Thursday October 8, 2015
PUBLIC TALK BY DR. GREGORY DAWES
Where: Maxine Tynes Room – Alderney Gate Public Library
When: October 8 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
No Admission Fee
A comparison and contrasting of the view of faith and reason found in John Locke’s essay with that found in Aquinas’s work (and elsewhere in the Christian tradition). Dr. Dawes argues that faith and reason can be kept distinct only by adopting a ‘bootstrapping’ view of faith, one in which the act of faith is regarded as ‘selfauthenticating’. This attitude helps to explain why religious beliefs are so resistant to criticism.
Dr. Dawes gained his first graduate degree at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (1988) before returning to New Zealand, where he completed PhD degrees in both Biblical Studies (1995) and Philosophy (2007). He teaches the Philosophy of Religion, a course on Religion, Science, and Magic, and another on Science, Religion, and Knowledge at the University of Otago, New Zealand.