I Love the Brown Symposium!

I went to all of the lectures of the Brown Symposium, so it is kind of hard for me to choose two lectures to write about. Instead I will write about my three favorite; Christopher Bader and Paul Froese’s “Images of God and Views on Science: Findings from the Baylor Religion Survey, Simon Conway Morris’ “Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Songs of Creation”, and David Sloan Wilson’s “Evolution as the Theory of Choice for the Study of Religion”. I think the reason I found these lectures interesting because some of the information in the lecture (and/or the discussion it prompted) surprised me.

During the Baylor Religion Survey lecture I was particularly interested (although not surprised) to learn that individuals who do not believe in God are more uncomfortable with an interaction or dialogue between science and religion than are individuals who do believe in God. I did not find this fact unusually surprising because my experience suggests that individuals who are not religious tend to have rather negative views of religion. I was also interested to hear that in higher-level education religious people are more likely to be discriminated against than are non-religious people. A third thing that interested me was the audience’s reaction to having their image of god categorized and analyzed. I felt that various individuals felt uncomfortable about the generalizations made about them and other individuals sharing their image of god. I guess it is part of our nature as humans to wish to avoid being categorized, with the hope of instead being able to justify our beliefs and actions. However, the extent to which the audience expressed discomfort with their categorization surprised me. I would like to add here that the thing I personally found most upsetting in their lecture was when they said that the average American has a good chance of not knowing that the earth revolve around the sun!!!

I particularly enjoyed Simon Conway Morris’ lecture from the perspective of (hopefully) a future scientist. I was interested to learn that the ideas Morris lectured on were in fact the exact opposite of those he held earlier in his career. I felt his lecture provided insight to the process of science and how researchers must be open to the feedback provided by their research. (Obviously my field of interest wouldn’t have gotten very far if we listened solely to Freudian thought.) I plan to try to keep Morris in mind during my future study of science as a hint to be open to theories that are new and/or different from my own. I suspect this hint will help me to be a better researcher and student, and maybe in a few years some one will finally convince me and I will believe all human behavior is a result of conditioning. :) One last item from Morris’ lecture that I found truly fascinating was the idea that one’s consciousness lies (at least partially) somewhere other than the brain. I am not prepared to comment on this presently because I’m not quite sure I understand it and I am still devoting a great deal of thought to the subject. However, this idea certainly had an impact on me.

I was similarly surprised by the reactions of the audience to David Sloan Wilson’s lecture. I particularly enjoyed the lecture because I thought it was extremely thought provoking and raised a number of questions I had never thought to consider. However Dr. Wilson did not hesitate in the slightest to boldly challenge traditional Christian thought. On example of this is the idea that religion is 100% a social construct. This is not a fact that surprised me (I think it is fairly obvious that God did not reach down and hand religion to humanity), however it clearly rattled a number of audience members. While I understand how this could rattle someone (my mother, who has done master level work in religion used to shock me with such statements when I was a little girl) I was surprised by the number of people who took this statement to mean God isn’t real and religion is useless, particularly considering the fact that Wilson made a point of focusing on a number of the social benefits provided by religion. Additionally, comments from the audience indicated a similar reaction to Wilson’s assertion that it is scientifically proven that there is no such thing as an active God. Clearly he meant that a God who (for example) reaches down to earth to prevent a car accident. (I know that is what he meant because he said as much.) Again audience members seemed to take this as no God, divine being, or spiritual force in the universe exists. I think this interpretation may have occurred so that people could simply decide that Wilson was ill informed and simply ignore him. That would surely be easier than reexamining their own spiritual convictions. One last item from Wilson’s lecture that I found truly fascinating was the idea that one’s consciousness lies (at least partially) somewhere other than the brain

I would like to note at this point that I do not by any means think that all (or even most) of the lectures' audience members share the views of audience members I represented above. I take these representations from both the questions that were asked during the lecture and discussions I have had with friends and acquaintances about their reactions to the lectures.