[committee] FW: Possible Reasons To Believe speaker event/debate for May

[cu]

Sorry I meant 4 e-mails total. This is 2nd
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From: Fountain, Joshua
Sent: 29 March 2012 00:36
To: Justin Brierley
Cc: Ravalde, Thomas; cu; Faux, James
Subject: RE: Possible Reasons To Believe speaker event/debate for May

Hi Justin

Thanks so much for your email, I really appreciate your offer and am very excited at the prospect of doing another event in conjunction with Premier Christian Radio. I’m certainly very interested in the idea, though unfortunately I can’t make any promises just yet.

I actually came across Dr. Hugh Ross years ago and have listened to and read a fair bit of his work, I think he would be a great speaker to come to Imperial (with the slight caveat that it would be good for him to stick to Fine Tuning of the Universe type arguments and stay away from Intelligent Design arguments which focus on dealing with flaws in Darwinism, while I personally am a supporter of ID and think there is a lot to be said for it I don’t believe such arguments are very effective as a form of apologetics at Imperial). The 28th of May is during our exam term but I think it may well be possible to get people along to an event of this type despite it being exam term.

Personally I think a debate format would work wonderfully, we recently put on an event on “Can a scientist believe in miracles” and we found that the panel discussion afterwards was what really opened up conversations that lasted whereas as simply having the lecture probably wouldn’t have inspired quite as much conversation. The problem with debates is always finding someone to argue the opposite position, but if we could get someone like Peter Atkins along it could work very well. Having said that I think a lecture or question and answer session would work well if we couldn’t find someone to debate with him.

I’m actually not on the CU committee anymore (we’ve just changed over) but I’d be more than happy to help out with the organization and be a point of contact if needs be (I think my exams are over by the 28th), I’ll leave that up to James. I’ve cc’d in the person who has taken my place on the committee (James Faux) and I’ll try and circulate emails as quickly as possible to be able to give a definite response as to whether Imperial CU could put on such an event. Do you have a deadline when you need to hear back for definite by? Also I was just wondering whether you would want this event open to people outside of the college?

Thanks again for your email. I really hope we can sort something out and we do very much appreciate you considering us.

Thanks

Josh

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From: Justin Brierley [justinbrierley at yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: 28 March 2012 14:37
To: Fountain, Joshua
Cc: Ravalde, Thomas; cu
Subject: Possible Reasons To Believe speaker event/debate for May

Hi Josh

I hope you are well. My name is Justin, I work for Premier Christian Radio. I was involved in various aspects of the William Lane Craig tour in October, which of course stopped at Imperial.

I wanted to let you know that I am organising an apologetics conference for 26 May where US Christian astronomer Hugh Ross and apologist Ken Samples, both from Reasons To Believe, will be speaking.  Both are great communicators with loads of experience responding to sceptics questions.

I'm hoping to give them a chance to present the evidence from the universe and science for God to a student audience (big bang, fine tuning of the universe) while they are over and wondered if there may be any chance of ICCU hosting them on Monday 28 May either in the day or evening?

This could be in a debate format with an atheist scientist, or it could be in a Q&A format which invites sceptical interaction.  I think it could be a great chance to outreach to Imperial students who think that science and god are incompatible.

Let me know if you think this may be something you would be interested in.

Thanks
Justin