Emerging Voices in Science and Theology: Contributions by Young Women

179 Pages·2022·1.848 MB·English

by  Bethany Sollereder, Alister McGrath

Emerging Voices in Science
and Theology
This volume engages with the relative absence and underrepresentation of
female voices in the feld of science and religion, which tends to be dominated
by male academics who are in the later stages of their careers. It makes a
valuable contribution to correcting this imbalance by showcasing the work
of a talented set of rising female scholars, which is not necessarily explicitly
feminist in content or approach. All the authors featured are at a relatively
early stage in their careers with diverse backgrounds and interests. Engaging
with traditional and new questions, they promise to contribute much to the
future development of the feld of science and religion.
Bethany Sollereder is Research Fellow in the Laudato Si’ Research Institute
at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, UK.
Alister McGrath is Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion,
Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, and Fellow of
Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford, UK.
Routledge Science and Religion Series
Series editors:
Michael S. Burdett
University of Nottingham, UK
Mark Harris
University of Edinburgh, UK
Science and religion have often been thought to be at loggerheads but much
contemporary work in this fourishing interdisciplinary feld suggests this is
far from the case. The Science and Religion Series presents exciting new work
to advance interdisciplinary study, research and debate across key themes in
science and religion. Contemporary issues in philosophy and theology are
debated, as are prevailing cultural assumptions. The series enables leading
international authors from a range of diferent disciplinary perspectives
to apply the insights of the various sciences, theology, philosophy and
history in order to look at the relations between the diferent disciplines
and the connections that can be made between them. These accessible,
stimulating new contributions to key topics across science and religion will
appeal particularly to individual academics and researchers, graduates,
postgraduates and upper-undergraduate students.
Providence and Science in a World of Contingency
Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action
Ignacio Silva
Science and Religion in India
Beyond Disenchantment
Renny Thomas
New Directions in Theology and Science
Beyond Dialogue
Edited by Peter Harrison and Paul Tyson
Emerging Voices in Science and Theology
Contributions by Young Women
Edited by Bethany Sollereder and Alister McGrath
For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: www.
routledge.com/religion/series/ASCIREL
Emerging Voices in Science
and Theology
Contributions by Young Women
Edited by Bethany Sollereder
and Alister McGrath
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Bethany Sollereder and Alister
McGrath; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Bethany Sollereder and Alister McGrath to be identifed
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-1-032-13957-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-17025-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-25144-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003251446
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction 1
ALISTER MCGRATH AND BETHANY SOLLEREDER
PART I
The Relationship Between Science and Religion/Theology 11
1 The Anatomy of Unbelief: Towards a Materialist Approach
to the Cognitive Science of (Non)Religion 13
MARI OVSEPYAN
2 Seeing the World Through the Languages of Science
and Religion 28
AMY LEE
PART II
Sin and Salvation 43
3 The Unique Desires of Love and Original Sin 45
BETHANY SOLLEREDER
4 Unity in the Massa Peccati: Original Sin and the Extended
Evolutionary Synthesis 57
MEGAN LOUMAGNE ULISHNEY
5 Time and Tillich: Re-Examining Salvation Through the
Lens of Special Relativity 71
EMILY QURESHI-HURST
vi Contents
PART III
Technology and the Human Condition 87
6 Human Creativity and Technological Enhancement in
Theological Perspective 89
VICTORIA LORRIMAR
7 Origin and the End: Artifcial Intelligence, Atheism,
and Imaginaries of the Future of Religion 105
BETH SINGLER
PART IV
Psychology and Faith 121
8 Divine Hiddenness and the Possibility of Learned Faith 123
SARAH LANE RITCHIE
9 Psychological Disorders and the Divine Order:
Towards a Science-Engaged Theology of Autism 139
JOANNA LEIDENHAG
Afterword: God Must Have Some Sense of Humor! 155
NANCEY MURPHY
Index 169
Contributors
Amy Lee is a DPhil candidate in Science and Religion at Oxford University
in the United Kingdom.
Victoria Lorrimar is Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Trinity College
Queensland within the Australian College of Theology.
Megan Loumagne Ulishney is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Theol-
ogy and Religious Studies Department at the University of Nottingham
in the United Kingdom.
Alister McGrath is Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at
Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
Nancey Murphy is Senior Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theo-
logical Seminary, Pasadena, California, USA.
Mari Ovsepyan is a doctoral student in Science and Religion at Oxford Uni-
versity in the United Kingdom.
Emily Qureshi-Hurst is a junior research fellow in Religion and the Fron-
tier Challenges at Pembroke College, University of Oxford in the United
Kingdom.
Sarah Lane Ritchie is the program ofcer in Philosophy & Theology at the
John Templeton Foundation, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, USA.
Beth Singler is the junior research fellow in Artifcial Intelligence at Homer-
ton College at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Bethany Sollereder is a research fellow at the Laudato Si’ Research Institute
at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

Introduction
Alister McGrath and Bethany Sollereder
The feld of science and religion continues to expand and is gaining sig-
nifcant traction in academic culture, in church life, and in wider cultural
discussions. This has been helped signifcantly by support from major
philanthropic organizations with interests in this feld, including the John
Templeton Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Tem-
pleton Religion Trust, and the Issachar Fund. There is every indication that
this feld of study, teaching, and research is establishing itself in multiple
locations and manners, and attracting growing interest on university cam-
puses and within the wider culture.
This collection of essays engages what is widely considered to be a major
weakness in the feld – the relative absence of female voices. As an academic
discipline, science and religion tend to be dominated by males who are in the
later stages of their careers – such as John Hedley Brooke (Oxford), Alister
McGrath (Oxford), Ted Peters (Pacifc Lutheran Theological Seminary),
and Fraser Watts (Lincoln). While there are some senior female fgures in
the feld – for example, Nancey Murphy (Fuller Seminary), Elaine Howard
Ecklund (Rice University), Deborah Haarsma (Biologos), and Celia Deane-
Drummond (Laudato Si’ Research Institute, Campion Hall, Oxford) – it
is obvious that women remain signifcantly and unacceptably underrepre-
sented in the feld.
Two recent publications in the feld of science and religion give an indi-
cation of the extent of this problem. Of the 135 contributors to the recent
Dictionary of Christianity and Science,1 only 9 are female (6.7%). The six
volumes of the Divine Action Project (arguably the largest coherent under-
taking in the history of the feld of science and religion to date) are made up
of 103 chapters, of which only 9 (8.7%) include contributions by females;
even then, some of those chapters are jointly written with male authors.
Perhaps most strikingly, the collection of papers Finding Ourselves After
Darwin consists of 20 chapters written by a multinational team of schol-
ars.2 Of these 20 chapters, none (0%) are written by female scholars. The
recent collection of papers published by the Faraday Institute, Cambridge,3
also consists of 20 chapters; once more, none (0%) are written by female
scholars. While various mitigating factors might be considered for this bias,4
DOI: 10.4324/9781003251446-1