Westmont Opens Center For Faith, Science
Westmont has established the Center for Faith, Ethics and the Life Sciences in an effort to encourage thoughtful and productive dialog about religious implications of the life sciences. Grants totaling more than $1 million, including a $780,000 award from the John Templeton Foundation, provide funding for center projects.
“We’re thrilled to announce the launch of this center,” says Westmont President Gayle D. Beebe. “It will make a significant contribution to our campus and change the trajectory of discussion in this field.”
Some of today’s most fascinating but contentious issues arise from the life sciences, such as stem cells, global warming, intelligent design, and biological theories of love and morality. “The disappointing thing about these debates is that they’re frequently not debates at all,” says the center’s director Jeff Schloss, distinguished professor of biology and the first recipient of the T.B. Walker Chair in the Natural and Behavioral Sciences. “They’re often polemical monologues that reinforce false extremes without tentativeness or civil discussion.”
“Jeff Schloss is one of America’s foremost thinkers on the integration of science and faith,” Beebe says. “We congratulate him for receiving the Templeton grant.”
“The Galileo affair was child’s play compared to the way contemporary biosciences have revolutionized human thought,” Schloss says. “Not only has the field generated wondrous intellectual and practical advances, but also it has profound impacts on faith – both enriching and challenging. Curiously, there are countless journals and institutes that focus on faith and science in general or advance particular agendas on creation and evolution, but there are no programs that relate a Christian perspective to the wide range of issues raised by scientific perspectives on the nature of life.”
One currently prominent example is emerging research on the biological roots and impacts of religious belief itself. The Templeton grant will fund empirical research by Schloss and Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist at Claremont Graduate University, to investigate behavioral and neurological effects of spiritual disciplines, focusing on oxytocin – a hormone known to promote trust and well-being.