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:
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words of the Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint’s picture.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“I exulted like “a pagan suckled in a creed” that had never been worn at all, but was brand-new, and adequate to the occasion. I let science slide, and rejoiced in that light as if it had been a fellow creature. I saw that it was excellent, and was very glad to know that it was so cheap. A scientific explanation, as it is called, would have been altogether out of place there. That is for pale daylight.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)