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Posted by: gcarkner | March 9, 2014

Iain Provan Examines Two Cultural Mythologies

A Critical Examination of Two Myths that Drive Culture:

the Axial Age and Dark Green Religion

Dr. Iain Provan, Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies,

Regent College

Wednesday, March 12 @ 4:00 p.m. Woodward (IRC) Room 6, UBC

Abstract

The contemporary world has been shaped in part by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers’ construct of the “axial age” envisions the common past (800–200 BC), the time when Western society was born and world religions spontaneously and independently appeared out of a seemingly shared value set. Conversely, the myth of the “dark green golden age” as narrated by David Suzuki and others asserts that the axial age, and the otherworldliness that accompanied the emergence of organized religion, ripped society from a previously deep communion with nature. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In this lecture, Iain Provan will engage critically with both myths, explaining why we should not embrace them and why it matters if we do.

Biography

With his doctorate from Cambridge University, Dr. Iain Provan has been the Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College since 1997. He was born and educated in the UK and retains strong family, academic, and church connections with his homeland. He received his MA at Glasgow University in Mediaeval History and Archaeology, his BA from London Bible College in Theology, and his PhD from Cambridge, where his thesis focused on the books of Kings, and was subsequently published as Hezekiah and the Books of Kings. Iain Provan’s academic teaching career took him to King’s College London, the University of Wales, and the University of Edinburgh, where he was a senior lecturer in Hebrew and Old Testament Studies. He has written numerous essays and articles, and several books including commentaries on Lamentations, 1 and 2 Kings, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, and co-authored with Phil Long and Tremper Longman A Biblical History of Israel. Most recently he released Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was., the concern of this talk. Iain is an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland; a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge; and the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. He and his wife, Lynette, have four children and he holds full credentials as a soccer coach in BC. Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, GCU Events, Public Lectures, Seeker Corner, Stewardship

Posted by: gcarkner | March 4, 2014

Who Gave us Scientism?

The Historical and Philosophical Roots of Scientism

The scientific revolution in the seventeenth century owes much to the new techniques of empirical science: important advances in mathematics and the telescope are just two impressive examples. Radical empiricism, on the other hand, derives from John Locke and David Hume of Britain in the eighteenth century. This is the origin of sentiments towards scientism. Hume claimed that an idea was meaningless unless it had empirical grounds. He attempted to reduce all knowledge to scientific knowledge and even suggested the burning of all books that contained no quantities or matters of fact. The irony here is that Hume was also the first skeptic of scientific induction.

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Posted in Apologetics, GCU Events, GCU Personality, Grad Student Strategies, Public Lectures, Science Reflections

Posted by: gcarkner | February 27, 2014

Denis Alexander on Science & Religion

Dr. Denis Alexander is a big advocate for the dialogue between science and religion, science and the Christian faith. He has made a substantial contribution in this field through speaking, writing and co-ordinating sessions at the Faraday Institute for Dialogue on Science and Religion at Cambridge University. His Test of Faith DVD series has helped people around the globe to think more robustly about the various issues of cosmology, neuroscience, genetics and origins. He has hosted an international lighthouse for this discourse. Denis has been a visiting lecturer for the UBC Graduate & Faculty Christian Forum. He is the author of impressive tome Rebuilding the Matrix: Science and Faith in the 21st Century (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 2001). We think he represents the academic image of a scholar/scientist and a gentleman at its best.

Download Lectures from Faraday @ http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Multimedia.php, Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, Grad Student Strategies, Science Reflections | Tags: science and theology

Posted by: gcarkner | February 23, 2014

Self-Identity within Modernity

Modernity, Identity and the Self

The ideology of Scientism assumes a certain kind of anthropology, one full of optimism about the possibility for both knowing and organizing the world. Homo autonomous is an independent, self-reliant, self-centering, self-integrating rational subject. This includes a heroic understanding of human subjectivity. One can trace how this was achieved during the Renaissance by means of a radical transformation or re-interpretation of the biblical story of Adam in light of the Greek myth of Prometheus–the self of heroic individualism. Included in this identity was a bedrock faith in the ability of the self to discover universal, binding truths of science, politics and morality. The belief in universal reason is coupled with individual autonomy–the ability of every human being to come to the right conclusions.

The modern self of Scientism has a tendency to be optimistic, often to an illusory degree. It draws confidence from the mood of the Enlightenment where science seemed to open up new possibilities for the self as active agent to carve out and control its own destiny. There was a strong belief in progress to the point of becoming a grand narrative or cultural mythology. One could leave behind the ties of authority, religion and medieval hierarchy. Modernity’s positive self-image is of a civilization founded on scientific knowledge of the world and rationl knowledge of value, placing the highest value on human life and freedom. Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, Science Reflections | Tags: modernity, self

Posted by: gcarkner | February 18, 2014

Higher Education: Truth & Power

Can Truth Speak to Power?

French poststructuralist philosopher Michel Foucault’s (College de France) middle work is centered on power-knowledge or power/knowledge, and nowhere is power and knowledge more intertwined than in today’s university. As many readers know, Foucault is still one of the most quoted intellectuals in academia, especially in Europe. His thought and critique of culture continues to have an incredible influence across a huge spectrum of fields.

Knowledge to some degree is always implicated by, entwined with, power but that is not always a bad thing. Power is a condition of knowledge and therefore knowledge must take account of its involvement with power. Who gets to say such and such a proposition/declaration/claim is true, weighty, the way to go, or credible? In fact, it is often the person or persons who have earned their way up in the echelons of power—the ‘expert’, those who edit the journals, or lead a school of thought. We look for the most credible sources to make our case in our thesis proposal or dissertation. We locate our discourse or discussion among those who have earned their stripes the hard way, or whose ideas have met the test of time and application. Their opinion, even if we disagree with it, counts in the larger debates, many of which have been raging for centuries. It is a complex and fascinating relationship. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | February 7, 2014

Think Differently About Faith and Reason

Think Again about the Relation between Reason & Faith

The tendency towards a pure reason or pure faith are really impossible to actualize; there are no pure domains of reason and faith. They are intertwined. One cannot get rationalism without the other extreme of fideism; both are forced categories; rationalism needs faith to be fideism for its very survival. Nietzsche claimed that there are only interpretations; positivists claim that there are only facts. What should we believe whatever our starting point or prejudgments? It is perhaps a life-long quest to understand the nuances of this relationship. Marquette intellectual D. Stephen Long helps our quest offering fresh insight and much to ponder in his profound book Speaking of God: theology, language and truth. Stephen was a past guest speaker at UBC in the GFCF series. I have chosen some priceless quotes below. ~Gord Carkner

D. Stephen Long, Marquette University

The certainties which the church has received as a gift require its participation in humanity’s “commom struggle” to attain truth. The human search for truth, which is philosophy’s vocation, is not set in opposition to theology’s reception of truth as gift. What we struggle to understand by reason we also receive by faith. No dichotomy exists between the certainties of faith and the common struggle by human reason to attain truth. … the truths humanity seeks by common reason (philosophy) and the certainties of faith can be placed over against each other such that each illuminates the other and renders it intelligible until the two ultimately become one, which is of course what the incarnation does in reverse. The concretion of the one Person illumines the natures of both divinity and humanity. (p. 87)

Faith seeks reason and reason assists faith. They mutually enrich each other. (p. 88)

Philosophy should be the love of wisdom that prompts persons to use reason in the quest for truth, goodness and beauty…. Philosophy and theology have distinct tasks, but those tasks cannot be delineated solely in terms of nature and supernature or reason and faith. (pp. 83-4)

Faith not only seeks and presumes reason, it converts it. Every account of reason assumes something beyond it, some enabling condition that makes it possible but cannot be accounted for it within its own systematic aspirations… Likewise faith can never be pure; it will always assume and use reason even as it transfigures it. (p. 135)

Faith adds less a material content to geology, physics, mathematics, evolutionary science, economics, etc., than the form within which they can be properly understood so that they are never closed off from the mystery that makes all creaturely being possible. (p. 135)

Creation, although significant, is not self-interpreting; its meaning, if it has any, resides beyond it…. Creation has no meaning; it is a brute fact, until we give it value… Metaphysics will continue to ask why is there something rather than nothing. The question points beyond the world trapped in it s own immanence.

Only on the basis of an ontology of love can gift be understood. Because love, and not pure reason, is the basic structure of being, the failure of human reason to achieve infinite desires is not negative but positive. Thus we do not need to negate reason in order to believe, but rather to supplement and intensify it. We receive knowledge as a gift. … Gift, another name for the Holy Spirit, is the fullness of being, the perfection that surrounds us with an inevitable desire for truth, goodness and beauty. It illumines our lives. (p. 159)

The science that allows us to see more than by the “natural light of the intellect” is sacred doctrine. It includes all things that have been divinely revealed. Revelation here, however, is not propositional knowledge but a ‘form’ of divine light that then illumines all other sciences by looking at them through the aspects of divinity. It is more a ‘way’ than a ‘what’. (p. 197)

There must be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God….Theology comes as gift communicating God’s goodness to creatures for their own perfection, showing them their imperfection. (p. 207)

Philosophy has its limits, but it must be redeemed, and a place must be made for it within the gift we receive in sacred doctrine. Philosophy has its own integrity when it does not exceed its proper limits and seek to police the questions asked. The limits Wittgenstein placed on philosophy for the sake of a life worth living is similar to the limits Acquinas put on philosophy for the sake of the Christian life as a way of following Jesus into the truth of God. (p. 258)

The political and ecclesial question before us is how to subordinate power to truth and goodness without unwittingly using truth and goodness as mere forms of self-assertion. (p. 262)

For Wittgenstein, truth is not a matter of detachment, but engagement, the kind of engagement that love entails and that requires judgments based on qualitative contrasts….Wittgenstein’s appeal to love depends on something more akin to ‘virtue epistemology’. Love is not opposed to truth; they are both necessary virtues for knowledge. You cannot know what you do not love; you cannot love what you do not know. (pp. 300-01)

If we recognize that truth is a ‘way’ rather than a set of propositions attached to a reality or cohering with other propositions, then we might privilege those voices that embody this way, the way found in Christ’s life—forgiveness, reconciliation, hospitality to strangers—as truth because it is the divine way and is universal. Because of Christianity’s dogma the virtues of liberality and generosity must be extended to all. The task of the church then is not to rule but to make the truth present in the world. (p. 302)

How do we recover Christian claims to truth from their subordination to politics, especially when the political is understood as a field of pure power? (p. 305)

The purpose of the church is to recognize and acknowledge those conditions by which we can, like Mary, say yes to God and in so doing make Jesus present to the world. Those conditions are the way of holiness and that assume the transcendentals—truth, goodness and beauty. (p. 309)

Modern rationalism makes us choose truth against beauty and goodness. Only a permanent, living unity of the theoretical, ethical and aesthetic attitudes can convey a true knowledge of being.

Good philosophy, philosophy that does not seek to close us off from the world in some tight, immanent reality, will remain open to receiving this gift, a gift that can be found in language, but never identified with it. (p. 316)

Because language is never private, it serves to place some matter out in the open between interlocutors…to put things in public space. The constitutive dimension of language provides the medium through which some of our most important concerns, the characteristically human concerns, can impinge on us all. This makes possible judgments and standards. (p. 239)

Expressivist-Constitutive uses of language (Herder, Hamann, Humboldt)) recognize that metaphysics cannot be done by abstracting from language, but by turning to it. It recognizes the mystery that surrounds language. Truth does not look for the conditions by which language refers to reality; instead truth is manifest through music, art, facial expressions, liturgy, etc. Sentences are much too limiting to be the primary vehicles bearing the weight of truth. This tradition draws on a more Augustinian understanding of language. Everything is a sign. Charles Taylor places the later Wittgenstein in the expressivist-constitutive tradition, avoiding an instrumentalization of language as the basis for truth. (p.230) [also know as the hermeneutical approach.]

Designative uses of language (Hobbes to Locke to Condillac) traps the pursuit of wisdom within language and confines it to immanence, where language and its relationship to truth are reduced to pointing. Language primarily designates objects in the world. The object is observed but not participated in. One assumes a use of language based on quantitative judgments that are non-subject dependant. This tradition contributes to a mechanistic universe leaving it disenchanted. It is committed to the primacy of epistemology (evidence and justified belief). It is not oriented to universals or essences. (p. 230)

The good characterizes a public, successful performance of truth; it refuses fideism….Truth is an activity, a judgment inextricably linked to the good, and therefore to moral transformation. When I am pursuing truth I am pursuing goodness…. This truth both an undying fidelity and love, and at the same time a generosity towards others. By refusing to subordinate itself to ‘power’, understood as willful self-assertion, it best serves the tradition of democracy. (pp. 320-1, 325)

Check out the blog posts on Paul Davies and the ones on Fine-Tuned Universe.

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, GCU Personality, Science Reflections, Seeker Corner

Posted by: gcarkner | January 31, 2014

Lecture on Question of Assisted Suicide

Dying with Dignity? Negotiating the Moral Debate on Assisted Suicide

Wednesday, February 5 @ 4:00 p.m., Wodward (IRC), Room 6

Dr. Jeffrey Greenman, PhD Ethics University of Virginia,

Dean of Faculty Regent College

Abstract

A recent video by Dr. Donald Low, a Canadian physician who became famous during the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto, has sparked fresh moral and political debate about assisted suicide. In the video, which was made just eight days before he died of brain cancer, Low expressed his worries about how he would die. He asked for support for “dying with dignity” through assisted suicide, but because such measures are illegal in Canada, he was unable to die as he had wished. Addressing those who oppose assisted suicide, Low said, “I wish they could live in my body for 24 hours… Why make people suffer for no reason, when there is an alternative?” In this lecture, Dr. Greenman will explore the most important reasons given for and against assisted suicide, looking at the current debates from the standpoint of historic Christian convictions about suffering, death, and human dignity. Greenman will offer a multi-faceted rationale for upholding the longstanding Christian opposition to assisted suicide, and provide reasons why Canadian public policy should resist calls for change on this issue.

Statement by Dr Donald Low on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3jgSkxV1rw

Biography

Jeffrey P. Greenman (Ph.D. in religious ethics, University of Virginia) is Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at Regent College. He is the author of two books including Understanding Jacques Ellul, editor of seven volumes, and has written dozens of articles and book chapters on theology, ethics, education, and leadership.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44Xy5i73240 Biola Lecture/Discussion on Assisted Suicide

Paul Chamberlain, Final Wishes: a cautionary tale on death, dignity and physician assisted suicide. IVP, 2000.

Edward J. Larson & Darrell Amundsen, A Different Death: euthanasia and the Christian tradition. IVP, 1998.

Arthur J Dyck, Life’s Worth: the case against assisted suicide.

Comments on the Lecture: lively and enlightening Q & A period

– there seems to be a tension between perceived autonomy and the innate sacredness (sanctity) of human life itself

-one palliative care doctor in the crowd raised the issue of public safety for patients

-another medical professional noted that the main issue is care and not the total elimination of suffering

-Stanley Hauerwas’ book Suffering Presence was mentioned as a resource.

-someone quoted Dworkin “Hard cases make bad laws”

-we all agree that we should make people as comfortable as possible and provide an environment with dignity

-in places like Belgium and Holland, where doctor assisted suicide happens, there is no protection of the conscience of doctors who do not agree with the practice.

Response by Dr. Bert Cameron, former head of Nephrology at UBC,

To: GFCF ‘Dying with Dignity’ Lecture-Discussion by Dr. Jeffrey Greenman, Regent College

Rejoinder: “I was asked to give this response by the GFCF committee. I realize that it is not a fully considered document and that I would appreciate input particularly from those experienced in current palliative care.” ~Bert

I thought Jeff did a good job. Using the video clip as a beginning focused attention well and gave him the opportunity to make a number of significant points. First, ethical problems are always difficult because they involve a conflict of principles such as personal autonomy vs. sanctity of life. Second, the use of terms such as “maturity” and “death with dignity” are slogans that need better definition since we all want to be mature and respect the dignity of the human person.

I also thought that it was good to review the current legal grounding of Canadian laws (sanctity of life) and to point out the Hippocratic tradition and to give the Judeo–Christian basis for respect for human life, particularly the statement to Noah linking the prohibition to human murder with the image of God.

I thought the discussion was interesting, particularly the input from two doctors concerned deeply with euthanasia. They have been very vocal in the pro-life and euthanasia prevention movements. Clearly experience has shown them that when discussing this issue in society at large, the only argument likely to gain purchase is that of protection of the vulnerable in society. For this reason, much of their attention is focused on the “bad outcomes” in jurisdictions where euthanasia is practiced in the US and Europe. This moves the discussion away from principles to anecdotes and social research.

However, I think it is important clarify our interpretation of the principles so that we are honest about them. Let me explain.

It is true that the Old Testament lays the foundation that man is in the image of God and therefore human life is to be respected. Murder is condemned. However, taking life is not condemned since death was the punishment for murder and a number of other misdemeanors. Therefore, the active taking of life was not prohibited in Jewish society. The death penalty was recommended for thirty or more circumstances, which included a variety of sexual, familial, religious and legal misdeeds, some of which would be considered quite trivial today. In fact, our society seems to have a higher view of the sanctity of life than is evidenced in the Old Testament such as banning the death penalty.

Therefore, though as a Christian, I believe in the respect for life based on being made in the image of God, I find it difficult to suggest that hastening the death of suffering person who will die shortly can be equated with murder from the Old Testament perspective.

Other than the general principle of respect for human life, I find little in the Old or New Testament that bears significantly on the issue of palliation as medicine is practiced today. The argument that God determines our death is applicable in a general way but not specifically in a society that prolongs life by artificial means.

The point about the Hippocratic Oath and Tradition also has to be taken with caution. The Hippocratic Oath was a pagan oath that applied to a small group of doctors in ancient Greece. They were, in essence, setting standards for themselves in order to attract patients. Since they had access to killing agents, it was a promise not to use them. Again, it has very little to do with the current discussion. The Oath was, however, taken up by the Medieval Church and “sanctified” and has been used largely because it was in line with Christian thinking and the prohibition against murder.

As far as Canadian law is concerned, it is of course under continual change. It is probable that some sort of euthanasia will be legalized in Canada because the law has increasingly been moving to support the principle of consent and autonomy over other considerations. For example, the law against treating Jehovah’s Witnesses with blood transfusions against consent even though lack of treatment will lead to death.

Further, there are a number of practical issues involved in this complex discussion. There is a wide range of individual and family response to dying. At the end of life, some want to die, some want to live at all costs. Families are also very diverse on this issue. What constitutes medical care or negligence? Is it mandatory to put an IV into an unconscious dying person? What limits are permissible to ease suffering? Every individual case is different and often not predictable. In my experience, after each case the questions often remain as to whether the best was done.

So where does this bring me?

First, I believe that modern medicine and care is rooted in the Christian tradition, beginning with the healing ministry of Christ. It is based on Jesus care for the physical ailments of humans. Subsequently Christians cared for the sick, built hospitals and universities that cared as well as producing medical advances.

Second, death is inevitable and in some cases, overzealous attempts to preserve human life should be avoided. Having said that, this is very much a judgment issue. I have been forced, under legal threat, to keep brain dead people physically alive.

Third, within a palliative care context, wherever that is taking place, the health care team needs to be given latitude to deal with each case and family in a very individual and caring way. If this were understood and practiced, I think many situations like Dr. Lowe’s could be avoided.

Fourth, I like the phrase that Eric Stephenson mentioned to me; instead of using the term “Do Not Resuscitate” we should say “Allow Natural Death”.

Fifth, the Christian approach to the euthanasia debate should definitely focus on protection of the vulnerable. In our socialized society this can be a complex issue since we all pay for the extension of life through highly technological means.

Sixth, the question of having doctors responsible for euthanasia outside of the palliative care context is a very vexed question. I think medical societies should stand against it because it will reduce trust in physicians.

~Dr. Bert Cameron, former Head of Nephrology, UBC (professor emeritus)

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Posted in Faith & Culture, GCU Events, Grad Student Strategies, Public Lectures, Seeker Corner, Stewardship | Tags: assisted suicide

Posted by: gcarkner | January 31, 2014

Is God Really Good? #3

Further Examination of God’s Goodness

Existential choice is necessary for ethics but not sufficient; it lacks discernment concerning the wide variety of human expressions and motives, constructive and destructive. Charles Taylor reveals dimensions of the moral self that are repressed (even subverted) by various ethical projects. These dimensions are deemed to be crucial for the health and well-being of the self: a moral horizon which includes community, narrative, the hypergood, life goods, a common good, sources of the good and the constitutive good. See the Blog Series “Qualities of the Will”. He contends that one cannot truly flourish (is morally handicapped) without them.

Taylor believes that it is possible to win on freedom and responsibility, mutuality and complementarity, amidst a renewed self-conscious relationship to the good, in order to establish deeper relationships and build accountability into society. He holds that this more rooted, embedded self will endure and enjoy its freedom as it discerns its calling within a larger context. It offers a more full-blooded conception of subjectivity. Taylor wants a deeper theme of personal freedom and choice, with more infrastructure for a thick self. This entails an ethics that is in quest of a substantive context and a robust source of the good.

In this series exploring the Goodness of God, we contend that the knowledge of the good is intimately linked with the knowledge of God, and one’s relation to the good is ultimately connected to one’s relationship to God. It is an exploration of the heuristic relationship to God’s goodness. American theologian D. Stephen Long (2001) notes:

Participation in God is necessary for the good and for freedom. Evil arises when freedom is lost through turning towards one’s own autonomous resources for ethics. The fall does not result from people seeking to be more than they are capable of through pride but from their becoming less than they could be because they separate the knowledge of the good from its true end, God, and find themselves self-sufficient … Seeking the good through nonparticipation in God, through the “virtue of what was in themselves” makes disobedience possible. (Long, 2001, p. 128)

This is what Long refers to as the blasphemy of the a priori, that is, the philosophical preoccupation that assumes one can determine the conditions for knowledge of the good a priori, without engaging the good at its best in a trinitarian God. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | January 26, 2014

Is God Really Good? #2

The Goodness of God Under Investigation … continued

We have discussed the negative aspects of the definition of God’s goodness. It has helped to free God, so to speak, from human judgment or stereotype, to let God be God regarding goodness. Now we move to the corollary, the positive aspects of a dynamic divine transcendent goodness. According to Marquette University theologian D. Stephen Long, goodness is a “character trait predicate” of the triune God as three active Persons. God is entirely and transcendently good in essence and existence. Without God’s goodness, we would not be having this discussion, because he is unapologetically the very ground of all goodness. Goodness begins with the infinite transcendent God, not with finite humans, and then flows to creation. This constitutes a theological side of the discourse of ethics that we have been sponsoring under the theme Charles Taylor and Qualities of the Will in this blog. According to German theologian Christoph Schwobel,

It is one of the implications of this trinitarian conception of divine agency that the intentionality of divine action is not to be inferred from the structure of the world God has created, but has to be understood as grounded in the revelation in the Son. It is this paradigmatic action that is authenticated by the inspiration of the Spirit which then provides the framework for the interpretation of God’s work in creation. In a similar way the character of the work of the Spirit as inspiration indicates how God involves human beings in the realization of his intentions. It is the context of the interrelatedness of creation, revelation and inspiration that we can talk about God’s action in terms of free, intentional action. (Christoph Schwöbel, 1992, p. 70) Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, Seeker Corner, Stewardship

Posted by: gcarkner | January 22, 2014

Regent Bookstore Apologetics

Regent Bookstore Apologetics Gold

UBC has a great bookstore as most students know, but Regent Bookstore, within Regent College, right at Gate One (Wesbrook Mall @ University Boulevard) is a not-to-be-missed intellectual goldmine on campus. I believe that it is one of the most comprehensive theological, faith and culture bookstores in Canada. They have so much good literature and recordings.

You simply have to check it out personally; you will not regret it.

The Grand Tour We want to take you on a mini-tour of the Apologetics Section. Also take note of the special Fevbruary Regent conference on Justice . Whether you are exploring the Christian faith for the first time, or you are wondering whether to abandon your faith now that you are in higher education and away from Mom & Dad and your home church pastor, or you are looking for convincing explanations of the Christian faith to your colleagues, this is an excellent place to start. Do ask the friendly staff to guide you to this section. By the way, I believe that far too many abandon their religion in undergraduate life without really grappling with the richness and depth of the Christian faith. I came close to doing the same as a student of Biology at Queen’s University. This is unnecessary and often silly! There are answers to your toughest questions by thoughtful scholars from around the globe. “The unexamined life is not worth living” writes Socrates, indicating that the pursuit of wisdom is a critical part of anyone’s education. You are what you read, so pick good books and find a good mentor to help you sort through your questions and doubts. You might want to join the next Apologetics Canada Conference in Burnaby and Abbotsford

March 7 & 8 2014 http://www.apologeticscanada.com/conference-2014/

Some of the Gold:

Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir by Carolyn Weber. This is a thoughtful conversion narrative of a London, Ontario woman who arrived in Oxford as a grad student with no perceived need of God. Hopefully many will find a new faith in God this year at UBC.

Alister McGrath, Intellectuals Don’t Need God. This is an excellent overview of the spectrum of apologetic dialogue. He also writes good material on the history of the relationship between science and theology. Also see his A Fine-Tuned Universe.

For the seeker, you might like Christopher J.H. Wright, The God I Don’t Understand; N.T. Wright, Simply Christian; John Dickson Life of Jesus; or Philip Yancey The Invisible God.

Kelly Monroe Kullberg of Veritas Forum & Laurel Arrington offer the Christian an intriguing Faith & Culture Devotional

Tim Keller’s (an intellectual Presbyterian pastor in Manhattan) material on dialogue with tough questions is popular but thoughtful: The Reason for God; The Prodigal God

For the student of Apologetics: Kreeft & Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics;Paul Chamberlain, Why People Don’t Believe. (see also his Can We be Good Without God?); Ravi Zaccharius, Deliver Us From Evil; Charles Taylor A Secular Age; Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation; Francis Collins, The Language of God; C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Eric Metaxus.

Try a powerful intellect in David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God. or N.T.Wright’s books on Jesus or Paul, Alvin Plantinga on Warranted Christian Belief.; Thomas Morris, Making Sense of it All.; Charles Taylor’s Dilemmas ad Connections.; Mortimer Adler’s Ten Philosophical Mistakes; W. Jay Wood’s Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous.; Budziszewski’s Written on the Heart; MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

And there is much more… You get the picture; there’s lots to expand and stimulate the mind and the imagination. Check the Apologetics Resources section of this blog https://ubcgcu.org/apologetics-resources/

Gord Carkner, PhD Philosophical Theology, University of Wales

See Conferences Button on this blog for Apologetics Canada Conference March 7 & 8, 2014

Join our book study on Monday at 12 noon Barber Library Room 316

USA Grad & Faculty Director Bob Trube’s Comments on Good Books http://rtrube54.wordpress.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6991670-bob?shelf=christianity-and-culture

__________________________________

Workshop to come at Apologetics Canada Conference: 12 noon, March 8 Willingdon Church, Burnaby

Title: Monopolizing Knowledge: Scientism and the Search for Reality

Speaker: Gordon Carkner

Science is a vital part of our modern culture in the West. However the contemporary belief that science is the only way to truth (scientism) is a perversion of science and a major barrier to exploring the benefits of Christiaity. Rooted in the worldview of materialistic naturalism, it promotes a conflict between science and faith (believed by 70% of university students). This workshop provides critical perspective on the character of scientism, as compared to legitimate scientific work, offering excellent resources to grapple with this vital apologetic question. SCIENTISM@Missfst

http://www.apologeticscanada.com/conference-2014/

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, Grad Student Strategies, Public Lectures, Seeker Corner | Tags: apologetics

ubcgcu

Iain Provan Examines Two Cultural Mythologies

Who Gave us Scientism?

Denis Alexander on Science & Religion

Self-Identity within Modernity

Higher Education: Truth & Power

Think Differently About Faith and Reason

Lecture on Question of Assisted Suicide

Is God Really Good? #3

Is God Really Good? #2

Regent Bookstore Apologetics

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