A physicist at the Collegium: A Colloquy between Faith and Reason
Dr. Gintaras Duda
Department of Physics, Creighton University

The Collegium is a week long conference/retreat for faculty from Catholic institutions to explore Catholic identity, Catholic tradition, and the interplay between faith, science, and reason. Faculty are deliberately mixed so that discussions between arts, science, theology, and engineering faculty can occur, hopefully leading to deeper and richer discussions. Here in the physics department at Creighton we have long struggled with fundamental questions such as: 1) What is the role of a physics department in a Catholic and Jesuit institution? 2) How is a physics department at a Catholic Jesuit institution different than at a secular institution? and 3) perhaps at a more personal level, how does one integrate science and faith or even how does one construct a worldview in which science and faith are complementary rather than being mutually exclusive? This talk will give a physicists perspective on these questions as influenced by the collegium, personal reflection, and Catholic theologians and teaching.