New debate on God, atheism, and science on very spot where Samuel Wilberforce debated Thomas Huxley
Christian mathematician John Lennox and atheist public understanding of science prof Richard Dawkins will continue in October 2008 their 2007 discussion on the spot where Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce duked it out a century and a half ago:
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At 6:00 p.m. on the 20th of October, Fixed Point Foundation will host a public DVD screening of last year's God Delusion Debate between Professor Richard Dawkins and Dr. John Lennox, both of the University of Oxford. The screening will take place in the Main Hall of the Oxford Town Hall and is free and open to the public. For more information about the debate, click here.
The following night, Fixed Point will sponsor a discussion between Dawkins and Lennox on the main floor of the Oxford Museum of Natural History at 7:00 p.m. Both scientists will discuss atheism, the Christian faith, and the claims of their respective books: The God Delusion and God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? The building marks the historical site of the famed evolution debate of 1860 between Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.
General admission tickets for the October 21st discussion with Dawkins and Lennox are available through Tickets Oxford and can be purchased online at www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford or by contacting the box office at (Tel) 01865 305305 (Fax) 01865 305335. Only 500 tickets are available. They are £15 each and £10 for students.
Richard Dawkins and John Lennox met for the first time in Birmingham, Alabama this past October for another event sponsored by Fixed Point, The God Delusion Debate. The debate, moderated by United States Federal Judge William H. Pryor, examined six theses from Dawkins' book The God Delusion. Garnering the attention of Fox News, Wall Street Journal, London Times, and BBC Radio, the event took place in front of a sold out crowd of almost 1,400. Fixed Point is seeking to generate further public interest on this topic by taking the two men back to their hometown for another event.
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Got to hand it to Fixed Point for knowing how to frame a discussion!
Also, just up at The Mindful Hack:
Would you shove a fat man off a trestle to save five people?
The Mark Steyn show trial in Vancouver
Coffee break: The Zen pensioner says ...
Brain: Octopus develops advanced brain, but what does it do?
Theological speculation - just what the cave man needed ...
Richard Dawkins is no Thomas Henry Huxley
Here is Thomas Henry Huxley on the subject of atheism -
"Of all the senseless babble I have ever had the occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God."
Henrietta A. Huxley, Aphorisms And Reflections From The Works of T. H. Huxley, page 3.
Compare Huxley with Einstein on the same subject -
"Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source... They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres."
Alice Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein, page 204.
In my opinion Richard Dawkins lives in a fantasy world entirely of his own construction, congenitally oblivious to the order and purpose evident to so many of us. With his New World atheist ally, P.Z. Myers, he is doomed to be little more than a footnote in the history of evolutionary science, a science to which he has contributed little of lasting significance.
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."