The Science Network

The Science Network

Founded	2004
Headquarters	La Jolla, CA, United States
Staff	Roger Bingham, co-founder and director Terrence Sejnowski, advisory board chair
Area served	Global
Method	Video sharing
Motto	More programs, more candles, more light.
Website	http://thesciencenetwork.org

The Science Network (TSN) is a non-profit, web-based organization concerned with science and its impact on society.

Beyond Belief

TSN's signature series Beyond Belief is an annual meeting which brings together a community of scientists, philosophers, scholars from the humanities, and social commentators. Speakers at these meetings have included Steven Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Harry Kroto, Neil de Grasse Tyson, and Stuart Kauffman.

2006: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival

Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival, the first of the The Science Network's annual Beyond Belief symposia, held from November 5 to November 7, 2006, was described by the New York Times, as "a free-for-all on science and religion," which seemed at times like "the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told." According to participant Melvin Konner, however, the event came to resemble a "den of vipers” debating the issue, "Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?”^[1]

Conference goals and topics

The event was conceived as a response to the efforts of the Templeton Foundation to reconcile science with religion, according to its underwriter Robert Zeps, who told an interviewer, "I am not anti-Templeton in the sense of funding scientists to say mean things about religion. I simply believe that all study should be free of any particular agenda besides learning...Most take the position that the religious right are just nuts who are loud but frankly undeserving of a response...I believe that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and pretty much all of the tech age wealth is firmly on the side of science and they need to step up .and say so in a way that is heard by the anti-science lobby."^[2]

Many conference participants leveled strong criticism at the activities of the Templeton Foundation, including claims that it attempted to blur the line between science and religion and that it funded "garbage research" aimed at showing a healing effect of prayer.^[1] The conference devoted its final session to "the negative effects of introducing religion into medicine." A Templeton spokesperson responded by warning against “commercialized ideological scientism," the effort to profit from promoting science as the only guide to truth.^[1]

NewScientist summed up the topics to be discussed as a list of three questions:^[3]

• Can science help us create a new rational narrative as poetic and powerful as those that have traditionally sustained societies?
• Can we treat religion as a natural phenomenon?
• Can we be good without God? And if not God, then what?

Speakers included physicists Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss, author Sam Harris, biologist Joan Roughgarden, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.^[1]

2007: Enlightenment 2.0

Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 was the second annual symposium and was held from 31 October to 2 November 2007 at the Frederic de Hoffmann Auditorium of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.^[4]

2008: Candles in the Dark

Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark was the third annual Beyond Belief symposium. This event was organized by The Science Network and held from 3 October to 6 October 2008 in La Jolla, CA.^[5]

References