The Zygon Center for Religion and Science is a non-profit organization housed at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago that is committed to the study of the interaction of religion and science. The center was founded in 1988 in continuing with the vision of Ralph Wendell Burhoe and it is supported by the Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science (CASIRAS).
The first director of the center was Philip Hefner (1988-2003) who was succeeded by Antje Jackelén (2003-2007). Currently the center is headed by Director Lea Schweiz with Associate Director Gayle Woloschak.
The center hosts a yearly course entitled the "Epic of Creation", which brings scientists and religious scholars together to offer lectures on the origins of the universe. It also hosts a yearly seminar with changing topics entitled the "Advanced Seminar in Religion and Science."
The center has hosted many notable conferences, with speakers such as Wolfhart Pannenberg (2001), Arthur Peacocke, and Ursula Goodenough. Ian Barbour, one of the godfathers of religion and science study is a frequent guest also.
Although sharing a name and various scholars, the Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science is a separate entity from the center.
Famous quotes containing the words center, religion and/or science:
“Placing the extraordinary at the center of the ordinary, as realism does, is a great comfort to us stay-at-homes.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of “decency.” The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)