{"id":3868,"date":"2014-03-24T00:51:44","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T00:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=3868"},"modified":"2014-03-23T09:05:28","modified_gmt":"2014-03-23T09:05:28","slug":"god-on-trial-talk-went-down-a-treat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2014\/03\/24\/god-on-trial-talk-went-down-a-treat\/","title":{"rendered":"“God on Trial” talk went down a treat"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was invited to speak on the last night of Reason Week at Southampton University, organised by the Atheist Society. I have spoken there a number of ties and know the people who run it and really enjoy speaking there. There are some philosophy students who are involved which means that the chat in the pub afterwards is always engaging and often properly geeky. Nice.<\/p>\n

This talk focuses on 5 arguments against God (but I go off on a lot of tangents and include other points too):<\/p>\n

\u2022The creation of non-God objects \u2013 why would a perfect god create at all?<\/div>\n
\u2022Why don\u2019t we photosynthesise? \u2013 the problem of evil<\/div>\n
\u2022Morality presupposes atheism<\/div>\n
\u2022Why create people with more or less likelihood to believe in him?<\/div>\n
\u2022The stupidity of (believing in) the Exodus<\/div>\n

Sometimes I swap in the morality one for one on the Kalam Cosmological Argument. My last argument on the Exodus is one of my favourites because I try and inject a bit of humour (I try to do that throughout the night) and show how silly a belief in its reality is. It is based on the notes I made here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I was happy to get some lovely feedback, including:<\/p>\n

\"Capture1\"<\/a> \"Capture2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I also have some contact details for Cafe Scientifique in Southampton so will follow that up to see if they want a talk on free will.<\/p>\n

What was great about the talk on Friday night was that the Christian Union and some Muslims turned up. This made for some great back and forth, especially between a Christian philosophy student and myself. Of course, I had all of the answers! ;) I live for that stuff.<\/p>\n

If any organisations in the south of the UK want a talked on philosophy or science, let me know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was invited to speak on the last night of Reason Week at Southampton University, organised by the Atheist Society. I have spoken there a number of ties and know the people who run it and really enjoy speaking there. There are some philosophy students who are involved which means that the chat in the pub afterwards is always engaging and often properly geeky. Nice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[256,16,237],"tags":[39,342],"class_list":["post-3868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-philosophy-of-religion","category-speaking-engagements","tag-atheism","tag-philosophical-arguments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}