Religion and Science: Dialogues of Faith and Reason
Special lecture series featuring Dr. Timothy Gianotti, Dr. Laury Silvers, and Dr. Bernard Lightman
Offered in connection with Noor’s Darwin and the Divine course, this special lecture series will also be of interest to the general public. Beginning with an examination of different ways of knowing the world, the series then looks at the creation theory of one of Islam’s greatest thinkers, and culminates with a discussion on Darwin’s theory of evolution.
A Life in Search of Certitude: Reading al-Ghazali’s Autobiography as an Epistemological Survey of Medieval Islam
Dr. Timothy Gianotti
Date: Saturday April 18, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5
For students of intellectual history, one of the striking characteristics of the medieval Islamic world was its willingness to accommodate multiple pathways to knowledge, an accommodation that gave rise to a remarkable mosaic of philosophical, scientific, mystical, and theological writing. Taking one small, holographic shard of this mosaic as a point of departure, this talk presents the famous autobiography of the twelfth-century theologian-jurist-mystic Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d.1111) as an epistemological survey of classical Islam. Al-Ghazali’s quest for certitude thus provides access to the various ways the scientists, philosophers, mystics, and theologians conceived of and pursued truth within this complex and cosmopolitan world.
Timothy Gianotti is the Noor Fellow in Islamic Studies at York University. He is the author of Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul, a study of controversies surrounding the soul and the Afterlife in medieval Islam.
Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Cosmology and the New Creation
Dr. Laury Silvers
Date: Saturday April 25, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5
The Qur’an says, “Were We then tired from the first creation that they are in doubt as to the new creation?” (50:15) For Muslims, God did not rest after creating the heavens and the earth – rather, creation continues in every passing moment. This talk will be a brief introduction to Ibn al-‘Arabi’s vision of the cosmos as a barzakh, an “isthmus” or a relationship struck between God and Nothing, renewed in every passing moment, on every level of existence down to the tiniest atom. Ibn al-`Arabi (d. 1240) is known as the Greatest Shaykh, one of Islamic civilizations greatest mystical thinkers, philosophers, theologians, and poets.
Laury Silvers is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at University of Toronto. Her scholarship focuses on Islam in the Formative Period, particularly Sufism, Sufi Metaphysics, and Gender.
Scientists, the Public, and Natural Selection: From Darwin to Dawkins
Dr. Bernard Lightman
Date: Saturday May 9, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5
This presentation will discuss how Darwin’s theory of natural selection was received by Anglo-American scientists and the public since he presented it in his Origin of Species in 1859. It will explore how the changing fortunes of natural selection have affected the way the religious implications of evolution have been perceived right up to the debates between creationists and atheists like Richard Dawkins.
Bernard Lightman is Professor of Humanities at York University, Director of the new Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies, and Editor of the history of science journal Isis. His publications include The Origins of Agnosticism and Victorian Popularizers of Science.