And So It Goes

Having extensively researched aspects of evolutionary theory, including the work of Edward O. Wilson, for my Durham master’s thesis, I chose to devote my first assessable essay for the MSt in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford (2016) to making an original contribution to understanding Wilson’s intellectual biography. An important figure in evolutionary theory, Wilson was among the first to apply evolutionary theory to social and cultural contexts without degenerating into social Darwinism. People know him as the…

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After completing the master’s in theology and religion at Durham University (2014-2015), I moved to the University of Oxford to pursue a specialization in science and religion with the Faculty of Divinity’s (now called Theology and Religion) science and religion MSt program (2015-2016).   Oxford was the first (and only) place I encountered individuals who possessed unparalleled such raw intelligence (processing speed) and capacity for abstraction (in undergraduate philosophy classes) that I wondered if we were the same species. In…

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This is the fifth and final part of the master’s thesis on science and religion at Durham University (2015). It took close to 12 months to complete and submit the paper, and I was immensely grateful to my supervisor Professor Wilkinson for seeing me through the whole process successfully. He warned that science and religion type essays tend not to grade well, because, theologians tend to be intellectually tribalistic about their discipline. Thankfully, I managed to get decent results which…

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The fourth part of the master’s thesis on science and religion at Durham University (2015) is where I explore consonances between the doctrine of sin and the evolutionary social sciences. It’s the crux of the thesis. Stitching together two fields of inquiry typically yields interesting and useful insights. It may be career suicide for an academic, but since a strict academic career was not the path for me, I chose to pursue less-trodden pathways between established roads. Serious and sustained…

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The third part of the master’s thesis on science and religion at Durham University (2015) describes the doctrine of sin common to the great Christian traditions. I leveraged my training in biblical languages and prior research from all my other essays. And I combined these with a study of the doctrine by contemporary theologians at the cutting edge. The point of describing a nuanced and robust doctrine of sin was to find resonances between it and modern social scientific accounts…

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The second part of the master’s thesis on science and religion at Durham University (2015) describes the scientific component that I wanted to evaluate against sin, the Evolutionary Social Sciences (ESS). To write this part of the thesis, I crash-coursed Evolutionary Biology and learned everything I could about the ESS within the available time frame. This short section belies the insane amount of time and effort it took to get up to speed on these disciplines, to be able to…

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My master’s thesis at Durham University (2015) was on a science and religion topic. The broad goals of the field of science and religion are to find meaningful and productive resonances between them. I moved from St Chad’s College to St John’s at Durham University to make it easier to consult with my supervisor, who was the Principal of St John’s at the time, Professor David Wilkinson. He earned two doctorates, one in theoretical astrophysics and the other in systematic…

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Rowan Williams was Archbishop of Canterbury when the Anglican Communion, the third largest Christian communion comprising over 85 million members across the world, was about to split over disagreements about, among other things, homosexuality. In this two-part series of essays, written to fulfil the taught portions of the Master of Arts degree programme (2015) in Theology and Religion at Durham University, UK, I unpack some of Williams’ thinking. In part two, I compare William’s position with representative views from the…

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Rowan Williams was Archbishop of Canterbury when the Anglican Communion, the third largest Christian communion comprising over 85 million members across the world, was about to split over disagreements about, among other things, homosexuality. In this two-part series of essays, written to fulfil the taught portions of the Master of Arts degree programme (2015) in Theology and Religion at Durham University, UK, I unpack some of Williams’ thinking. In part one, I read virtually everything Williams has written about the…

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Saint John Chrysostom, the early church father and Archbishop of Constantinople, was widely lauded for his legendary oratorical skills and prolific writings. In this two part series of essays, written to fulfil the taught portions of the Master of Arts degree programme (2015) in Theology and Religion at Durham University, UK, I unpack some of his thinking. In part two, I explore Chrysostom’s thoughts on the value of monastic traditions in relation to the priesthood. My supervisor Associate Professor Krastu…

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