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Faraday Film & Faculty Panel on Science & Faith
Wednesday, September 28 @ 4:00 p.m., Woodward Room 5
Faculty Panelists
Victor Ling, Assistant Dean of Cancer Research at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Medicine, and Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Awarded the Order of Canada for his work.
Dennis Venema, Associate Professor and Chair of Biology, Trinity Western University
Marvin McDonald, Head of Counselling Psychology, Trinity Western University
This high quality Faraday film called Test of Faith involves thoughtful responses to a number of probing questions by highly qualified experts from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, plus Stanford and the NIH. Three of these professors of science have been visiting scholars at UBC through GFCF. The viewing of the film will be followed by a lively Q & A session with a distinguished UBC-TWU panel.
Experts in the Film on Frontiers of Genetics & Neuroscience
Sir John Polkinghorne, former top Mathematical Physicist, former President of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and a world authority on the Science and Religion Discourse
Bill Newsome, Neurobiologist, Stanford University School of Medicine
John Bryant, Professor Emeritus of Cell and Molecular Biology, Exeter University
Alasdair Coles, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Neuroimmunology, Cambridge University & Curate St. Andrew’s Church, Cambridge, UK
Francis Collins, Director of the National Institute of Health, USA (lead the government section of mapping the human genome).
Questions Investigated
- Can humans be reduced to their genetic template?
- Can human behaviour and choice be fully explained by neuromechanisms alone?
- What is the delicate relationship between the mind and the brain?
- Are spiritual experiences mere epiphenomena of brain events or neural networks?
- How does human personhood calculate with current knowledge of neuroscience and genetics?
- Can one rightly think of moral decisions or did my neurons (or my genes) make me do it?
- What are the emergent properties of complex neural networks?
- Are people just glorified machines at the end of the day or does science leave room for the discussion of a spiritual dimension of humanness?
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ABSTRACT
We live in a culture defined and sustained by technology. Usually we equate this access to technology with opportunity, affluence, even happiness: "the good life." Borgmann raises some crucial, if disconcerting, questions: If technology liberates us, exactly what kind of liberation does it promise? Do we really feel free? Are we prospering, and by what definition? He looks at the relationship between Christianity and technology by examining some of the "invisible" dangers of a technology-driven lifestyle. Specifically, he points out how devices and consumption have replaced physical things and practices in everyday life. The practices he wants to preserve include citizen-based decision-making, communal celebrations, and a vital connection with the table and the word through daily, shared meals and the discipline of reading. Examining the influences that shape people, this talk will challenge and engage anyone interested in technology, philosophy, or cultural critique. He explores the limitations of conventional ways of thinking about technology and its social context, both liberal democratic ideals and Marxist lines of thought.
BIOGRAPHY
Professor Borgmann, received his PhD from University of Munich, and is presently Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana, where he has taught since 1970. He was born and raised in Freiburg, Germany. At a relatively early age he was drawn to philosophy through his encounter with the lectures and writing of Martin Heidegger. His current research interests are philosophy of society & culture, with a particular interest in technology. Among his publications are Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (University of Chicago Press, 1984), Crossing the Postmodern Divide (University of Chicago Press, 1992), and Holding on to Reality: the Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (University of Chicago Press, 1999). Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology (Brazos, 2003) as well as numerous articles. For Borgmann, philosophy is a way of taking up the questions that reside at the center of everyday life— questions that are urgent but often inarticulate. The philosophy of technology, which has been the principal focus of his work since the mid-1970s, is about bringing to light and calling into question the technological shape and character of everyday life.
Wednesday, February 8, 4:00 pm, UBC, Room TBA
 David N. Livingstone,
Professor of Geography and Intellectual History, Queen’s University Belfast
School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology
Topic: Science-and-Religion: Place, Politics, Poetics
Abstract
Professor Livingstone will begin with some reflections on the current culture wars, those contests over evolution in particular. Among other things, he will look at the recent vilification of Jerry Fodor and the strange rhetoric (poetics!) used in the attacks on him by Dennett, Coyne et al. Then he makes a plea for moving beyond crude conflict or co-operation historiography. Next he will try to “put Darwinism in its place” by looking at how it has been differently constituted in different places. Finally he will do the same sort of thing for key historical debates over evolution and faith, showing that there were usually other cultural issues at stake. See book by Conor Cunningham, Darwin's Pious
Idea. (Eerdmans, 2010).
Biography
With his PhD from Queen’s University, Belfast, Dr. Livingstone works on the History and Geography of scientific culture; his research interest is in society, space and culture. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2002 for his contribution to Geography and History, and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Irish Academy in 2008.
He has contributed widely and been part of several prestigious lecture series (see below), and has been asked to present the Gifford Lectures in 2013.. He is married to Frances and has two children.
• Charles Lyell Lecturer, British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1994-95.
• Hettner Lectures, University of Heidelberg, 2001.
• Progress in Human Geography Lecture, Royal Geographical Society, 2005.
• Appleton Lecture, University of Hull, 2007
• Von Humboldt Lecture, U.C.L.A., 2007
• Gordon Manley Lecture, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2007
Awards and Distinctions:
• Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA)
• Back Award, Royal Geographical Society
• Centenary Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society
• Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE)
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
• Academician, Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences (AcSS)
• President of the Geography Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for 2004-05.
• Vice President (for Research) and Member of Council, Royal Geographical Society, 2007-.
• Member of editorial boards: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Isis, Ecumene, Progress in Human Geography, Journal of Historical Geography, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews.
Some of Livingstone’s Publications:
• Adam's Ancestors: Race, Religion & the Politics of Human Origins (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)
• Geography and Revolution, joint editor with Charles W. J. Withers (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
• Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (University of Chicago Press, 2003)
• “Science, religion and the geography of reading: Sir William Whitla and the editorial staging of Isaac Newton’s writings on biblical prophecy,” British Journal for the History of Science, 36 (2003): 27-42
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• “Race, space and moral climatology: notes toward a genealogy,” Journal of Historical Geography, 28 (2002): 159-180
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• Science, Space and Hermeneutics, The Hettner Lectures 2001 (University of Heidelberg, 2002)
• Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective, edited with D. G. Hart and Mark A. Noll (Oxford University Press, 1999).
• Ulster-American Religion: Moments in the History of a Cultural Connection, with Ronald Wells (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999)
• Geography and Enlightenment, joint editor with Charles W. J. Withers (University of Chicago Press, 1999)
• Human Geography: An Essential Anthology, joint editor with John Agnew and Alistair Rodgers (Blackwell, 1996)
• The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (Blackwell, 1992)
• Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the Culture of American Science (University of Alabama Press, 1987).
• Darwin's Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought (Scottish Academic Press, 1984).
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