UTOKcon24 | Visions of Science and Religion in the 21st Century

📼 Get Access to all the recordings of this years UTOK Consilience Conference 2024 📼

Embark on a thought-provoking exploration at our symposium featuring profound insights into the interplay between science and religion. This engaging event includes talks from eminent thinkers like Ken Baskin, who discusses the neurobiological imperatives behind religious behavior, and Scott Jordan, who offers a compelling narrative on the intersection of culture, religion, and existential challenges.

What to Expect:
Innovative Perspectives: Dive into discussions that examine religious practices through the lens of evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience, proposing new frameworks for understanding these ancient human behaviors.

Symposium Highlights:
Ken Baskin’s presentation on "Religion as a Neurobiological Imperative," exploring how evolutionary pressures and neurobiological mechanisms have shaped religious behaviors and rituals.

Scott Jordan’s exploration of how cultural and religious narratives influence and are influenced by societal needs and challenges, providing a backdrop for potential transformations in societal structures and beliefs.

This symposium is a must-attend for anyone interested in the evolving dialogue between science and religion, offering a new understanding of how these fields intersect and influence our modern world.

🗣️ Bobby Azarian
I am a cognitive neuroscientist (PhD, George Mason University), a science journalist, and author of the book The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity. I have written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, BBC Future, Scientific American, Slate, Salon, The Huffington Post, Quartz, The Daily Beast, Big Think, Aeon, Noema, MSN, and others. My research has been published in peer-reviewed journals like Human Brain Mapping, Cognition & Emotion, Acta Psychologica, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. My Psychology Today blog (Mind in the Machine) has received over 8 million views, making it one of the most popular blogs on the website. I have been a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, the Michael Shermer Show, The David Pakman Show, The Jim Rutt Show, The Young Turks, the Singularity University podcast, and many others. I helped develop multiple episodes for Season 2 of the YouTube Premium series Mind Field, which helped it win an Emmy nomination. I am currently working on my second book, and my Substack & Youtube channel (Road to Omega). I live in Springfield, VA.

🗣️ Ken Baskin

🗣️ J. Scott Jordan
I am a cognitive scientist who studies the neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy of cooperative behavior. I am perhaps best known my work on Wild Systems Theory, a 21-century, transdisciplinary framework that integrates the sciences, humanities, lived-life, and pop-culture by focusing on what they have in common; specifically, the never-ending struggle for meaningful coherence. With over 120 publications, I have published dozens of papers that reveal connections between pop-culture narratives, psychology, and the realities of lived life. Examples include, Exploring the hidden kingdoms of assumption: Interview with Christopher Priest on Black Panther, culture, and the art of changing minds (Black Panther Psychology), and  The welcoming Spiderverse:Finding your ‘self’ in a web of others (Pop Mythology). I published a peer-reviewed, scientific song about the ‘self’ (It’s hard work being No One), (song), which received a positive review in Discover Magazine. I am the originator and director of ReggieCon, a virtual comic-con panel series that celebrates diversity and heritage months during the academic year. I am a member of the WGLT Psych Geeks podcast and I have been interviewed on multiple podcasts such as the bodyselfmind podcast. I also produce the Dark Loops Productions channel on YouTube, where I host discussions of lived-life, science, art, the humanities, and all things pop-culture.

🗣️ Tyler Volk

[mills]

I have been thinking about the future of these thoughts spaces. One metaphorical device that has popped up recently has been the dandelion. Gregg likens this particular space as a biplane heding into a hurricane. Maybe its more like a dandelion about to have its seeds scattered by the wind.

[thephilosophicalagnostic]

Oh, and by the way, the taste of chocolate is absolutely real. :)

[thephilosophicalagnostic]

Capitalism is the way a large number of people in a diversity of places move molecules effectively among themselves and handle scarcities of molecule movers and molecules with a language--money. There will be no end of capitalism UNTIL new technologies permits us to end scarcities of all kinds.