How can you or I know that Christianity is true? One of the main aims of Reasonable Faith Adelaide is to demonstrate that Christianity is plausible and more reasonable than the alternatives. We believe that we can have confidence that God exists, and that Jesus Christ is as is ascribed to him in the Bible. In other words, our aim is to demonstrate that Christianity is true. But can we actually “know”? Is that even possible?
Brian Schroeder will address some of the evidence and will endeavour to demonstrate, as far as possible, that we can know that Christianity is true, and how we can know. Brian Schroeder is a Reasonable Faith committee member. He has BSc and BA degrees from Adelaide University (Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics), and an MA in Theology.
According to Wikipedia, the “God of the gaps” is a theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are cited as evidence or proof of God’s existence.
This would have been a particularly attractive position at a time when people knew almost nothing, and could thus ascribe everything to God, but now that we know more and more, is God is getting squeezed out? Failures in gap arguments in the past have been embarrassing and counter-productive.
Are we in the process of eliminating God, or do gaps we still point to God, or is this an entirely erroneous concept in the first place?
Brian Schroeder presents the issues, and argue for the standard Christian response to this question. His talk is available on YouTube.
From ancient times people have gazed at the sun, moon and stars observing their consistent daily and seasonal motion, and assumed that all of this was ordered by a maker. The Enlightenment dismissed this as fanciful imagination, but as our power of observation of both the atomic and stellar scale has grown, we see increasing signs of order that only needs the slightest variation to prohibit life supporting conditions. Is there any other reason that can explain this observed fine tuning in our physical environment?
Multiverse?
Steve White presents an outline of Fine Tuning and the Multiverse. He presents evidence for the fine tuning of our universe from the sub-atomic to the stellar scale and then discusses whether Multiverse theory can explain it. Do we just happen to live in one lucky, life-supporting version, among many other universes?
Stephen White
Stephen White has had a career as a physicist and is now retired.
John Lennox has challenged whether science can prove everything? However, in this presentation, Dr Leonard Long will address the question, “Can science prove anything?” Science is practised within a belief system based on unprovable presuppositions, and can study only the patterns of behaviour of an already given functional, predictable, universe. Scientists who wander into bad philosophy will be critiqued, as will scientism – the overblown belief in science.
So Leonard’s address includes the following topics:
Nature of science,
Scientism,
Methodological naturalism,
Ideological corruption within science, and
Interference of politics and funding within science.
My philosophy lecturer once said, “All philosophy is a commentary on Plato”. There is much that is impressive about Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In Athens Paul referred to Stoic philosophers as a point of contact in proclaiming the Jewish Messiah. Early Christian apologists integrated Platonism with Christian belief but others were not so keen. Tertullian, a notable early church father, put it this way: “What has Athens got to do with Jerusalem?” What is the relationship between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world? Are they different?
These questions are considered here by Geoff Russell.
The French term “expérience de mort immente” (experience of imminent death) was proposed by French psychologist Victor Egger as a result of discussions in the 1890s among philosophers and psychologists concerning climbers’ stories of the panoramic life review during falls. In 1892 a series of subjective observations by workers falling from scaffolds, soldiers who suffered injuries, climbers who had fallen from heights or other individuals who had come close to death (near drownings, accidents) was reported by Albert Heim. This was also the first time the phenomenon was described as a clinical syndrome.
Professor Kenneth Ring (1980) subdivided Near Death Experiences (NDEs) into a five-stage continuum. The subdivisions were:
Peace
Body separation
Entering darkness
Seeing the light
Entering the light
The following explanatory models have been proposed for NDEs
Spiritual or Transcendental models
Psychological explanations
Physiological (organic) explanations
So what should we make of NDEs? Cardiac surgeons are objective observers of people who “die on the operating table”. They have to write clinical reports that are subject to review. Some of their patients come back to life after being pronounced dead. What do surgeons think about NDE? Are NDEs a preview into the afterlife?
Stephen White
Stephen White tells us what he has found. His presentation is on You Tube.
In modern Western Cultures today it seems that there is more “moral” outrage and indignation about “right” and “wrong” than ever before. It appears that our anger is growing and that, increasingly, we seem splintered into ever smaller groups with ever opposing yet solidly entrenched views with little hope of consensus on any issue of importance. There seems little doubt that this moral anger and outrage is being fuelled by social media. In light of this increasing debate about right and wrong, investigation and civil conversation about “morality” and its implications would be valuable.
Tom Daly presents the “moral argument for God” and examines more closely what we actually mean when we claim something to be “good/bad” or “right/wrong” and if this tells us something about ourselves, our ideas, our anger and also something about the existence of God. We will consider the moral argument for God in light of mankind’s ability to discern right and wrong, and the fact that we seem to be moral beings at our core. Yet scientism tells us that we are merely amoral matter that has developed ideas and feelings of morality by the amoral process of evolution, which, at its core, has what we feel to be the immoral notion that the strong eat the weak. Hopefully we can “reason together”.
Everyone has morals. Christians have morals, Muslims have morals, Hindus have morals and atheists have morals, but where do those morals come from? What is the underlying basis provided by those belief systems for the morality their adherents lay claim to? Also, what would a totally non-moral human look like, if it were even possible for such a person to exist?
In the case of atheism, is there any source for morality? Is there an atheist morality? If there is, then what is it? If there isn’t, then what explanation do we have for the fact that atheists are moral beings?
Brian Schroeder
Brian Schroeder attempts to look at all this and more by drawing from both atheist and theist sources.
Most people have some awareness of artificial intelligence (AI), perhaps from Hollywood movies or news articles about driverless cars. However, most people are not yet aware of the breadth of applications possible today, nor the stunning advances that have been made with AI in recent years. Already there are a growing number of important ethical and practical implications arising from these current and continuing advances in AI; yet the general public is not involved, nor the Church and even governments are scrambling to catch-up. This talk is part 1 of a 2-talk series on AI and will survey the current status of AI as well as near term advances. It will introduce and consider ethical questions such as:
What are the impacts for jobs in civil society in next few years and decades?
What are the right and wrong uses of AI technology? For example, should we use AI robots to keep the elderly “company”?
What happens when video and audio can be created by AI so well that real video/audio is indistinguishable from generated?
What are the risks from our current and likely future reliance on AI technology?
What conversations should we be having to care for each other as AI ushers in a huge increase in the pace of change?
This is a summary of a talk Artificial Intelligence and its implications on ethics today. The talk was given by Tom Daly to Reasonable Faith Adelaide on the 12th of April 2018.
The talk can be viewed on You Tube and you can access the slides here.
