John Bates

'STRUTH, WHAT CAN WE BELIEVE? A Symposium John Bates

If you ask someone how our world, we and everything in it were created; if you get an answer at all, it may be either a religious explanation based on faith and sacred scripture: Torah, Bible or Qur'an; or a secular explanation based on science: cosmology, particle physics, evolutionary biology and neuropsychology. The rivalry between faith and reason to explain the creation of the universe, life on earth and the meaning of human existence is long standing but has become ever more focused as scientific discoveries have been able to explain much that was previously believed to be the work of supernatural forces: God or gods. Yet the mysteries of the expanding universe, quantum physics and human consciousness remain. The ambitious aim of the symposium is to provide a guide to all of us who are perplexed about the reality of the universe and our existence in it. The symposium will comprise eight sessions spread over four days: cosmology; life; 'STRUTH records an imaginary symposium of scientists, philosophers and theologians, each eminent in their field, who have been invited to make presentations and have discussions to see if there is any common ground between faith and reason; science and religion. Each perplexed existence jogs along nervously, sandwiched between past and future. "What am I now? How did I get here? What does it all mean? What will happen?"