A Teaching and Research Program on Science and Religion at the Catholic University of Lyon

The challenge is to imagine and to execute, inside the Catholic University of Lyon, France, a pedagogical and up-to-date program in science and religion for (current and future) catholic religious leaders such as priests, seminarians and lay peoples (i.e. teachers of the primary and secondary school of the catholic education office) sent by their dioceses to study theology and philosophy because of their responsibilities in the midst of the Catholic Church. With the opportunity of a recently established research centre on science inside the Catholic University of Lyon, the following activities are proposed at three levels, initial education (Bachelor degree), research education (masters and doctorate degree) and continuous education for leaders in activity: 1) Initiation of students as future religious leaders (initiation and research) professors of theology and philosophy (continuous education) to hard sciences and their impact on the social life. 2) At all levels: Study of historical questions and controversies between scientists and Churches/religious people, since Galileo to the main scientists of the XXth century, in order to open the future, taking into account the past errors or misunderstandings. 3) The development of a research laboratory on new insights in the science and religion interactions in terms of the sense of the universe and of human life, coming from physics, biology and neurosciences. The first challenge to be met might be a research program on the possibility of thinking a theophanic universe connected with the idea of a “veiled reality” raised by fundamental physics, and the problematic of the hidden God of the apophatic theology.