John Lennox

Professor Emeritus Mathematics, Oxford University

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity

Tuesday, October 3 @ 12:00 noon on Zoom

Response from Professor Craig Gay, Regent College

Abstract

Dr. Lennox will offer a probing conversation centered on the current and future impact of artificial intelligence technology. He will discuss the current state of AI, its benefits, dangers and future implications. He will explain the current capacity of AI, its advantages and disadvantages, the facts and fiction. Will Artificial Intelligence usher in a new utopia or a surveillance society dystopia? How do we protect our privacy in an age of digitalization of everything and deep machine learning? He authored the book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (Zondervan, 2020).

Biography

John Lennox is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He is a bioethicist, philosopher, author, and Christian apologist. He has written many highly-regarded books on religion, ethics and the relationship between science and faith, which covers key developments in technological enhancement, bioengineering and AI. Over the past 15 years, Lennox has been part of numerous public debates defending the Christian faith, including debates with Christopher Hitchens, Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins. He has lectured and given courses to enthusiastic audiences on science and Christian faith around the globe.

Templeton Green College

Questions to Consider:

Are we happy with AI surveillance capitalism?

How does ethics catch up with the speed of technological innovation? What is morally essential to all humans?

What are the implications of moving beyond ‘Narrow’ AI to AGI or Artificial General Intelligence (transhumanism)?

Do we like Yuval Noah Harari’s idea of humans as ‘hackable animals’, with the potential of becoming like gods?

How are we to understand the AI Religion of Neil MacCarthur?

How does utopian ideology operate in the AI space?

What kind of moral capacity is AI ever to have?

Sample of Speed of AI Development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnboHTfYsfk

Proposed GFCF Speakers for 2023-24 Academic Year: The purpose of the Forum is dialogue across disciplines, ideologies or philosophical persuasions. Dialogue on key issues brings one’s graduate experience to life. Come and meet new friends at GFCF, stimulating interlocutors that could last a whole lifetime.

We explore new ideas, insights and paradigms, featuring inspiring new research, publications and critical thought. We cooperate financially with other agencies such as Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation and Corpus Christi College at UBC. The philosophical foundations of the Forum include a broadly-based discursive, open-minded Christian theism, respecting the long history of tradition within the context of our pluralistic society. Our target audience is the senior members of the UBC research community: faculty members, postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Our proposal works in tandem with former UBC President Ono’s emphasis on ecumenical cooperation among Christian institutions and agencies—creating space for discussions about faith and culture.

1. February 14, 2024: Christopher Watkin, French Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.                          The Bible as a Tool for Changing Culture. 

Abstract: The question of the relationship between Christianity and culture increasingly takes centre stage in debates both within and outside the church today. This talk reflects on how a constructive, nuanced and–to many modern ears–fresh vision for contemporary society can be drawn from a rich engagement with the Bible’s storyline, guided by Augustine’s magisterial work City of God. What might it look like to reimagine Augustine’s mode of engagement with late Roman society in our own cultural moment of late modernity? 

Biography: Christopher Watkin (PhD, University of Cambridge) is senior lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a scholar with an international reputation in the area of modern and contemporary European thought, atheism, and the relationship between the Bible and philosophy. His published work runs the spectrum from academic monographs on contemporary philosophy to books written for general readers, both Christian and secular, and include Difficult Atheism, From Plato to Postmodernism; Great Thinkers: Jacques Derrida. His recent impressive 2022 tome with Zondervan Academic is Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.

2. March 13, 2024, Abigail Favale, Professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, Notre Dame University. Examining the Sources of Gender: Why Sexual Difference Matters.

Abstract: How do contemporary theories of gender compare to the understanding of gender in the Christian imagination? This talk will provide a sketch of two distinct paradigms–the “gender paradigm” and the “Genesis paradigm”–and bring those two frameworks into conversation with one another, highlighting points of consonance and dissonance between them.

Biography: Abigail Favale, Ph.D., is a professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. She has an academic background in gender studies and feminist theory, and writes regularly about these topics from a Catholic perspective. She is the author of The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius 2022) and Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion (Cascade 2018), as well as numerous essays and articles. Abigail’s essays and short stories have appeared in print and online for publications such as First Things, The Atlantic, Church Life, and Potomac Review. She was awarded the J.F. Powers Prize for short fiction in 2017. 

www.csca.ca/hayhoe-23

Dr. Matthew Lynch, Associate Professor of Old Testament

Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.

 

The Land Keeps the Score: Violence in Creation According to the Old Testament

Tuesday, March 14 @ 4 PM

Abstract

Most scholarly and popular treatments of violence in the Old Testament focus on social or personal dimensions of violence and its impact. Similarly, contemporary Christian attempts to grapple with the challenges of violence in Scripture often focus on the ethics of human-on-human or divine-on-human violence. While important, these approaches fail to address the Old Testament’s emphasis on the land as a victim of human violence. According to the Old Testament, the land bears the marks of violence because violence is, fundamentally, an ecocidal phenomenon. This talk explores this reality in Scripture and its implications for contemporary ethical reflection. 

Biography

Matthew Lynch spent the final year of his doctoral studies in Göttingen, Germany, remaining there as a postdoctoral researcher for another year following the completion of his PhD. He was subsequently hired at the Westminster Theological Centre in the UK, serving for seven years there in roles including Dean of Studies, Academic Dean, and Lecturer in Old Testament. During this time, he also lectured at Nashotah House and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. He is the author of First Isaiah and the Disappearance of the Gods (Eisenbrauns),  Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible: A Literary and Cultural Study (Cambridge, 2020), and Monotheism and Institutions in the Book of Chronicles: Temple, Priesthood, and Kingship in Post-Exilic Perspective (Mohr Siebeck, 2014). He also has a forthcoming volume entitled Flood and Fury: Engaging Old Testament Violence (IVP). Matthew is a founder and co-host of the OnScript podcast. He is married with two children.

https://podcast.app/onscript-p119883/

                                                                        

Dr. Michael Ward, University of Oxford 

English Literary Critic & Theologian

C. S. Lewis on Appearance and Reality in the Christian Life.

Thursday, January 26, 2023 @ 12:00 PM Pacific Time

View the Talk on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrJCGCZYIQc

Abstract

C. S. Lewis knew well that Christians walk “by faith, not sight”, as the apostle Paul puts it (2 Corinthians 5:7).  But what is the difference between faith and sight?  How does faith differ from delusion?  Michael Ward will explore these themes as they are presented in Lewis’s writings, especially his fiction, and in particular his best-known works, the seven Chronicles of Narnia.

Biography

Michael Ward is the author of the award-winning Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press), co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press) and presenter of the BBC television documentary, The Narnia Code. A member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford in his native England, Dr. Ward is also Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University.  He studied English at Oxford, Theology at Cambridge, and has a PhD in Divinity from St. Andrews University, Scotland. He played the role of Vicar in the film ‘The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis’ and handed a pair of X-ray spectacles to Agent 007 in the James Bond movie ‘The World Is Not Enough.’ In real life he is a Catholic priest, assisting at Holy Rood Church, Oxford alongside his work as an academic. His latest book is After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Word On Fire Academic). 

Next in GFCF Series: Save the Date

Tuesday, March 14 @ 4 PM: Dr. Matthew Lynch, Old Testament Professor @ Regent College

 The Land Keeps the Score: Violence in Creation According to the Old Testament

Bibliography of C.S. Lewis Oeuvre

1. C.S. Lewis: A Biography, Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper (HarperCollins, revised and expanded edition 2002)

2. C.S. Lewis, A Companion and Guide, Walter Hooper (HarperCollins, 1996)

3. The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, ed. Robert MacSwain and Michael Ward (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

4. Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, Michael Ward (Oxford University Press, 2008)

5. The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia, Rowan Williams (SPCK, 2012)

6. After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, Michael Ward (Word on Fire Academic, 2021)

7. The Tao of Right & Wrong by Dennis Danielson (Regent College Publishing)

8. On Obstinency and Belief by C.S. Lewis

Register for the Science & Faith Conference at Trinity Western University on January 28, 2023:  www.csca.ca/van-23 

If you liked Michael Ward, you will like this dialogue: Does God Exist? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2u54a1FL28 

Sir Roger Scruton: Anybody who goes through life with an open mind and heart will encounter moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. Those moments are precious to us. When they occur, it is as though, on the winding, ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window… through which we catch sight of another, brighter world–a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter. There are many who dismiss this world as an unscientific fiction. I am not alone in thinking it real and important.

Daniel K. Williams, 

Professor of History, University of West Georgia

How Should Christians Think about Partisan Politics?

Buy his book, Politics of the Cross

October 25, 2022 @ 4:00 PM

Recording of the Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fto-GqJ4PZE

Review of Politics of the Cross: https://ubcgfcf.com/book-reviews/

Abstract 

Does it matter how Christians think about political proposals that touch on moral issues such as poverty relief, racial justice, immigration, abortion, marriage, sexuality, and other matters that relate to biblical principles and human dignity?  What happens when Christians disagree with each other on these issues?  Is one political position or political party more “Christian” than another?  In this session, Dr. Williams will explore the recent history of Christian political activity and the reasons why political disagreements among Christians have become more heated lately.  He will then look at some ways to transcend partisan thinking and pursue Christian principles in the political sphere that should challenge those on both the left and the right.

Biography

Daniel K. Williams received his PhD from Brown University in 2005. He is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia and has taught there since 2005. He was the William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion in Public Life, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University, 2011-12. Dr. Williams’ research focuses on the intersection between politics and religion in modern America. He is author of numerous articles and books including: God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. Oxford University Press, 2010 which was the recipient of the 2011 Phi Alpha Theta Best First Book Award; The Election of Evangelical Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and the Presidential Contest of 1976. University Press of Kansas, 2020; and The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship. Eerdmans, 2021 (the theme of this presentation). 

Bibliography for Politics of the Cross:

Next in GFCF Series

Thursday, January 26, 2023 @ 12 noon: Dr. Michael Ward, Black Friars, Oxford                                                                         

C. S. Lewis on Appearance and Reality in the Christian Life.

Many thanks for the sponsorship of the UBC Murrin Fund

Literature on Religion and Politics

Dr. Michael Higgins

Basilian Distinguished Fellow of Contemporary Catholic Thought

Immediate Past Interim Principal of St Mark’s College and President at Corpus Christi College      

An Open Inquiry into the Ongoing Clerical Sex Abuse Crisis

September 22 @ 4 PM

Abstract 

This will involve Michael’s state of the art exploration when it comes to clerical abuse of children:  improvements made, new challenges that have surfaced, suggestions on moving forward. He co-authored with Peter Kavanaugh the ground-breaking book Suffer the Children Unto Me.

Biography 

Michael W. Higgins, a native Torontonian, is an author, scholar, Vatican Affairs Specialist for The Globe and Mail, Papal Commentator for the CTV Network, educator, CBC Radio documentarian, columnist. He has served as President and Vice-Chancellor of two Canadian Catholic universities, St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, and as Vice-President for Mission and Catholic Identity at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. He was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Catholic Thought in the Fall of 2020. He is Immediate Past Interim Principal and President respectively of St. Mark’s College and Corpus Christi College, at University of British Columbia. He is author of several important books and a recognized Thomas Merton scholar.

Upcoming 2024 Book: Francis, The Disruptor Pope.

Dr. Michael Higgins to Join the University of St. Michael’s College as a Distinguished Fellow – University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-is-pope-francis-a-polarizing-figure-for-catholic-hard-liners-ready-for/ Globe & Mail article by Michael Higgins on Pope Francis

Next in GFCF Series: 4 PM, Tuesday, October 25, 2022: Daniel K. Williams, Professor of History, University of West Georgia.                  How Should Christians Think about Politics?

See his recent publication: The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship. Eerdmans, 2021

Come hear Dr. Robert George, Princeton on Sept 27 at 4 PM Allard Law School, UBC: The Truth-Seeking Mission of the University https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/events-calendar/truth-seeking-mission-university

Science and Scientism

12:00 Noon, Wednesday, April 6, 2022  on Zoom

Abstract

Science is perhaps the most successful endeavour that human beings have ever engaged in.   It is tempting to think that it should also answer the big questions of life, such as why we are here and whether there is a purpose to life. 

Such hopes give impetus to modern versions of secularism.   At the same time a fully fleshed out scientism, the idea that only science brings us reliable knowledge about the world, remains  unpopular in the academy, in part because it hollows out these existential questions.   I will argue that it is not hard to see that neither science, nor any conceivable advance of science, can answer such existential questions.   Nevertheless,  implicit versions of scientism remain surprisingly influential in the academic world.  What can and should we do about this? (See also Tom McLeish & Sy Garte lectures on science and faith)

https://www.whyarewehere.tv/about-science/scientism/ A Clip by Ard Louis

Biography

Ard Louis is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford, where he leads an interdisciplinary research group studying problems on the border between chemistry, physics and biology at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics. He also writes and speaks widely on science and faith, for which in 2013 he was elected a member of the International Society for Science and Religion.  He recently made the 4-part documentary Why Are We Here with David Malone and  appeared in  The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, giving him an Erdős–Bacon number of 6. 

The Appeal of Caesar: the Future of Christians Living in the Authoritarian Context of the Middle East.

Thursday, January 20, 2022 @ 7:00 PM  

Dr. Paul Rowe

Professor of Political and International Studies
Chair of the Department of History, Political, and International Studies at Trinity Western University. 

Abstract

The past decade of crisis in the Middle East has claimed the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of its indigenous Christian populations. Among those small communities that remain, age-old strategies of survival under authoritarian governments persist. What are these strategies, and how might small numbers of Christians continue to claim a place in a region that seems singularly hostile to their persistence? 

Biography

Dr. Paul Rowe, Professor of Political and International Studies
Chair, Department of History, Political, and International Studies at Trinity Western University. He earned a PhD from McGill University in 2003. His dissertation title is “Ancient Crosses and Tower-Keeps — the Politics of Christian Minorities in the Middle East.” He has spent extended time in the Middle East and continues to study the politics of religious groups in developing countries. He is author of Religion and Global Politics, Toronto: Oxford University Press Canada, 2012; and The Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East. Routledge, 2018.

“A freed activist, a captive church? How do Christians navigate new forms of authoritarianism in the Middle East?” ~Paul Rowe

Resources on Faith & Scholarship: https://ubcgcu.org/faith-culture/

Brian Bird, Assistant Professor  Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC
DCL (McGill), BCL (Oxford), JD (Victoria), BA (Simon Fraser), of the Bar of British Columbia

The Struggle for Tolerance

Thursday, November 18 at 4 PM

Abstract

In many liberal democracies, there has been a tectonic shift in how we handle ideological conflict. Whereas the starting point was once a robust form of tolerance (live and let live), this principle is now fading. Tolerance, once widely regarded as an essential element of free and democratic societies, has become suspect. It is much easier to exhibit tolerance when we agree with each other. But we must also do the same—perhaps especially—when we disagree. If a grassroots rediscovery of tolerance does not occur, and tolerance fades further from view, our society will inevitably gravitate closer to the so-called tyranny of the majority, or at least the tyranny of an intolerant minority within the majority. Such a state of affairs is antithetical to the essence of liberal democracy. It also runs the risk of creating a vicious cycle: in which today’s tyrannized minority will be tempted to become tomorrow’s tyrannizing majority. Human nature, we can agree, is flawed. We do well to avoid inviting such human frailties to take centre stage in today’s culture.

Biography

Brian Bird is an Assistant Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. Before joining Allard Law, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He clerked for judges of the Supreme Court of British Columbia and for Justice Andromache Karakatsanis at the Supreme Court of Canada. Brian completed his doctorate at McGill University on The Freedom of Conscience and holds degrees from Oxford, University of Victoria, and Simon Fraser University. Brian’s academic writing has appeared in venues such as the Dalhousie Law Journal, Cambridge Law Review, Alberta Law Review, Supreme Court Law Review, and Manitoba Law Journal. He is co-editor of The Forgotten Fundamental Freedoms of the Charter (2020, LexisNexis Canada). His primary research interests are constitutional law and theory, interactions between courts and legislatures, jurisprudence, philosophy of law, legal history, and bills of rights.

GFCF YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl4NgIg_ht8IZCRIhho4nxA

GFCF YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl4NgIg_ht8IZCRIhho4nxA

New Video The Genius of Truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7dB5_G4CMg