On Tuesday, November 7th, I successfully defended my dissertation on the relevance of evolutionary studies of religion for theology. With that, a period of fifteen years came to a close, a period in which I studied theology, for the better part in combination with a full-time job as a teacher. So the defense was a […]
Category: adventures in research
Knowing the Past to Co-Create the Future.
Last week, I received an e-mail with the delightful news that my abstract for the next IRAS-conference , titled: “How Can We Know? Co-creating Knowledge in Perilous Times”, has been accepted. Moreover, the organizing committee awarded me with a Fellowship to enable me to join them. Obviously, I’m thrilled about this: a perfect way to end my […]
Learning From Schillebeeckx
Last week, I participated in a Schillebeeckx Research Seminar, co-organized by KU Leuven and Radbout University. The seminar consisted of two days crammed with presentations and discussions, having me fill up page after page in my note book in an attempt to make sure I would be able to retrieve as much insights as possible afterwards. The most exciting, […]
Philosophari in Maria: Towards a Marian Metaxology
This post is not explicitly about religion and science, although it does concern the relation between faith and reason. It’s about a meeting organized by the Anthropos Research Group, of which I am a member. On Tuesday, 26th of May, 14.00-16.00., my colleague Dr. Patrick Cooper, will present on the theme of “Philosophari in Maria: […]
Swinburne on the Existence of God
I was in fact searching for another paper (“The Informed Universe and the Existence of God” by John Haught, actually a chapter of an edited volume), when I stumbled upon this paper (link to pdf below) by Swinburne. There’s no reference to date or place, unfortunately, but the text offers an interesting read. Although I have some […]
Our Kinship With Nature
There are, I think, two possible interpretations of evolutionary history. The first, which I call the small one, sees evolutionary history as a gradual process of progress. Life started out very simple, but slowly gained in complexity. At one point in time, the human species emerged, with the ability to create culture. This implied, a small interpretation […]
Science, Religion and Theology: Two Lumberjacks and a Carpenter?
I think we could see both religion and science as a lumberjack, delivering tree trunks as the raw material for theology, the carpenter, to make pieces of furniture with, turning a building, i.e. the world, into a house, i.e. a habitable place. The tree trunks are the results of either scientific research, like theories, data analyses, […]
About Pigeon Holes
I have been writing on this blog on and off for more than a year now. Unfortunately, I never managed to get myself to publish regularly. In an attempt to change that, I turned to 750words.com. My writing will start there, every day. And some of that writing will be published here. What will I […]
Hefner: Relocation of the God-question
I just finished reading an older article by Philip Hefner: Relocation of the God-question.: EBSCOhost, first published in Zygon, in 1970. The article is interesting because Hefner argues why theology should take (evolutionary) science into account. First, he discusses Paul Tillich‘s way of framing the God-question. Through his methodology of “the ultimate concern“, Hefner explains, Tillich was […]
Hefner on Meaning Making
What do we want to accomplish by bringing theology and science together? Lutheran theologian Philip Hefner offers us an answer in an article of just over ten years ago[1]. In this blogpost I summarize the main points of the article. Hefner argues that the significance of the interaction between science and theology lies in the meaning […]
Weekly Gardening 