Registration for the Peter Singer conference is now closed, as we have reached capacity for the lecture theatre where the conference will be held.
Registration Open: Peter Singer
8 03 2011Registration is now open for the McDonald Centre spring conference, Christian Ethics Engages Peter Singer, to be held in Oxford 19-20 May. Download the registration form here. For full details, including a list of speakers, visit the main conference page.
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Tags: abortion, animal ethics, aquinas, climate, conference, consequentialism, ethics, eudaimonism, life you can save, oxford, peter singer, poverty, registration, utilitarianism
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McDonald Lectures Continue This Week
21 02 2011
The 2011 McDonald Lectures begin this week in Oxford, with lectures on Wednesday and Thursday. The full programme, including titles of individual lectures, follows. All lectures begin at 5.00 pm in the Exam Schools (81 High St, Oxford).
This year’s lectures are being given by Professor John Haldane of the University of St Andrews under the title, Ethics, Society, and the Place of Faith. Haldane is the author of numerous books and articles. He last visited the University of Oxford for a much-publicized debate with prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens.
2011 McDonald Lectures: ETHICS, SOCIETY, AND THE PLACE OF FAITH
- Politics in an Age of Uncertainty (Wednesday, 23/2)
- Religion in an Age of Doubt (Thursday, 24/2)
- Ethics in an Age of Scepticism (Wednesday, 2/3)
- Ethics and the Recovery of Nature (Thursday, 3/3)
- Religion and the Recovery of the Supernatural (Wednesday, 3/3)
- Politics and the Recovery of the Common Good (Thursday, 10/3)
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Tags: common good, doubt, ethics, faith, hitchens, john haldane, mcdonald lectures, natural law, nature, philosophy, politics, public, religion, scepticism, secular, society, st andrews, supernatural
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How May We Keep Ourselves Safe?
16 02 2011
Are there ethics for spies? Are there limits to how we may keep ourselves safe? These were among the questions discussed at a recent private colloquium, hosted by the McDonald Centre, entitled, How May We Keep Ourselves Safe? The Ethics of Intelligence Gathering.
There is widespread public recognition of the importance of intelligence work in keeping us safe. The intelligence services enable the government to promote national security, now defined as the management of risk so as to sustain confidence that normal life can continue. But there is at the same time public concern that the work of the services brings with it ethical hazards and dilemmas, both in the methods used by those services and in the impact of their work on our privacy. The mistreatment of detainees by our US ally, and the standards of interrogation and detainment in many countries who may possess intelligence of value to our national safety at home, have raised difficult questions which threaten to compromise public trust in our intelligence services. At the same time the moral issues surrounding transparency and openness on the part of government receives little attention in the discussion of Wikileaks or of court actions concerning secret intelligence.
The colloquium brought together a stellar body of 35 senior members of the UK and US intelligence services, academic ethicists, and journalists to discuss these issues. The event was co-sponsored by Chatham House, the nation’s premier institute for international affairs, and made possible with the support of Digital Barriers.
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Tags: chatham house, CIA, detaineees, ethics, intelligence, iraq, MI6, SIS, spies, spying, terrorism, torture, war, wikileaks
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Book Release: Behaving in Public
22 01 2011
Nigel Biggar’s latest book, Behaving in Public, has now been released by Eerdmans Publishing. The project began as the 2009 McDonald Lectures and in it, Biggar argues that contemporary Christian ethics too often poses a false choice between ‘conservative’ theological integrity or ‘liberal’ secular consensus. Behaving in Public explains both why and how Christians should resist these polar options. Informed by a frankly Christian theological vision of moral life and so turning toward the world with openness and curiosity, it charts a third way forward.
See the reviews from scholars such as Nicholas Wolterstorff and Jean Porter, or read an excerpt for yourself.
To learn more about Biggar’s goal in writing the book, visit the official Eerdmans Publishing blog.
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Tags: behaving in public, biggar, eerdmans, porter, wolterstorff
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Pete Ward: Religion & Celebrity Culture
4 01 2011
“Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, David Beckham and the Spice Girls, Reality TV: Pete Ward shows how Christian theologians can not only comment critically on celebrity culture as a cultural phenomenon, but more positively engage with it as theological capital. Ward develops a notion of theology in a celebrity culture based on the plausibility of faith in relation to the circulation of stories within cultural representation.”
Pete Ward will visit the McDonald Centre to lecture on the subject of his new book, God’s Behaving Badly: Religion & Celebrity Culture. Dr Ward is Senior Lecturer in Youth Ministry and Theological Education at King’s College, London. All are invited to attend.
Thursday, 27 January at 5pm
Lecture Room 1, Christ Church, Oxford
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Tags: Britney Spears, celebrity, culture, David Beckham, god's behaving badly, king's college, Paris Hilton, pete ward, Reality TV, religion, Spice Girls, theology
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Report from Genome Conference
15 10 2010
On 9 October, the McDonald Centre hosted an interdisciplinary conference, Reason, Theology and the Genome to explore the ethics of human enhancement. Speakers representing fields including political science, biochemistry, philosophy, and theology debated questions such as the scientific potential for fundamentally altering human nature via technology, the implications for parenting of choosing the genetic capacities of children, and more. Throughout the day, attention was given to the form that such discussions should take:
- Can theology contribute to such debates, even in a pluralist society?
- Are recent contributions from Sandel and Habermas legitimately ’public’ or do they depend on parochial religious commitments that are somehow inaccessible to a wider audience?
- Must Christians translate their religious perspectives when speaking in public? Must Aristotelians? Must utilitarians? If so, translate into what language? Liberalism or human rights?
The day concluded with a Round Table discussion in which various speakers addressed these questions in more depth, as they relate to questions of human enhancement.
Participants at the conference included scholars from various Faculties at Oxford, including law and medicine, as well as postgraduate students, visiting academics from other universities, and members of the general public.
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Tags: bioethics, ethics, genome, human enhancement, religion in public, technology
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