It's time for our second meeting this semester—this time with air conditioning! This Wednesday, September 26th at 8pm in Florida Gym (FLG) 245 (see images at bottom of post for directions), we'll be eating cookies (please bring your own drink if you want one) while we listen to Prof. Gene Witmer, our faculty advisor and esteemed philosophy professor here at UF, talk about how he thinks that we ought to think about atheism. (Please RSVP here if possible.) What is meant by "atheism"? Is it a disbelief in God, or a lack of belief in him? Is there a difference? Is atheism a "faith" in its own right, open to the same critiques it makes against religion? After his talk, Dr. Witmer will lead a lively and interesting Q&A / discussion on the subject. He describes his own presentation below:
"How To Think About (the Lack of a) God"By the way, if this sounds "biased" to anyone, remember that it's not meant to be unbiased: we want our speakers to try to argue rationally for something, which is exactly what Dr. Witmer will be doing. We plan to have speakers hail from different viewpoints from all over the school—which brings me to the next thing we'll be talking about:
"The question of God's existence is one that most people think is of great interest; but it is also one that, for a variety of reasons, many people think of as not suitable for rational evaluation. It's 'just a matter of opinion,' they might say; or 'it's a matter of faith,' where logic, argument, evidence and so forth apparently don't come into the matter. In this talk I'll aim to convince you that nothing of that sort is correct. In the process, I'll argue that there is in fact very good reason to believe there is no God, although, of course, nothing like a comprehensive treatment of the question is possible in this time frame. Still, I aim to provide, as the title says, some pointers on how to think about the lack of a God."
We'll also be discussing possible future speakers and topics. What do you guys want to talk about, and who do you want to come speak? Lastly, we'll briefly discuss the upcoming event "The Academy" on October 19th.
Come on out and join us for some casual food and talk. :) Hope to see you all there.
Directions: Below are some images on how to get there. See map in pictures for more details, or use the campus map.
For those who don't know this already, the talk will be in FLG 245, and you can RSVP HERE.
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