February 2021 Newsletter

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Dear WesleyNexus Colleagues,

This morning I woke to the news that yesterday anti-vaccination protesters caused a one-hour closure at one of the largest COVID-19 vaccination sites, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. On social media, the protesters described their demonstration as the “Scamdemic Protest.” While a variety of motivations for the protest were expressed by the demonstrators, some clearly were motivated by their religious views. One protester held a sign that said “Save Your Soul TURN BACK NOW,” one version of the anti-science sentiment we’ve seen expressed by some people of religious faith again and again during this pandemic that suggests if you have “real faith” you have nothing to fear from COVID-19. Meanwhile, during my church’s ZOOM worship, I calculated that ~20% of those in attendance lifted in prayer a COVID-related death that they had experienced in their circle of concern in the past week.

Sigh.

Clearly, there is much work that remains to be done in helping people reconcile science and faith. It can seem hard to keep going in any work when the path gets steeper and the obstacles more formidable. But, as I was recently reminded by Amanda Gorman in her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” that our nation “isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.” 

Unfinished.

And so our work continues. This month’s newsletter bears witness to the many ways that the vitally important work of science-and-faith continues and invites you to participate. Most especially, I invite you to join us on Monday, February 15th, for our 8th annual Evolution Weekend program, co-hosted this year with the Institute on Religion in and Age of Science.

As always, we are grateful for your support and partnership on this journey.

For love and wonder,

Jennifer, Rick, Maynard, and the rest of the WesleyNexus Board 

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The Rediscovery of Contemplation Through Science

Wednesday, February 3, 2021, 1:00 PM (Eastern), 6:00 PM (GMT)

The International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) is pleased to announce that the 2021 Boyle Lecture will be given by Dr. Tom McLeish, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of York, on the subject of “The Rediscovery of Contemplation Through Science.”

Access to the Boyle Lecture will Premiere through ISSR’s YouTube channel, which can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL3sh49hXBejQ6js7_1TUfQ .

The response this year will be given by The Rt. Revd. & Rt. Hon. The Lord Rowan Williams  of Oystermouth. The lecture and response will be followed at 7:15 pm (- 8:00 pm GMT) by a panel discussion consisting of Professor Tom McLeish, Lord Rowan Williams, Professor Sarah Coakley, Dr Sarah Lane Ritchie, Professor Fraser Watts, and chaired by Professor Michael J Reiss. Registration for this discussion can be accessed here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rediscovering-science-as-contemplation-post-lecture-panel-debate-tickets-135861039025 .

If you have any questions, please email Anthony Nairn at admin@issr.org.uk.

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WesleyNexus Eighth Annual Evolution Weekend Program

Monday, February 15, 2021, 4:30 PM (Eastern) via Zoom

This year WesleyNexus is partnering with the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science to explore three different approaches to naturalism. This free two-part program will involve TWO separate registrations. 

Part I: WesleyNexus Evolution Weekend, February 15, 4:30-5:00 PM (Eastern)

You will be welcomed by members of the WesleyNexus Board for this portion of the program which will be specific to the work of WesleyNexus and our supporters. 

Advance registration required. Go to www.wesnex.org and click on the registration link. You will receive by email a ZOOM ID and access code. 

Part II: Naturalism—as Religion, within Religions, or without Religion?  February 15, 5:00 PM (Eastern) time

Daniel Spiro will talk about the naturalistic philosophy of the 17th century thinker Baruch Spinoza, who has been called both an atheist and a “God-intoxicated man.” Mr. Spiro will then explain how once you make room for the element of transcendence in Spinoza’s philosophy, it can give rise to a conception of God that, while non-traditional, is nonetheless able to provide emotional sustenance. Mr. Spiro will also explain how, armed with a love for Spinoza’s God, he personally has been able to embrace religious faiths, including not only his native Judaism but also Islam and Christianity. The second position, presented by Maynard Moore, will represent a “Christian naturalism,” though not a view that is mainstream. This view is gratefully aware of the richness of life and the resource-fulness of the natural world, but claims that the Christian does not look to nature for either meaningful explanation nor ultimate fulfillment. Further, the claim will be made that this view is compatible with the best thinking that characterizes science, requiring no sacrifice of intellect or a bow to superstition or supernaturalism. Finally, Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad will offer his perspective of Islam as a system of naturalism within religion, in which God has chosen to create a natural universe that is real in a meaningful sense, and is knowable to the human mind to a degree that allows for some meaningful dominion over and stewardship of it and appointed man to be His vicegerent in it. He will summarize Islamic doctrines that support this understanding, concluding that Nature provides external evidence of the Divine reality, as our own souls provide the internal evidence of the self-same reality.

 Again, advance registration is required to participate:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ELB4WgcIS46pYQ5UnldnAw

 As the WesleyNexus segment ends at 5:00 PM Eastern time, you will be set up to click open the main program that will be hosted on the IRAS/ Star Island virtual platform. The transition will be smooth. 

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Humility as Inclusive Empathy: Theory of Mind and Imaginaries of the True Self

Co-hosted by CASIRAS, the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and the Zygon Center

Tuesday, FEBRUARY 19 – CASIRAS and the ZYGON Center Virtual Webinar 5:00 p.m. Eastern

Michael Spezio is associate professor of psychology, neuroscience, and data science at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. He directs the Laboratory for Inquiry into Valuation and Emotion (the LIVE Lab) and his research focuses on emotion as the cognition and consciousness of valuational representations of self and others in decision making. His work has an interactionist perspective that takes relationality as the central category for understanding the human mind and brain, especially in the connection of valuation, empathy, theory of mind, and ethical formation for virtuous autonomy. The LIVE Lab uses mixed methods including long-form interviews, computational linguistics, cognitive computational modeling of choice, fMRI, and EEG.

This free Zoom webinar is hosted by the Center for Advanced Studies in Religion and Science (CASIRAS) and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC). CASIRAS is a supporting organization for the Zygon Center for Religion and Science in partnership with LSTC. It also supports “Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science” in partnership with the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science and the International Society for Science and Religion. Learn more at casiras.org. “CASIRAS is using these webinars to engage further in the advanced science-religion dialogue that is at our core,” said CASIRAS President Gayle Woloschak. “We look forward to Dr. Spezio’s presentation as he has been a provocative thinker in the field and has published his work in the Zygon Journal over the years.”

Register by completing this form to receive the link on February 19. It will also be livestreamed on the LSTC Facebook page.

For more information, contact David Glover, CASIRAS Administrative Assistant at dglover@lstc.edu

https://www.lstc.edu/news-events/news/article-589

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SPINOZA AND CONTEMPORARY JUDAISM

Written by Daniel Spiro

“Contemporary Jews have the privilege of building the synthesis that Spinoza helped to create.  At a minimum, they can take inspiration from his righteousness and intellectual brilliance.  They also can take pride in the fact that he was not only a Jew who thought, but an authentically Jewish thinker.  Spinoza shared the ancient rabbis’ passions for those timeless ethical and metaphysical concerns that are central to Jewish texts.  But what makes him special is that he devoted his heart and mind to charting a path reflecting a courageous and largely compelling response to these concerns.  The fact that he did not always follow the rabbis’ every lead does not make him less Jewish.  In fact, it might make him more so.  For like his ancestor Jacob, the Godwrestler, Spinoza has shown how Judaism can evolve organically.” Read more from Spiro on this topic:

https://studyres.com/doc/7626519/spinoza-and-contemporary-judaism-written-by-daniel-spiro

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John Wesley’s Eschatology as Informed by the Science of his Day

Maynard Moore, President of WesleyNexus, presented a paper at the Wesleyan Theological Society conference on March 15, 2019 at Wesley Theological Seminary.  Moore focuses on John Wesley’s understanding of eschatology and argues that Wesley was not anti-science but instead, “testifies that the physical sciences confirmed his conviction that there is but One God, and strengthened his belief in Scripture; moreover, he attributes science as enriching his personal devotional life, and finally leads him to some of his most important theological convictions.”  This paper includes several specific references to citations in the Royal Society publications to illustrate Wesley’s conviction that all men have the capacity to know God through their “natural endowments” and have the freedom of choice to act ethically based on this knowledge.”  

ABSTRACT:

How did John Wesley think about “things eschatological” in the context of the “science” of his day, and how important was this stance in the cultivation and nourishment of his Methodist societies? This paper will demonstrate an interpretive answer to these questions through an examination of the texts in Wesley’s 5 volume A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation and in the twenty volumes of his The Arminian Magazine, published monthly from January 1778 to 1797. In his introduction to The Arminian, in the inaugural issue, Wesley says that he will argue that God’s mercy extends to “all creation” (not just “The Elect”) and that he will illustrate this fact “partly from Scripture, partly from Reason.” Wesley includes in every issue of the monthly magazine an “extract” from his 5 volume Survey, and other writings from the “natural philosophers” of his day, as well as letters and essays from “a very large block of natural history.” Many of these include representations from learned scholars in the Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society; already in Vol. 1 there is a favorable reference to the work of his older contemporary Sir Isaac Newton. But, of course, Wesley also read the Bible in excruciating detail, so the question arises, “How was his view of the ‘last things’ informed by his knowledge of science? The paper will include several specific references to citations in these Royal Society publications to illustrate Wesley’s conviction that all men have the capacity to know God through their “natural endowments” and have the freedom of choice to act ethically based on this knowledge. 

The full paper can be found here: 

https://wesnex.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/MMoore20190315.pdf

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The Trouble with the New “Islamic Science”: On trying to read the Koran like a science textbook by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad

“Despite their fall from a once-preeminent position in the sciences to the sad state in which they find themselves today, almost no Muslims have turned against science. But among the Muslims there are literalists who, while sincerely believing themselves to be enthusiasts of science, are laying the groundwork for a rejection of science by repeating the mistake of the medieval Christian Church — marrying their interpretation of scripture to current scientific theory. Should the day come that the supporters of the movement to find “scientific miracles” in the Koran finally accept that their claims have been disproven, they and their intellectual heirs are likely either to turn against the Koran, dismissing the sacred text as “unscientific” only because a particular interpretation that was easy for an earlier generation to accept was undermined by later discoveries, or else turn against science, declaring it to be a heresy against an interpretation that they have confused for scripture.” 

www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-trouble-with-the-new-islamic-science

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The Listen First Project

http://www.listenfirstproject.org/

Wishing for a healing in our fractured cities? Same here. The Listen First Project, featured on this page, offers ten practical tips for those of who pledge to listen first. With their emphasis on divine empathy, open and relational theologies propose that even God – even the heart of the universe – is a first listener.

– Jay McDaniel, January 29, 2021

https://www.openhorizons.org/the-listen-first-project-tips-for-compassionate-community.html?fbclid=IwAR1f4o5wmedyG_dmRwOzRkZR77GrIx6sp2Qotkk4NFPdgoztI9wXYXgfdKI

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Our Improbable Existence Is No Evidence for a Multiverse

Experts in probability have spotted a logical flaw in theorists’ reasoning

By Philip Goff

The reason some scientists take seriously the possibility of a multiverse in which the constants vary in different universes is that it seems to explain the fine-tuning. But on closer examination, the inference from fine-tuning to the multiverse proves to be an instance of flawed reasoning. So, what should we make of the fine-tuning? Perhaps there is some other way of explaining it. Or perhaps we just got lucky.  

Philip Goff is a philosopher and consciousness researcher at Durham University, and author of “Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness.” His research focuses on how to integrate consciousness into our scientific worldview. His website is www.philipgoffphilosophy.com and he blogs at https://conscienceandconsciousness.com. 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-improbable-existence-is-no-evidence-for-a-multiverse/?fbclid=IwAR2pEudhUpwy4mHf56ZOP09s8hBhdrsaR84FoY7zXDJKg6SAJ4E7hIia5Lc

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Becoming Christian: An eight week online course (February and March) 

The ancient creed for an open world

Thomas Jay Oord & Dr. Tripp Fuller

Tripp Fuller and I are offering a course that attempts to make sense of the Apostles’ Creed in the 21st century. We’ll go line-by-line and consider the creed from an open and relational theological perspective. 

We’d like you to join us… and the community that will emerge. The course is asynchronous, which means you can participate on your own schedule. Videos/audio will post in February and March. So signup soon.

Normally these courses run $99 or more. But we offer ours on a “pay whatever you can” basis. And if you’d like to help others or use the material for a group study, let us know.

For more information: https://preview.mailerlite.com/k5m0e8/1591737032894320462/t9x8/