Science and Religion

Wednesdays, 4:10pm, in the Martin Hall and online unless otherwise stated

All welcome. For enquiries, please contact Dr Bethany Sollereder: b.sollereder@ed.ac.uk.

Semester 2: Spring 2025

DateSpeakerTopic
29 JanuaryDr Shoaib Malik

Title: Beyond Angels and Humans: Fakhr al-Dīn Al-Rāzī and the Future of Islamic Theological Anthropology 

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), human evolution, and the search for extraterrestrial life challenge long-standing theological notions of humanity’s uniqueness. Are humans truly the pinnacle of creation, or could beings—biological, artificial, or extraterrestrial—surpass us in knowledge, morality, or spiritual rank? This seminar engages these questions through the lens of Islamic theological anthropology, drawing on the insights of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210), a medieval theologian and philosopher renowned for his significant contributions to Islamic theology (kalām). In his final work, Al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliya min al-ʿIlm al-Ilāhī (The Supreme Pursuits of Divine Knowledge), al-Rāzī explores the medieval debate over the superiority of humans and angels, a central theme in premodern Islamic thought on human nature and purpose. While rooted in a classical context, al-Rāzī’s framework offers valuable tools for advancing conversations on theological anthropology in light of modern ontologies—such as AI, evolutionary biology, and extraterrestrial possibilities—not considered in his time. This study uses al-Rāzī’s insights as a springboard to interrogate the evolving boundaries of human uniqueness and explore the implications of emerging scientific realities for Islamic theology.

12 FebruaryProfessor Arthur Petersen (University College London)

Title: Worldviews, Uncertainty and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 

Worldviews and religion are crucial elements in addressing climate change. This can be demonstrated for environmental policy analysis and sustainability assessment. The seminar will describe the intergovernmental negotiation process on knowledge about climate change, as organised through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will be shown how the IPCC deals with uncertainty in the knowledge base, especially concerning the future. Particular attention will be paid to the IPCC features religious, scientific and political dimensions in the confrontation that plays out in this organisation between Western science and non-modern cultures and worldviews. Bruno Latour’s philosophy will be used to shine a relevant light on the complexity of the various nature/culture constellations that play a role in this confrontation. The seminar will feature examples of modern planning for dealing with climate change in the context of non-modern cultures.

5 March, 5:15pm

Playfair Library, Old College and Online

 

Professor Hannah Holtschneider's Inaugural Lecture

Title: Eavesdropping on other people’s conversations: German Jewish refugee family correspondence in Holocaust historiography 

What tools do we have to understand how individuals negotiate the social, political and economic situations they find themselves in? How can we understand their circumstances, their responses, and the complexity of an individual’s multiple identities? In the last two decades, Holocaust historiography has embraced a range of methods developed by social and cultural historians in order to meet these challenges. This work has extended the focus of scholarly analysis towards specific places, particular population groups, and towards a broad range of sources, so that we may explore the relationships between an individual’s choices and the challenges they encountered. In this body of literature, scholars are now drawing an ever more nuanced and diverse picture of how individuals and collectives experienced persecution, war and mass violence. This historiographical turn towards the study of experience and agency is currently leading to a new, more serious engagement with personal documents and ephemera. These shifts stem from a growing recognition that by changing our perspective on the evidence we have, we can gain a better appreciation of the self-understandings, worldviews, and decision-making horizons of inhabitants of the past. In this lecture, I explore the lives of individual refugees through their personal correspondence to cast a better light on the ways in which they interpreted and experienced the historical circumstances that disrupted their lives and brought about their displacement or their murder. Listening to the conversations of one family, as partially preserved in letters exchanged in the 1930s and 1940s (and beyond), foregrounds questions about the experience of the past and permits us to interpret changing family relationships, identities, social-political, economic and cultural choices as they were negotiated and reflected upon. Such a close-up engagement with personal documents yields a richer, more complex picture of how large historical events played out in the social contexts of the lives of individual refugees.

Register

19 MarchDr John Perry, St Andrews UniversityTitle: Ethics after Aphasia: The Science and Theology of Linguistic Disability
2 AprilProfessor David Webster, University of Liverpool

Title: Does Abhidhamma-based Buddhist philosophy of mind see suffering as an irreducible mental event and why does this matter for AI? 

Followed by Drinks Reception

Semester 1: Autumn 2024

DateSpeakerTopic

Week 1

Tuesday 19 September

Professor Jeremy Carrette

Cross-School Research Event

Title: Religion and Identity – Panel Presentation

Register for online participation at: edin.ac/3Ayg7Qn

Week 2

23 September

Professor Loren Wilkinson, Regent College

Title: Book Launch: Circles and the Cross: Cosmos, Consciousness, Christ, and the Human Place in Creation

Followed by Drinks Reception

Week 3 

Attend another group's research seminar

https://divinity.ed.ac.uk/news-events/school-seminars

Week 4

7 October

Revd Dr Lucas Mix, ECLASTitle: Scientific Soteriology: Evolution and Rockets in Escape Narratives
Week 5 

Attend another group's research seminar

https://divinity.ed.ac.uk/news-events/school-seminars

Week 6

21 October

Dr Mohammed Gamal Abdelnour, University of YorkTitle: Book launch: Science and Civilization: Between Islam and Christianity
Week 7 

Attend another group's research seminar

https://divinity.ed.ac.uk/news-events/school-seminars

Week 8

November 4 

Dr Chelle Stearns, The Seattle School of Theology & PsychologyTitle: Music and the Brain, The Holy Spirit, and the Processing of Trauma

Week 9

November 11

Josie Gwin, Doctoral Candidate, University of Edinburgh

Title: Community Resilience: What Role does Faith and Spirituality Play?

Followed by Drinks Reception

Week 10 

Attend another group's research seminar

https://divinity.ed.ac.uk/news-events/school-seminars