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4. 2024 - 2025 Organs and Origins Conference Series

2024 - 2025 Organs and Origins Conference Series

'In the Beginning: Life, the Universe, and Everything'
December 6 - 7, 2024
Geddes Hall - Andrews Auditorium

“For the world itself, like mothers heavy with young, is heavy with causes of things that are coming to birth; but these things are only created in it by the Supreme Being in which nothing is born or dies, nothing begins or ceases to be.” (St. Augustine)

St. Augustine’s poetic side-by-side positioning of causes - worldly and divine - reflects the perennial human fascination with origins. Fueled by this wonder, scientists have pursued theories regarding the initial causes of material, biological and human existence with considerable successes. What can modern science tell us about beginnings? In the dialogue between disciplines, what might philosophy and theology contribute?

In this second teaching conference of the Organs and Origins series co-sponsored by the College of Science and the McGrath Institute for Church Life, scientists, philosophers and theologians will come together to consider initial causes in an interdisciplinary approach to “life, the universe and everything.”

Through generous funding from the John Templeton Foundation, 29 stipended fellowships are available for faculty and graduate students from across the disciplines who seek to enrich their teaching and research through this learning experience.

Registration Form - Click Here

Graduate Student Fellowship Application - Click Here

Faculty / Postdoc Fellowship Application - Click Here

Schedule*

Talk Descriptions

• “The Origin of Matter”
  Stephen Barr, Ph.D., Society of Catholic Scientists
  

  This talk will discuss where the matter in the universe came from according to the present understanding of particle physicists and cosmologists. It will first discuss what matter is, what kinds of matter there are, and how much of each type is contained in the universe. It will then explain how matter can be “created” and “annihilated” (in the physics sense), and how processes shortly after the Big Bang are believed to have generated the matter that exists. It will then discuss briefly the question of where the energy came from that fills the universe and got converted into matter, which is closely connected to some of the deepest unsolved problems in fundamental physics.

• “The Origin of Life”
  Luc Jaeger, Ph.D. - University of California Santa Barbara
  "What is Life?" and "How Life came to be?" are certainly among the most fundamental and profound questions to be asked. We will revisit some of the most recent scientific discoveries pertaining to the quest of the origin(s) of organic life in light of the three Greek concepts of life, namely Zoe (ζωή), as the principle and process of life, Bios (βίος), as the existence and physical embodiment of life, and Psyche (ψυχή), as the breath of life. Far from being meaningless, the quest on the origin of life in matter will contribute to a deeper understanding of the origin and meaning of our own human existence.

• ‘The Origin of the Human Species: The Scientific Perspective’
  Kieran McNulty, Ph.D. - University of Minnesota
  The question “What does it mean to be human?” is as old as human consciousness as well as the fundamental question in the discipline of Anthropology. In this talk, I will draw on my own research as an evolutionary anthropologist to explore answers to that question from the context of a fossil record spanning 6 million years. Starting with our common ancestor with chimpanzees, we will examine the highlight-reel of hominin evolution that ultimately led to our own species. I conclude with a brief consideration of what such abundant evidence of our physical evolution can and cannot tell us about what it means to be human.

• "The Origin of the Human Species: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives"
  Mariusz Tabaczek, OP - Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum)
  The encounter of philosophical, theological, and biological views on anthropogenesis inspired the most emotional reactions to evolutionary theory and posed a considerable challenge to systematic and philosophical theology. The history of the conversation between scientific and religious worldviews on the topic of hominization is thus long and complicated. In my talk I will present the four major positions on the origin of the human species. I will defend the contemporary Thomistic approach as philosophically and theologically more accurate and precise than the most prevalent version of the semi-naturalistic position that is favored and repeated by many theologians and accepted in the official statements of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
• "In the Beginning: The Widest Wisdom"
  Christopher Baglow, Ph.D., Director, Science & Religion Initiative, McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame
  Heather Foucault-Camm, BS.c., PGCE, MS.c., M.A., Program Director, McGrath Institute for Church Life,
  University of Notre Dame
  ‘I was interested in truth from the point of view of salvation just as much as truth from the point of view of scientific certainty. It appeared to me that there were two paths to truth, and I decided to follow both of them’ (Msgr. Georges LeMaître). With these words the Catholic priest and pioneer of the modern Big Bang theory of the universe’s origin alludes to science and faith as paths worthy of being walked together. Heather Foucault-Camm will propose the theological mystery of creation from nothing (ex nihilo) as the ultimate reason for this surprising affinity, in which God causes all things to be and to be causes of each other. Building upon this, Christopher Baglow will identify cosmological and biological evolution as providing an opportunity to renew theological discourse on the traces of the Trinity (vestigia Trinitatis) in creatures. They will conclude by considering three three habits of mind, all hallmarks of great science, that can be nourished by faith in creation - awe and wonder, curiosity in inquiry and delight in discovery.

Speaker Bios

Christopher Baglow, Ph.D. is a theologian, Professor of the Practice and Director of the Science and Religion Initiative of the McGrath Institute for Church Life. His work is the culmination of two decades of faith and science scholarship and educational program creation, as well as a lengthy career in Catholic theological education. He is the author of Faith, Science and Reason: Theology on the Cutting Edge (2nd edition, Midwest Theological Forum, 2019) and Creation: A Catholic’s Guide to God and the Universe (Ave Maria Press, 2021). He serves as theological advisor to the Board of Directors of the Society of Catholic Scientists.

Stephen M. Barr, Ph.D., is an American physicist who is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Delaware. A member of its Bartol Research Institute, Barr does research in theoretical particle physics and cosmology. In 2011, he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society for original contributions to grand unified theories, CP violation, and baryogenesis. He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1974, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1978. His field of research is theoretical particle physics. He has written over 120 research papers spanning a wide range of topics in that field. One of his areas of expertise is “grand unified theories”, on which he wrote the article for the Encyclopedia of Physics. He is the founder and president of the Society of Catholic Scientists.

Barr has written and spoken extensively on science and religion. His articles and book reviews have appeared in such journals as Church Life Journal, First Things, National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Public Interest, and Academic Questions. He is the author of Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2003), A Student’s Guide to Natural Science (ISI, 2006) and The Believing Scientist (Eerdmans, 2016).

Heather Foucault-Camm, BS.c., PGCE, MS.c., M.A., is the Program Director for the Science and Religion Initiative at the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where she develops the pedagogical components of SRI programming and delivers presentations on content both in Bioethics and Artificial Intelligence. A veteran science teacher and curriculum expert, she has a BSc and MSc in the field of Chemistry (specializing in Physical Chemistry), a PGCE, has completed the program for the National Certificate in Health Care Ethics from the NCBC, and has an MA in Theology from the University of Notre Dame. Heather is currently a doctoral student in moral theology and is investigating the social implications of emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. Heather is a Scholar Associate of the Society of Catholic Scientists.

Luc Jaeger, Ph.D., is a professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is also affiliated to the Biomolecular Science and Engineering program at UCSB. Notably, he has pioneered the field of RNA nanotechnology. Presently, his research interests focus more on RNA structural evolution and the emergence of complexity in biological systems and the origins of life. Dr. Jaeger is the author or co-author of over a hundred research articles published in renowned international scientific journals as well as few scientific book chapters. He is also interested in the dialogue between science and religion and was a member of the Advisory Board of the John Templeton Foundation from 2011 to 2013. For the academic year 2017-2018, he was a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Professor Jaeger’s research has been supported by major grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and more recently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He is presently a Specialty Chief editor for Frontiers in RNA Research.

Kieran McNulty, Ph.D., is a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, where he was awarded the McKnight Land-Grant Fellowship 2008, named Scholar of the College in 2017, and has received multiple teaching awards. His principal interests are in the evolution of apes and humans, pursued through paleontological fieldwork in eastern Africa. Kieran conceived of and directs the NSF-funded REACHE project, a collaborative network that coordinates field research at all of the Early Miocene fossil ape sites in eastern Africa, working in close association with the National Museum of Kenya and Uganda National Museum. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Leakey Foundation. He is a member of the Society of Catholic Scientists.

Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P., Ph.D., is a friar preacher. He holds Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, Church Licentiate in theology from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and Dr. habil. in philosophy from the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Poland. He currently works as a professor, vice-dean of theology, and researcher of the Thomistic Institute at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He is also a lecturer at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Krakow, Poland. He specializes in the science-theology dialogue and the issues concerning divine action and natural sciences, in particular. He is interested in systematic, fundamental, and natural theology, philosophy of nature, philosophy of science (philosophy of biology, in particular), philosophy of causation, and metaphysics.

He published a number of articles on metaphysics and the issues concerning the relation of theology and science in Zygon, Theology and Science, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Nova et Vetera, Forum Philosophicum, and Scientia et Fides. He is the author of three books: Emergence. Towards A New Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), Divine Action and Emergence. An Alternative to Panentheism (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), and Theistic Evolution. A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2024). He also coauthored two chapters in the second edition (2017) of Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction (ed. by Gary Ferngren).