Science and Theology Symposium
with Harry Lee Poe & James Buchholz – Oxford and Cambridge Weeks

At the surface level, we may think of ethics as the discipline concerned with how we measure goodness and truth, if such things actually exist. At a much more fundamental level, however, science must deal with whether goodness and truth are real standards or merely cultural constructs to achieve political goals. The future of scientific discovery is at stake. Is science value free? Does the scientific enterprise depend upon any values? How do goodness, truth, beauty, and other values inform, guide, and inspire scientific discovery? What are the implications of a growing culture of relativism for the future of science? Sir John Templeton’s concept of the “laws of life” and C. S. Lewis’s understanding of “the Tao” offer positive examples for a solution to the problem of distinguishing between the cultural expressions of values and the actual values behind the cultural expression. Several important clues to a solution have appeared in different disciplines in recent years. Physicists, chemists, and mathematicians have realized for some time that beauty does not belong to the arts alone, but that it presents a standard for evaluating scientific theory. The Science Symposium will explore these and related issues with guest speakers Ben Mitchell, Celia Deane-Drummond, Denis Alexander, Simon Conway Morris, and others.

Jim Buchholz is Professor of Mathematics and Physics at California Baptist University, Riverside; Jim Buchholz has worked with the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at the University of California, Riverside, for many years. In 2001, along with his colleague, Jeff Cate, Buchholz won a CTNS (Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences) Templeton Science and Religion Course Prize for the development of the course "Science and Faith".

Hal Poe is Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson, Tennnessee, Hal Poe is co-author with Jimmy Davis of Science and Faith: An Evangelical Dialogue and Designer Universe: Intelligent Design and the Existence of God. He co-edited with Stan Mattson the science and religion papers from the 2002 C. S. Lewis Summer Institute that will be published as What God Knows: Time, Eternity and Divine Knowledge.