FARADAY INSTITUTE appearance

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion
St Edmund’s College, Cambridge

Science, Religion and Atheism

Short Course No. 21

Murray Edwards College, Cambridge

Friday 30th March – Sunday 1st April 2012

Is the discussion between science and religion affected by its narrator, be they
theist, atheist or agnostic? This course is not to debate the existence of God
but to explore answers to this question presented by speakers themselves
coming from these different perspectives.

Speakers and Topics include:

A Plague on Both Your Houses: Prof. Michael Ruse
Does the Evolutionary Narrative Support Theism or Atheism?
Prof. Simon Conway Morris FRS and Dr Fern Elsdon-Baker
Is the Universe Designed?
Revd Dr Rodney Holder and Dr Stephen Law
Perspectives on the Philosophy of Science and Religion
Prof. Keith Ward and Dr Mark Vernon
Does the History of Science and Religion depend on the Narrator?
Dr Allan Chapman and Prof. Ronald Numbers

For more details including bursaries and discounts, see
www.faraday-institute.org
or call +44 (0)1223 741281

Swinburne and Philipse, May 10th.

I am chairing this event. Hope to see some of you there...












CFI UK and South Place Ethical Society present:

Public Debate

Does Science Support Belief In God?

Prof. Herman Philipse vs Prof. Richard Swinburne

Chair: Stephen Law

Tuesday May 10th, 7-9pm.

Main Hall, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. Holborn London WC1R 4RL

£3 on the door. £2 students. Free entry to CFI UK friends (i.e. season ticket holders).

An evening with two of the world’s most powerful and respected thinkers from either side of the theism/atheism divide. Topics likely to be addressed include: Does the orderliness of the universe point to a designer? Do discoveries in neuroscience, cosmology and other branches of empirical science reveal evidence of the hand of God?

Richard Swinburne is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years, Prof. Swinburne has established himself as one of world’s foremost philosophers of religion. He is an influential proponent of natural theology, that is, philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Prof. Swinburne’s “Is There A God?” has been translated into 14 languages.

Herman Philipse Is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, and one of the world’s leading atheist thinkers. Philipse’s 1995 Atheist Manifesto was republished in an expanded edition in 2004 with a foreword by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who partly credits the book for her shift from Islam to atheism. Philipse’s forthcoming book "God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason" will be published by OUP in 2011/12.