In this episode of I Thought You'd Like to Know This, Too, Sr. Carla Mae Streeter, OP, interviews Sister Ilia Delio, OSF, a Franciscan sister with a background in science and theology. Sr. Ilia discussed her journey from neurobiology to historical theology, emphasizing the integration of science and religion. She highlighted the need for a dynamic understanding of Christology and the role of figures like Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, and Teilhard de Chardin in bridging science and faith. Sr. Ilia advocated for a shift from traditional doctrines to a more evolutionary and integrative approach, stressing the importance of revisiting core theological concepts in light of modern scientific insights. She also emphasized the need for a robust religious education that includes both science and faith to address contemporary challenges.

In this webinar of the Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology, Sr. Marysia Weber, RSM, and Dr. Kevin Powell, discuss the effects of social media on children. (April 13, 2024) Is the increasing number of hours that children are spending using smartphones having any effects on their brains and psychosocial well-being? Research is telling us that the answer to this question is a resounding yes! This presentation will address how excessive use of digital devices is impacting psychosocial maturation and is altering brain development in ways similar to the alterations noted in substance use disorders. Practical means of addressing these detrimental effects will also be highlighted. Technology changes communication and social lifestyles. This has been true since the invention of the printing press and the telephone. Technological progress will have both positive and negative effects on society. It is not enough to measure harms and act like outraged Luddites. Ethical societies measure and balance the positive impacts. It is not enough to weigh pros and cons. Communities should regulate technology so that positives are appropriately rewarded, negatives are mitigated, and just remediation is provided for economic externalities that generate profit for some while harming other people, society, and the environment. Laws are not enough. Moral formation needs to be updated and augmented to enable beneficial development and adoption of technology. Children, who have never known anything different, are the most strongly impacted by the harms, the least able to resist trends, and the most in need of the moral formation. How Does Social Media Affect Children? - Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology (faithscience.org)

In this ITEST Webinar "Bridging the Chasm: Quantum Mechanics and Christian Spirituality," Dr. Bob Kurland and Dr. Terrence Lagerlund (December 16, 2023) BRIDGING THE CHASM: HOW QUANTUM MECHANICS BRINGS TOGETHER THE PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL WORLDS BY TERRENCE D. LAGERLUND, MD, PHD Dr. Terrence Lagerlund has been a neurologist in the Division of Epilepsy at Mayo Clinic for 35 years, treating patients with epilepsy and interpreting their electroencephalograms. He also lectures to residents and fellows on electroencephalography including basic principles of electricity and neurophysiology. He has published papers and authored book chapters on electroencephalography and epilepsy, particularly regarding quantitative analysis of electroencephalograms. Prior to becoming a neurologist, he obtained a Ph.D. in physics and worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science (doing research at Brookhaven National Laboratory and CERN) and as a term physicist at Fermilab. ABSTRACT The God of Judeo-Christian tradition is the Lord of the universe, and scriptures affirm God’s sovereignty over the course of events. However, the discoveries by Newton and others that the universe is governed by rigid laws of cause and effect that are expressed as mathematical formulas engendered the belief that the universe is a complete, closed system of cause and effect (the principle of “causal closure”), and therefore that God cannot possibly influence or change what happens in the physical universe. In this worldview, God, even if he exists, is irrelevant to our lives, and our souls, even if they exist, are irrelevant to what we believe, say, or do. However, quantum mechanics may provide an opening for the spiritual world to influence the physical. Quantum mechanics (QM) describes physical systems by a state vector (SV), a collection of superimposed possible states. During the quantum to classical transition, possible states reduce to one actual state (SV collapse). QM predicts the probability of each possible outcome. SV collapse seems to be an uncaused process with a random result, breaking the deterministic chain of physical causes and effects. Wolfgang Smith hypothesized that God causes SV collapse and chooses the outcome. TOURING THE WONDERLAND OF QUANTUM MECHANICS BY ROBERT KURLAND, PHD Dr. Robert Kurland (a convert to Catholicism in 1995) is a retired physicist who has applied magnetic resonance to problems of biological interest in his research (web search: “Kurland-McGarvey Equation”). He began to learn about quantum mechanics at Caltech (BS, “with honor,” 1951) and Harvard (MS,1953; Ph.D.,1956) from courses taught by Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger. In teaching quantum mechanics to students at Carnegie-Mellon University and SUNY/AB he found that mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics was an obstacle to understanding. So, in his talk he will try to explain what quantum mechanics is about using a minimum of mathematics, as he did in his book Mysteries: Quantum and Theological. ABSTRACT The talk will give a brief, qualitative, pictorial explanation of quantum mechanics, from a historical perspective. I’ll illustrate two mysteries of quantum mechanics—superposition of states (the Schrödinger Cat paradox) and entanglement—by use of simple examples. Also, I’ll discuss some of the many interpretations of quantum theory, focusing on how they might be related to Catholic teaching.

DR. PATRICK CASTLE LIFE Runners President & Founder REAL HEALTHCARE DEFENDS LIFE AT ALL STAGES ABSTRACT Did you know that Hippocratic Oath specifically forbids abortion and euthanasia? Did you know the American Medical Association in 1859 unanimously voted that life begins at conception and that abortion is criminal? Did you know that Google makes it more difficult for mothers to find pregnancy help centers online? Did you know that the FDA removed the warning that Plan B can cause an abortion? Did you know that the current administration is working to repeal conscience protections for healthcare workers? Did you know that running is optional for LIFE Runners? And much more! GEORGE DELGADO, M.D. President of Steno Institute ABORTION PILL REVERSAL: GIVING WOMEN A SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE ABSTRACT Mifepristone chemical abortions account for about 60% of all abortions in the United States. Some women, after starting the chemical abortion process, change their minds and want to continue their pregnancies. Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) utilizes supplemental progesterone, the maintenance hormone of pregnancy, to out-compete the abortion drug. APR offers women a second chance at life. Women offered the option of reversing their chemical abortions are very grateful.Mainstream medical organizations, Planned Parenthood, and the ACLU have fought vigorously to discredit APR and make it less available. The evidence in the medical literature is very reassuring that Abortion Pill Reversal is safe and effective. DR. CYNTHIA TOOLIN-WILSON Academic Dean – Pontifex University SURVIVING ABORTION AS THE VICTIM ABSTRACT The most important event of my life occurred when I was eleven years old. That was when I found out that Ma and Grandpa tried to kill me, with the knowledge and agreement of many family members, including Pa.On a hot summer evening in her kitchen, Ma told me after several hesitations, that in 1949 Grandpa bought a chemical at the drugstore that would make her lose me. She was annoyed that I didn’t understand what that meant. So, she told me that she didn’t want a baby and the medicine would make me go away. I asked her why the medicine didn’t work, and she explained that when she started bleeding, she was afraid she might die too, so she stopped drinking it. The fact that she was afraid of dying was the second most important event of my life.I never felt the same about her or the family members. I suspect that her cousin, who had married a Catholic man, and had used medicines for years to prevent a pregnancy, had told Ma what medicine to buy.Here I am 62 years later (that is, I am now 73 years old). I am the age my mother was when she passed. My husband Jimmy Toolin, a devout Catholic, died of cancer; my second husband Bill Wilson, who I managed to bring back to being a practicing Catholic, died of heart, liver, and kidney failure. Between them, if I count all the way to great grandchildren, I have 38 descendants.

Classical metaphysics is grounded in a philosophy of Being (States of Being) with God as the Supreme Being or Pure Actuality. Potentiality is seen in descending states of being: first, the order of angels, human beings, higher-order and lower-order animal species, plants, insects, minerals, their molecular and atomic components, prime matter. Process- or systems-ordered metaphysics is grounded in Stages of Becoming: Infinite Potentiality/Energy Source, subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, minerals, cells, plants, animal species, human beings, an all-encompassing network of relations between participants that continues to evolve in new and different ways through all its parts or members but especially its primordial components. Everything else depends upon the right choice in terms of these opposing world views. ​ Transformative learning theory, which explains the reframing of one’s worldview in light of a transformative experience, may assist in articulating the dynamic relationship between the One and the Many. Fr. Bracken’s explanation of a reciprocal causal relation among constituent parts and the whole to which they belong provides an opportunity to explore a process-oriented metaphysics in the understanding of an event-based efficient causality. The creative interplay among the relational paradigms through which an individual organism moves over the course of its existence demonstrates the interdependence of all things regardless of their material causes, and this seems to give a quantum meaning to any kind of final causality of adaptive systems.

Some links: https://www.enroutebooksandmedia.com https://www.wcatradio.com https://www.faithscience.org

PREACHING WITH THE SCIENCES AND THE SCIENCE OF PREACHING - FR. FOLEY’S ABSTRACT The sciences are seldom employed by Roman Catholic preachers in their homilies. This presentation will narrate how they became important for my own preaching, which in turn generated the grant in preaching from the Templeton Foundation. That grant and our scientific collaborates, homilists, and resulting resources will be described. This work has triggered further wonderment about the sciences, not “in” but “behind” the preaching. Neuroscience seems particularly valuable in gaining new perspectives on what contributes to effective preaching, across languages and even cultures. While this work is preliminary, I will report some of my preliminary findings about the ways the neuroscientific work collaborates some well held wisdom about crafting effective preaching. PREACHING WITH THE SCIENCES REAWAKENING WONDER IN WORSHIP - DR. WOLF-CHASE’S ABSTRACT Science and technology pervade every aspect of modern life. Over the past several decades, their interplay has increased our knowledge of ourselves, our planet, and the Universe, exponentially. Faith is often seen as becoming increasingly detached from “real life” and the multiple challenges our world faces today. Religious leaders have a very important role to play in helping their communities relate science and faith intellectually and meaningfully. However, science offers more than intellectual stimulation; it offers wonderment. Many religious thinkers have pointed out that, in an excessive focus on legalism, religion loses precisely that sense of awe and wonderment that inspired so many of the Scriptures. I’ll offer some ways that astronomy, in particular, can help reawaken religious awe and wonder. PREACHING WITH THE SCIENCES: A PROTESTANT REFLECTION - REV. LIU’S ABSTRACT The sciences rarely make a substantive appearance in Protestant preaching. I will reflect upon how participation in the Templeton Preaching with the Sciences Grant led by Ed Foley has provided opportunity to anchor scientific knowledge and inquiry as foci for preaching preparation and practice in an ecumenical way that has broadened my own homiletic imagination as an ordained United Methodist Minister and the possibilities for enlivening preaching scientifically in partnership with Roman Catholic neighbors. The grant has also helped me to think more directly about how engaging scientific knowledge and inquiry homiletically can strengthen the public relevance of preaching for ethical questions in our contemporary era.

In this episode of I Thought You'd Like To Know This, Too, Robert Nicastro and Paul Segura discuss Astrophysics and Exotheology (February 13, 2023)