​IRAS Special Session at AAAS: February 13, 2020


Will Modern Civilization be the Death of Us? Reflections on the Earth's Future
A new way of envisioning tomorrow will be offered. When on a rugged landscape, complexity science teaches us to explore every possibility for which we have resources. In 2020, we find ourselves on such a landscape. It will not soon get smoother. Today, the dominant response of our modern cultures is still yesterday’s response — we commit ever more resources to solving the problems we can now see by developing STEM in conventional ways. In effect, we moderns have come to believe that the core work of the 21st century is to make modernity globally sustainable. Overwhelmingly, this is our driving focus. Accordingly, no serious and sustained efforts are being made to explore, understand and respond to today’s complexity with an entrepreneurial and imaginative spirit that questions the soundness of our commitment to sustaining current educational and scientific practices. We neglect, possibly at our peril, insights such as these: (1) No version of modernity can be made to be sustainable. (2) The core human work of the 21st century is not as we now assume. (3) Rather, we need to transcend our modern/industrial form of civilization. This means learning to let go of modernity by outgrowing it at every scale of our existence and to face the utterly new and historic work of becoming the conscious cocreators of the next form of human civilization — the Consciously Co-creative. A path forward will be offered, including new roles for science, technology, and religion.
Speakers:
Dr. William Rees, professor emeritus University of British Columbia 
Mr. Ruben Nelson, Executive Director, Foresight Canada
Moderator: 
​Chuck Fowler

​Science and Religion Track at the Parliament of World Religions

The Science & Religion track was created jointly by the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) and the International Society on Science and Religion (ISSR), specifically addressing the major themes of the 2019 Parliament.