HUMAN IDENTITY AND SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

This issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science contains two thematic sections that together provide a rich picture of the human being, focusing on their identity and on their spiritual intelligence. The section on human identity is the result of last year's Science and Religion Forum and its six articles have been collated by Finley Lawson. The section on spiritual intelligence derives from a project funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation and contains four articles written by Harris Wiseman. For an overview of the articles in both sections, I direct the reader to their respective introductions. The “Articles” section contains four articles. In the first article, Mark Harris investigates the early contributions made to science and religion since the mid-nineteenth century by holders of Edinburgh's “Chair in Natural Science”; in this adaption of his inaugural lecture, he uses the lens of that chair as an entry point to highlight nuances in very early instantiations of the creation-evolution debate. In the second article, Luca Valera and Gabriel Vidal attempt to clarify whether Spinoza was a pantheist, panentheist, or neither of these; they show that this is of relevance in assessing whether his philosophy can serve as a proper foundation for environmental philosophy. In the third article, Megan Loumagne Ulishney reflects on the importance of play as a theologically relevant insight from sexual selection; she emphasize that play is not just the product of “culture,” but is a thoroughly natural phenomenon that provides resources for human cultural elaboration. Finally, in the fourth article, Atle Søvik offers a philosophical explication of why God's revelation is so vague; he finds argumentative resources in a multiverse theory of revelation and divine hiddenness. The issue ends with two book reviews. Ananya Pattnaik reviews Banu Subramaniam's Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism, and Jonathan Chappell reviews John Cottingham's In Search of the Soul: A Philosophical Essay. I am very pleased to be able to report that the charitable corporation behind Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science has found a way to “flip” the journal to diamond open access. From January 1, 2024, all Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science articles—past, present, and future—will be freely accessible to all (with no cost to the authors)! More detailed announcements will follow over the course of next year.