(This event, originally planned for Sept. 14th, has been rescheduled to Oct. 5th.)

Harvard University Medical School

TMEC Room 250 (260 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115)

12:30 pm

A lecture by Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, OP (Providence College)

Lunch will be served.

Co-sponsored by the Christian Medical and Dental Association and the Catholic Students Association

This lecture is free and open to the public.

Lecture description:

The famous atheist Richard Dawkins once said:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

While this statement might arguably represent an extreme perspective, many have questions about the nature of the God of the Bible.  Why does God describe himself as Jealous?  Why does he always demand that people praise him all the time?  Aren't these qualities of a narcissistic megalomaniac?  Others might wonder how could God be both transcendent and immanent? How can he be described as totally distinct from his creation and yet fully involved in the world?  How is this possible?  And how can he be described as both 3 and 1? That seems completely irrational!

Speaker Bio:

Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., completed his Bachelor’s Degree (B.S.E.) in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, and then earned his Ph.D. in Biology from M.I.T. in the laboratory of Prof. Leonard Guarente, where he was a fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was ordained a priest in May of 2004 and completed his Pontifical License in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) in Moral Theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, and a Pontifical Doctorate in Sacred Theology (S.T.D.) at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, in 2015.