Genetics, God and the Future of Humanity
Rapid advances in genetics, robotics and other sciences are challenging our understanding of what it means to be human. Can science resolve key ethical questions? What role does religious thinking play in the age of genomics? And how do scientific and religious ways of knowing relate?
What do medical and behavioural genetics tell us about the limits of human freedom? And how does our current understanding of human genetics relate to the Judaeo-Christian conviction that humankind is made in the image of God?
How far do we go in manipulating humans using genetic engineering and in the creation of cyborgs? Where are the boundaries between healing and enhancement, and, as science continues to shape the future of humanity, how will we recognise these boundaries?
Dr Denis Alexander
Dr Denis Alexander is Emeritus Director and Fellow of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge. He is a past chair of the Molecular Immunology Programme and Head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge.
Dr Alexander has previously been at the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories in London (now Cancer Research UK) and spent 15 years developing university departments and laboratories overseas. He was also formerly Associate Professor of Biochemistry in the Medical Faculty of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, where he helped to establish the National Unit of Human Genetics.
From 1992-2013 he was Editor of the journal Science & Christian Belief, and currently Dr Alexander serves as a member of the executive committee of the International Society for Science and Religion.
Having given the Gifford Lectures at St Andrews University in 2012, these lectures were published by CUP in August 2017 under the title 'Genes, Determinism and God'.
Lecture One - Manipulating Humans: A Challenge to Science and Faith
Lecture Two - Are We Slaves to our Genes?: Faith and Human Freedom
Lecture Three - Genetic Engineering: Faith and the Future of Humanity