Science, Religion & Society: An Online Series 
Inaugural Sessions to be held starting summer of 2020

For 65 years, The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) has held summer Conferences on Star Island, off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Due to the current pandemic, we have postponed our 2020 Star Island conference until the summer of 2021. But—never fear! There’s a new way to engage with IRAS themes and the IRAS community!
With Star Island’s generous support, we have launched a live webinar series: Science, Religion, & Society.
UPCOMING WEBINAR:  ​
January 28th, 2021
Extraterrestrial Species: Will They Be Moral? Will They Be Religious?
The program will begin at 4:00 PM CDT, 5:00 EDT, 2:00 PM PDT, 10:00 PM BST.
​
This IRAS webinar is FREE but
​registration is required.
​Please register using the link below.
If you have questions, contact CJ Love: carolynjlove3@gmail.com
About the January 28th, 2021 webinar:
Interpretations have been made of a currently narrow range of signal types that humans can record from interstellar sources, to determine if distant life forms exist. This talk briefly surveys the types of signals now available and what they and others could reveal about distant life forms in the future. The presenters then explore the assessment of intelligent species if they visit Earth. They ask which observable signs could indicate self-awareness, social behavior, and ethical thinking, and how humans can test for the presence of ethics, religion, and culture. A “Goldilocks Evolutionary Sequence” of neurocognitive features is presented, which can be operationalized as a plan to vet interstellar visitors and a protocol for negotiating with them. 
Christopher J. Corbally, S.J., Ph.D., is a Jesuit priest and an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory Research Group, for which he has served as Vice Director, and liaison to its headquarters at Castel Gandolfo, Italy. He is an Adjunct Associate Astronomer at the Department of Astronomy, University of Arizona, and ministers to a wide variety of Catholics, including Native Americans, in Tucson, Arizona. He is the Co-Founder of The Human Sentience Project, LLC.
Margaret Boone Rappaport, Ph.D. is a cultural anthropologist and biologist who works in human cognitive evolution, and as a futurist, lecturer, and author in Tucson, Arizona. As President, Policy Research Methods, Incorporated, she conducted research for federal agencies for 30 years. She lectured at Georgetown and George Washington Universities. Dr. Rappaport is also a prize-winning short story and poetry writer, and the Co-Founder of The Human Sentience Project, LLC.

We hope you’ll be able to join us!

Past Sessions: Videos

New Materialism, Relational Holism, and Posthuman Life
with Dr. Ilia Delio
We are the Dinosaur, We are the Meteor:
Climate, Biodiversity, and the Human Future
Presented December 10, 2020
About the November 17th, 2020 presenter:
Dr. Ilia Delio, OSF holds the Josephine C. Connelly Chair in Christian Theology at Villanova University. Her area of research and writing is systematic and constructive theology. She is the author of over twenty books including Re-Enchanting the Earth: Why AI Needs Religion; Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian; Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology and Consciousness, a finalist for the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize; and The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love, for which she won the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a 2014 Catholic Press Association Book Award in Faith and Science. Her latest book The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science and the Human Journey, will be published in Spring 2021. She lectures nationally and internationally on various topics pertaining to faith and science, and in 2020 received an honorary doctorate from Sacred Heart University for her work in Science and Religion. She is founder of the Center for Christogenesis, an online educational resource for the work of Teilhard de Chardin and the integration of Christianity and evolution in the 21st century.
 We are the Dinosaur, We are the Meteor:
Climate, Biodiversity, and the Human
Future 
with Dr. Lisa Fullam
We are the Dinosaur, We are the Meteor:
Climate, Biodiversity, and the Human Future
Presented November 17, 2020
About the November 17th, 2020 presenter:
Dr. Lisa Fullam joined the faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University in August 2003. As Professor of Moral Theology, she teaches courses such as Fundamental Moral Theology, Sexual Ethics, Luther and Ignatius: Conversations Ethics, and Spirituality of Pastoral Ministry, and Issues in Virtue Ethics. She received her baccalaureate and D.V.M. degrees from Cornell University and earned her M.T.S. and Th.D. at the Harvard Divinity School. Dr. Fullam’s research interests include virtue ethics, Thomas Aquinas, biomedical ethics, Ignatian spirituality, and the relationship of spirituality and ethics. She is also accredited as a faculty member at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Among her publications is the monograph Curiosity and Skepticism: Virtues for Genomics. 
It’s the Economy, Friends: Putting Sacred Cows Out to Pasture
​with Brian Czech
It’s the Economy, Friends: Putting Sacred Cows Out to Pasture
Presented October 21, 2020
About the October 21st, 2020 presenter:
Brian Czech is the president of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE), an economic think tank and educational organization he founded in 2003. In 2017, Czech signed on as CASSE’s executive director. In this role, Czech oversees all CASSE operations and plays the lead role in policy development, public education, CASSE publications (blog, books, and journal articles) and international outreach. From 1999 to 2017, Czech served as the first conservation biologist in the history of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as a visiting professor of natural resource economics in Virginia Tech’s National Capitol Region. He is the author of several books, including Supply Shock, Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train and The Endangered Species Act: History, Conservation Biology, and Public Policy and has authored over 50 academic journal articles. Czech has a B.S from the University of Wisconsin, an M.S. from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.
The Unifying Potential of a God that is Real in the Scientific Universe
​with Nancy Ellen Abrams
Navigating Crises and Bridging Cultural Divides with Citizen Science
Presented September 17, 2020
About the September 17th, 2020 presenter:
Dr. Grace Wolf-Chase (A.B. Physics, Cornell University; Ph.D. Astronomy, University of Arizona) is a Senior Scientist and Senior Education & Communication Specialist at the Planetary Science Institute. In 1994, she was awarded a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship to pursue star formation studies at NASA Ames Research Center, and in 1996, a University of California President’s postdoctoral fellowship to continue these studies at U.C. Riverside. She is an Affiliated Member of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science; and Vice President of the Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science CASIRAS). She spent 22 years integrating astronomical research with public education at the Adler Planetarium, has published dozens of scientific papers, contributed to several books, and currently leads an initiative to engage faith-based communities in research experiences via the Zooniverse citizen science platform.
The Unifying Potential of a God that is Real in the Scientific Universe
​with Nancy Ellen Abrams
The Unifying Potential of a God that is Real in the Scientific Universe  
Presented August 18, 2020
About the August 18th, 2020 presenter:
Nancy Ellen Abrams is a philosopher of science, lawyer, and lecturer at the University of California Santa Cruz.  Her book A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet proposes a radical, empowering, and future-oriented way of rethinking God in light of undeniable and growing knowledge about the universe, the human brain, and the perilous state of our world.  It won the 2015 USA Best Book Award in philosophy.  With cosmologist Joel R. Primack, she co-authored The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos, the first book to interpret the place of human beings in the new dark matter/dark energy picture of the universe.  Abrams and Primack also co-authored The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World.  Together the two books won the Chopra Foundation’s “Spirit of Rustum Roy Award” for “contributions to consciousness and to creating a peaceful, just, sustainable, and healthy world.” ​
Theology & Covid-19: Etiological and teleological models at the nexus with science 
​with Dr. Arvin Gouw
Theology & Covid-19: Etiological and teleological models at the nexus with science   
Presented July 16, 2020
About the July 16th, 2020 presenter:
Dr. Arvin Gouw is the vice president for research and development at the Rare Genomics Institute (RGI), where he oversees the Rare Genomics Task Force (RGTF) and the BeHEARD Challenge (Help Empower & Accelerate Research Discoveries), which provide grants globally to rare disease researchers, foundations, and patient families. Dr. Gouw is also a research fellow in Oncology at Stanford University School of Medicine and an affiliate scientist at UC Berkeley/LBNL, developing cancer drugs and drug screening platforms, and serves as affiliate faculty at the Center for Science, Religion, and Culture (SRC) of Harvard Divinity School. Dr. Gouw holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, an M.Phil. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in theology from St. Mary’s Seminary and University Ecumenical Institute of Theology, and an M.A. in endocrinology and a B.A. in molecular cell biology–neurobiology from UC Berkeley.
Will Modern Civilization be the Death of Us? ​Does our modern techno-industrial society destroy the biophysical basis of our existence? with Dr. William Rees
Will Modern Civilization be the Death of Us? Envisioning Tomorrow’s Earth 
​with Ruben Nelson
Will Modern Civilization be the Death of Us? A two part series presented June 29 & 30, 2020
Part 1:  Will Modern Civilization be the Death of Us? ​Does our modern techno-industrial society destroy the biophysical basis of our existence? with Dr. William Rees.
William Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. His research focuses on the biophysical requirements for sustainability and on the implications of global ecological trends for global civilization. Dr. Rees is perhaps best known as the originator and co-developer of ‘ecological footprint analysis’ (EFA), a quantitative tool that shows the extent to which humanity is in ‘ecological overshoot’. Overshoot poses a serious challenge to policies promoting the continued growth of the human enterprise—we would need almost five Earth-like planets to support just the present world population sustainably.
Part 2: Will Modern Civilization be the Death of Us? Envisioning Tomorrow’s Earth with Ruben Nelson.
Ruben Nelson, Executive Director of Foresight Canada, is an internationally respected futures researcher and practitioner of strategic foresight. He was first to apply the concept of 'paradigm change' to whole cultures in 1975. He coined the term 'civilization overshoot' in 2018. He explores the new reading of human history that will enable us to see why our Modern Techno-industrial cultures are almost wholly blind to (1) destroying biophysical existence (2) the emerging reality that the Modern Techno-industrial civilization has already entered a long, irrevocable decline (3) accepting that Modernity is our past, but not our future, and (4) realizing that our new work is to transcend our past at every scale, from personal-to-civilizational, becoming Consciously Co-creative.
All sessions are moderated by Dr. Ron Cole-Turner.
​Moderator Ron Cole-Turner teaches at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where he holds the H. Parker Sharp Chair in Theology and Ethics, a position relating theology and ethics to developments in science and technology. He is an ordained United Church of Christ minister and a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion.