Skip to main content

Can Science Solve Every Mystery? - this Saturday June 8th - see some of you there I hope...

Running Order:

11.00-11.40 Peter S Williams
11.40-12.20 Peter Atkins
12.20-1.00 David Papineau
1.00-1.30 lunch
1.30-2.30 panel discussion with Williams, Atkins and Papineau


Centre for Inquiry UK and Conway Hall present

Can science solve every mystery? A scientist, a philosopher and a Christian discuss.

Peter Atkins, David Papineau, Peter S. Williams

Can science answer every question? Should scientists show a little humility and acknowledge there are questions that only religion can answer? Are science and religion “non-overlapping magisteria”, as the scientist Stephen Jay Gould claimed, or is science capable of showing that religion is false, as Richard Dawkins believes? And what, exactly, do philosophers do?

Presented and chaired by Stephen Law (Philosophy, Heythrop and Provost of CFI UK).

Saturday June 8th, 2013

Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
Holborn
London
WC1R 4RL

£7 (£4 students) Free to friends of CFI UK. Book here or pay on door.

10.30am registration. 11am-2.30pm

Speakers

Professor Peter Atkins (Univ. of Oxford). Chemist, atheist and author of many books including Galileo’s Finger and Four Laws That Drive the Universe:

“Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny.”

“Sitting around thinking about the world … [that] is philosophy. And we know where that leads to in understanding. My argument is - nowhere.”

Peter S. Williams (Damaris Trust). Philosopher and leading British Christian apologist. Author of C.S. Lewis vs the New Atheists and A Faithful Guide to Philosophy:

“The existence of scientific laws is inexplicable unless we move beyond science into the realm of metaphysics, postulating a God who intends those laws for a reason.”

Professor David Papineau (KCL). One of Britain’s leading philosophers and humanists and author of Philosophical Devices:

“Philosophical problems are characterized by a special kind of difficulty, a difficulty which means that they cannot be solved, as scientific problems normally are, simply by the uncovering of further empirical evidence. Rather they require some conceptual unravelling, a careful unpicking of implicit ideas, often culminating in the rejection of assumptions we didn't realize we had.”


Comments

Maths Tutor Wirral said…
Peter S. Williams :-

'“The existence of scientific laws is inexplicable unless we move beyond science into the realm of metaphysics, postulating a God who intends those laws for a reason.”'

CARR
In other words, for science to work , you have to drop on the floor the Christian worldview where their hypothetical god created demons who (according to Plantinga) create natural evils, and would certainly interfere with the regular working of Mother Nature.
June 4, 2013 at 10:31 AM
Iain Walker said…
“The existence of scientific laws is inexplicable unless we move beyond science into the realm of metaphysics, postulating a God who intends those laws for a reason.”

Peter Williams certainly doesn't seem afraid of a vicious regress, does he? Or does he genuinely think that explanations in terms of an agent's intentions somehow stand in no need of further explanation, or that they do not presuppose law-like conditions themselves? Very odd.
June 4, 2013 at 2:14 PM
Anonymous said…
Will this be available online?
June 4, 2013 at 3:54 PM
L.Long said…
Fortunately or not science can only work in the realm of this space-time. But anything outside of this space-time is irrelevant anyway, i.e. is there a hell or for that matter a gawd.
But given time and technology there is nothing science cannot answer, i.e. conscientious or their favorite LOVE! As both of those do manifest themselves in this world.
June 4, 2013 at 6:43 PM
Daniel Polowetzky said…
An alternative question would be, "Are there mysteries that humans cannot solve?"

The answer would be YES, because of the low probability of human omniscience, which is what a NO answer implies.

The question to be addressed on June 8 is really a question as to the scope of science not its potential to answer every question.
June 4, 2013 at 10:18 PM
Paul P. Mealing said…
I hope this is recorded for those of us who can't attend.

Regards, Paul.
June 5, 2013 at 8:33 AM
Musa Kocaman said…
Türkiye'nin ve dünyanın her yerine tatil planınızı yapabilirsiniz.
July 5, 2013 at 12:15 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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

Sye show continues

I was sent a link to this , for those interested in the never ending saga of Sye TenBruggencate and his "proof" of the existence of God. Hit "sinner ministries' proof of the existence of god" link below or on side bar for 30+ earlier posts on this topic that I wrote during an extended interchange with him last summer (check the literally many hundreds of comments attached to these posts if you really want to get into how Sye thinks and argues). Sye's amazing intial "proof" is available here . PS. For those interested, my own "presuppositional" proof, parodying Sye's proof by his principle "the impossibility of the contrary" (which turns out to be the key to Sye's proof) is: My claim: Sye's mind is addled and his thinking unreliable because he was hit on the head by a rock. Prove this is false, Sye. Try to, and I will say - "But your "proof" presupposes your mind is not addled and you can recognise a pr...
250 comments
Read more