Why evolutionary science and creation?

The sciences and Abrahamic faiths uniquely share an unexpected cultural difficulty today: lack of trust in their respective explanations of life. These matters of trust often center upon a religion’s relationship with scientific explanation, and specifically their explanations and theologies related to creation. Many people do not trust creation theologies to be coherent with science; others do not trust science as a consistently truth-producing process. This need not be a zero sum game with science winning when religion loses or vice versa. Rather both science and religion could gain deeper public trust by promoting mutual respect for both fields.

Why the Abrahamic faiths?

Jews, Christians, and Muslims need to learn from each other in convivial environments, now more than ever. Synagogues, churches, and mosques need to behold visible demonstrations of such epistemic humility and excitement about coming to  new religious understanding in practice.

What will we do?

We will put the belief that we have a lot to learn from each other into action—to show that multi-faith and multi-discipline interaction can create a unique form of epistemic humility and openness to learn. Using concentrated sessions of multi-faith and multi-disciplinary co-learning (i.e. workshops, book clubs etc.) the ATOP will create a community of scholars who will share the fruits of their learning within and between their wider faith communities (i.e., digital presence, popular publishing, congregational events, public lectures, etc.). The ATOP will focus on nurturing this cohort of scholars (to include some scholar-clerics) with an end goal of including clerics and laypersons in similar multi-faith and multi-disciplinary co-learning.