality disorder. Dr. Vaillant received the Foundations Fund Prize for Research in Psychiatry and the Jelinek Award for research in alcoholism. He has been a Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Over the last 10 years because of his lifelong immersion in the study of adult development – both spiritual and biological – Vaillant has been asked to give many keynote addresses on the relation of spirituality to medicine at the Harvard, Baylor and Duke medical schools, and at The Institute of Religion at Texas Medical Center. Vaillant is on the advisory board of Case Western’s Institute for Research on Unlimited Love and on the Steering Committee of Positive Psychology. From 1998 to 2004 he was a nonalcoholic trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Paul Wason is Director of Science and Religion Programs for the John Templeton Foundation. He works with scientists, theologians, philosophers and ministers on programs that feature the constructive engagement of science and religion, enhancing our spiritual knowledge and our understanding of the cosmos, life and humanity. Dr. Wason is an anthropologist with a specialty in prehistoric archaeology. His research on inequality, social evolution and archaeological theory has been published as The Archaeology of Rank (Cambridge, 1994) and in other works, and he is currently studying the changing relations between religion, status and leadership as evidenced by the stone circles and other monuments of Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. He is also interested in cultural evolution, especially questions of meaning and purpose in the living world and the world of human affairs. Before joining the Foundation, Dr. Wason spent ten years at Bates College as Director of Foundations and Corporations and as a sponsored research administrator, overseeing all aspects of Bates’s interaction with private foundations, corporate-giving programs and government-granting agencies. He also served on the college’s multi-year strategic planning effort, and on L/A Excels, a unique alliance of businesses, nonprofit organizations and the cities of Lewiston and Auburn, Maine, for the purpose of implementing a new community vision. Dr. Wason has also served as secretary/treasurer of the Southern Maine Chapter of Sigma Xi, as treasurer of The Children’s Rainforest, USA, and as faculty advisor for the Bates Christian Fellowship. He is a member of the Social Science Commission and is a Fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bates College where he earned a B.S. in biology. He has engaged in field studies in Peru, Scotland, the Czech Republic, Maine and New York. Dr. Wason is married and has two children with whom he enjoys hiking, camping, kayaking and gardening.
Eric Weislogel is the Director of the Local Societies Initiative, a $5.1 million grant program designed to foster the science and religion dialogue by building dynamic associations of scholars, clergy, and interested laypeople around the globe. Prior to joining the Metanexus Institute, Weislogel was the manager of business process consulting for UEC Technologies, a unit of United States Steel. Before that, he was assistant professor of philosophy at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and he also taught at St. Francis College (PA) and the Pennsylvania State University. He has published a number of philosophical essays and reviews in such journals as Philosophy Today, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy in Review, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Additionally, his articles have appeared in the online journal Metapsychology, as well as in steel and technology industry trade journals. Weislogel’s main philosophical interest consists in the interplay of postmodernism, religion, science, and politics. He and his wife, Kellie Given, who live in Reading, PA, have two children: Elisa, a junior at La Salle University, Philadelphia, and Lucas, a recent graduate of St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA, majoring in physics education.
Amos Yong, Ph.D. is Associate Research Professor of Theology at Regent University School of Divinity in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Born and raised as a PK (“pastor’s kid”) to Assemblies of God ministers in West Malaysia, he moved with his parents to California when he was 10 years old. His graduate education includes degrees in theology, history, and religious studies from Western Evangelical Seminary and Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, and Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts. He has published four books – on theology of religions, theological method, pneumatological theology, and Pentecostal theology – and is presently pursuing research on theology and intellectual disability, and on religion and science. He and his wife, Alma, currently reside with their three children – Aizaiah (15), Alyssa (12), and Annalisa (10) – in Chesapeake, Virginia. For publications, see http://www.regent.edu/acad/schdiv/faculty_staff/faculty/yong.cfm
Moderators Rev. Dr. Rolf Bouma is Director of the Center for Faith & Scholarship in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Pastor for Academic Ministries at the Campus Chapel. He has a J.D. from the University of Michigan, a Th.M. and M.Div. from Calvin Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston University. He teaches envionmental ethics in the University of Michigan's Program in the Environment and at the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies. He also teaches theology and theological ethics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During his time at Boston University, Bouma twice received the First and Grand Prize awards for writing in science and theology through the Boston Theological Institute/Templeton Foundation essay competition. He served as conference coordinator for a science and religion conference at Harvard University sponsored by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences entitled "Truth in Science; Truth in Religion." The Center for Faith & Scholarship is the recipient of an Metanexus LSI grant and has been active in organizing science and religion events on the University of Michigan campus.
Charlene Burns
Mathew Chandrunkunnel
Stuart B. Crampton
Edward B. Davis is Distinguished Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College (Grantham, PA), where he teaches courses on historical and contemporary aspects of Christianity and science. Mainly known for his work on the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, Dr. Davis edited (with Michael Hunter) The Works of Robert Boyle, 14 vols. (London, 1999-2000), and Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature (Cambridge, 1996). He has also written several articles and reviews on the history of religion and science in America, including comments presented at a public forum on evolution and the schools sponsored by the AAAS. BBC radio has featured his research on modern Jonah stories, published in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (December 1991). With support from the National Science Foundation and the John M. Templeton Foundation, he is currently writing a book about the religious beliefs of prominent American scientists in the 1920s. An article based on this project was published by American Scientist in May-June 2005. Dr. Davis attended several days of the Dover intelligent design trial, and his commentary was published in the Winter 2006 edition of Religion in the News. Additional information is found at http://www.messiah.edu/hpages/facstaff/tdavis/home.htm.
Peter Dodson holds three degrees in earth sciences: B.Sc. University of Ottawa ’68; M.Sc. University of Alberta ’70; Ph.D. Yale University ’74. He has spent his entire career as a gross anatomist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Geology. He is also a research associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He has done extensive fieldwork in the western United States and Canada. In 1981 he discovered a new horned dinosaur in Montana, which he described as Avaceratops lammersi in 1986. Since 1995 he has visited China (twice) and India, and has participated in field projects in Madagascar, Egypt and Argentina. Less exotic but also rewarding has been a field site in Montana that has recently yielded a new sauropod dinosaur. He is co-editor of The Dinosauria, University of California Press, 1990, author of The Horned Dinosaurs (Princeton University Press, 1996), and several children’s books, including An Alphabet of Dinosaurs (Scholastic 1995). He taught a Templeton course on science and religion at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, and is president emeritus, and current secretary of Metanexus Institute.
Kathleen Duffy, SSJ received her Ph.D. in Physics from Drexel University. Currently, she is Professor of Physics at Chestnut Hill College. Formerly, she taught physics at Drexel University, Bryn Mawr College, Ateneo de Manila University and University of the Philippines. She has published research in atomic and molecular physics and in chaos theory in journals such as Physics Review Letters, Journal of Chemical Physics and Chemical Physics Letters, as well as Philippine journals and bulletins. She is presently President of the Board of Directors of the METANEXUS Institute for Religion and Science and Cosmos and Creation. Her current research interest is in the synthetic work of Teilhard de Chardin and its relationship to modern developments in science. She has published some of her work in this field in Teilhard Studies. Greg Fields
Anne Foerst Before coming to St. Bonaventure, she has worked as research scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was also affiliated with the Center for the Studies of Values in Public Life of Harvard Divinity School. At the AI-Lab, she served as the theological advisor for the Cog and Kismet Projects, two attempts to develop embodied, autonomous and social robots in analogy to human infants which might learn and develop more mature intelligences. She also initiated and directs "God and Computers", a dialogue project initially between Harvard Divinity School, the Boston Theological Institute and MIT and now to be continued at St. Bonaventure. In this function, she has organized several public lecture series and public conferences on Artificial Intelligence, computer science and concepts on personhood and dignity. She is consultant of projects which explore the connection of new media and religion and especially the Christian churches. She has also presented various keynote addresses on the interaction between religion and science. Her work on dialogue has been covered in numerous print and internet media (New York Times, MS NBC, Boston Globe, Der Spiegel etc.) and she appeared in many radio and television shows (ABC, CNN, WDR, ARD etc.) She has published papers in academic journals on the possibility for mutual enrichment between Artificial Intelligence, the Cognitive Sciences, and Jewish and Christian theologies and anthropologies. She also writes for popular media to bring the question on religion and science to a broader audience. Her research centers mostly on questions of embodiment and social interaction as central elements in human cognition, on questions of personhood and dignity, and on how to bring theology back into the public discourse in secularized, high-tech Western cultures. Her first book God in the Machine: What robots teach us about humanity and God was published by Dudham: a part of the Viking-Penguin group, in Fall 2004 and came out as paperback last Fall. Her research interest are centered about the question on the nature of personhood and humanness; after exploring the biological mechanisms of humans in her book, she is concentrating now on the questions of sexuality as bonding mechanism and conflict resolution to establish objective criteria for personhood.
Martin Fowler, born in 1951 in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dr. Martin Fowler is currently Lecturer in Philosophy at Elon University where he has taught for the past 12 years. His research area includes the ethical issues presented by critical thinking and the scientific and spiritual dimensions of restorative justice, particularly the role of forgiveness. Together with Prof. Ann Cahill, he is presenting a draft of his book Ethical Issues of Critical Thinking at the 16th International Workshop/Conference on Teaching Philosophy. His work on restorative justice and reconciliation stems from years of jail ministry and years of service on the Board of Directors of Evangelicals Concerned, Western Region (http://www.ecwr.org), and recently as a member of Homicide Prayer Partners, which, together with Parents of Murdered Children (http://www.pomc.org), seeks ways to meet the spiritual and healing needs of family members who have lost a loved one to homicide. Healing of trauma and achieving reconciliation between adversaries requires both a clear understanding of the social and psychological principles of how people deal with conflict, but also intuition and openness to honoring an optimal spiritual framework to initiate and sustain healing and reconciliation.
Francis Hart
Peter M. J. Hess
Eric S. Hintz is a Ph.D. candidate in the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, and an intern at the Metanexus Institute. Eric earned his B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1996, then worked in San Francisco as a technology consultant and high school teacher before pursuing his graduate studies in 2003. Eric's historical interests are focused broadly on 19th and 20th century science and technology, with special interests in the history of invention and R&D, and the interplay between science, technology, and religion, particularly Catholicism.
Augustus E. Jordan
Dr. Solomon Katz is director of the Krogman Center for Childhood Growth and Development at the University of Pennsylvania. Katz is also a leading expert on the anthropology of food. His work in the field of science and religion spans 30 years with leadership in the Institute for Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), in which he served as president from 1981 to 1984, and as associate editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. Katz is immediate past president of the Metanexus Institute Board of Directors and also serves on the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and serves on several committees including 'The Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion.' He is editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Food published by Scribners.
P. Douglas Kindschi is currently professor of mathematics and philosophy at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he previously served for over 20 years as the Dean of Science and Mathematics. His interest in the science and religion discussion goes back to his graduate studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School and his leading a campus ministry science-religion program while completing his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin. At Grand Valley State University, he developed the course "Science, Mathematics, and Religion: Ways of Knowing," which received a Templeton Course Award. He founded and has led for the past eight years a faculty discussion reading group in science and religion. He currently directs a Metanexus Local Societies Initiative program which is bringing together an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, and interfaith dialogue for the greater Grand Rapids area.
Anne Kull
Hubert Meisinger studied Protestant Theology in Heidelberg, Germany, and Chicago, USA. His doctoral dissertation (1995) was about the love command in the New Testament and investigations on altruism in sociobiology. For this thesis, he was awarded the first ESSSAT Prize for Studies in Science and Theology in 1996. He spent a year at the Center of Study for Pedagogic of Religion in Kronberg near Frankfurt working on genetics and gen-ethics. After a year as regular minister in a parish, he became Campus Minister at Darmstadt University of Technology in 1998. He has had special teaching posts at the Department of Philosophy in 2002 and 2003 and is Associate Lecturer for Systematic Theology at Darmstadt University of Technology since 2004. He is Vice-President of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT), founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR), member of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) and Associate Director of Studies for Science and Theology at the Protestant Academy Arnoldshain, where he also is founding member of the Metanexus LSI-group “Science – Human Being – Religion”. He participated in the John Templeton Oxford Seminars on Science and Christianity at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, 2003-2005. He also is conductor of a choir and a flute-ensemble. His latest publications include: Wisdom or Knowledge? Science, Theology and Cultural Dynamics, Hubert Meisinger, Willem B. Drees, Zbigniew Liana (ed.), London: T&T Clark, 2006, and Physik, Kosmologie und Spiritualität. Dimensionen des Dialogs zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Religion, Hubert Meisinger, Jan C. Schmidt (ed.), Frankfurt: Lang, 2006 (forthcoming)”. His current research includes Christology; the role of art in science and religion; bio-/nanotechnology and theology; and sociobiology and theology.
Rabbi Craig Miller oversees Inter-religous Affairs and Disaster Spiritual Care for the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC). He also serves as Campus Liaison for the JCRC and New York Board of Rabbis, of which he serves as a Vice President. In the campus capacity, he works as the Jewish Chaplain for Baruch College. Rabbi Miller's interests focus on the relationship between science and humanity's spiritual journey as well as Mussar, the Jewish tradition dealing with wise living. These interests were focused by his experience as a Red Cross chaplain post-9/11. Over the past two years he has begun speaking and teaching Mussar and its relationship to science. Rabbi Miller, a graduate of the New School, was ordained by Beis Medrash L'Torah in Passaic and is pursuing graduate studies in science and philosophy. His greatest joy and learning comes from his wife Judi and three children.
Roman J. Miller
Heinz-Hermann Peitz was born on July 12, 1958 in Essen, Germany. He is married and has two children. Peitz completed his biology and theology studies at the Ruhr-University in Bochum. He was a research assistant to H.J. Pottmeyer, who directed his dissertation on the applicability of Karl Rahner's theology for the science-and-religion dialogue. This work earned him two awards: the Wilhelm Hollenberg Prize (1996) and the Karl Rahner Prize (1998). Since 1993, Peitz is responsible for the dialogue between science and theology at the Roman Catholic Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. He is founder of the award-winning Metanexus Local Societies Initiative Group “forum-grenzfragen” (www.forum-grenzfragen.de <http://www.forum-grenzfragen.de/>). In recognition of his use of the internet for acquiring promising young scholars for the science-and-religion dialogue, he was awarded a "supplemental grant" by the Metanexus Institute in 2003. Together with the LSIs Gießen and Frankfurt, he also received a supplemental grant in 2004 for initiating the Religion and Science Network Germany (RSNG). The recent focus of his interest is the Intelligent-Design debate as a trigger for a revised theology of creation.
John Raines Raines has been chair of the Department of Religion, President of the Interfaith Council on the Holocaust of Philadelphia, and a co-host of the award-winning Sunday morning ABC (Philadelphia) talk show "Dialogue." He serves on the Board of Directors of Temple University Press and of The Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health, and Ethics. He and his wife Bonnie live in the western suburbs of Philadelphia.
Barbara von Schlegell is Visiting Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Haverford College and a Fellow at the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Before her current position at Haverford College, for nine years Dr. von Schlegell was a professor of Islam and Islamic History at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies form the University of California at Berkeley where, under the supervision of Professor Hamid Algar, she completed a dissertation on Ottoman Sufism in the Abra lands. Dr. von Schlegell's publicatitons include Principles of Sufism: Al-Qushairi's Risala (Berkeley, 1995) and Muslim Women throughout the World (Boulder and London, 1997). Her next book is Sufi Women and the Islamic Revival in Damascus. She is also completing an intellectual biography of the Sufi and legist Shaykh 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1143/1731) for Brill Press in Leiden, in which she discusses the reception of Ibn 'Arabi's metaphysics in Early Modern Islam. In addition to teaching Islam, Dr. von Schlegell has lectured widely on Islam in America, Muslim women, and modern global Islam. She acts as an expert witness legal consultant in civil cases involving American Muslims in US courts. Dr. von Schlegell has conducted research in Islamic manuscript collections in Egypt, North Africa, Mecca and Medina, Syria, and Turkey. She embraced Islam in 1997.
S. Brian Stratton His research interests include philosophical theology, the relationship between theology, philosophy and natural science, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and constructive theology. Stratton is currently at work on “Creation and Fall in Light of Science,” a book examining how the understanding of natural science influenced prominent Jewish and Christian interpretations of Genesis One – Three. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Pikeville College and his M.Div. and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Stratton presented “Intelligent Design: Science, Religion, Or ... ?” as the second of three major lectures sponsored by the Rhodes-Memphis Colloquium on Religion and Science at Rhodes College in Tennessee. He recently presented at the Einstein, God and Time Conference at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University.
Jon Taylor is chair of the theology and religion program at the University of Great Falls, Montana, and chair of the LSI Montana Symposium on Religion and Science. He holds a licentiate in theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, and a licentiate in biblical studies from the Pontifical Biblical Institute. He has been active in developing religion and science programs for many years, participating in the Templeton Foundation Toronto Workshops, and developing courses at the interface of science and religion at the University of Great Falls.
Judith A. Toronchuk, B.A. (Rutgers), M.Sc., Ph.D. (McGill), is associate professor of psychology and biology at Trinity Western University in British Columbia where she teaches neuroscience and chairs the research ethics board. At the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich from 1976 -1981, she investigated neural responses to vocalizations in the squirrel monkey. Further research on neural mechanisms of auditory localization was carried out at the University of Munich and the University of British Columbia. She was also a visiting fellow at Regent College, a school of theology associated with the University of British Columbia. Recent research interests include the neural mechanisms and evolution of emotions. She is on the executive board of the Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation and is also chair of the Vancouver Science & Religion Forum, a grantee of the Metanexus Local Societies Initiative.
Dr. Ronald Cole-Turner is the H. Parker Sharp Professor of Theology and Ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, a position that relates theology and ethics to developments in science and technology. He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ and chairs the UCC committee on genetics. He serves on the Advisory Board (Executive Committee) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. Dr. Cole-Turner is the author of The New Genesis: Theology and the Genetic Revolution (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993) and coauthor (with Brent Waters) of Pastoral Genetics: Theology and Care at the Beginning of Life (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1996). He is the editor of Human Cloning: Religious Responses (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997) and has written numerous articles. In 1998, he won one of 12 international awards for "Quality and Excellence in Teaching" from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.
John Witcoski
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