Marilyn McCord Adams is Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has written extensively about the problem of evil, including two books on the topic: Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God and Christ and Horrors: the Coherence of Christology.

Emilie M. Townes is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Religion & Black Studies at Boston University School of Theology. She is an ordained American Baptist clergywoman. She is an expert on Christian ethics, womanist theology, cultural theory, as well as racial and economic justice.

Read Washington Post columnist and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson’s tribute to Christopher Hitchens written more than a year before Hitchens’ death.

James Ellor is a professor of social work at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and editor of the Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging. His degrees are in divinity and social work, and his publications include Aging, Spirituality and Pastoral Care: A Multi-National Perspective.

Stephen G. Post, a Professor of Bioethics, Religion, and Philosophy at Stony Brook University and author of The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer’s Disease: Ethical Issues from Diagnosis to Dying (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), is an expert on Alzheimer’s. He is the author of the 2011 book, The Hidden Gifts of Helping.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, N.J., funds Faith in Action, a program using congregations and other community groups to provide greater access to health care for the ill, including those with Alzheimer’s. Doug Smith is program coordinator for Faith in Action, which is based at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Yakir Kaufman is a neurologist at Herzog Memorial Hospital in Jerusalem. He conducted a study published in 2005 showing that spiritual people may be better protected against Alzheimer’s disease.

Kelly C. Smith is an associate professor of philosophy and a Lemon Fellow of the Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University in Clemson, S.C. He can discuss the philosophy of science and the role of faith and reason in science.

Bruce Wightman is an associate professor of biology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. He is an expert on genetics, evolution and the interface between science and religion.