Philosophers and scientists thoroughly discussed the impact the Big Bang theory has in religious belief at a conference last month held in partnership with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research or CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
Picked up by a number of global news organizations, the discussion was designed to allow scientists from a range of disciplines to dialogue with philosophers and theologians from a variety of religions to discuss the nature of the Big Bang Theory to discover what ground theologians and scientists have in common.
According to The Guardian in the UK, much of the discussion focused on containing religious extremism and the thought that scientists unintentionally employing inflammatory language could create significant problems. With a view of shaping a communal language between religion and science, one session looked at the relationship between faith and scientific empiricism with a talk from Nancey Murphy, a professor of philosophy from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California. Another discussion topic was the religious perspectives of the Big Bang Theory. The program included John Lennox, a fellow in mathematics and the philosophy of science at the University of Oxford in the UK and Alnoor Dhanani, who studies the intersection of science, philosophy and theology in Islamic civilizations and is a fellow at Harvard University.