At the beginning of October, the Faraday Institute’s Director, Dr Denis Alexander, and Course Director, the Revd Dr Rodney Holder, travelled to India to lecture on science and religion in two very different contexts. Along with Professor Ross McKenzie, Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Australia, they delivered a course module of 12 lectures on ‘Science, Religion and Apologetics’ to Masters degree students at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS), Bangalore. They then lectured at a day seminar entitled ‘When Science Knocks on Heaven’s Doors’ for members of the Indian Institutes of Science and local churches.
The three speakers then travelled to Kerala to deliver three lectures each at an ‘International Course on Science and Religious Beliefs’, carried out in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of the Mar Thoma Church. At this course two lectures were also delivered by Professor Babu Joseph, former Professor of Physics and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cochin. The venue was the idyllic location of the Shanthigiri Ashram, Aluva, Cochin. The team was greeted by the Metropolitan and Suffragan Metropolitan of the Mar Thoma Church, and was also treated to a cultural evening of traditional Kathakali dance. The course was organized in Kerala by Prof George Varghese, assisted by Prof. Roys P. David, both alumni of Faraday courses in Cambridge.
During the two weeks in India, the Faraday-sponsored team explored many significant areas of interaction between science and religion, covering such topics as scientific and theological epistemology, critical realism, the historical relationship between science and theology, cosmology, biological evolution, prayer, emergence and eschatology. More pictures: Lecturing at SAIACS Cultural evening at the Ashram Felicitations and gifts from the Mar Thoma Church