Program Particulars
*Times denoted refer to web version of audio

(01:31–03:39) Music: "The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

(02:25) 1859 Publication by Darwin
Charles Darwin's famous work was published in 1859 under the title On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

(03:38) Reference to Talmud
The Talmud is a body of teaching, commentary, and discussion of Jewish oral tradition that is meant to be studied and not only read. The Talmud is a compendium of ancient scholarly interpretations of the Torah—the first five books of the Bible—that were formulated over a 1000 years time, beginning around 500 BCE and finally codified near the end of the sixth century CE.

There are two separate Talmuds produced by the Palestinian and Babylonian academies. In general, reference to the Talmud usually applies to the Babylonian Talmud because of its expansive nature and better preservation of the complete text. Read the complete text of the Babylonian Talmud and learn more about its structure.

(09:00–09:26) Music: "Flowing" from Chamber Music with Flute, by Arthur Foote and Aaron Copland

(10:03) Paraphrase of Einstein
Feit's paraphrase of Einstein, "Nature doesn't give away her secrets easily," comes from the German Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht: "Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse."

(11:26) Reference to Jewish Holidays
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is the celebration of the creation of the world, which in rabbinic tradition commemorates the anniversary of creation itself. Based on the lunar calendar, Rosh Hashanah occurs in late September or early October and begins the Ten Days of Penitence. During services, a shofar, a trumpet made of a ram's horn, is blown and the traditional phrase, "Leshana tova tikosevu," or "May you be inscribed for a good year," is used as a greeting.

Considered to be the most important day of the year, the festival ends with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, many Jews believe that God passes judgment on all people standing before Him. Yom Kippur is a day of fasting, intense introspection, prayer (continuing from morning until after sunset), and a collective confession of guilt, in which Jews profess and share each other's transgressions. On the eve of Yom Kippur, Jews feast and prepare for God's judgment by sending gifts to the poor and asking forgiveness of people they have offended or harmed. Yom Kippur ends with the final call of the shofar.

(12:19–13:12) Music: "Flowing" from Chamber Music with Flute, by Arthur Foote and Aaron Copland

(13:36) Actuality from Star Trek: The Next Generation
In describing Foerst's background in artificial intelligence, Krista states that the sophisticated android Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is a hero to both her and Foerst. The following text was excerpted from Episode 135: "The Quality of Life" and played during the program:

COMMANDER DATA: Doctor, what is the definition of life?
DOCTOR: That is a BIG question. Why do you ask?
COMMANDER DATA: I am searching for a definition that will allow me to test an hypothesis.
DOCTOR: Well, the broadest scientific definition might be that life is what enables plants and animals to consume food, derive energy from it, grow, adapt themselves to their surroundings, and reproduce.
COMMANDER DATA: And you suggest that anything that exhibits these characteristics is considered alive?
DOCTOR: In general, yes.
COMMANDER DATA: What about me? I do not grow. I do not reproduce. Yet I am considered to be alive.
DOCTOR: That's true. But you are unique.
COMMANDER DATA: Hmm. I wonder if that is so.
DOCTOR: Data, if I may ask, what exactly are you getting at?
COMMANDER DATA: I'm curious as to what transpired between the moment when I was nothing more than an assemblage of parts in Dr. Soong's laboratory and the next moment when I became alive. What is it that endowed me with life?

(15:05) Speech by Foerst
Krista refers to the speech "Commander Data Goes to Divinity School" that Foerst presented at Brandeis University. The paper was later published as Commander Data: A Candidate for Harvard Divinity School? (note: please press "Cancel" button when "Enter Network Password" box displays) and can be found in the Festschrift (a volume of learned articles) Religion in a Secular City: Essays in Honor of Harvey Cox, edited by Arvind Sharma.

(15:44) Robots at MIT
The humanoid robots Krista talks about are Cog, a creature built to approximate the sensory and motor skills of a human form, and Kismet, a creature tailored to express human forms of communication.

(16:23) Book Mentioned by Krista
The forthcoming book by Anne Foerst is entitled On Robots and Humans and God.

(19:08) Excerpt from Genesis
Foerst talks about the joy and satisfaction of creating and building something that works, to which Krista quoted a biblical passage from the book of Genesis, "And God saw what he made and it was very good." Read the entire passage from Genesis 1:1-31 of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

(19:25) Mention of Golem Building
In Hebrew, golem means "shapeless man." Foerst discusses the Jewish concept of golem-building — commonly associated with Eastern European mystics from the 14-16th centuries but date back to as early as the 5th century — in which building artificial humans from clay was thought of as an act of prayer.

In one version of the legend of a famous 16th-century rabbi, Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the rabbi created a monster from the mud of the Vltava river in Prague. The golem, named Yossel, came to life when the Rabbi placed a shem — a tablet with a Hebrew inscription — in its mouth. Yossel is said to have aided Rabbi Loew in his struggle with the anti-Semites in the court of Rudolf II, the Hapsburg Emperor who was then the ruler over what is now the Czech Republic.

Elie Wiesel writes that Rabbi Loew and Rudolf II met on the Charles Bridge in 1583 and the emperor invited him to his court in Prague. They quickly became friends and Rabbi Loew became a Hofbefreiter Jude or "Court Jew" who was frequently able to intercede on behalf of the Jews who were being routinely persecuted at that time.

Legend has it that the golem finally ran amok and Rabbi Loew had to interrupt his Sabbath service in the synagogue to deal with the problem. The end of the golem came when the Rabbi removed the shem from its mouth, and the remains of the golem were transported to the attic of the synagogue in Prague. To learn more about the use of the golem story in another field of science, listen to A Theological Perspective on Cloning, a Speaking of Faith program featuring Laurie Zoloth.

(23:46) Terms for Soul
The Hebrew term for soul that Foerst uses is nephesh and the Greek word is psyche.

(27:22) Actuality of Rod Brooks
Rod Brooks is the director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and creator of Cog. The following passage heard during the show was excerpted from the 1996 Errol Morris documentary Fast, Cheap & Out of Control:

Many people have said to me, "This is something that men do because men can't have babies themselves, and this is a way of building your own baby, if you like." But I don't actually buy that argument. As it turns out, in my lab, there are more women than men. I think there's some deeper-seated thing which crosses the sex boundaries of understanding life by building something that is life-like.

(28:51–30:07) Music: "World of Dreams" from Elements, performed by Peter Mayer

(34:40–35:46) Music: "Susanne un Jour" from Virtuoso Lute Music from Italy and England, composed by Orlando di Lasso and performed by Jakob Lindberg

(34:54) Reading from The Dark Night of the Soul
Eaves says that St. John of the Cross' description of "sitting out on the dark night with only the fire of longing in his heart" is very close to the spirituality of a scientist." Mirabai Starr published an accessible translation of the 16th century Spanish Carmelite monk's work, Dark Night of the Soul, from which the first and third stanzas of the poem "Songs of the Soul" were read during the show:

On a dark night,
Inflamed by love-longing—
O exquisite risk!—
Undetected I slipped away.
My house, at last, grown still.

That sweet night: a secret.
Nobody saw me;
I did not see a thing.
No other light, no other guide
Than the one burning in my heart.

(36:57) Reference to Leviathan
Leviathan, the monster of the deep, is referred to by name twice in the Book of Job, 3:8 and 41:1.

(37:33–39:07) Music: "Suite No. 1 in G; Sarabande" from The Cello Suites, composed by J.S. Bach and performed by Yo-Yo Ma

(37:42) Reading of Job, Chapter 38
Eaves' citation, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" appears in chapter 38, verse 4 of the Book of Job. The following reading was taken from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures:

Then the Lord replied to Job out of the whirlwind and said:

Who is this who darkens counsel,
Speaking without knowledge?
Gird your loins like a man;
I will ask and you will inform Me.

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?
Speak if you have understanding.
Do you know who fixed its dimensions
Or who measured it with a line?
Onto what were its bases sunk?
Who set its cornerstone
When the morning stars sang together
And all the divine beings shouted for joy?

Who closed the sea behind doors
When it gushed forth out of the womb,
When I clothed it in clouds,
Swaddled it in dense clouds,
When I made breakers My limit for it,
And set up its bar and doors,
And said, "You may come so far and no farther;
Here your surging waves will stop"?

Have you ever commanded the day to break,
Assigned the dawn its place,
So that it seizes the corners of the earth
And shakes the wicked out of it?

(40:31) Recitation of Psalm 139
The reading of Psalm 139 heard in the program was taken from Celebrating Common Prayer: A Version of the Daily Office SSF:

For you yourself created my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I will thank you because I am marvellously made;
your works are wonderful and I know it well.
My body was not hidden from you,
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book;

(40:42–41:36) Music: "An Ode of Tears" from the soundtrack of Trojan Women: Euripides, composed by Eleni Karaindrou

(46:24–48:09) Music: "World of Dreams" from Elements, performed by Peter Mayer

(48:55) Darwin's Quote of Bacon
On the opposite page of the title page of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin uses the following excerpt from Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning:

To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both.

(49:12) Statement on National Academy of Sciences Web Site
The extended excerpt of a passage quoted by Krista originally appeared in the essay A Serious Misstep in the Education of Our Youth by Bruce Albert, President of the National Academy of Sciences:

Accepting evolution as an accurate description of the history of life on Earth does not mean rejecting religion. Many scientists are deeply religious. But science and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience, and should be taught as such — in distinct classroom settings. To continue to demand that they be combined detracts from the glory of each.

(49:28) Reference to Bonhoeffer
Krista reads from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters & Papers from Prison:

We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know. That is true of the relationship between God and scientific knowledge, but it is also true of the wider human problems of death, suffering, and guilt.

(49:23–51:09) Music: "The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

(51:11–52:18) Music: "World of Dreams" from Elements, performed by Peter Mayer