While the beginning of the year often inspires a hopefulness and expectancy for life, New Years isn’t all excitement and courage. For you personally, this year may be a continuation of past sickness, relational strife, or financial uncertainty. For listeners in the United States, 2024 is an election year — which may mean fractured friendships, families, and even communities of faith ... none of which made your resolution list. Given all this, what is there to hope for in 2024?
As we enter into the new year, the speakers in today’s episode meet you in this uncertainty through an invitation to consider who you are — from your genetic makeup, to your relationships, to your beliefs about life’s biggest questions. In their discussion, today’s speakers explore the limits of our wills, the role of reason, and where true hope can be found.
You’ll hear from genomics researcher Praveen Sethupathy (Cornell), BioScience professor Yousif Shamoo (Rice), and moderators Rabbi Oren Hayon and Dr. Elaine Ecklund (Rice). This forum was hosted at Rice University in 2016. Thank you to our Forums planning team at Rice for making this event possible.
Praveen Sethupathy
It matters whether Jesus was a historical person who existed in the world. It matters whether there was a Mount Sinai where something happened. It matters whether Muhammad did certain things and actually was able to hear the Word of God. These things matter.
We, as scientists, have tried for centuries to make all sorts of claims about the biological uniqueness of humans — maybe it's making tools, maybe it's the ability to form empathy, maybe it's reasoning ability. And the more we learn, the more we find that other animals (generally primates) experience or have these kinds of features, too. So I think it is not so much our biological nature but our spiritual nature that distinguishes us. There's a God-breathed spirit — and there is a desire to know him, a desire to have fellowship with him, a propensity to ask these kinds of big questions of life.
Jesus turned my notions of power upside down. Turns out he wasn't on the cross because he was powerless to stop it; he was on the cross because that's precisely how he chose to exercise his power — to give up his life for the sake of others. As a Christian, and as one who claims to follow in the way of Christ, I am also called to live a life of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. I don't always live up to that calling, but it really does shape the way that I think about who I am.
Science provides a set of tools that are useful for investigating phenomena in the natural world. But as powerful as science may be for dissecting planetary motion and battling cancer, it's not really intended for questions like, "Why did life forms originate in the first place?" We're free to speculate and have our beliefs, but science is not equipped to answer questions like this.
