Natural Theology in the 21st Century, 2021 IRC Conference

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"NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE 21st CENTURY"
Oxford, 15-17 July 2021

With generous support from the Issachar Fund

This event, which was originally scheduled for 16-18 July 2020, was run as an online event in 2021 given the ongoing pandemic. The next scheduled physical IRC conference is the 2022 Conference, planned for Thursday evening 14 July to Saturday evening 16 July 2022. The theme will be the work of Alister McGrath, who will be retiring as the Andreas Idreos Chair of Science and Religion in summer 2022.

FREE PDF OF CONFERENCE HANDBOOK:

> 2021 IRC Conference Handbook (updated)

Thursday 15 July (evening only)

All these events will be online via Zoom

Friday 16 July

All these events will be online via Zoom

Saturday 17 July

Further information on the conference themes:

Natural theology investigates what we can know or not know about the existence and essence of God and divine revelation on the basis of what we can know about nature. Developments and discoveries in our explorations of nature (e.g., Aristotelianism, Copernican revolution, Newtonian physics, Kant's Critique, Darwinian Evolution, quantum mechanics, and Big Bang cosmology) have enriched and challenged the investigations of natural theology throughout its history. Likewise, discoveries and revolutions in our understanding of nature in the 21^stcentury (e.g., AI, Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, fundamental physics, etc.) will have the potential to undermine or enrich future investigations in natural theology. What questions will natural theology need to confront in the 21^st century? How can these insights enrich the engagement of religious communities, such as Christian churches, with the wider culture?

Looking backward, what lessons do the future enquiries of natural theology need to learn from its past enquiries? What are the enduring achievements, catastrophic failures, and  tangential distractions from the history of natural theology? What place will cosmological, ontological, design, moral, and other arguments for God's existence have in its future investigations? What were the major contributions of the past hundred years of honorary lectures confronting questions in natural theology (e.g., Gifford, Hulsean, Bampton lectures) Looking forward, what challenges from philosophy and the sciences must natural theology confront, from numerous forms of naturalism, to metaphysics of dispositions and grounding, second-person perspective, machine learning, CRISPR, …? Are "nature" and the "natural" still viable concepts for 21^st century enquiries, including those of natural theology? 

What is or should be the scope of natural theology? Is it strictly concerned with evidence and arguments based in nature known apart from appeals to revelation or numinous experiences? Or, should it be construed broadly to include investigations concerning historical events, including those detailed in sacred and religious texts? What is the relationship between natural theology and the investigations of supernatural theology, philosophy of religion, analytic theology, theology of nature, and apologetics? Is natural theology "natural"? Is the very project of natural theology guilty of the charge of ontotheology? What place should metaphor and analogy have in natural theology? What role do narrative arguments, just-so stories, genealogies, and meta-narratives play in theists', atheists', and agnostics' contributions to natural theology? Can anyone-theist, agnostic, or atheist-engage the enquiries of natural theology or atheology from a neutral point of view? How might these questions be engaged by religious communities seeking to engage a wider culture and cultivate the reasoned faith of their members?