UC Berkeley
8:30 PM
Barrows Hall, Room 170
A lecture by Fr. Anselm Ramelow, OP (Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley)
Free and open to the public
Speaker Bio
Fr. Anselm Ramelow is a Catholic priest in the Order of Preachers. He is professor of philosophy at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley and currently the chair of the philosophy department. He obtained his doctorate under Robert Spaemann in Munich on Leibniz and the Spanish Jesuits (Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl, 1997) and did theological work on George Lindbeck and the question of a Thomist philosophy and theology of language (Beyond Modernism? - George Lindbeck and the Linguistic Turn in Theology, 2005). He contributed articles to the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophy and essays on topics at the intersection of philosophy and theology, as well as a translation and commentary on part of Aquinas’ De veritate. He continues to work on questions of free will, philosophy of religion (miracles, existence and nature of God) and philosophical aesthetics.
Lecture Description:
Modern people, including believers, can be embarrassed by miracles, fearing to be accused of superstition or unwarranted credulity. Can it be ever rational to believe in miracles? In order to answer this question and the skeptical objections that have been raised, we will consider the fundamental principles at work: What are miracles? Can they violate laws of nature? How can we know that they have occurred? What do they tell us about God, about the world and ourselves? How about miracle claims in other religions?
