The Pub Debate – Can atheists justify morality?

On Monday 30th March we have our first Pub Debate of the year, between Dr Peter Slezak and Dr Jim Franklin on the topic: Can atheists justify morality?

As ever, drinks start at 5pm in the Club Bar (upstairs at The Roundhouse) and the debate will start at 6pm.  Here are the blurbs:

Peter Slezak: “Whatever the source and justification of ethical judgements, these must be consistent with our best science. The picture of the world available from our best science is essentially that of Lucretius – there is only “atoms and the void”. We must find the meaning of life and make sense of morality in such a framework.”

Jim Franklin: “There is no room for genuine ethics in the world picture of standard (scientific materialist) atheism. On that view, a human brain is much the same kind of thing as a lifeless galaxy: just complex stuff. So the death of a person is much the same thing as the explosion of supernova: a firework, something that might be disliked as a psychological matter, but not a genuine tragedy in the objective scheme of things. In that case, there can’t be genuine ethics, only tribal custom.”

Come along to hear these two positions explained and argued – and bring your own questions to fire at either of the speakers.