Join us for what is anticipated to be one of the most significant abortion debates of the decade.
Ann Furedi, CEO of the UK’s largest private abortion provider, BPAS, will be going head to head with Gregg Cunningham, the founder and director of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, a group that makes pictures of aborted babies available for public education projects across the globe.
The point of contention is the use of graphic abortion images outside of abortion clinics in the UK.
The Resolution:“This house believes that it is morally wrong for groups to approach women and display abortion imagery outside facilities which provide abortion services.”
The event will be charied by Brendan O’Neill, Editor of Spiked Online. It will take place at 18:30 on 3rd of October at the Emmanuel Centre, Marsham Street, Westminster, SW1P 3DW.
From happiness expert and Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland.
Excerpt:
According to ancient thought, happiness is a life well lived, a life that manifests wisdom, kindness and goodness. For the ancients, the happy life — the life we should dream about — is a life of virtue and character. Not only did Plato, Aristotle, the Church Fathers and medieval theologians embrace this definition, but Moses, Solomon and (most importantly) Jesus did, too. Sadly their understanding is widely displaced by the contemporary understanding of happiness defined as pleasure and satisfaction, a subjective emotional state associated with fleeting, egocentric feelings.
Consider the differences:
Contemporary Understanding
Classical Understanding
Happiness is:
Happiness is:
1. Pleasure and satisfaction
1. Virtue and character
2. An intense feeling
2. A settled tone
3. Dependent on external circumstances
3. Depends on internal state; springs from within
4. Transitory and fleeting
4. Fixed and stable
5. Addictive and enslaving
5. Empowering and liberating
6. Irrelevant to one’s identity, doesn’t color the rest of life and creates false/empty self
6. Integrated with one’s identity, colors rest of life and creates true/fulfilled self
7. Achieved by self-absorbed narcissism; success produces a celebrity
7. Achieved by self-denying apprenticeship to Jesus; success produces a hero
How can we be certain Jesus is inviting us to a classical understanding of happiness in Matthew 16:24-26? He isn’t talking about going to heaven rather than hell, nor is He telling his followers how to avoid premature death. Where Matthew writes, “what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul” (emphasis added), Luke clarifies Jesus’ teaching by replacing “his soul” with the word “himself” (Luke 9:25). The issue is finding one’s self vs. losing one’s self. More specifically, to find one’s self is to find out how life ought to look like and learn to live that way; it’s to become like Jesus, with character that manifests the fruit of the Spirit and the radical nature of Kingdom living; it’s to find out God’s purposes for one’s life and to fulfill those purposes in a Christ-honoring way.
In one of his lectures, he says, and I quote: “Happiness is the freedom to do what we ought to do”. Indeed. When a person is free to comply with God’s design for human flourishing, then he/she is happy.
I’m a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I work in philosophy of time, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science (especially physics), and probabilistic epistemology.
Bradley Monton • Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the University of Colorado • BA in Physics and Philosophy from Rice University • PhD in Philosophy from Princeton University • Author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design
And here are the interview questions:
What makes you take intelligent design (ID) seriously?
Why do you think some scientists refuse to take intelligent design seriously?
You write in your book that you don’t fully endorse intelligent design. In your opinion, what are some of the weaknesses of ID?
Then why can’t you fully support intelligent design?
So what are the strengths of intelligent design?
What do you think about the multiverse theory—this belief that there are actually an infinite number of universes out there, making the complexity of our own universe more likely and less special?
Do you think intelligent design should be taught in public schools?
Do you teach your own students about intelligent design?
Do you think academic freedom is limited for non-tenured proponents of intelligent design?
How have other academics responded to your writings and statements on intelligent design?
You’ve written that intelligent-design arguments have made you less certain of your atheism. What would it take to make you abandon it altogether?
So what sort of scientific evidence would be compelling enough to change your mind?
Are there other atheist scientists out there who believe that intelligent-design arguments hold some merit?
Here’s my favorite question (#12) and the answer:
So what sort of scientific evidence would be compelling enough to change your mind?
It would be evidence for mind as a fundamental feature of the universe. As far as I’m concerned, God would have to be a purely mental entity, not connected to physical reality in the way that we are through our bodies. So if we could discover some kind of evidence that mind is fundamental, then that would go a long way toward making me a believer. And if we could find evidence that the physical world isn’t causally closed—that not only is mind a fundamental entity, but it likewise plays a causal role in the structure of the world—then that would also be compelling evidence for the existence of God. Now, if it is found that mind plays a role in our brain processes alone, that by itself wouldn’t make me believe in God, though it would certainly make me more open to the idea. But if we were to discover that mind is intervening in other places in the world besides our brain processes, then that would pretty much be the smoking gun.
Yeah, I think there is good evidence for a non-physical mind, both from science and philosophy.
I think a lot of Christians who grew up with young-Earth creationism are startled to find that there are non-theistic, non-Christians scholars who take ID seriously. I think if I were a smart young-Earth creationist like Paul Nelson or Marcus Ross, I would try to create common ground with scholars by discussing intelligent design with them.
WINTERY KNIGHT 