It is a question that has gained greater traction as we have ventured farther into our solar system and beyond.

Sara Imari Walker is an associate professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration and deputy director of Beyond: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz. She is also the leader Emergence, an ASU research group focused on the origins of life here and elsewhere in the universe.

The Rev. David J. Collins is a Catholic priest, a Jesuit and an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with an interest in science, religion and space. He sometimes teaches a course on outer space, science and religion.

James Matthew Ashley is an associate professor of the history of Christianity and systematic theology at the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind. One of his areas of study is science and theology.

Wiliam Storrar is the director of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, N.J., an ecumenical institute for interdisciplinary research in religion. The center designates several topics to study for a year or more and has, to date, focused on religion and violence, law and religious freedom, evolution and moral identity, among others.

Michael Schulson is a freelance writer who oversees Religion Dispatches‘ science and religion portal, “The Cubit.” He also writes at Undark. He lives in Durham, N.C.

Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman is the founding director of Sinai and Synapses, an organization that brings together Judaism and science, mostly through the introduction of scientists into synagogue programming. He is based in Westchester County, N.Y.

Peter Harrison is a former professor of science and religion at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, and an expert on the dialogue and tensions between science and religion. He is the author of The Territories of Science and Religion. He is now director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at […]

Matthew Stanley is an astronomer and a professor of the history and philosophy of science at New York University. In 2016, he gave a talk at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society on the question of whether we are alone in the universe, and if we are not, what would that mean to our […]