Greenflame
Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
Category: Science, Technology & Religion
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Doing some surfing around the science and religion web sites on the net and came across this recent article by Paul Davies posted at Metanexus: Metanexus Institute: Into the 21st Century. It’s an interesting (and quite readable) opinion piece on science and religion interaction as we move into the next century. It’s worth a read…
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Over in his new blog Tall Skinny Kiwi has posted about people borrowing Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the noosphere – a global mind or interconnected consciousness or even soul – to visualise cyberspace. (See: RecycledSpam: Noosphere). It was interesting to see it crop up as I’ve just finished writing a paper that looks at…
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Interesting article from Newsweek that I saw linked to from the Science & Theology News web site that comments on the increasing discussion over the place of spirituality and religion in the health sector. Modern medicine, of course, still demands scientific proof on top of anecdotal evidence. So over the past decade, researchers have been…
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Last Monday in class we watched a variety of people talking about conquering death or prolonging life indefinitely – cryonics, longevity treatments, nanotechnology and “uploading” consciousness into silicon constructs. Provoked some discussion in class. Today I saw this Methuselah Man in which biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey predicts 5000 year life spans relatively “soon”. Answering a…
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Just finished reading Rocks of Ages : Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould as part of an ongoing project evaluating models of science and religion interaction. It was one of those books where after the preface and the next 8 pages you knew pretty much all you needed to…
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Interesting interview here with Elaine Graham: Finding humanity’s place on the Starship Enterprise. Again more stuff directly related to my research – definitely agree with her comment that “theologians must remember that technologies have to be considered within a wider political economy, as well as the broader ontological and philosophical issues.”
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Dropped by the Science and Theology News web site today and saw the article on Robot helpers: How close to human should they look? which fits right in with my own research. “Most people doing social robots believe that human faces will turn people off and will disturb them. I think that’s ridiculous,” Hanson said.…
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Just started reading Nancey Murphy’s book Reconciling Theology and Science: A Radical Reformation Perspective and I’ve been enjoying it so far. I notice that in the section on Theology and the Social Sciences there is a section on the New Zealand experience of Restorative Justice. Quite unusual for a US book to notice something down…
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Maggi Dawn posted a comment on my blog entry about “Darwin and Fundamentalism” with a reference to book on Victorian times and how that related to Darwin. I’ve gathered some links to web sites with Darwin and Victoriana information so I thought I’d add them here for those who are interested. The Victorian Web: An…
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Just whipped through John Polkinghorne’s little book Traffic in Truth: Exchanges between Science and Theology which, like the Darwin book I blogged about earlier, provides an easy entrance to thinking about the relationship between science and religion. It reads like the combination of an introduction and conclusion from one of his other more lengthy books…