Science and Religious Anthropology: A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life

Science and Religious Anthropology explores the convergence of the biological sciences, human sciences, and humanities around a spiritually evocative, naturalistic vision of human life. The disciplinary contributions are at different levels of complexity, from evolution of brains to existential longings, and from embodied sociality to ecosystem habitat. The resulting interpretation of the human condition supports some aspects of traditional theological thinking in the world's religious traditions while seriously challenging other aspects. Wesley Wildman draws out these implications for philosophical and religious anthropology and argues that the modern secular interpretation of humanity is most compatible with a religious form of naturalistic humanism. This book resists the reduction of meaning and value questions while taking scientific theories about human life with full seriousness. It argues for a religious interpretation of human beings as bodily creatures emerging within a natural environment that permits engagement with the valuational potentials of reality. This engagement promotes socially borne spiritual quests to realize and harmonize values in everything human beings do, from the forging of cultures to the crafting of personal convictions.

Wesley J. Wildman is Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics department of Boston University's School of Theology. He directs the multidisciplinary Science, Philosophy, and Religion doctoral program within the university's graduate school. His research and writing focuses on interdisciplinary topics connecting religion with the natural and social sciences. He is the author of Fidelity with Plausibility: Modest Christologies in the Twentieth Century, an interdisciplinary study of plausibility conditions in Christian theology; editor with W. Mark Richardson of the textbook Science and Religion: History, Method, Dialogue; and co-editor with Wentzel van Huyssteen and others of the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. He is also Cofounder with Patrick McNamara of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, a research institute devoted to the scientific study of religion.