Skip to main content

KEITH WARD, JOHN COTTINGHAM, STEPHEN LAW, RICHARD HARRIES 21st Jan London

HEYTHROP RELIGIOUS STUDIES CONFERENCE

KEITH WARD, JOHN COTTINGHAM, STEPHEN LAW, RICHARD HARRIES

Sat 21st Jan 2012

A day conference aimed primarily at A Level students and teachers of RS and/or philosophy, though all are welcome. Free entry.

Heythrop College, University of London, Kensington Square W8 5HN

Bookshop by Newham books. Book signings.

11.00 KEITH WARD
Life, the Universe, and Everything

Keith Ward is a Fellow of British Academy, one-time Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, King's London, Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and now Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop.

12.00 JOHN COTTINGHAM
Ethics and Religion: How They Fit Together

John Cottingham is Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Reading University, and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is Editor of Ratio, the international journal of analytic philosophy.”

1.00-2.00 lunch

2.00 STEPHEN LAW
The Evil God Challenge

Stephen Law is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, university of London, editor of THINK (journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy) and author of The Philosophy Gym (Headline) and The Philosophy Files (Orion).

3pm RICHARD HARRIES
Justice for hedgehogs: Ronald Dworkins’ ‘value holism’ in theological perspective

Richard Harries is Gresham Professor of Divinity. His latest books include Faith in Politics? Rediscovering the Christian Roots of our Political Values (DLT) and The Re-enchantment of Morality (SPCK) which was short-listed for the 2011 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological writing.

Heythrop reserves the right to change the programme at short notice. Book here.

Comments

Peter Hardy said…
The fact that I only stumbled upon this the afternoon of the conference makes me question God's reality : (
January 21, 2012 at 5:48 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Evil God Challenge and the "classical" theist's response

On another blog, FideCogitActio, some theists of a "classical" stripe (that's to say, like Brian Davies, Edward Feser) are criticisng the Evil God Challenge (or I suppose, trying to show how it can be met, or sidestepped). The main post includes this: In book I, chapter 39 , Aquinas argues that “there cannot be evil in God” (in Deo non potest esse malum). Atheists like Law must face the fact that, if the words are to retain any sense, “God” simply cannot be “evil”. As my comments in the thread at Feser’s blog aimed to show, despite how much he mocks “the privation theory of evil,” Law himself cannot escape its logic: his entire argument requires that the world ought to appear less evil if it is to be taken as evidence of a good God. Even though he spurns the idea that evil is a privation of good, his account of an evil world is parasitic on a good ideal; this is no surprise, though, since all evil is parasitic on good ( SCG I, 11 ). Based on the conclusions of se...
446 comments
Read more

EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS

(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151) EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS Stephen Law Abstract The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of indepen...
159 comments
Read more

Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism refuted

Here's my central criticism of Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). It's novel and was published in Analysis last year. Here's the gist. Plantinga argues that if naturalism and evolution are true, then semantic epiphenomenalism is very probably true - that's to say, the content of our beliefs does not causally impinge on our behaviour. And if semantic properties such as having such-and-such content or being true cannot causally impinge on behaviour, then they cannot be selected for by unguided evolution. Plantinga's argument requires, crucially, that there be no conceptual links between belief content and behaviour of a sort that it's actually very plausible to suppose exist (note that to suppose there are such conceptual links is not necessarily to suppose that content can be exhaustively captured in terms of behaviour or functional role, etc. in the way logical behaviourists or functionalists suppose). It turns o...
151 comments
Read more