USUPhilosophy

‘God on Trial’ will air this Sunday on PBS (I think at 8pm, listed under ‘Masterpiece Collections’ in tv guides) – it sounds like a provocative and interesting exploration of the problem of evil (set in Auschwitz, a handful of prisoners put God on trial).  First Things gives it a great review here.  Judging from the First Things review, it seems the show explores the problem/mystery of suffering in the right way in at least one sense – no one (atheist or believer) should feel comfortable after watching it.

What more could you want?

It is All Saints Day today, and I’ve been reading Ratzinger/Benedict this week and came upon this interesting remark about apologetics:

“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb. Better witness is borne to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art which have arisen in the community of believers than by the clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so frequent in the Church’s human history.” —  
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), from The Ratzinger Report

We run back into the same old issue – teleology, teleology, teleology (both art and saints disclose what we might be, what we ought to strive for).  I think Ratzinger might be right, these telic significations are most powerfully met and felt in art and in the encounter with morally and spiritually excellent people (saints).

 

This year in addition to paper submissions, Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal welcomes philosophy-inspired creative works for their “Musings” section. The deadline for all submissions is December 19th.
For further information about submitting a paper or submitting to the “Musings” section, visit http://stance.iweb.bsu.edu.

on November 7th. Anyone is welcome to attend. Make a day of it!

Here is the program; more details will follow.

1 p.m.: KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
Margaret Battin (keynote)    U of U    The Patient as Victim and
Vector: Ethics and Infectious Disease

2 p.m. – 6 p.m.: CONCURRENT SESSIONS:
David Grandy    BYU        Quantum Uncertainty, Quantum Play, Quantum
Sorrow

David Keller    UVU        Reading Lawrence Through the Lens of Nietzsche

Tyler Stoehr    U of U    Is the Memory a Storehouse, Repository,
Register, or a Cabinet?

Matthew Mosdell    U of U    Dispelling Some Platonic Peculiarities

Bryan Benham    U of U    On the Varieties of Deception in Research

Daniel Graham    BYU        Aristotle on the Beginnings of Philosophy

Ryan Christensen    BYU    Theories and Theories of Truth

David Paulsen    BYU        The God of Abraham, Isaac and (William) James

Karen Mizell    UVU        Community of Inquiry as a Pedagogical Model for
Human Rights Education for Children

William McCurdy    Idaho State U    C. S. Peirce’s Logic of
Relations: A Graph-Theoretical Model

Keisha Ray    U of U    Athletes aren’t the only People Who Take
Performance-Enhancement Drugs: A Discussion of Drug Behavior in Sports
and Music

Mark Olson    Westminster    Torture and Deontology

Robert Fudge    Weber State    Definitions of Art:  Six Central Issues

Xianduan (Judy) Shi    U of U    A Scorekeeping Model for the Contents of
Thick Ethical Concepts

Shannon Mussett    UVU        Nature and Anti-Nature in Simone de
Beauvoir’s Philosophy

Travis Anderson/David Packard    BYU/BYU    Susanne Bier’s “Open
Hearts”:  A Case-Study of Nietzschean Discontinuity in Jump-Cut
Film Editing

Dennis Potter    UVU    Mathematical Realism Disconnected

6 p.m.: DINNER

7 p.m. – 9 p.m.: PANEL DISCUSSION:
Deen Chatterjee    U of U    Panel on Global Justice (presenters
TBA)