Last Saturday I attended the 2018 LAMP (Leadership and Multi-faith Program) symposium, a collaborative endeavor between Emory University and Georgia Tech. The topic for this year was “Religious and Scientific Perspectives in the Future of Life.” The event was sub-divided in three parts, starting with life in the body and mind (religion meets science in deciphering the soul), life in our planet (warnings about Global Warning inaction) and life in outer-space (an introduction to Astrobiology). For lunch, we also learned about a AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) initiative to build bridges between seminary students and scientists.
Unfortunately, I was not able to stay for the last session and therefore cannot speak to it in detail. Yet, the very idea that there is an academic discipline studying the possibility of life in other planets is fascinating. I am encouraging my 8 year-old daughter to look into that for a college major. It sounds like a truly exciting field.
The symposium opened with Dr. Arri Eisen describing his experience of teaching science to Buddhist monks in Tibet. Apart from some entertaining stories, the main gist followed along the lines of “we have much to learn from each other if we are open” theme. While this is not earth-shattering, it was refreshing to see a Scientist affirm that his craft is not immune to personal and/or cultural biases. Of all the speakers that followed, the most interesting was Dr. Mascaro’s description of her work to test the health impacts of meditation. She first showed the overwhelming evidence for the correlation between social connection and health. That is, the more lonely we are the more physically sick we become. Hence, any activity that can increase our sense of connection with others should also have health benefits which proved to be the case. This is an important finding that hopefully with time will move us to look at physical health from a more holistic perspective.
I was particularly unimpressed by the contribution of the speakers from the religious side to the dialogue. To be fair, each of them had little time to fully state their case but their observations really added little to the debate. For example, the Muslim scholar’s main point was to question the reliability of the mind without fully describing how that really differs from the soul. I think what he meant was a suspicion of the Western cult of objectivity and rationality yet that was not clearly stated. The Jewish Scholar spoke of her research on ritual bath without really making clear connections as to how that contributes to the dialogue between Religion and Science or the connection between mind and soul.
The lunch talk was informative and hopeful as I learned about how Columbia Seminary students were being exposed to Scientific knowledge though a speaker series. The hope here is that as they become pastors they will become more engaged with Science and this engagement will makes it way to the pulpit and Sunday school classes. However, such initiative would have been much more consequential in conservative evangelical seminaries where Science is often seen as the enemy of faith. It is an encouraging beginning nevertheless.
The after-lunch session turned out to be a call to action for engaging religious community with Global Warming activism. Of the speakers in this session, I was impressed by Rabbi Kornblau’s holistic approach to the Torah that included a commitment to caring for the environment. I was disappointed by the Christian Theologian’s exploration of Eschatology and Ecology. While he brought a valid point that his generation was less concerned about a shift in worldview to moving to action, there was a missed opportunity in developing this many connections of the these two topics. Moreover, while I will second their concern with Global Warming, I was looking for discussion on the current scientific developments in life extension. I was also hoping for an acknowledgement of the role of technology in their research.
I realize that the tone of my review is rather negative. I was expecting much more from a discussion on the future of life. As someone keenly interested in the dialogue between Technology and Religion, I am rather impatient with the slow pace of the dialogue between Religion and Science in academic circles. The latter lays the groundwork for the former. Yet, given its slow pace, we may be years away from a robust dialogue between on the role of Religion in emerging technologies. I see a lot of preliminary discussion but very little in the way of actionable insights. I understand that this stems in part from the academic focus on research and theory. Even so, I find that unacceptable given the pace of change brought forth by emerging technologies (AI, VR and CRISP to name a few) on our humanity. While there are some institutions in the forefront of this dialogue (i.e.: Pittsburg Seminary and University of Durham), I was hoping the leading academic institutions of a growing metropolis like Atlanta would be making inroads in this area.
This leads me to believe that most insights and breakthroughs in this area will not come from Academia but from practitioners (pastors and technologists). Academic institutions will find themselves having to catch up with the new knowledge being uncovered by innovators in the field. This is unfortunate given academic institutions’ wealth of resources for research. I hope that changes but if what I saw on Saturday is any indication, Academia is a long way from leading in this dialogue.