Sunday, March 26, 2006

Upcoming Talk

I'll be giving a talk at this summer's Two Tasks Conference in Alexandria, Virginia during the morning session of the Physical Sciences Track on Friday, June 23. I won't divulge the title of my talk, but to any regular reader the contents should be recognizable from the recurring themes of this forum.

The conference as a whole promises to be a great gathering. Aside from the obvious good taste the organizers have displayed in allowing me to speak (ha ha!), they have invited a wonderful array of speakers, including Peter Kreeft and John Haldane.

The name of the conference comes from the thought of Charles Malik:

If you win the whole world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover you have not won the world. Indeed it may turn out that you have actually lost the world....Responsible Christians face two tasks—that of saving the soul and that of saving the mind.

My sincere hope is that this realization takes hold in the mainstream of American Christianity. For too long some Christians have allowed themselves to be shoved into the intellectual ghetto: indeed they have insisted that living in the ghetto was an identifying characteristic of authentic Christian belief!

Even a distant look at history shows this credo's falsehood: whence did the power of Western Civilization—a realistic faith in human reason—come if not from Christian Europe?

1 comment:

Mahndisa S. Rigmaiden said...

03 30 06

Hey there LG:
I am awfully curious about your talk, and wish you the best while presenting. I think that human reason came with the early Christians who were Armenians and Ethiopian Coptics. A lot of the stuff they allowed in their society showed a loving people, committed to certain values who still had the ability to live in a diverse society. Today's Christians oft get caught up in the Word Life/Prosperity Gospel, where ones divinity corresponds to ones material possessions etc.

I love physics because to my way of thinking,it is the closest way to figure out how the creator did his job.I don't have a doctrinal approach to Christianity because the Bible isn't infallible. But the underlying lessons are all there. I think I am somewhat of a mystic and am saddened that there aren't more people who can suspend their disbelief for faith a bit, but not completely!

Sorry for ranting. I covered mutant p53 species and LQG on the blog today.
Warmest Regards.