Science and Religion Forum

2003 CONFERENCE REPORT
The Place of Humans in the Universe - Multi-Faith Perspective

The Science and Religion Forum held their Annual Conference at Woodbrook Conference Centre, Birmingham, from 8th - 10th September 2003. The title of the Conference was, " The Place of Humans in the Universe - Multi-Faith Perspective".

After a welcome to the Conference and to Birmingham, Professor John Hedley Brooke, Andreas Idreos Chair of Science and Religion, the University of Oxford set the scene and gave an interesting historical perspective on how areas of concern in one age are not always those of another.

V. V. Raman, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York State, USA, gave the first talk. His talk was entitled "The Place of Humans in the Universe Cosmology: Perspectives of a Hindu Thinker".

Professor Raman argued that every traditional religion has proclaimed and preached that we are indeed the source from which everything radiated. It is but a logical corollary to state that the universe itself was created for us. In other words, in its infinite wisdom the Grand Omnipotent Divinity, abbreviated as GOD, created the world for humans to experience and to enjoy.

One of the root causes for the negative reaction to the Copernican worldview, when it was first put forward, was that it summarily displaced humans from the center of the universe, and this had enormous theological implications. With or without the discovery by physicists of a possible anthropic principle undergirding the universe, we simply cannot ignore human presence in the universe. And we have reason to attach universal significance to humanity. Our presence in the universe is modest in scale, but it is fair to say, even from objective considerations, that it is no less important than any of the components of the universe in properties and significance.

Hindu seers, of the distant past, said Professor Raman, reflected on the mystery of the human presence in the universe. The Vedas are among the most ancient spiritual reflections in humanity's rich heritage. They are also the founts of Hindu thought and religion. They consist of invocations and reflections by spiritually enlightened sage-poets, addressed to the factors and forces in the universe that instigate, sustain, and dissolve life and consciousness here below. Traditional Hindus attach to Vedic utterances the same divine revelation as the Bible and the Qur'an are given by the faithful of the Abrahamic traditions.

Among the many hymns that constitute the Rig Veda there is one that is known as the Hymn of Creation. Somewhat as in the Book of Genesis, it reflects on how the world came to be. Here are a few stanzas from it:

Not even nothing existed then
No air yet, and no heaven.
Who encased and kept it where?
Was water in the darkness there?

Neither deathlessness nor decay
No, nor the rhythm of night and day:
The self-existent, with breath sans air:
That, and that alone were there.

Darkness was in darkness found
Like light-less water all around.
One emerged, with nothing on
It was from heat that this was born.

Who really knows, and who can swear,
How creation arose, when or where!
Even gods came after creation's day,
Who really knows, who can truly say

When and how did creation start?
Did He do it? Or did He not?
Only He up there knows, maybe;
Or perhaps, not even He.

Aside from the cautious skepticism at the end, the point to note is the complete absence of any mention of human beings here, nor even of the planet earth. This makes the hymn not incompatible with the heliocentric system. Very much like modern science, this vision evokes a cosmology without saying anything about anthropic centrality. Very much like modern science again, some of the Vedic seers looked upon the world with deliberate detachment, for it struck them as the glorious work of a supreme architect rather than as an arena for Man and Woman to sport and spend time.

And yet, human presence is not altogether ignored, for there are countless prayers in the Vedas that seek protection from the elements and blessings from divinities. More importantly, in the Upanishads which are elaborations of Vedic wisdom, there are references to humanity, not as a dominant factor on the planet, nor in terms of an external resemblance to God, but rather in the context of the mystery of mysteries: namely, consciousness. It is on the nature of this experiencing entity that Hindu spirituality probed and proclaimed. Neither the golden sunset nor the pattered wings of a butterfly, neither the fragrance of flowers nor the taste of honey would emerge as aspects of the physical universe without the highly complex human brain. There would be no art or philosophy, no science or technology, no music or mathematics in the world without Homo sapiens. From the Hindu perspective, human beings are privy to the secrets of cosmic origins and to other esoteric truths about the universe. This occult knowledge is referred to as rahasya or secret. There are several contexts in which ordinary mortals receive that wisdom. Krishna of Bhagavad Gita fame, talks about revealing the rahasya to the valiant Arjuna. Professor Raman said he interpreted this is the revelation to the human brain of the Cosmic consciousness that is heartbeat of the universe.

How are we to explain these extraordinary features of human consciousness in relation to its temporal and spatial insignificance? How are we to comprehend the fact that to none but the human brain is the universe comprehensible? Science's suggestion that evolution alone led to this extraordinarily powerful complexity is one hypothesis. The sage poets of Hinduism probed into the ultimate nature and roots of consciousness, and they arrived at the startling conclusion that it is but a pale echo of something of far grandeur dimensions. Expressed through the pithy Upanishadic aphorism, tat tvam asi: Thou art That, the Hindu vision is that every conscious entity is like a spark from an underlying effulgence, and can flash its radiance as its source alone can. In other words, this capacity for awareness and experience, for logical analysis and joyful interaction constitutes the intangible component in the fleeting persistence of Homo sapience. This is the essence of what we call the human spirit. Just as there is more to a flower than soil and tree-branch, the spirit is more than neural network, heartbeat and vital breath, though these are what create and sustain it here below. If there is splendor in the perceived world and pattern in its functioning, and if it can all result in the grand experiences of life and thought, then even prior to the advent of humans, there must have been a purusha of a vastly superior order, an Experiencer Who spanned the cosmic range in space and time. This is the undergirding cosmic principle, the Brahman in Hindu vision. Just as the expanse of water in the seas is scattered all over land in ponds and lakes and rivers and bottles, all-embracing Brahman finds expression in countless life forms. We are miniature lights, one and all. We have emanated from that primordial effulgence, like photons from a glorious galactic core, destined for the terrestrial experience for a brief span on the eternal time line, only to re-merge with that from which we sprang.

The Hindu spiritual vision paints individual consciousness on a cosmic canvass. It recognizes the transience of us all as separate entities, yet incorporates us into the infinity that encompasses us. It does not rule out the possibility of other manifestations of Brahman, sublime and subtle, carbon or silicon-based, elsewhere amidst the stellar billions. It recognizes the role of matter, and the limits of the mind, but sees subtle spirit at the core of it all. It does not speak of rewards and punishments in anthropocentric terms, nor of a He-God communicating in local languages. Yet, it regards the religious expressions of humanity as echoes of the Universal Spirit, even as volcanic outbursts reveal submerged forces of far greater magnitude. Professor Raman concluded that we must all join hands in our efforts to induce the positive and snub the negative in human capacities. Now, as never before in history, we feel we are all passengers in the only spaceship we have. Fortified by the knowledge and power that come from the sciences we may build on the finer values and wisdom of the ages, and make this our planet an even more rewarding place to be. This, Professor Raman said, should be among the goals of our education in the new century.

Russell Stannard, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, responded to Professor Raman from a Christian perspective. He began at the beginning, with the Big Bang. It was such a cataclysmic event said Professor Stannard; it is natural to suppose that it marked the origin of the Universe - the moment when it all came into being. The triumph of the Big Bang theory marked the end of the rival Steady State theory - the idea that the universe had always existed. So, how do we account for the world coming into existence? The Judeo-Christian response has always been that God created the world. The world and ourselves owe our existence to God - the underlying ground of all being. There are those who argue that God is not necessary; there is an alternative explanation of the occurrence of the Big Bang. They put it down to a quantum fluctuation. But that only raises the question of where the quantum physical law governing this process came from.

In speaking of God as the Creator, we need to be careful. We do not see him acting in the way most religious people assume he does - meaning a God who exists for all time, and who at some point in time decides to create a world, he lights the blue touch paper, there is a Big Bang, and we are on our way.

The creation question, on the other hand, is different. It is not particularly concerned with what happened at the beginning. Rather it is to do with: 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' It is as much concerned with the present instant of time as any other. 'Why are we here? To whom or to what do we owe our existence? What is keeping us in existence?' It is an entirely different type of question, one not concerned with the mechanics of the origin of the cosmos, but with the underlying ground of all being. It is for this reason one finds that whenever theologians talk about God the Creator, they usually couple it with the idea of God the Sustainer. Professor Stannard then went on to the question of the human mind/brain. No one understands how consciousness comes about. All we can say is that it appears to have something to do with the complexity of the brain. Our brain is admittedly not big on the astronomical scale, but it is probably one of the most complex structures to be found anywhere in the Universe. In view of complexity, it would seem that in physical terms what is more relevant than size, is degree of complexity. As far as organised complexity is concerned, the Sun must count as an extraordinarily simple object compared to the human brain.

It is impossible, he argued, to put a hard figure on the likelihood of getting life from simply throwing together a bunch of physical laws and constants at random. Whatever the true odds are, it is probably fair to say that to have a universe that, purely by chance, satisfies all the requirements appropriate to the development of life is less likely than winning first prize in the National Lottery; it might even be as high as winning first prize in the lottery every week since Camelot began. All of this goes under the name of the Anthropic Principle: This set of apparent coincidences that our universe satisfied and, which were necessary for life to develop within it. What might be the explanation of the mysterious appropriateness of the Universe? There are essentially three alternatives

(i) Science will one day come up with an answer (ii) The possibility of our Universe being one of many (iii) A Universe fine-tuned and designed for life

Bearing that in mind, it would be advisable for religious believers today not to make too much of this new Argument from Design - one based this time on physics and cosmology rather than biology. God can neither be proved nor disproved on the basis of such reasoning. Nevertheless, for religious believers, the simplest explanation is in terms of a Designer God.

What of our importance in relation to life elsewhere in the cosmos? Is there life elsewhere? The only way to settle this issue conclusively is to make direct contact with alien civilizations. To this end searches are being made of the heavens under the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) programme for signs of intelligent radio signals being beamed at us - to date without success. Professor Stannard's view is that although, for all we know, intelligent life in the cosmos might be unique to planet Earth, that smacks of arrogance - the kind of arrogance that led us initially to think that we were at the centre of the Universe. It is quite possible that the cosmos is teeming with life forms as intelligent as we are.

A more interesting question as regards ET might therefore not be so much concerned with how intellectually developed they are, as to how spiritually developed. What would it mean to have a species that was more spiritually developed - and consequently more valued by God - than us? What would count as the epitome of spiritual development? The willingness to lay down one's life for God, or for the wellbeing of others? But humans already have that capacity. Christians believe that the very Son of God took flesh and became human, and set us that standard by his example of laying down his life for us. So perhaps God does value us as much as he values anyone else in the cosmos.

In conclusion, Professor Stannard raised the question of how the Son of God relates to ET. Does he elsewhere in the cosmos take on the form of ET and become one of them? Perhaps one day we shall receive a message, or a visit from them, and shall be able to share our experiences.

The lead talk in the second section was entitled "The Place of Humans in the Universe" and was given by Professor Osman Bakar of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, USA. In presenting Islamic perspectives on the place of humans in cosmology, human distinctiveness, human choices and consciousness, Professor Bakar said he was talking about the main intellectual currents in contemporary Muslim thought on those subjects. Since the discussion is about Islamic perspectives, we can, he said, concentrate on those intellectual positions and developments in Muslim societies that seek to reconcile between revealed data in the Koran and modern knowledge, which is primarily of Western origin and creation.

On the subject of the place of humans in the cosmos, the most popular Muslim understanding of it views humans as God's best and special creation and as His representatives on earth. In Islamic terminology, it is said that every human, male and female, has been created to become God's khalifah on earth. The idea of khalifah is in the Koran. According to the popular interpretation, to be God's khalifah is to be empowered to rule the world in the Name of God. Humans have the natural qualifications to be empowered as such by virtue of the fact that they have been endowed with reason and intelligence and are capable of love, higher feelings and obedience.

Professor Bakar said that on the basis of one of these traditional interpretations of the khalifah, we see that it is first and foremost in the spiritual sense that we should understand the right of human beings to dominate the rest of creation. As a khalifah, the function of a human is to celebrate the honourable and dignified position God has given him, namely his position as a central being in the universe by virtue of his being created in the image of God. It is also to honour his obligations to serve as a channel of grace for all other creatures. One could say that all other creatures willingly accept to serve human beings, to be used and subjugated by them only on the condition that the human consumption and management of things on earth and beyond are all directed towards the fulfilment of the cosmic purpose. From the point of view of the Koran, Prophet Muhammad is this channel of grace par excellence when it says that Muhammad has been sent "as a mercy to the whole universe."

Many Muslims are not interested in going into the spiritual and scientific content of the relationship between humans and the rest of creation. Only those interested in the inner and deeper meanings of religious truths like the Sufis, scientists and philosophers, are attracted to the idea of penetrating the spiritual and scientific dimensions of that relationship.

One of the most important ideas in traditional Islamic thought that have immediate implications for the relationship between human beings and other creatures is the idea of the microcosm. The basic meaning contained in this idea is the following: everything that exists externally to a human being exists as a part of him. Conversely, everything that is a part of a human being exists outside him. In short, a human being is a universe in miniature. Mathematically speaking, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm. A human being as a microcosm contains all the properties and attributes of physical, biological, psychical, and spiritual elements that exist in the universe. But a human being is greater than the sum total of all these properties and attributes. There is also something divine within the human person. The Koran affirms this fact by saying that God has breathed something of His Spirit into man.

A growing number of contemporary Muslim scientists are turning to traditional cosmology and the place of humans in it in search of answers to the various issues raised by new discoveries in cosmology and other sciences. The new thinking discernible in this growing interest is that facts discovered by contemporary science, as opposed to interpretative ideas, may be readily integrated into traditional Islamic cosmological theories.

Human distinctiveness is a reality not only at the spiritual and intellectual level but also at the physical and biological levels. There are biological determinants as well. But these are relative, not absolute in nature. On the basis of contemporary knowledge of DNA, one is tempted to conclude that the fate of a human, including the moral fate, is biologically determined in an absolute way. However, biological determinism is only an aspect of the human reality. As we know in theoretical physics, indeterminism is also a part of the reality of our universe. A holistic view of the human reality has to incorporate both the biologically determined dimension, which is the domain of scientific investigation, and the spiritually determined dimension, which is the primary concern of religion. Added to all these is the element of uncertainty in the world to which the Koran calls on believers to acknowledge and to respond by saying insha' Allah (if God wills).

A philosophical and scientific approach to the study of human nature and attributes would also affirm human distinctiveness in relation to other creatures. But unlike the Shari'ah, which tends to negate or ignore the existence of similar natures in humans and animals the Islamic philosophical and scientific approach tends to view humans as being continuous in nature with other animals in many respects. Still in affirmation is the idea that humans possess each similar nature in its most perfect form. What we have is a grade of natures rather than humans having them in an exclusive manner. Thus Muslim scientists and philosophers have discoursed on the presence of attributes like intelligence, life and consciousness in all living things on earth. However, there is something distinctive about human intelligence, human life and human consciousness.

Dr Christopher Southgate, Acting Principal of the South-west Ordination Course responded from a Christian perspective. He began by thanking Professor Bakar and by picking up points of contact saying he warmed very much to the conviction that only through divine guidance can humans relate appropriately to the non-human creation, and that that relationship needs to be based on servant-hood. Something we might explore further is whether that is servant-hood only in respect of God, or also in respect of other persons and the world. There was a hint that it might be the latter in the Professor's description of humans as being able to act as a channel of grace to all creatures. Dr Southgate also felt a point of contact with Professor Bakar's conviction that human prayer is prayer on behalf of all creatures, that humans, are in some sense the priests of creation, but also, picking up on one or two hints in the Psalms, that all creation praises God. Humans are the creatures who happen to be able to give that praise the character of freely offered, rationally articulated worship. He noted that the Professor distinguished between the emphasis in Shariah on human distinctiveness (because Shariah has to be concerned with the law concerning human action, and therefore presumably on regarding humans as free moral agents) and a more philosophical approach which accepts a degree of continuity between humans and other creatures. The latter approach would acknowledge to a greater extent that what humans do is a product of a complex mixture of causes, including genes we have inherited from our early ancestors, and cultural patterns that those genes reinforce.

Christian theology must be unusual among religious anthropologies in the way in which Christians derive their understanding of humans from our understanding of God. What it is to be a person, the very use of that term, derives from early Christian exploration into the inner life of the God who both creates the world and comes to meet it in the initiative of salvation. Dr Southgate recommended John Habgood's Being A Person. But of course, if we try and understand personhood by reference to the inner life of God, then our formulations must necessarily be provisional, full of unanswered questions and a degree of mystery. But what Christian thinkers can glean from these old arguments is a sense that, since we understand persons from considering persons-in-relation in the godhead, relationship must be a key element in what it is to be a person.

Another important recent book on personhood is Al McFadyen's The Call to Personhood, and McFadyen points out in his introduction that the two traps in understanding persons are so to emphasise that they are separate individuals, and thus to fail to take account the importance of social context, or so to stress the collective as to fail to give weight to individual autonomy. The middle course, he says is one, which takes seriously both the 'I', and the way the 'I' is informed by relationship. This is an approach he traces back to the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber's seminal book I and Thou.

The Christian conviction is that Jesus gives us the example of what it is to keep one's orientation firmly and wholly on God, and to derive all one's strength from that. One's life from moment to moment is not one's own possession, but something received as a gift from God. What is said of Christ's equality with God in Philippians 2 is true of authentic human being in it - that it is not something to be grasped, but to be received, and responded to in the service of God and others. Again we see the connection between what it is to be an authentic human being and the relationships of freely given mutual love and response that are attributed to God as Trinity. Indeed Christian theology wants to go further and say: not just that a human being fully alive has a quality of life that is like the quality of life that is within God, nor just, in the famous saying of Irenaeus of Lyons, that the glory of God is a human being fully alive, but also that a human person living in free, loving, undistorted relationship with others has been drawn up into the life of the Trinity, and participates in that life. That is something well explored recently by Paul Fiddes in his book Participating in God.

The problem with these formulations comes at the edges - the frayed ambiguous edges, where members of the human species cannot take their place in the matrix of socially constructed communication which allows selves to sediment, where they have not developed, or no longer possess, the capacity to focus on anyone or anything. There are some key cases of this, which are central to the debate about personhood. The embryo, the topic of the next session. Those who can be called 'demented' either through the diseases of old ages such as Alzheimer's, or through accidents leading to PVS, and indeed those children born with severe mental disability. But also in the case of our evolutionary forbears.

Suzi Leather, Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), gave the first talk in the third session. Her talk was entitled "Dilemmas Faced by the HFEA". Suzi Leather explained that the HFEA regulates IVF, donor insemination, the storage of eggs, sperm and embryos, the creation of embryos outside the body and the use of embryos in research. It therefore works at the interface of a number of disciplines: ethics, theology, genetics, law, embryology, medicine, philosophy and biological science. These disciplines themselves have different understandings of what humanness means: all situate the concept of humanness with regard to different sets of propositions, facts and considerations. The HFEA's job is partly, in a sense, one of reconciliation. To reconcile the scientific advances with the existing legal framework, with ethical boundaries and with current social and religious attitudes and values. This often involves arbitrating between sometimes-conflicting discourses about what it means to be human.

The moral status of the human embryo is the central point and the reason for having the HFEA. There are of course, varying view points. Many people who believe that the human person starts from the 'moment of conception' can never be reconciled with the wastage of embryos created by IVF. They may also believe it is wrong to create embryos outside the body because it is unnatural. These are views of many in the Roman Catholic Church. There are also people who consider that life starts from the moment of conception but that IVF is only wrong if it involves the creation of surplus embryos, which are going to be discarded. IVF is therefore acceptable so long as all embryos created are put into a woman. This is the position in Germany. There are also people who believe that although IVF is acceptable, embryos, even surplus ones, should not be used for research. This is the French position.

The accepted legal position in this country has since 1990 been that an embryo before 14 days post fertilisation, or the appearance of the primitive streak, whichever is sooner, should be treated with respect because of its potential, but is not a person, meaning is not a human subject. An embryo may therefore be used for morally serious purposes but not for trivial or unnecessary reasons. And Parliament has determined clearly the lawful purposes of embryo research and the HFEA can only issue licences for one or more of these purposes.

One in 100 babies are born with a serious genetic or chromosomal disease, which can give rise to physical or mental abnormalities, pain and often-early death. A recently developed technique allows for in vitro created early embryos to be tested for a limited number of inherited defects before transfer to the uterus. This is called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. (PGD). It is relatively new; there have been no long-term follow-up studies on it. It seems safe, but there is uncertainty about it. A few clinics worldwide offer this service, which has so far helped many couples avoid having children with genetic diseases. And avoid genetic disorders without requiring the abortion of a foetus, which many will consider a considerable ethical advantage.

How does the elective avoidance of disability and early death impact on our humanness, or upon our conscious and unconscious attitudes to differently created humans? If a couple should be free to choose not to have a child with a genetic disability, should they also, as some have wished, be able deliberately to choose to have a child who is, say, deaf? Or are we bound, as parents and as practitioners to make sure that children are as healthy and 'whole' as possible?

The same technique, which allows embryos to be biopsied to identify whether they will have a serious genetic diseases, also allows embryos to be identified as tissue matches for existing people. This raises the possibility of at the same time as avoiding genetic disorder, choosing an embryo as a tissue match for an existing person. The baby, whom develops from that matched embryo, can, at its birth, be a cord blood donor. And when it is older of course it could be an organ donor, for the person he or she is matched with. These babies have been nicknamed saviour siblings. You may recall the Hashmi family who wanted, and received permission from the HFEA, to select an embryo which did not suffer from their family genetic disorder beta thalessemia and which could also be a matched sibling for an existing child with the disease. You may also remember another couple, the Whittakers, who also wanted a tissue-matched child to be a donor for an existing child with black fan anaemia. The HFEA did not give permission to them. In the Whittaker case, there was no inherited genetic disorder; another child in the family was no more likely to have the disease, black fan anaemia than any other baby born in the UK. The Whittaker child would simply have been selected on the basis of its match for its sibling.

Suzi Leather concluded by making a distinction between avoiding genetically determined harm and seeking to endow genetic advantage. Of course we cannot avoid all suffering, but genetic roulette is very unkind to many families. It is difficult to draw clear lines, but it seems to me that when a parent's natural desire to ensure human flourishing extends beyond the wish to avoid harm, that is a step too far. Suzi Leather said that she believed we have a responsibility to use the brains we have evolved to possess to improve human lives. But how far should we seek to hard wire apparent advantage into our genomes? Is the desire to do so an expression of our humanity or a threat to it?

There were two responses to this paper. One was from Rabbi Margaret Jacobi of Birmingham Progressive Synagogue. Then Professor Celia Deane-Drummond of Chester College of Higher Education gave a Christian perspective.

In the afternoon of the second day participants had the opportunity to display posters related to the theme of the conference. This was the first time in a number of years that this had taken place and was successful and interesting.

Following this there was a launch of the book Re-ordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Genetics edited by Prof Celia Deane-Drummond and Dr Bronislaw Szerszynski.

The fourth session was entitled "Being Human - Education". John Hull, Professor of Religious Education at the University of Birmingham was the first speaker. Dr Hull gave an excellent summary of some of the recent trends in religious education. He emphasised that the religious education teacher was the only person young people come in contact with whose only aim was education in religion not advocacy. He beloved that the social science had a great role in helping young people and others in their understanding of religion. He said that nowadays there was a trend to study religions rather than religion as a universal phenomena. Prof Hull thought that the academic disciplines of the anthropology of religion, sociology of religion and psychology of religion had much to offer religious education at all levels.

Marilyn Mason, the Education Officer of the British Humanist Association gave a well-argued paper in which she advocated that RE teachers have a duty to keep themselves reasonably informed about science by reading a broadsheet, reading The New Scientist or watching television documentaries. The greater knowledge of science of some pupil than their religious Education teachers should be viewed as a resource not a problem. Science should not be treated as something to fear or to shun. Science is a great achievement of the human intellect and its success a factor in the modern world. The beauty of the world revealed by science is inspiring possibly even spiritual.

The third session of the evening was Dr Hardial Singh Dhillon a biochemist and Sikh. He gave an informative talk, which included many quotations from the Sikh scriptures, the Guru Granth-Sahib. He started by quoting Einstein famous dictum that "Science without religion is blind and religion without science is lame." He outlined the main thrusts of Sikhism and modern science and argued that there was no incompatibility between the two.

The fifth sessions started with a talk by Professor John Hick. The talk was entitled "Brains, Consciousness and Freewill". He has requested that a full report of his talk be not published as his ideas are still developing in this area. In summary he said that he would speak of conscious and unconscious events rather than of the mind, because he did not want to involve a Cartesian account of mind as a substance or entity - it is probably better thought of as a complex intermingling stream of processes. He argued, first, that a purely physicalist or materialist account of consciousness, the mind/brain identity theory, is highly implausible. He then looked at the range of theories that have to a great extent now replaced that in the current discussions - dual attributes, emergent properties, functionalism. These are all different forms of epiphenomenalism, the view that consciousness is not itself physical but is nevertheless a temporary product of brain function, reflecting what is going on in the brain (or in parts of it) but having no independent existence or executive power. He argued that when the implications of this position are set out they also become unsustainable.

David Booth, Professor of Psychology, University of Birmingham, responded as a multi-disciplinary scientist. He said that he was in agreement on two basic theses with John Hick. Firstly that no aspect of human consciousness can be reduced to mere chemical and electrical processes in the human brain; and yet, secondly, all aspects of consciousness, and of the unconscious mind, are utterly dependent on healthy brain activity. Professor Booth did add a third thesis as a vital complement, the dependency of mind on brain. It is also a key to issues about consciousness and about freewill. This proposition is that all aspects of mind are also utterly dependent on culture - that is, on the individual's membership of historically and ecologically contingent society. There was, Professor Booth objected, another very simple objection to brain-mind identity and all neuro-reductionist programmes. The physical basis of the human mind and its development within a culture includes a good part of the rest of each person's body, such at least some elements of the face, the larynx, the senses and the voluntary musculature.

Dr Booth than stated that Professor Hick uses two pieces of philosophical apparatus that are so well established that they form an unquestioned structure for debate on brain and mind and on determinism and freewill. Yet as a scientist, and as a philosopher of action and of ethics, Dr Booth thought that both of these philosophical truisms has long since lost contact with basic scientific knowledge and with the real social issues. Firstly, Apparatus P is the classic categorisation of theories of the relationship between Mind and Brain: identity, parallelism, interactionism, epiphenomenalism and psychism. If this classification is accepted, then the above thesis of interdependent realities or parts of reality has to be forced under the heading of Interactionism, raising the question how the brain and mind interact which permeates the discussion of freewill. Secondly, Apparatus Q is the classic fork between determinism and libertarianism: the will can only be free if the decision to act is indeterminate. A physically determinate brain seems impossible for any of these sorts of theory to relate to an indeterminate mind in its willing.

At the end of the conference Professor John Hedley Brooke, Andreas Idreos chair of science and Religion, the University of Oxford skillfully wove together some of the themes from the conference. There was then a panel of speakers, chaired by the President of the Forum, Russell Stannard, which answered questions from the audience.