“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” — Charles Dickens
Thursday, October 1st will be the best of times, because that evening there will be two highly-anticipated lectures. It will also be the worst of times, however—you can only attend one as they each start at 7:00 PM. I’ll advertise them both; go to whichever one most piques your interest.
This year’s Leonard Arrington Mormon History Lecture will be given by Kathleen Flake, professor of American religious history in the Divinity School and Graduate Department at Vanderbilt University. She will be speaking about “The Emotional and Priestly Logic of Plural Marriage.” Having read Flake’s work on polygamy, I expect her presentation to be fascinating. This lecture will take place Thursday, October 1st at the Logan Tabernacle at 7:00 PM.
Another lecture will be held at the same time in the Emert Auditorium (room 130) of the Eccles Science and Learning Center. Dr. Francisco Ayala will be giving a lecture entitled “Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion.” He teaches evolutionary biology at UC Irvine and served as the chief witness in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education against teaching creationism in public schools.
Our theist friends can attend both—one in body, the other in spirit. But alas, we nonbelievers enjoy no such luxury.
Nonbelievers, however, have the option of cloning or robot duplicates. Make two robot duplicates and you can attend both lectures, while also catching up on homework.
Even believers do not have the option to be in one place in body and another in spirit since believers (at least believers like me) think that we have a basic and irreducible pscyho-somatic unity.
I was just playing off of the saying “I’ll be there in spirit.” I didn’t actually mean to commit theists to any particular metaphysics ha ha.
Now that these are over, does anyone have any summaries of one or both of them? I didn’t end up making it away from my man-high pile of textbooks.
I can provide a summary of Flake’s lecture sometime this week.