Is religious belief rational?

Monday, 15 March 2010

The idea of a ‘closed cosmos' - that the natural world is all there is - cannot be established scientifically; and it runs counter to some of our deepest human impulses. It also fails to account fully for the existence of moral values.  This is the basis of the forthcoming lecture by Professor John Cottingham, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University.

Deflationist accounts (of the kind favoured by Darwin) try to explain away moral impulses as mere by-products of our evolutionary history as a species; but such accounts are not philosophically convincing. Our human quest for genuine meaning in our lives requires us to reach beyond the ‘closed' cosmos towards an ultimate source of value.

Drawing on some of the ideas from his recent book Why Believe? Professor Cottingham will argue that the secularist or naturalist position that appears to be gaining ground in our contemporary culture faces serious problems.

Religious belief, or its lack, is something that touches our integrity very deeply. It goes to the heart of where we are, what we take ourselves to be doing with our lives, and how we locate ourselves in relation to others.

Much philosophy tackles belief in God as if it depended entirely on abstract intellectual argument, but Professor Cottingham will show how the religious outlook connects with our deepest human longings, how it links up with our moral and aesthetic experience, how it is not after all in conflict with a scientific understanding of the world.

Is belief rational? the Chaplaincy spring lecture will take place on Thursday 18 March at 7.30pm in the Henley Business School Lecture Theatre, Whiteknights. Free and open to all. To register for this event, please contact: chaplaincy@reading.ac.uk telephone 0118 378 8797