Society of Catholic Scientists

Seton Hall University hosted the sixth annual conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists (SCS2023), which was a great success. At least 104 people attended in person and over 1,200 watched by live stream. Dr. Stephen Barr, President of the Society and Professor emeritus of physics at the University of Delaware, organized the conference with the Seton Hall SCS Chapter and the Division of Continuing Education and Professional Studies.

"The Society is thankful to the twelve speakers and the twenty-four poster presenters for their great work, and they are also very grateful to the Seton Hall University Chapter of SCS, which helped plan the event, and to Seton Hall University for being a wonderful host for this event." The full lineup of speakers, biographies and abstracts of all the poster presentations can be found here.

The Seton Hall Chapter President, Rev. Joseph R. Laracy, S.T.D. affirms, "The 2023 Society of Catholic Scientists (SCS) Conference at Seton Hall University was a great success! Over one hundred scientists from around the world came to campus to discuss cutting edge research, and also further explore the intersection of science and faith. Due to the excellent planning by SCS President, Dr. Stephen Barr, and Seton Hall Assistant Provost, Mary Kate Naatus, Ph.D., the event could not have gone smoother."

One of the highlights of the conference was the presentation of the 2023 St. Albert Award to Prof. Anthony Ichiro Sanda, who has won many prestigious scientific awards for his contributions to fundamental theoretical physics, and who has done much writing and speaking in Japan on the relation of science and faith, and serves as a Deacon for the Archdiocese of Tokyo. You can read about all that on the St. Albert Award page of the SCS website, where the text of his inspiring acceptance letter (which was read at SCS2023) can also be found.

The theme of the conference was "Critical Issues at the Intersection of Science and Faith." There were talks on a wide variety of topics: how life may have originated on earth; the latest findings on the evolution of Homo sapiens; the "Dark Matter" that fills the universe (what it is and attempts to detect it); integrating neuroscience and faith; Artificial Intelligence; the vexed question of gender dysphoria; and much more.

At every annual conference, the Society has at least one Guest Lecture by a distinguished non-Catholic scholar. This year, the featured speaker was Yoav Vaknin, a young Israeli scholar whose team has done fascinating work using new cutting edge techniques of "paleomagnetism" to date archaeological sites in the Holy Land, confirming in some cases the biblical chronology of invasions and destruction events that had been disputed and hard to date by other means. This work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has received wide coverage in the media.

Categories: Faith and Service