Conor Cunningham

University of Nottingham

Conor Cunningham Associate Professor in Theology and Philosophy, University of Nottingham. Conor Cunningham’s prize-winning research has been translated into six languages. Conor’s first book was Genealogy of Nihilism, which argued that the Western, philosophical canon entailed an invariant logic that led to nihilism. Doing so when transcendence was either excluded or misunderstood. His second book on evolution -Darwin’s Pious Idea- laid the ground for a prize-winning BBC documentary, which he wrote and presented: ‘Did Darwin Kill God?’. In 2012-2013 he was a Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, where he worked in a team of 12, composed of mainly atheist scientists, a philosopher and three theologians on the question of ‘Evolution and Human Nature’. Presently Conor is under contract for a trilogy: Soul and the Marriage of Discourse: A Summa for Science after Naturalness: Volume One: Body (Science), Volume Two: Soul (Philosophy), Volume Three: Spirit (Theology). Conor is also co-editor of three book series: Veritas (Wipf and Stock Publishers, and SCM); Interventions (Eerdmans); and Kalos (Wipf and Stock). He is also a co-editor of two professional journals: Theology, Politics and Culture, and Syneses: Beyond Secular Faith, and he is on the editorial board of the new, peer-reviewed journal, Science, Philosophy, and Theology. Conor’s expertise includes Theology and Science, Philosophical Theology; Systematic Theology; Phenomenology and Metaphysics.

See more:  

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/humanities/departments/theology-and-religious-studies/people/conor.cunningham

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True Reduction, Real Emergence, and the Failure of Naturalness

(abstract)

There is growing recognition among physicists that the foundations of their discipline are in crisis. Many trace the problem to the failure of ‘naturalness’, the dogmatic requirement that a good theory predicts experimental results without ‘fine-tuning’. As empirical evidence against this dogma mounts, it is becoming increasingly evident that ‘the reductionist paradigm is hardwired into the naturalness problems’ (Arkani-Hamed 2021). Deepening this analysis, I bring Plato into dialogue with cutting-edge science to show how the empirical failure of naturalness results directly from its ideological reduction of reality to particles and science to particle physics, which renders disciplines silos, both presuming and pursuing a form of isolationism. 

The demise of this ideology under the pressure of scientific evidence, and theoretical reasoning, presents an opportunity to dismantle the imperialist myth that only particle physics delivers real knowledge. A major consequence of which is the exposure that the typical understanding of both reduction and emergence is wrongheaded and ill formed, and therefore so are the many faux problems this misunderstanding generates. If the above succeeds, the idea of a Master Discourse in pursuit of a Theory of Everything is nonsensical. Thereby one can retrieve the interconnectedness of the physical world and the disciplines that study it, restoring a more creative university-universe relations.

Mark Harris

University of Oxford, Harris Manchester College 

Professor Mark Harris holds the position of the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion, which is attached to a Professorial Fellowship at Harris Manchester College. As a physicist working in a theological environment, he thinks of himself as a theologian of science, interested in the complex ways that the natural sciences and religious beliefs relate to each other. Professor Harris is the Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and he serves as President of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT). 

See more:  https://www.hmc.ox.ac.uk/people/undefined

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Christ Fundamentalism and Quantum Fundamentalism

(abstract)

In light of recent scholarly dissatisfaction with the identity and scope of ‘science and religion’ as the preferred terminology for an international research discipline, I explore the potential of ‘theology of science’ as a promising alternative. Indeed, it turns out that the great Polish philosopher and physicist, Michał Heller, had made a similar suggestion a long time ago (1996), but this appears to have been largely overlooked by wider scholarly circles in science and religion, and was only recently brought to my own attention by Tadeusz Sierotowicz. ‘Theology of science’ presents a number of advantages over ‘science and religion’ as a disciplinary identifier, not least that it makes clear that research takes place in parallel with (and closely informed by) the much better established disciplines of philosophy of science and history of science. It is possible, for instance, that by adopting 'theology of science' as our disciplinary title and identity, scholars of science and religion may be able, finally, to put to rest the troublesome methodological problems presented by the myth of conflict between science and religion. However, there is more, and in this talk I suggest that theology of science can also be taken as an, in effect, self-consciously Christian philosophy of science. Another way of making this point is that theology of science explores what it means to hold Christ the Logos as fundamental to natural philosophy. I will discuss these thoughts with reference to my current research interests in ‘quantum fundamentalism’, asking ‘What was God thinking when he created the quantum world?’

Robert A. Larmer

University of New Brunswick 

Robert A. Larmer received his doctorate from the University of Ottawa in 1985. During his time at UNB, he has taught a wide variety of courses including business ethics (a subject not taught at UNB before his arrival), health care ethics, environmental ethics, ancient philosophy, modern philosophy, as well as numerous courses in philosophy of religion, an area in which he specializes. He currently serves as Chair of the Philosophy Department. Larmer has served on the executive board of the Canadian Philosophical Association and on the executive board of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. He currently serves as the President of the Canadian Society of Christian Philosophers. Among his accomplishments is the winning of one of three world-wide course awards in a competition jointly sponsored by Oxford University and the Templeton Foundation. In the area of business ethics, his article “Ethical Investing: A Reply to William Irvine” was awarded the Anbar Citation of Excellence.

See more:  https://robertlarmer.com/

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Two Unsuccessful Objections to the Apologetic Worth of Miracles

(abstract)

In the presentation I examine two common objections to the apologetic worth of miracles. These are: (1) the objection that it would take an inordinate amount of evidence to establish the occurrence of certain events such as the Resurrection of Jesus, and (2) the objection that even if such events could justifiably be held to have occurred, it would be more rational to attribute them to unknown natural causes rather than supernatural intervention. I argue that both objections are mistaken.

Two points emerge from my considerations. First, given that miracles should not be defined as violating any laws of nature, and that the common objection that the occurrence of a miracle is inconsistent with the truth of the principle of the conservation of energy is mistaken, no balance of probabilities argument based on a conflict between the evidence for the laws of nature and the evidence for a miracle is possible. This means that Hume’s argument of part one of his Of Miracles based as it is on a presumed conflict between these two bodies of evidence, can find no purchase as regards the task of assessing the rationality of belief in a reported miracle. Second, the claim that the progress of science provides a strong inductive argument against ever believing an event to be a miracle is mistaken. Rather, the progress of science provides a strong inductive argument that the occurrence of certain event types would best be understood as instances of supernatural intervention. If as time goes on our increased scientific knowledge makes it ever more difficult to provide an explanation of an event in terms of natural causes, and if the event can be seen as furthering what we reasonably take to be God’s purposes, then this provides even stronger warrant for believing the event to be the result of supernatural intervention, i.e., a miracle. The claim that the progress of science undermines the rationality of belief in miracles appears, therefore, mistaken. Given good reason to believe that certain events have in fact happened, for example the resurrection of Jesus, the progress of science has strengthened rather than weakened the claim that these events are in fact miracles.

The argument from miracle, therefore, deserves, as it has in the past, to play an ongoing central role in Christian apologetics.