University of Helsinki
Keynotes
Robin Collins is Professor Robin Collins is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. He earned his PhD in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame (1993) and has graduate-level training in theoretical physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He has written over forty substantial articles and book chapters in philosophy with some of the leading academic presses, spanning the areas of philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and philosophy of mind. He has given invited talks at many colleges and universities, such as Oxford University, Cambridge University, Stanford University, and Yale University, and has appeared on several nationally broadcast programs such as the PBS show Closer to Truth and Stanford University’s Philosophy Talk Radio. He is internationally recognized as a leading expert on the fine-tuning of the universe for life and its philosophical implications. Professor Collins’ recent work explores how the laws and fundamental parameters of the universe appear to be optimized for our ability to do science and discover the universe. He recently received a large grant from the John Templeton Foundation for finishing work on this original area of research.
Jeffrey Koperski is professor of philosophy at Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan. He has a Ph.D. (Philosophy) from Ohio State University and a B.E.E. (Electrical Engineering) from the University of Dayton. His areas of expertise are philosophy of science and philosophy of religion. While most of his early work focused on philosophical questions in physics, his more recent publications deal with issues at the intersection of philosophy, science, and religion. He is an editorial board member for Philosophy Compass and has published articles in Philosophy of Science, the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, among others. His two books are titled The Physics of Theism: God, Physics, and the Philosophy of Science (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) and Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Routledge, 2020).
Taneli Kukkonen is professor of philosophy at NYU Abu Dhabi. Kukkonen specializes in classical Arabic philosophy, Aristotle, and the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions from antiquity to the Renaissance. He also has interests in philosophy and pop culture, religious studies, Islamic culture in the classical period, and the early history of science. Taneli is an avid reader of comic books and lives on music and chocolate. He is the author of Ibn Tufayl (Oxford, 2014) and over thirty research articles on Arabic philosophy and the Aristotelian tradition. He has also held standing faculty positions in Philosophy at the University of Victoria (Canada); History at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland); and Religious Studies at the University of Otago (New Zealand).
Samuel Lebens is associate Professor in the philosophy department at the University of Haifa, he is also an Orthodox Rabbi and Jewish educator. His first book, Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions (Routledge 2017) was a study of Russell’s evolving theories about the nature of meaning. His second book was The Principles of Judaism (Routledge 2020) and his third, forthcoming book is Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (Routledge 2022). Sam’s academic interests span the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. He is also the co-founder and served as the founding chair of the Association for the Philosophy of Judaism.
Presenters
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Organisers
E. V. Rope Kojonen is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki. His research focuses on science and religion, the philosophy of religion and Christian theology. His books are The Compatibility of Evolution and Design (2021), Luominen ja evoluutio: Miten usko ja tiede kohtaavat (2021) and The Intelligent Design Debate and the Temptation of Scientism (2016). Kojonen has also written research articles on various aspects of the science and religion discourse.
Shoaib Ahmed Malik is an Assistant Professor of the Natural Sciences at Zayed University, Dubai. He researches exclusively on the topics of science and religion, atheism, and Islamic theology. He is the author of Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm (2021) and Atheism and Islam: A Contemporary Discourse (2018), and has book chapters and articles with various publishers and journals.