The Oregon Faith Report - Faith News from Oregon

May 4, 2012

BY Oregon State University Socratic Club

The Socratic Club at OSU will sponsor a debate on the topic, “Is Christianity anti-Science?” on Monday, May 7. in LaSells Stewart Center on the OSU campus, at 7 p.m. The speakers are Andrew Karplus and Victor Stenger.

The relationship of Christianity and science has long been a contentious subject. It has been argued that the condemnation of Galileo and the opposition to Darwin are evidence of the church’s opposition to the advance of science. A more recent view is that the cases of Galileo and Darwin are exceptions to Christianity’s general encouragement of science over the centuries. Two scientists will engage in a spirited debate on the subject. Andrew Karplus will maintain that Christianity is supportive of science. Victor Stenger will argue that it is hostile.

Andrew Karplus is Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at OSU, where he has taught since 1998. He holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Washington and was twice an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Freiburg in Germany. He has received several awards for his research and has authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles on protein structure-function relationships in “Science” and other prominent journals.

Victor J. Stenger is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Hawaii and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado. He received his Ph.D. in physics from UCLA. He was a pioneer in the emerging fields of neutrino astronomy and very high-energy gamma rays. Stenger has authored ten popular books that interface between physics and cosmology and philosophy, religion, and pseudoscience. His most recent title is “God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion.”

The debate is free and open to the public. For more information visit the OSU Socratic Club online at http://oregonstate.edu/groups/socratic/

The Socratic Club at OSU is celebrating its tenth anniversary as a student organization at Oregon State. It sponsors 5-6 debates each year on subjects at the intersection of the Christian faith and contemporary culture. All debates are filmed and more than 20 of them are available on You Tube. See http://www.youtube.com/user/orstsocraticclub

Our last debate, “Have Science and Technology Made God Irrelevant?” has been posted on You Tube.

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