As many of you know (from my Facebook event invitation or previous blog post), I coordinated the Veritas Forum at MIT for the second year in a row Monday night. Since everyone asks, it was recorded and will be on veritas.org/mit some time in the next 3-6 weeks. I’ll be reflecting on the event over two or more blog posts, and this is the first.
What was it about? Well, you can read the super long title on the Facebook page to see how we advertised it. To get feedback on the forum, we ask all of the participants what their biggest takeaway from the forum was. Here are some random examples to give you a flavor of the discussion.
the motives of actions are important. In other words, it’s not just actions, it’s the truth behind the actions that matter. True belief matters, and belief is valuable because provable absolutes don’t exist. Even “cogito ergosum” is doubtable
There are very smart people on both sides of this issue
Religion shapes how people act and is important in that way
Respect more important than convincing
MIT professors are not philosophers (mostly)
The limits of science and proving God’s existence should be considered.
The presence of God cannot be proven nor disproven, though this fact should not deter belief.
I need to do my taxes in the next two days!
Okay, so that last one was fake, but it did come up in Professor Formaggio’s presentation. If you weren’t there, I guess you’ll have to wait for the video to see how he tied that in to his agnostic beliefs, because you’ll never guess.
Anyways, as the organizer, I was already familiar with the content that they presented, and my biggest takeaway was not generated from the discussion itself. Instead, it was through this event that I learned the value in letting go of my perfectionism.
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The Christian Rationalist 