Since Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science was founded 49 years ago and since one of its co-publishers, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), was founded 60 years ago, there have been significant developments in their various cultural contexts—in science, in religion, in culture, in academia, and in the science and religion dialogue. This article is a personal remembrance and reflection that compares the context of IRAS in 1954 when it was first organized with the context (...) of IRAS and Zygon today. It considers the contemporary niche of IRAS in relation to the developments that have occurred over the past 60 years. (shrink)

Beginning with our cosmic ancestors and the 1950s ancestors of Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, this essay highlights the wider, post-World War II cultural context, including other science and religion organizations, in which IRAS was formed. It then considers eight challenges from today's context. From the context of science there are the challenge of scale that leads us to question our place in the scheme of things and can lead to a challenge to morale concerning whether we (...) make any difference; the challenge of human variability that leads to the question whether there is a single human moral nature; and the challenge of detailed explanation that leads to the question of what is the task of theology in relation to detailed scientific explanation. From the religion context there are the challenge of objectivity—studying religion without practicing religion; and the challenge of pluralism and the variety of cultural and religious perspectives. From the context of the growing and diverse science-and-religion enterprise, considered from the perspective of IRAS developed in the first part of this essay, there are the challenges of apologetics and intellectualization. Finally, from the context of our growing, worldwide consumerist culture that is contributing to the radical alteration of the planetary environment, leading to much suffering, there is the challenge of becoming more motivated to act for the long-term global good. (shrink)

This essay briefly examines the original visions of Zygon , how they helped explain the publication of a new journal, and what they imply for where we might be going today.

One task of religion is delivering human beings from evil within and between themselves. Defining good as well-being or functioning well, evil as impaired functioning, and doing evil as impairing the functioning of others, this essay explores how religions in consort with other social institutions might understand and respond to evil in light of contemporary scientific knowledge. To understand evil I use a multicausal approach that includes both biological and sociocultural environmental causes. I illustrate the use of this approach by (...) analyzing how we might understand and respond to human rage and violence. (shrink)

. This paper outlines an evolutionary theory of knowledge involving not only conceptual but also behavioral and experiential knowledge. It suggests human knowledge is continuous at the behavioral and experiential level with that of nonhuman animals. By contrasting an evolutionary understanding of ultimate reality with the more traditional, personalistic understanding, the paper shows how an evolutionary epistemology applies to religion in terms of both general and special revelation. Finally, the paper explores how one might respond to the problem of religious (...) knowledge in a pluralistic age and how a nonpersonal, evolutionary understanding of God might be religiously adequate. (shrink)

This essay develops a theological naturalism using Gordon Kaufman's nonpersonal idea of God as serendipitous creativity in contrast to the personal metaphorical theology of Sallie McFague. It then develops a Christian theological naturalism by using Kaufman's idea of historical trajectories, specifically Jesus trajectory1 and Jesus trajectory2. The first is the trajectory in the early Christian church assuming a personal God in the framework of Greek philosophy that results in the Trinity. The second is the naturalistic-humanistic trajectory of creativity (God) that (...) evolves from nonpersonal interactions in the universe and life to creativity in persons and is manifested in Jesus as love. This is elaborated further with Dean Keith Simonton's Darwinian understanding of genius and Marcus Borg's analysis of Jesus as Jewish mystic, teacher of alternative wisdom, and nonviolent resister to the domination system of the Roman Empire. What makes Jesus a religious genius is his exemplifying unconditional, universal love—a new mode of creativity (God) that has evolved from nonhuman to a human form. (shrink)

In an evolutionary world, humans need “salvation” understood as restoring and maintaining well‐being or functioning well. Humans are embedded in, embodiments of, and emergent creative‐creatures of the universe. We have evolved also as ambivalent creatures—doing good, harm, and being bystanders while harm is being done. Multiple factors—for example, genetic, neurological, child developmental, and societal—contribute to malfunctioning and harmful behavior, and multiple religious and secular approaches help restore well‐being. I develop a view of Jesus as a “religious genius” who, grounded in (...) a direct experience of God, taught undiscriminating love and engaged in nonviolent political activism against the unjust domination system of the Roman Empire. Christians and others can follow Jesus by engaging in meditative practices that facilitate well‐being out of which compassion for others and a passion for justice flows. Universal love rooted in Jesus is compatible with an evolutionary perspective that all humans are part of a natural family. (shrink)

Researchers who have attempted to collect and compare bilateral labor agreements have encountered varying degrees of accessibility of information on these agreements. Why is it harder to find out information on some bilateral labor agreements than others? In this Article, we argue that it is more difficult to find information and agreements tend to be more informal when governments want to obscure what they are doing. Building on insights from the study of optimal obfuscation in trade policy and research on (...) informal institutions in international politics, we argue that policymakers use more informal agreements and make it more difficult to find information on BLAs when they think they will be politically unpopular and are unlikely to be ratified. In contrast, leaders will be more likely to use formal agreements when they want to lock in a policy. Drawing on original quantitative data on the accessibility of information on bilateral labor agreements and Peters’ 2019 database on BLAs, the Article analyzes the accessibility of information on bilateral labor agreements and finds some support for our argument. (shrink)

Science and religion share the conviction that the world is intelligible, susceptible to being logically understood, but they delineate this under different paradigms. In the cleanest cases we can say that science operates with the presumption that there are causes to things, religion with the presumption that there are meanings to things.—Holmes Rolston III.

Much good work has been done on the evolution of human morality by focusing on how “selfish genes‘ can give rise to altruistic human beings. A richer research program is needed, however, to take into account the ambivalence of naturally evolved biopsychological motivators and the historical pluralism of human morality in religious systems. Such a program is described here. A first step is to distinguish the ultimate cause of natural selection from proximate causes that are the results of natural selection. (...) Next, some proximate causes are suggested as possible conditions of biological and emotional valuing as well as of customary social morality and individual rational ethical thought. Finally, different moral perspectives of Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity are briefly presented in order to illustrate how one might inquire about the selection of a variety of biopsychological and cultural proximate causes that enable the evolution of a plurality of religious moral systems. (shrink)

For forty years, Creighton Peden has been engaged in significant scholarship to preserve the nineteenth and twentieth-century tradition of American empirical, pragmatic theology and in particular, the work of the Chicago School. He has edited or coedited several volumes of authors’ unpublished works including one with John Gaston on Edward Scribner Ames, also published in 2011. Further, he has created a series of intellectual biographies on leaders of this unique tradition.Peden’s biography of Ames is organized in three sections. The opening (...) two chapters set the historical context of Ames’s work in the Disciples of Christ denomination and in his own personal autobiography. The middle section.. (shrink)