St. Thomas Day Lecture 2010
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 31 Jan 2010 at 02:45 pm | Tagged as: Lectures, Parish Events
Click below for audio of this year’s St. Thomas Day Lecture, delivered last Thursday evening by Rev. Brian Davies, OP, a Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. The topic of Fr. Davies’ address was “The New Atheism: Its Virtues and Its Vices.”
Over the course of his remarks, Fr. Davies argued several important points. First, he chronicled the development of the movement popularly called the “New Atheism,” distinguishing it from what he called the “Old Atheism” of previous centuries. Then, he listed certain strengths of the New Atheism, and several points of agreement it shares with the classical Christian tradition, especially in the articulation given it by St. Thomas Aquinas. Finally, Fr. Davies challenged the claim of the New Atheism to have scientifically disproved God’s existence. The Dominican philosopher explained that these scientific arguments do not actually touch the question of God’s existence as understood by classical theists. In other words, classical Christianity has never held the existence of God to be a scientific thesis, provable or unprovable through scientific experimentation. Rather, the Christian tradition has always explained the rationality of belief in God’s existence through philosophical investigation, a reality which, according to Fr. Davies, key authors of the New Atheism—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett—inexplicably ignore.
I regret that I was unable to attend this lecture due to work commitments. Is the text of Father Davies’ paper available in addition to the audio recording?
Fr. Davies hopes to publish his paper in the near future. Until then, I’m afraid all we’ll have is the audio of his lecture.