Religion and science are both ways of contemplating reality. Both are doorways to the transcendent. Scientists and theologians alike are prompted by awe and wonder to explore this reality, probing what is seen and not seen, searching for answers.
This grant brings together serious scientists, theologians, and philosophers in a collaborative endeavor to grasp the unified reality that we inhabit, and thus highlights the convergences between science and faith, prompting participants to explore and deepen those convergences. It does this by sponsoring a 5-day conference for working scientists, theologians, and philosophers. It extends that engagement by in-person lectures and events with graduate and undergraduate students through the TI Campus Chapters program (student groups on over 80 different university campuses), aiming to foster and strengthen the thirst for transcendence and ultimate meaning of the students, as the follow the paths of both science and faith. Finally, it then distributes the content generated by these events (and other pre-existing content on the same themes) to a wider audience through podcast recordings, social media and email marketing, and an online learning platform.
In doing so, this grant strengthens students and faculty in their own search for transcendence and ultimate purpose. Its animating spirit is rooted both in a genuine intellectual curiosity and also in authentic intellectual humility: this program exemplifies for students and faculty that we do not begin with all of the answers, and that each of us individually – and the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and contemporary science more broadly – need to engage seriously with different approaches to reality in order to enter into the rich mysteries that we encounter in our cosmos, and in our search for its ultimate origin and purpose.
