Dr. Allan Chapman returns to MSUM for lecture and Eurospring recruitment

Dr. Allan Chapman returns to MSUM for lecture and Eurospring recruitment

Dr. Allan Chapman, Oxford faculty, returns to MSU Moorhead for his annual lecture and Eurospring recruiting visit. He will speak on Wednesday, September 26 at 7:00 p.m. in Science Lab 104. Refreshments will follow in the Science Lab atrium.

Chapman’s topic this year is “Science and Religion: Friends or Foes?” He notes:

Those people who have come to be styled the ‘New Atheists’ try to convince us that religion really belongs to an earlier phase of human development, and that nowadays science has taken its place as the yardstick of authority. They also claim that one cannot be a scientist and a committed religious person. On the other hand, there are living today scientists of the highest intellectual distinction, in sciences ranging from cosmology to medical research, who make no bones about their faith and cannot understand what the ‘New Atheists’ are getting so worked up about. Indeed, for centuries there have been devout scientists who saw their science as an ongoing expression of their faith. And I personally know many present-day men and women of scientific eminence who would say the same thing.

So has anything actually changed in the nature of scientific discovery to give atheistic interpretations of science
a decisive new edge that it did not possess in 1900, or 1700, or 1500? Do modern discoveries in biology, brain science, cosmology and physics seriously undermine religious belief? Or are religious modern scientists just fools who are so blind in their dogmatic brain-washing that they cannot see the bigger world beyond their test-tubes? Or, on the other hand, are the ‘New Atheists’ simply re-telling a worn-out tale which itself goes back centuries, and which they are trying to spice up with big helpings of rhetoric and ridicule? If you are interested, come along and listen.

The lecture is open to the campus community and the general public. Do join us!