Veritas Forum

MIT professors Alan Lightman, Troy Van Voorhis, Alex Byrne, and Daniel Hastings speak on "Life, the Universe, and MIT" in a discussion moderated by Rosalind Picard.

Os Guinness addresses the Veritas Forum at UCLA, 2010

Rodney Brooks and Rosalind Picard discuss robotics and humanity at the Veritas Forum at MIT, 2009

The Veritas Forum is a non-profit organization which works with Christian students on college campuses to host "forums" centered on the exploration of truth and its relevancy in human life, through the questions of philosophy, religion, science, and other disciplines. The organization, named after the Latin word for truth, aims to "[create] university events engaging students and faculty in exploring life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life."^[1] The first Veritas Forum was held at Harvard University in 1986. By 2008, 300,000 students had attended over 300 forums at 100 campuses across the United States, Canada, France, England, and the Netherlands. In the 2010–2011 academic year, Veritas Forums were held at over 50 institutions of higher education. Veritas Forums are available for viewing online, and the organization has published several books with InterVarsity Press.

Forums

To plan a Forum, Veritas partners with Christian student groups, who organize and host the Forum, typically co-sponsored by other student organizations and academic departments. Typical events include evening keynote addresses, workshops, debates, and discussions. Common topics include the existence of God; the relationship between science and religion; social justice work; questions of social ethics; feminism and women's issues; questions of meaning or purpose in human life, evil, or beauty; human sexuality and relationships; the existence of objective truth; religion and art; Christianity and popular culture; and the historical validity of the Bible.

The Veritas Forum has hosted several discussion events with prominent speakers representing secular or non-Christian points of view, including Peter Singer, Steven Pinker, Antony Flew, Christopher Hitchens, Shelly Kagan, Alan Lightman, and Jeffrey Sachs.

Recent discussion events include the following: the 2009 Veritas Forum at MIT with atheist philosopher Peter Singer, Christian philosophical theologian John E. Hare, and philosopher and religious scholar Eric Gregory;^[2] the 2010 Veritas Forum in the Sheldonian Theatre of the University of Oxford, with atheist and journalist Christopher Hitchens alongside Catholic philosopher and ethicist John Joseph Haldane;^[3] and the 2010 Veritas Forum at UCLA with Christian mathematician and apologist John Lennox being interviewed by UCLA Law Professor Daniel Lowenstein.^[4]

History

Pianist Mia Chung performs as part of an exploration of music, beauty, and truth, 2009.

Peter Singer addresses a Veritas Forum at MIT about human worth and dignity

The first forum took place at Harvard University in 1986, and was organized as an academic conference in Christian apologetics.^[5] Peter Gomes, Harvard's campus minister, participated in the forum in 1986.^[5] The Forum's name derives from Harvard's motto, Veritas, meaning Truth.^[6] Harvard's motto reflects the school's Christian heritage: although it is popularly trimmed to the one word Veritas, it officially reads "Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae," or Truth for Christ and the Church. With this name, Veritas seeks to remind the university community of the centrality of Christ to its founding. At the first Veritas Forum writers of the book Finding God at Harvard gathered to share their own questions, sufferings, journeys, and discoveries with the Harvard community.

After its first forum at Harvard, Veritas Forums spread to the University of Michigan, Ohio State, the University of Virginia, Yale and eventually across the country to Berkeley, Stanford, UC Davis, and UCLA.^[7]

France had its first Veritas Forum in 2006; England and the Netherlands in 2007; Macedonia in 2010. In the academic year 2010-2011, Forums were held at over forty American institutions of higher education. To date, over 400 speakers have presented at a Veritas event, representing a variety of disciplines and worldviews.^[8]

Past speakers

Christian speakers

Denis Alexander - Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St Edmund's College, Cambridge
Justin L. Barrett - psychologist and member of the Thrive Center for Human Development
Jeremy Begbie - scholar of Christianity and the arts at Duke Divinity School
Craig Blomberg - American New Testament scholar at Denver Seminary
Mia Chung - award-winning pianist and professor of Interpretive Analysis at Curtis Institute of Music
Francis Collins - American physicist-geneticist, former head of the Human Genome Project
Caroline Cox - member of the British House of Lords and CEO of the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust
William Lane Craig - American apologist, theologian, analytic philosopher and professor at Talbot School of Theology
Marla Frederick - professor of African-American Studies and the Study of Religion at Harvard University
Robert P. George - professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University
Owen Gingerich - professor of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard University
Os Guinness - noted author and apologist
Gary Habermas - American philosopher of religion
William Hurlbut - physician and consulting professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University
Timothy Keller - Christian pastor in New York City and author of "Reason for God"
Peter Kreeft - professor of philosophy at Boston College
Madeleine L'Engle - American author and winner of the Newbury Medal for "A Wrinkle in Time"
John Lennox - Irish apologist, mathematician and philosopher of science
Ard Louis - reader of theoretical physics at Oxford University
Paul L. Maier - American historian and writer
George Marsden - historian and professor at The University of Notre Dame
Frederica Mathewes-Green - Eastern Orthodox author and speaker on religion
Alister McGrath - Anglican priest, theologian, professor at King's College London
Kenneth R. Miller - American professor of biology and author of "Finding Darwin's God"
J.P. Moreland - American philosopher, theologian, and apologist
Richard John Neuhaus - prominent Christian cleric, founder and editor of "First Things"
Rosalind Picard - professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab
Alvin Plantinga - American analytic philosopher and former professor at the University of Notre Dame
John Polkinghorne - English theoretical physicist, Anglican priest, and professor at Cambridge University
Mary Poplin - professor of education at Claremont Graduate University
Nabeel Qureshi - Christian apologist, speaker and former Muslim
Vinoth Ramachandra - Sri Lankan Christian theologian and Secretary for Dialogue and Social Engagement for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students
Fritz Schaefer - computational and theoretical chemist, professor at the University of Georgia
John Stott - English Christian leader and Anglican cleric, principal author of the Lausanne Covenant
S. Joshua Swamidass -American scientist in computational biology, professor at Washington University in St. Louis
Peter Thiel - American investor and venture capitalist
Vince Vitale - British philosopher, theologian and speaker at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
Troy Van Voorhis - MIT chemistry professor
Miroslav Volf - Croatian professor of Christian theology at Yale University
Dallas Willard - American philosopher, formerly a professor at the University of Southern California
Peter J. Williams - British bible scholar and lecturer
Lauren Winner - author and lecturer, professor at Duke Divinity School
Jennifer Wiseman - American astronomer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Nicholas Wolterstorff - philosopher at Yale University
N.T. Wright - noted scholar and professor at the University of St. Andrews
Ravi Zacharias - public intellectual and Christian apologist

Secular speakers

Colin Adams - mathematician, author, and professor at Williams College
Dan Barker - prominent American atheist and former Christian preacher
Akeel Bilgrami - Indian-born philosopher of language and mind
Sean M. Carroll - American physicist and theoretical cosmologist
Veena Das - professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University
David Eisenbach - historian and professor at Columbia University
Antony Flew - British philosopher of religion and former atheist
Marcelo Gleiser - Brazilian physicist at Dartmouth College, astronomer, and author of "A Tear at the Edge of Creation"
Garrett Hardin - renowned American ecologist, coiner of the phrase "tragedy of the commons," and long-time professor at UCSB
David Helfand - chair of the Astronomy department at Columbia University
Christopher Hitchens - British author, journalist, and noted communicator of atheism
Shelly Kagan - professor of philosophy at Yale University
Nicholas D. Kristof - American journalist and winner of two Pulitzer prizes
Alan Lightman - MIT professor and author of the bestselling Einstein's Dreams
Gerd Lüdemann - German critical New Testament scholar and atheist
Steven Pinker - Harvard University professor of psychology and leading atheist
Jeffrey Sachs - American economist and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University
Scott Sehon - professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College
Peter Singer - Australian philosopher, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, and preference utilitarian

Books and media

Veritas Forum recordings are freely available on the Veritas website.

Veritas Forum Books seek to provide "academically engaging, culturally relevant and distinctively Christian points of view" to the public. Current titles include the following:

A Place for Truth edited by Dallas Willard, published in the fall of 2010
Finding God at Harvard edited by Veritas founder Kelly Monroe Kullberg
Finding God Beyond Harvard edited by Veritas founder Kelly Monroe Kullberg
The Dawkins Delusion by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath
Finding Calcutta by Mary Poplin
Did the Resurrection Happen? featuring a discussion between Gary Habermas and Antony Flew

Notes and references

↑ "What is Veritas?, Organization's self-description.
↑ Moral Mammals: Why Do We Matter?
↑ We Don't Do God: Secularism and Faith in the Public Square
↑ Christianity and the Tooth Fairy: A UCLA Law Professor questions an Oxford mathematician on the claims of Jesus
1 2 Kofol, Anne K. (28 February 2001). "Christian Groups Plan Veritas Forum". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
↑ About Harvard's shield and logo
↑ Where We Are
↑ Veritas Presenters

External links

Local media

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