2016 Townes Lecture: “Dramatic Developments in the Science and Religion Dialogue – Implications of Discoveries from Gravity Waves to Exoplanets, with a Kabbalistic Perspective”
The 2016 Charles Townes Lecture on Science and Religion is hosted by the MIT Campus Ministry and sponsored by interFASE: the International Faith and Science Exchange
4:00 PM, MIT Bldg 6-120, Eastman Lab, 182 Memorial Drive., Cambridge MA
Something new and important is happening these days to how we think about science, religion, and their descriptions of the world. The discussion itself (and its equivalent, between natural philosophy and scriptural interpretation) is very old. But despite the important insights of geniuses and saints over the past thousand years, there have been remarkable and unforeseen developments in just the last thirty years that should challenge the faith of traditional religious believers – and simultaneously that should shake the simplistic assumptions of atheists. The remarkable successes of modern science, especially in physics, astronomy, and biology, call out for a greater openness to wonderful alternatives. This lecture will cover a few recent discoveries, some widely expected (gravitational waves, Higgs boson) and others totally surprising (dark matter, the accelerating universe), that should reshape our assumptions. The Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah offers a different language and perspective that can be useful in sorting out the revolutionary implications of these discoveries.
