Aasim I. Padela, MD, MSc Professor of Emergency Medicine, Bioethics and Medical Humanities, The Medical College of Wisconsin; Chairperson and Director, the Initiative on Islam and Medicine Both science and religion are bodies of knowledge that help inform an understanding of a topic that we’ll never have perfect understanding about. Who we are, what our end will be, how are we going to get there? You have to be epistemically humble about both science and religious dictates. That needs to be acknowledged both by religious leaders and scientific leaders. We have to understand the limitations of our knowledge sets in both domains, be transparent about them to the public and say, we’re making best-case, best-hypothesis driven arguments. We’re making the best data available, the best understanding we have today, but we’re open to change tomorrow.
Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD Professor of Emergency Medicine and Professor in the Division of Education and Bioethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University; Attending Physician, Montefiore Medical Center Religious authorities cannot function in a vacuum. We need to maintain a dialogue. We need to understand the latest science, and we need to apply that science to our congregations to keep everybody healthy and safe.
Markus Gabriel, Dr. Phil. Chair in Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy and Director of International Center for Philosophy and Center for Science and Thought, University of Bonn, Germany The human being is an animal desperately trying not to be one. Nothing is more human than the wish to deny one’s own animality. The capacity to try to lead a life as if we weren’t animals is quite characteristic of the human being. Thus, we need to compensate for our overly one-sided, natural, scientific technological culture by going back to the insight that we are integrated into a larger natural context, which we will never be able to fully dominate. Tyler VanderWeele, PhD John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Director of the Human Flourishing Program, and Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality at Harvard University Religious community has profound effects on health and wellbeing. Those who regularly attend religious services tend to live longer, have about a 30% lower risk of incident depression and about a fivefold reduced risk of suicide. Participation in religious communities tends to lead to greater levels of happiness, of purpose, of volunteering, of civic engagement and charitable giving and lower divorce rates. Religious participation might be one of the most underappreciated social determinants of health.
Animals possess many rudimentary traits previously regarded as unique to humans: tool use, self-awareness, mind reading, moral cognition, the ability to experience complex emotions such as grief or awe or personality traits. None of them, however, has the same ability to extend, transform, refine and sublimate these rudimentary forms in ways that come natural to human beings. It is part of human nature to transcend nature.
Georg Theiner, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Villanova University and Editor-in-Chief, Social Epistemology
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