Illuminations — Ministry of Ideas

Illuminations is a limited series that reveals the untold friendship of religion and science. Through interviews and stories drawn from a range of cultures, faiths, and eras, this series reveals the unknown and unexpected histories of how religion and science have been entangled across time. We hear why the Dalai Lama loves quantum mechanics; why the Mormon faith inspires a search for extraterrestrial life; why the Scientific Revolution was catalyzed by a religious quest to uncover divine craftsmanship. These surprising narratives explode the myth that faith and science are destined to be enemies and reveal how they worked as mutual inspiration.

Illuminations is produced by Zachary Davis, Maria Devlin McNair, Liya Rechtman and Nick Andersen. Script editing by Galen Beebe. Sound Design by Stephen Larosa. Artwork by Dan Pecci.

**EPISODE 1: EXPERIMENTAL METHODS**
Have faith and science always been enemies? The story of Robert Hooke, a revolutionary working in the Scientific Revolution, exemplifies the ways in which Christianity has actually provoked scientific inquiry.

**EPISODE 2: BEYOND BELIEF**
Do scientists ever reject science? Research data on the controversial topic of extraterrestrial life has met with resistance from some in the scientific community and openness from communities of faith.

**EPISODE 3: DIVINE TECHNOLOGY**
It’s common to feel that technology removes the magic of the world, but Hindu worshippers in Bangalore have shown that it's all in the approach.

**EPISODE 4: QUANTUM BUDDHISM**
What’s the spiritual significance of quantum mechanics? The answer comes from the Dalai Lama - a surprising but genuine lover of scientific investigation.

**EPISODE 5: MOVEABLE FEASTS**
God, we know, is outside space and time. But the need to date one faith’s most sacred feast drove a cutting-edge technological quest to accurately locate ourselves in time.

**EPISODE 6: MANIFEST MARS**
A sense of divine destiny drove Americans to expand West. A similar spirit is behind the modern quest to conquer space.

**EPISODE 7: MIRRORS OF MORALITY**
Why do we keep turning to biological origin stories about human nature? We want science to tell us who we are – but the stories fall short because we’re asking them the wrong questions.

**EPISODE 8: WATCHING HEAVEN**
Why does the Catholic Vatican have an observatory? The question is hard to answer if all we know of Christianity and science is the story of Galileo, but astronomy has long been built into the Church.

**EPISODE 9: Rituals for a Dying World**
Absorbing the full reality of climate change will require more than a scientific approach. Some American Jews are showing how religious ritual can help us metabolize catastrophic grief while also pointing towards a future rebirth.

**EPISODE 10: UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE**
At the dawn of European exploration, the Renaissance polymath Francis Bacon dreamed of resurrecting the Garden of Eden. Driving this vision was a relentless quest to fully understand—and catalog—God's created order.

**EPISODE 11: SCI-FI PROPHECY**
The traditional purpose of religious prophecy – to call out where society is headed and urge it towards a better path – has found its modern home in the futurist genre of science fiction.
*Coming soon*

**Episode 12: Myths and Motifs**
Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis offered a powerful new way of understanding the human mind, but his successor Carl Jung would develop those ideas into a new modern religion.
*Coming soon*

**EPISODE 13: THE NATURE OF NATURE**
Does the physical world draw you closer to the divine or cut you off from it? This question, fiercely contested through history, is being given new answers by ethically and spiritually charged technologies.
*Coming soon*

**EPISODE 14: THE GOD SPOT**
Revealing the secret of our innate spiritual potential was a dream of nineteenth-century visionaries. Their conclusions have been debunked, but their goals are resurfacing in modern neuroscience.
*Coming soon*

**EPISODE 15: GOOD VIBES**
For many people in search of healing, it's all about finding the right vibrations.
*Coming soon*

**EPISODE 16: CONSCIOUS CREATION**
Western religious tradition has often posited a stark hierarchical divide between human and the nonhuman, but what changes when we begin to recognize that all creation, even plants and rocks, is at some level conscious?
*Coming soon*

**EPISODE 17: MAPPA MUNDI**
Sacred geography helps align believers in time and space with the divine and it turns out getting the directions right has led to incredible cartographical innovations.
*Coming soon*

**EPISODE 18: AUTHORITY FIGURES**
Wielding truth in one hand and power in the other, scientists have assumed the ancient role of prophets.
*Coming soon*

**EPISODE 19: GOD’S DICE**
It's hard to imagine any field less enchanted than statistics, but its origins surprisingly can be traced to theological reflection on God’s power.
*Coming soon*

**EPISODE 20: FUTURE HUMAN**
Religious and scientific communities alike celebrate the breakthroughs that protect life. But today’s most ambitious technological dream is to conquer death itself – when maybe what we need most are new spiritual resources to accept our finitude and make the most of it.
*Coming soon*

This project was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this podcast series are those of the producers and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.