Exploring Science and Faith (ESF): Inspiring the Shapers of Tomorrow’s Culture to Make the Connection

In our surveys of thousands of university students across the U.S. and Europe, questions concerning the relationship between science and faith consistently rank among the most important issues students desire to explore. For a complex variety of reasons, the prevailing paradigm within the university and the religious community is that science and faith are incompatible. The ideas cultivated within our universities permeate our entire culture for generations, making the university a critical community to engage in the struggle to redefine the science-faith gridlock. The Veritas Forum seeks to develop a two-year, four-pronged program to inspire students and faculty at leading secular universities in the U.S. and Europe to explore the dynamic relationship between science and faith with humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness. We desire to provide a compelling, credible, and winsome alternative to the rhetoric which dominates academic and public discourse. The four programmatic prongs include: large-scale catalytic campus events, highly-leveraged online resources, a high-profile book publication, and a training program for specially-selected younger scholars. Building on the enormous success of our Templeton-funded -Faith and Science Initiative,- we are well-positioned to multiply our impact. The combined strategy of the four prongs will enable us to influence the university community through the multiple avenues of web interactions, print publications, in-person events, and targeted training and development. Through this multi-faceted approach, we intend to significantly alter prevailing prejudices and paradigms with regard to the relationship between science and faith within individual student and faculty lives, as well as the university community as a whole. Ultimately, we aim to produce a new generation of cultural leadership who understand and value the integration between science and faith.